Why were all members with a 0 post count deleted

[McNutty]

It's a good job this ain't my board or I'd be deleting some of the accounts in this thread too, just for shits and giggles!

Check your PM for the DB password.

[Elyanna]

D: YOU KILLED NOT GIRAFFE

[ivan astikov]

It's a good job this ain't my board or I'd be deleting some of the accounts in this thread too, just for shits and giggles!

Check your PM for the DB password.

Ooooh, if only...

[CRSP]

OK, I thought I was agreeing to deleting posters who had never posted, and had been members for more than 60 days. This would have gotten rid of a substantial number of snark user accounts whose only purpose is to influence polls, and also gotten rid of a large number of spambots.

The reason why it wasn't discussed in The Hive was because we thought any talk of methods for combating the image trolls would only enflame the situation until those measures were implemented.

It looks like we fucked up (for one, not even considering that there may be users who chat, but never post). On that front, I'm sorry.

[Sleeps w/Butterflies]

blah blah blah blah blah blah blah
ETA: I was curious how many chatters got nuked. Here is the list, along with how many messages each had. I think it's safe to say ChickenToes and MultiTalent were the only real active chatters affected by this:

+-------------------+-----------------+
| username          | count           |
+-------------------+-----------------+
| MultiTalent       |             451 | 
| Chicken Toes      |             276 | 
| CraZgurlie        |              59 | 
| Chris Hansen      |              38 | 
| Una Persson       |              28 | 
| Unsquare Dance    |              18 | 
| Nunavut Boy       |              17 | 
| bitchslap         |               9 | 
| SexyExy           |               9 | 
| me3po             |               7 | 
| 1UP               |               6 | 
| Toadfoot          |               6 | 
| Mymalene          |               5 | 
| nonny             |               4 | 
| green             |               3 | 
| Lorna Mae         |               2 | 
| Not Giraffe       |               2 | 
| Socky McSockerton |               2 | 
| Greathouse        |               1 | 
| Superorganism     |               1 | 
+-------------------+-----------------+

CHRIS HANSEN IS GONE!?!?!?!?!? Let me tell you something, MISTER MCNUTTY, you haven't SEEN dramatical yet. MARK.MY.WORDS.

DIAF,
Sleeps

[beebs]

CHRIS HANSEN IS GONE!?!?!?!?!? Let me tell you something, MISTER MCNUTTY, you haven't SEEN dramatical yet. MARK.MY.WORDS.

DIAF,
Sleeps

Chris Hansen is already back. He was flirting with me about 40 minutes ago.

[rotheche]

How about, instead of deleting them - unwelcoming - after 60 days without visiting the board, move them into a 'retired' user group or something like that?

[ivan astikov]

How about, instead of deleting them - unwelcoming - after 60 days without visiting the board, move them into a 'retired' user group or something like that?

Yes! How about The Lurking Room? I'll even volunteer to be moderator!

[Feirefiz]

CRSP, McNutty, feel free to accuse me of being overly dramatic, if you care at all.
What has happened does bother me and I don't accept the apologies so far.

This board is struggling. Yet people want to give it a chance. Sure, many don't post as much as you might like, but frankly, in your situation you should be grateful for every member in good faith that you can get.
There are a few people who only chat. Others lurk but want full access to the board. They might or might not post one day. Finally there are those who just wanted to secure their usual names. These people didn't do anything wrong. Actually they are exactly the people you should try to win for the board.

Still you decided to give them the finger and you did that for little discernible reason. Snarkers and spambots don't care about registering new accounts. Sure, you can claim that you never meant to offend the innocent. Ok, then it was just a remarkably stupid spur-of-the-moment decision that betrays you apparent disdain for members that don't live up to your expectations. Furthermore the fact that this was actually implemented without any scrutiny shows deficiencies in the way this board is run.
You might want to rethink that attitude. It won't serve you well.



It was fun for a while and I really wanted you to succeed but I don't believe in you any more.

[ivan astikov]

Actually they are exactly the people you should try to win for the board.

So, those whose loyalty - and posting - is tied to another board, with this board basically a life-raft if their #1 choice sinks, are the people we are trying to attract?

[Feirefiz]

So, those whose loyalty - and posting - is tied to another board, with this board basically a life-raft if their #1 choice sinks, are the people we are trying to attract?

Of course it would be preferable if the board could attract its own audience through sheer brilliance and abundant content. Realistically that won't work without the low hanging fruit of those who know about the board and have shown at least minimal interest.

[Hatshepsut]

Does this really need to be so goddamn dramatic? It was a rash move that they thought was going to have no impact to anyone. They were wrong. Allow them to say "oops" and decide a better way to do it next time. The world is not ending. Your trust was not violated. It's just a message board.

In my opinion, the right way to deal with this is: 1) agree that the criteria for deletion were a bit capricious and not well-thought-out, 2) apologize to those who had their accounts deleted and ask them to sign up again if they would be so kind as to not hold a grudge, and 3) come up with better criteria for deleting "dead" accounts or possibly don't do it at all (the only benefit I can see is freeing up usernames; the burden of an inactive account is basically nil).

That pretty well sums it up for me.

In terms of "why on earth would anyone do this?" my first thought was that it was that it was an attempt to present an "honest" face to the world about the size of domebo. I've seen sneering on this board at the obviously inflated SDMB membership numbers - don't they claim something like 80k members, when obviously the active membership is far less? The purge was a bad idea, obviously, but I tend to assume it was well-motivated.

[ivan astikov]

So, those whose loyalty - and posting - is tied to another board, with this board basically a life-raft if their #1 choice sinks, are the people we are trying to attract?

Of course it would be preferable if the board could attract its own audience through sheer brilliance and abundant content. Realistically that won't work without the low hanging fruit of those who know about the board and have shown at least minimal interest.

You mean enough interest to sign up? If all the board needed was additional non-active 'members', I could have got 50 online associates to sign up here, who wouldn't have contributed anything, because it's 'not their bag'. I don't see how it would improve the status of the board though.

[Exy]

OK, I thought I was agreeing to deleting posters who had never posted, and had been members for more than 60 days. This would have gotten rid of a substantial number of snark user accounts whose only purpose is to influence polls, and also gotten rid of a large number of spambots.

The reason why it wasn't discussed in The Hive was because we thought any talk of methods for combating the image trolls would only enflame the situation until those measures were implemented.

It looks like we fucked up (for one, not even considering that there may be users who chat, but never post). On that front, I'm sorry.

I don't understand what the train of thought was that this would possibly help with those problems anyway. If someone's willing to go to the trouble of opening up dozens of threads to post shock images, or register half a dozen accounts in order to vote on whatever stupid thing has to be voted on next, the reregistering step is somehow going to stop them?

I have no idea how many spambots there are, and per Tuckerfan's comments earlier perhaps deleting their accounts actually slows them down, I don't know, but it's still really hard to understand why you imagined this would help with trolls and poll cheaters, since there's nothing stopping those people from signing right up again.

Allow them to say "oops" and decide a better way to do it next time.

That pretty well sums it up for me.

Uh, you know, when he posted that, the person who made this decision hadn't said oops, and we were still completely in the dark as to what the rationale for this even was.

[Winston Smith]

CHRIS HANSEN IS GONE!?!?!?!?!? Let me tell you something, MISTER MCNUTTY, you haven't SEEN dramatical yet. MARK.MY.WORDS.

DIAF,
Sleeps

Please clarify: Should it just be McNutty that dies in a fire, or should the fire include CRSP and What Exit?, too?

[Fenris]

Does this really need to be so goddamn dramatic? It was a rash move that they thought was going to have no impact to anyone. They were wrong. Allow them to say "oops" and decide a better way to do it next time. The world is not ending. Your trust was not violated. It's just a message board.

In my opinion, the right way to deal with this is: 1) agree that the criteria for deletion were a bit capricious and not well-thought-out, 2) apologize to those who had their accounts deleted and ask them to sign up again if they would be so kind as to not hold a grudge, and 3) come up with better criteria for deleting "dead" accounts or possibly don't do it at all (the only benefit I can see is freeing up usernames; the burden of an inactive account is basically nil).

I agree, and I appreciate CRSP and What_Exit saying they made a mistake. That's a refreshing change from the Dope.

That said, I think it's important WITHOUT RECRIMINATIONS (the people involved admitted they were wrong) is to examine why it happened to prevent further problems of this nature.

CRSP said

The reason why it wasn't discussed in The Hive was because we thought any talk of methods for combating the image trolls would only enflame the situation until those measures were implemented.

This is, to me, the sole key problem.

Domebo is founded on complete, total, absolute openness. And you've just allowed your (irrational, IMO) fear of trolls to undermine your single guiding principle. Because you were afraid of trolls, you made a clandestine decision totally at odds with the board's mission.

I think everyone agrees it was a mistake to do the deletions, but the more important question is "Why are you so afraid of these trolls?"

The posters here voted for images in every forum (FTR, I didn't. I voted for the "Images in some forums"). The vast, VAST majority of your posters are internet savvy enough to know that means you're gonna get the occasional Tubgirl attack. And they voted for images anyway. It seems to me like there's been a lot of second guessing that decision.

I think a better solution would have been (and hell, this is 20/20 hindsight)

A) the default in every user's profile is that images are OFF until they choose to turn them on. That way, Grandma who signed up because that little bald creepy-guy on your front page is so cute won't get shocked by Goatse or Tubgirl.

B) Quit trying to make board policy so dependant on what the trolls may/will do. Yes, someone in the Snackpit was talking about a huge invasion this weekend. So? At worst there's icky pictures up for a couple of hours. A huge problem the SDMB has is that there's so much hysteria about what "might" happen that they have totally insane rules they wrote to deal with a single situation. (The "you can't change quotes. Not even a period. OR YOU'RE BANNED!" came from one (1) moron who threatened to sue in 2001-ish.)

C) Either change your mission statement about total openness or don't make behind-the-scenes decisions of this magnitude again. The breach of trust can be mended from one error in judgment, but I doubt it can be mended with two.

Anyway, I hope this doesn't come across as me trying to tell anyone how to run their board--it's a bit awkward for me to weigh in on board stuff, but I do post and chat here and I like it. I'm only trying to post as a Domeboer here.





One important thing that I think needs to be examined is th

[Borborygmi]

.

[ivan astikov]

One important thing that I think needs to be examined is th..........

Not that important, then?

[Exy]

One important thing that I think needs to be examined is th

Oh no, he's been silenced! THEY DISAPPEARED FENRIS! DAMN YOU, DUMBO!!!!!

[ivan astikov]

Now I know what it felt like to wear glasses in Pol Pot's Cambodia.

Or, I should say, Fenris does.

[Winston Smith]

I'm going to unsticky this thread, because there's really no reason for it to be sticky.

[Auntbeast]

I'm going to unsticky this thread, because there's really no reason for it to be sticky.

We are trying to go off on a tangent here. Could ya keep logic out of it?

[Winston Smith]

I'm going to unsticky this thread, because there's really no reason for it to be sticky.

We are trying to go off on a tangent here. Could ya keep logic out of it?

Logic? I've been accused of a lot of things on this board, but this is a first.

[beebs]

Hypothetically if someone started a sock account that got deleted because that person only posted once, would that mean that the old email address could still be used again? Or is that email still in the vault as previously registered even though the account has been deleted?

Hypothetically some members in good standing could be too lazy to grab another email address.

Your Devil's advocate,
beebs

[What Exit?]

Hypothetically if someone started a sock account that got deleted because that person only posted once, would that mean that the old email address could still be used again? Or is that email still in the vault as previously registered even though the account has been deleted?

Hypothetically some members in good standing could be too lazy to grab another email address.

Your Devil's advocate,
beebs

The Email and account name should both be freed up for reuse.

[Exy]

Hypothetically if someone started a sock account that got deleted because that person only posted once, would that mean that the old email address could still be used again? Or is that email still in the vault as previously registered even though the account has been deleted?

Hypothetically some members in good standing could be too lazy to grab another email address.

Your Devil's advocate,
beebs

Yes, you can reuse the email address.

[Winston Smith]

Hypothetically if someone started a sock account that got deleted because that person only posted once, would that mean that the old email address could still be used again? Or is that email still in the vault as previously registered even though the account has been deleted?

Hypothetically some members in good standing could be too lazy to grab another email address.

Your Devil's advocate,
beebs

Yes, you can reuse the email address.

[featherlou]

I agree with McNutty and Fenris - this was a misstep, but I don't think for a second there was any malice behind it. Like many people have said already, we can't let fear of trolls be our driving motivation here.

As for the issue of finding the balance between doing everything by vote and committee and letting the mods and admins do their jobs, I think we'll find our way to that eventually. It doesn't have to happen overnight.

ETA: And CairoCarol. I agree with McNutty, Fenris, and CairoCarol. Can I start over?

[OneCentStamp]

Of course, one advantage of the Great Domebo Purge of 2009 is that all the handles that were SDMB members holding their places here "just in case" they wanted to come over are now free. FREE!!!

Cuntlapper.

[ivan astikov]

Of course, one advantage of the Great Domebo Purge of 2009 is that all the handles that were SDMB members holding their places here "just in case" they wanted to come over are now free. FREE!!!

Haven't you got a crumbling empire to be taking care of?

[WhyNot]

I agree with McNutty and Fenris - this was a misstep, but I don't think for a second there was any malice behind it. Like many people have said already, we can't let fear of trolls be our driving motivation here.

As for the issue of finding the balance between doing everything by vote and committee and letting the mods and admins do their jobs, I think we'll find our way to that eventually. It doesn't have to happen overnight.

ETA: And CairoCarol. I agree with McNutty, Fenris, and CairoCarol. Can I start over?

I agree with featherlou. :wink:

Myrna, Excalibur, I love you like cheese, but it does seem as if you're looking for reasons to be pissed off at this place sometimes.

[MultiTalent]

I can see why someone invested time on the board would be upset. So Myrna and Excalibur have the right to be upset they and What Exit and featherlou (other chatters as well) were the welcoming committee when I started. And if I understand the reasoning behind them being pissed it is because they want new people to be welcomed here. Take this example, PosterJoe is on the SDMB signs up here and on Giraffes board but never posted on either, now the SDMB goes down for an extended time PosterJoe goes here to sign in and post but no more account, so he goes to Giraffes logs in and posts. Who has a better chance to keep PosterJoe as a regular?

[Exy]

Weird, I thought I just posted a message quoting the Ed Zotti thing and pointing out that the admins are probably going to now have to undertake the task of confirming the identities of new signups under well-known SDMB usernames. Ed Zotti there is probably not an issue but there was a fake Diogenes who posted for like a year at the snackpit before the real one noticed; I, at least, don't want that to happen here. Even if you don't really care about protecting people who just signed up accounts to prevent username spoofing, it's gonna suck for the rest of us to have to sit around wondering if, say, Miller actually decided to start posting here or if it's just someone screwing around.

Myrna, Excalibur, I love you like cheese, but it does seem as if you're looking for reasons to be pissed off at this place sometimes.

Yeah, whatever, WhyNot. I repeatedly attempted to calm people down in chat, and most of my posts in this thread were an attempt to explain exactly why this is a bad idea, prior to Crispy's post, since, at that point, all we knew was that he had asked Jim to do it and that he was planning on doing it again in the future.

So if you want to ignore everything I said using the false justification that I just invent reasons to get pissed, go ahead, but if you look at the thread I was hardly the engineer of the outrage train. The opinion that this was a bad idea appears to be unanimous, as far as I can tell, and prior to Crispy's showing up and saying he wouldn't do it again, pretty much everyone was floored by it, not just me or Myrnalene.

[WhyNot]

So if you want to ignore everything I said using the false justification that I just invent reasons to get pissed, go ahead, but if you look at the thread I was hardly the engineer of the outrage train.

Actually, you're right. I did go back and review, and you're right. I apologize for including you in that statement.

[Exy]

Actually, you're right. I did go back and review, and you're right. I apologize for including you in that statement.

Thanks.

We all know Myrna's the incorrigible troublemaker here.

[ivan astikov]

Actually, you're right. I did go back and review, and you're right. I apologize for including you in that statement.

Thanks.

We all know Myrna's the incorrigible troublemaker here.

She's even trying to disrupt my "Mexican Wave" thread!!!11!

[Fenris]

but there was a fake Diogenes who posted for like a year at the snackpit before the real one noticed;

Digression-did anyone ever confirm that the Fake Dio was, in fact, a fake?

[Exy]

Digression-did anyone ever confirm that the Fake Dio was, in fact, a fake?

Diogenes said so. And I'm pretty sure Mommy backed him up on it. Though for all I know she may just have been going off an email of his, if you're thinking that Diogenes decided to repudiate his own snark persona.

[ivan astikov]

Actually, you're right. I did go back and review, and you're right. I apologize for including you in that statement.

Thanks.

We all know Myrna's the incorrigible troublemaker here.

She's even trying to disrupt my "Mexican Wave" thread!!!11!

Did I mention she was showing her breasts, guys?

[Myrnalene]

OK, I thought I was agreeing to deleting posters who had never posted, and had been members for more than 60 days. This would have gotten rid of a substantial number of snark user accounts whose only purpose is to influence polls, and also gotten rid of a large number of spambots.

Without a doubt you have gotten rid of a substantial number of good faith accounts in the process.

I don't want to come off as recriminating here but there are a couple of things I think need to be straightened out before we can move on from this. Obviously, there was some kind of communication breakdown between you and Jim. I not trying to blame anyone but this is a problem that needs to be fixed. If there was some kind of discussion, even a PM loop with all the mods evolved, maybe this stuff could have been clarified instead of two people each thinking they are understanding each other which leaves us with this horrible mess. I still think the purge was a terrible idea, but maybe we could have lost less than half of our user base.

Also, you said you were agreeing? I thought this purge was your idea.

The reason why it wasn't discussed in The Hive was because we thought any talk of methods for combating the image trolls would only enflame the situation until those measures were implemented.

I can't say it any better than our excellent Fenris:

And you've just allowed your (irrational, IMO) fear of trolls to undermine your single guiding principle. Because you were afraid of trolls, you made a clandestine decision totally at odds with the board's mission.

Please let us know what we can expect in the future regarding transparency and the handling of troll/spam issues.

[NAF1138]

Please let us know what we can expect in the future regarding transparency and the handling of troll/spam issues.

This wasn't lack of transperancy, this was the admins making a unilateral decision, which is even more fustrating.

I sort of understand why they did it*, what I don't understand is why they didn't think to ask anyone else if it seemed like a good idea.


*I don't agree, but I understand.

[Zuul]

As I stopped an image troll only hours after this event, this clearly, clearly did not do anything to stop trolling. Nor, in fact, does it logically have any connection to stopping trolling.

If a troll can sign up as many times as they want, they will. Regardless of whether you delete their account or not. If a troll can sign up using the same IP address over and over again, they will. Regardless of whether you delete their account or not.

Posters with zero posts to their names or one post wonders aren't your trolls and deleting them is not going to solve anything. I've been trying to moderate this place and offer suggestions for how to combat various problems in good faith, but at this point I'm wondering if my time would be better spent banging my head into a brick wall.

Now trolls can snatch up names from the SDMB that had been claimed before by the genuine users. They don't have to make new email accounts to register new names, either, since previous accounts were deleted. They pretty much don't have to do anything to get a name here again except sign up.

If somebody had twenty sock accounts that you just deleted, he can use the exact same twenty email addresses and start them up again. Meanwhile, honest lurkers will probably not bother.

I cannot fathom the fear and overreaction to trolls here, either. I cleaned up nearly a hundred tubgirls by hand, on a holiday, by myself. Not something I relish doing again, but not something worth flailing around in a panic about either.

[Exy]

[words]

Thanks, Caerie, this is an excellent post.

[Winston Smith]

I cleaned up nearly a hundred tubgirls by hand...

This sounds so dirty. I like it. A lot.

[McNutty]

Take this example, PosterJoe is on the SDMB signs up here and on Giraffes board but never posted on either, now the SDMB goes down for an extended time PosterJoe goes here to sign in and post but no more account, so he goes to Giraffes logs in and posts.

You know, I appreciate this scenario, but honestly, the more likely outcome is probably that PosterJoe, if he notices at all, says to himself, "huh, I thought I signed up here. Well, I never did post. Maybe they delete old accounts that have never posted," and signs up again. The vast majority of the deleted accounts were not someone who, like you, was active in chat.

I'm not saying the deletions were a good idea, but I don't think all these zero-post folks are going to stomp off in a huff when they find their accounts missing. Many will just sign up again if they care. Many won't, but I suspect a good portion of those will be people who had zero posts because they weren't coming back anyway.

And of course, the fact that they can just sign up again is the exact reason this didn't help with trolls. Caerie had a great point that people with zero posts are extremely unlikely to be trolls, because never posting anything isn't a real effective trolling style.

[Myglaren]

I propose a moratorium on non posters but a proviso in the regulations that the database could be cleared of non posting members who have not made a first post after (for example) three months.

Anyone who wants to sign up to enjoy the benefits of membership such as identification of new posts, etc. then only hast to bung a post in periodically to retain their settings.

ETA: The email addresses of known trolls can be added to the banned list to at least slow them down a bit. Nothing is going to stop the determined ones. Other than summary execution perhaps.

[Exy]

Well, maybe I was wrong to disagree. With the new troll-free atmosphere, we've been graced by the presence of SDMB favorites like Gfactor, OpalCat, and Ed Zotti . . .

[What Exit?]

Well, maybe I was wrong to disagree. With the new troll-free atmosphere, we've been graced by the presence of SDMB favorites like Gfactor, OpalCat, and Ed Zotti . . .

Gfactor is probably real. He was lurking here before.

[CRSP]

Without a doubt you have gotten rid of a substantial number of good faith accounts in the process.

Yeah, I accept that some accounts made in good faith have been deleted in the mess up.

I don't want to come off as recriminating here but there are a couple of things I think need to be straightened out before we can move on from this. Obviously, there was some kind of communication breakdown between you and Jim. I not trying to blame anyone but this is a problem that needs to be fixed. If there was some kind of discussion, even a PM loop with all the mods evolved, maybe this stuff could have been clarified instead of two people each thinking they are understanding each other which leaves us with this horrible mess. I still think the purge was a terrible idea, but maybe we could have lost less than half of our user base.

OK, the overwhelming majority of that half of the user base were spam bots. The overwhelming majority of posters that have signed up for the boards in the last few months have been spam bots (as evidenced by me periodically running a few of their names through the spam bot search engines available online every so often). We simply do not have, and never have had 1200 active members. A substantial number of the remaining members in that half were those who had simply parked their user names in the early days of the board. I think it's pretty fanciful to presume that they're going to start posting regularly when they've provided no evidence that they're going to do so for the past six months (plus the fact, in many cases, they're denying potential other users use of their user names, many of which are quite generic).

In that sense, I think focusing on "half the user base" is a bit of an overstatement, and makes this look worse than what it was: yes, it was a fuck-up. But we haven't just lost half of our regular posters. Those that were deleted who were regular chatters: once again, I'm sorry, it was an oversight that we didn't consider that there were people chatting who never posted.

Also, you said you were agreeing? I thought this purge was your idea.

It was (I think: I deleted half the conversation to save space in my inbox prior to Jim running the purge). But after the idea was proposed it was hashed out further, and I thought I was agreeing to purging only those who had never posted and had been members for sixty days or over. It was a miscommunication.

Please let us know what we can expect in the future regarding transparency and the handling of troll/spam issues.

There's always going to be private communication between the admins on how the board is operated, and technical details of the software, usergroup management etc. This time we miscalculated and made private something that should have been discussed in public and with the input of all the mods (and wasn't fully a technical issue). Then it would have been obvious what a bad idea it was.

[What Exit?]

Sorry about the poor execution on my part. I did not see the 60 day part. I thought it was just a purge.

BTW: The Purge does not work well and did not work from Firefox 3.5 for some reason. Not too important, just noting it.

Thank you for the reply though. I tried to answer as much as I could last night without going into the discussion via PM.