I haven't done any clean up in 10 years. So with the forum starting to slow down I
figured I'd clean things up a bit. I deleted all the accounts that have been deactivated
by one of our 18 admins, which is 99% spammers, along with their spam posts.
A couple real but deactivated users were probably on that list. And they, along with their
posts got deleted. I did not have time to investigate each of the many hundreds of spammers
or the thousands of spam posts there were sitting there.
I did notice that most of the spammers and their posts were already getting old
(at least few years old) so I didn't think I'd be affecting any current conversations.
As to the question of policy, there hasn't been a policy to deal with spammers that have
had their account deactivated by an admin.
Maybe we can come up with one now.
First of all, in 2012 I have implemented the email sign up system. That seems to be doing
a real good job eliminating spammers. I open up the system for about 15 minutes a day to
sign up the new members. In that time I usually get 2 or 3 spammers who slip in. But
the new members can't post until I move the new members into the registered members group.
Prior to doing that, I delete the spammers. So we should not have any spammers with
deactivated accounts. Should a spammer circumvent all the safeguards that are in place,
we will delete him and his posts quickly.
That means that only previously registered users can have their accounts deactivated by an
admin. And it certainly makes sense, not to delete their posts, as it would leave holes in
some threads. So I am thinking just to leave these accounts in the database, in their
deactivated state.
And if I accidentally put some holes in threads this week while I was cleaning up, I
apologize. I don't suspect that'll happen again.
Mike...