Scratch

sonicfan12p wrote:

Why are views so important? It just means someone looked at it.

When I said that these usernames could be gaining views instead of dust, I was stating that these accounts could once again have purpose, unlike now, where it is neither used nor visited.

Also, how is 2 months a long time?

Sorry, I said "Two-three months". I should have just said "three months", simpler. If it's three months, then I have a question for you, Have you ever not logged in even once once in a quarter of a year's time? If it's too short of a inactivity period, extend it to half a year or even a whole year, it really doesn't matter. This is just an idea for removing inactive accounts and that definition can vary, of course. 

Anyway, it's only important to clean out accounts if you're a game or website that has hundreds joining each day, like runescape, or something like that. But regardless, the ST won't do it. It would take more effort than it's worth, just ask the ST. They will be able to tell you straight forward why they won't do it, rather than us speculating.

The fact that no Mods or any of the Scratch Team have posted on this topic yet gives me doubt, seeing as there are 75 posts and it's continued being discussed for a couple of weeks now...
If other websites are able to close accounts based on inactivity, why wouldn't this one? 

sonicfan12p wrote:

That's just it, most of the great projects would be gone were we to follow you're idea. While this is a great way to clean up collabs, which some collabs have done, but not the Scratch website. That, and there are many schools who give asignments that can be fulfilled with scratch, sometimes it's the student choice what to use. I've helped several students in help with scripts get this done. Besides, as mentioned earlier, with the commentless, projectless, everyting else less users, they may only have the account to download projects, with no interest in using the rest of the site. Deleting that would be unfair to them.

bobbybee wrote:

AND never downloaded a project.

Reread the first post please. There is a NO!-Funktion if your account is in danger -.- The only problem is what happens if people do not notice anything what is pretty unlikely. And if their account is a JUST-download account (NOTHING else like you said) why can't they just create a new one? Thant it hadn't been that important anyway. and if its more, they'll notice the NO!-Funktion for sure.

LiFaytheGoblin wrote:

Maybe you could only delete people who don't have projects, don't have favourites, never left a comment and have never been in the forums? people who only made a profile but never used it?

Thats kinda the point ^____^

zubblewu wrote:

How about delete accounts that are inactive, each project has 100< views and 15 unique love it's, less than 100 forum posts, their accounts haven't been looked at in a long time (anything other than viewed), less than x amount f people have friended than, and they have not logged in in 2 months or more. (this is just an on the fly example, something like this would probably be different.)

Yep.

sonicfan12p wrote:

That's the description of almost 2/3 acconts on Scratch zubblewu...

They can still say no, if their Account is in danger.

ImagineIt wrote:

No... That doesn't mean they're worthless, just because they have low views...

Its not about "good" or "bad"or as you say worthless accounts. NOTHING could ever make an active account here worthless, its just about the unused ones!

jontmy00 wrote:

xJira wrote:

How many schools have Scratch-Assignments?

Many in Singapore... 

That had been a serious question, I didnt know that. But if there accounts are rather functional, at least they dont loose friends or sth. if they have VERY bad luck and really don't notice and nobody else who could tell 'em

Last edited by xJira (2012-09-06 13:46:58)

taddl wrote:

and if the scratch team made a mistake, and every single account would be gone?
O_O

... Because the Scratch Team is well-known for massive programming messups and not testing things first. 

jukyter wrote:

Dinoclor wrote:

Sorry for having an opinion, but...

I support.

I think that commentless, projectless, and postless accounts that have been inactive for over 4-6 months should be purged in the transition. If anyone is gone for more than 3 months, they are most likely never coming back. and if Wes's math is correct, then it leaves everyone with a lot more space.

But, just to make sure, they should all get a bulk admin notification to make sure they ARE really inactive. I think that would be more effective than a button to grab attention and more likely to be clicked on and noticed. The notification would contain a link to a page with a delete button.

No history would be destroyed.

No-one would get upset over their account going poof.

Okay, so like anyone gone over 3 months is never coming back? :s
I was gone for almost 3 years :s

You weren't postless for that time though

I still don't support though

OverPowered wrote:

RedRocker227 wrote:

You weren't postless for that time though

I still don't support though

Plrase tell us why... I just do not understand why Scratchers seem unwilling to support this, even though it would reduce the Scratch server's data usage, allow more usernames to be used, and improve statistic gathering...

If the length of inactivity time is the problem, just remember that three months is an arbitratrily set time and can easily be changed. How long does a Scratcher have to be gone to be considered, well, gone? Six months? A year?

It's not really a good idea to set an arbitrary amount determining inactivity - after all, inactivity can differ from user to user. For example, test accounts can go inactive for a long time until an owner needs them; I have one that's been inactive for longer than a year that is absolutely blank - no projects, no comments, no forum posts, no faves, no downloads, no avatar, you get the picture - and I'd rather not lose it for certain reasons. Another example of inactive accounts not worthy of deletion: a teacher could have a Scratch account for teaching purposes, might leave it inactive for a while and return to it years later. I could think of a few more that might be unfairly caught in the sieve.

At this time, I don't think that the Scratch Team would set criteria in place for removal of accounts do to lack of activity - most websites don't even do that in the first place (or if they do, the warning is usually given when signing up, not after the fact) simply for the reason that you never know when a user is going to come back. This is especially true when account deletion is permanent such that there is no possible case of account retrieval once the delete button is hit (account deletion would be too much of a high risk in this case).

One good workaround would be to have an e-mail reminder for inactive accounts asking if they want the account deleted (as opposed to one that threatens account deletion after inactivity) - the user would then ignore the message if they want to keep the account or click on a link if they choose to delete it. However, that kind of system requires monitoring all accounts and sending messages to all of them - and that can overtax the sever more than the mere presence of hundreds of thousands of empty and inactive accounts ever would; return messages due to fake/incorrect/inactive e-mail addresses would make that situation worse. It may not be worth trying to determine criteria for inactive accounts and stamping them out in the first place. 

If the sake of deleting inactive accounts is for saving space, then I think you guys might be thinking in the wrong direction. While empty and inactive account do take up some space, it isn't inactivity that causes most of the server slowdown - it's actually activity itself. Things that really overtax the server include things like searches, uploaded projects, high volume of visitors, and notifications and high commenting volume. So a good goal is to actually watch ourselves and what we do. A few good ways to start:

- be careful when adding projects to galleries: Galleries are designed for grouping things and messages are generated when projects are added to galleries. So keep away from putting stuff in "add everything" galleries and
- be careful about what we post or upload: Posting mean, spammy, or trollish comments and attack projects because you dislike someone or their project so not only against Community Guidelines - they take up extra notification space and cause an extra tax on the server when moderators have to clean them up.
- deleting notifications and friend request in your message center: I dunno why, but people seems to be so enamored with high messages in their message center or use it to keep track of those who friended them. But keeping those notifications around is bad for the server! So it's better to get rid of them.

I'm not saying to reduce website activity, but to make good use of it and not waste it. We can do a lot more with practicing good behavior instead. Good behavior = happy website in more ways than one. 



P.S. I could help but notice this in the first post:

xJira wrote:

It makes a lot of user-names avaiable again.

^That's totally false. Once a name it taken, it's taken. It's to prevent users from taking over other people's identities when they're gone (can you imagine how much havoc would be raised if I decided to delete my account and name was taken by some troll?)

P.P.S. If you're reading this post-postscript because you scrolled down and didn't bother to read my post, then go back and read. And no TL;DR attitude, we all know how rude that is around here.

jontmy00 wrote:

I have to agree with cheddargirl. And I did not scroll down immediately. I read the entire post. 

++1

i'd much prefer a button that says "IF YOU WANT TO DELEATE ACCOUNT HERE

cheddargirl wrote:

theprogrammerpro wrote:

i'd much prefer a button that says "IF YOU WANT TO DELEATE ACCOUNT HERE

There was originally a button like that, but it only exists for blank accounts under certain conditions - some Scratchers were afraid that someone would abuse that function if someone broke into the account, which is why the button isn't there anymore. You can, however, still contact the Scratch Team for account deletion. 

Very true.

Another reason why people would have accounts w/o anything:
To play games in Flash.

sonicfan12p wrote:

Thank you Cheddargirl. Now that the ST has come and told you why, now we can let it go. 

Cheddargirl accidentally banned everyone from the forums once, but that was an error causing all ip's to be shown the same. Nothing like it has happened since.