Account Cleanup

[Hooman]

A number of 0 post accounts have been deleted today (just over 400 actually). Only accounts with no posts were deleted. Many of them were suspected bot accounts. A few may have just been forgotten about by the people that started them (or have been neglecting to write their first post). If that's the case, than I apologize for deleting your account. You are of course quite welcome to start a new one.

This account cleanup may happen again in the future, so new members are encouraged to post an introduction, or anything really, so we can see you're not a bot. If you don't post, we usually have no way of telling if a real person signed up for the account or not.


One of the reasons for the cleanup, aside from getting rid of useless junk bot accounts, is they sometimes leave messages in places people don't usually look, but search engines pick up on. We don't really want our site to be associated with whatever it is they're selling, and have linked to in their personal profile or similar. Of course one way to limit this impact is to not allow search engines to index the personal profiles. However, there are other places where their information may be displayed that can't be easily limited, or are perhaps missed. For instance, the name of the newest member is displayed at the bottom of the main page. If their name contains something they're selling, or is perhaps just unique, then having it on our site may help to promote their site in a search engine (as their name is linked to their site, which is found all over the net), and perhaps bring our site down a bit in the process (as our site becomes more associated with what they're selling and diluting our ranking for what we're really about). Hence we don't really want useless bot accounts just sitting around.
 

[Highlander]

(thumbsup)  

[Zardox Xheonov]

Hooman the BANISHER strikes again! du du dunn...

[CK9]

Thank you Hooman, I think you know how long I've been pushing for this to happen *hug*

[fallenangel]

That's a lot of members... I guess a lot of people like to spam forums :/

[Kayedon]

Can I push for a forum cleanup too?

[Mez]

Can I push for a forum cleanup too?

Make some suggestions.

Its around the time of year that I bulk close old threads and move things to archive sections.

Other bits of clean-up tend to fit in with this quite well.

What are your ideas?

[Kayedon]

Can I push for a forum cleanup too?

Make some suggestions.

Its around the time of year that I bulk close old threads and move things to archive sections.

Other bits of clean-up tend to fit in with this quite well.

What are your ideas?

I'll do it forum-by-forum. The MAIN reason I'm suggesting all this is because these forums are extremely cluttered, are prone to useless necro'ing (yes, a valid post in an old topic is ok, but it is annoying because everyone points it out despite the fact we say it's ok.) That, and most closed suggestions should be put into a simple "Troubleshooting Guide" in the appropriate area.

• Introductions - Anything that hasn't been posted in for 3 months should be removed. If you're unwilling to do 3, do either 6 9 or 12.
• News - Do we really need to know about old OP2 gatherings or small things? Anything older than start of 09 should probably be removed, as well as any topics that are no longer useful (again, old OP2 gatherings and what have you)
• Feedback/Suggestions/Problems - Any resolved or inactive problems removed, as well as refreshing the Stickies (Full Hamachi networks haven't been reported in the thread since June. Either it's being done privately or in the shoutbox. If so, this topic is no longer needed.) Most other stickies are either unused or dealt with (Community Direction). Do we still use the webhosting? Archive poll is done and should be removed.
• Internet Relay Chat - I'm feeling repetitive. Any closed/dealt with problem etc. should be removed, as well as any old topics that are no longer useful (i.e. most of them)
• Outpost 2 Divided Destiny - Again, delete old stuff. Most topics prior Autumn/Winter '09 are probably unneeded.
  • Outpost 2 Strategy/Single Player - Not much but old/outdated/unfinished and useless stickies here. Do we even need the forum?
  • Polls - All of this is old, half of it is locked, none of it is needed. Again, do we even need the forum?
• Outpost 2 Multiplayer - Most, if not all of the stickies either need to be remade/refreshed or just removed. Most of the topics aren't needed either.
  • Outpost 2 Newbie Help - I'll admit, this would be a very useful forum...if it was used. Most of it would be better off as a Troubleshooting or similar guide in a different or parent forum, with this one deleted.
• Outpost 1 / Other Topics - Delete everything, make a sticky with troubleshooting. Pretty much nothing else is relevant.
• Outpost Novellas - How much of this do people truly care about? Most of this could be deleted, with the rest copy-pasta'd into a Collaboration Thread
• Outpost 2 Programming/Outpost 2 Mapping/Outpost 2 Coding/AI Coding - Collaborate everything useful into one sticky in each forum, remove everything else.
• Main Projects/All Child Forums - General clean up, as should be obvious by everything above. Again, collaborate/delete.
• Outpost 3D - This seems fine as it's a current project, but some cleanup could be in order.
• Outpost 3: Genesis - If the project is dead, stop making it seem alive.
• Outpost: Tactical Frontier - See above.
• Other Projects - Remove anything inactive.
  • Outpost 3: The Final Chapter - There's one topic, a sticky. Yes, the link works, but that was 2 years ago. Do we need this?
  • Outpost: A New Beginning - Is this project active?
• Inactive Projects - Uhm, let me be blunt. Do we really give a f*** about these?
• General Interest/All Child Forums - General clean-up. Anything old/useless is gone.
• Test/Spam Forum - See above.

Anything else?
 

[Simpsonboy77]

Kayedon I respectfully disagree on most of your post. You stated to remove threads. I enjoy reading some past posts, such as the different patches made. I was going through each forum like you, but it got very repetitive. Here are my main points.

1) Why delete threads? I'm not talking about the spammy ones, I'm talking about ones which actually have a purpose and discuss something. Say if you have a problem and you remember it coming up before. You can search for it and reply with it.

2) Yes update stickies. Nothing annoyed me more than going to a sticky only to see it super outdated and having to ask someone for help. I like getting stuff to work, even more if I am able to get it working by myself.

3) The inactive projects. Maybe make the forum read only. It would be nice (although unlikely) that someone takes the working bits of different projects and makes a working project.

4) When you say to consolidate the forums, you are taking a lot of information. This could take a year on a high content forum.
@Mez is it possible for the archive section to be viewed?

[CK9]

Currently, the archive section is admin/mod view only.  There was previously some talks of making a viewable one for everyone, but I haven't heard anything more on the recently

[TH300]

I am strictly against removal of old threads. After all, they tell the history of this community and without our history, we may eventually forget who we are. I don't even see how one can find those threads disturbing, since they're always at the bottom and you usually don't look there.

[Highlander]

I must agree with TH300 on this one.
 

[CK9]

here's my thoughts on the subject:

Keeping the older threads makes it harder to find things.  People necro threads that are dead and they block newer ones that are still fairly active.  Having an archive section helps aleviate this, as all threads in it are set to view only.  However, you have to give it a good organization and unrelated images should be disabled so that viewing the topics is fast.

Something that could help: have a seperate storage for older threads and delete them from the forum when they are stored.  This keeps the forum streamlined for faster access and still keeps the history for people to review.

[Mez]

Currently, the archive section is admin/mod view only.  There was previously some talks of making a viewable one for everyone, but I haven't heard anything more on the recently

I never realised that this was never "fixed"!

I need to go pester an admin to make it registered user readable.

[CK9]

Mez the "archive" is the "trash" section

[Kayedon]

In retrospect, an archive would be better than deletion. And @Simpson on Point#4, Most of the consolidating is tiny.

[CK9]

correction:  there is a trash and an archive, I keep forgetting that they are seperate, lol

Maybe Hooman or Beta can look into making a public archive

[Mez]

Mez the "archive" is the "trash" section

That is Mod/Admin sub forum specific, CK9!

If I remember correctly I created an archive sub forum for each forum and copied everything into it.  No idea what happened to the after that.

[Hidiot]

Anything us mortals should know?  

It only makes sense to keep a public archive, especially with frequently asked and answered questions lingering. The more those pile up, the more legitimate a "use the search button" remark becomes. Of course, there are some topics that just have no current or otherwise use. Those should be deleted to save up space.

[CK9]

We need to make the archive public, and there should be a sticky of FAQ that links to the archived topics.

[Simpsonboy77]

And @Simpson on Point#4, Most of the consolidating is tiny.

Not if you consider alll the posts about the transition to different patches, and how they came around. The discussions are interesting (well atleast to me). I'd rather see everything go to an archive with the same structure as the current forums, just read only.

As for removing images to load faster, sometimes they are relevant so we may want an option to view images in the thread.

[Hooman]

The archive section is gone. All topics were merged back into their original forums. (If I remember correctly). Having the archive section left a large part of the main page cluttered with sections that NEVER had any activity in them. Using sub sections doesn't work so well, as you can only go two levels deep with the current software.

The stickies do need to be cleaned up though. Perhaps some forums can be merged or reorganized. I'd prefer threads being locked rather than deleted, although I'm not against deleting a few really useless topics. (The kind of thing that probably never should have been posted in the first place). Deleting old stuff wouldn't free any significant amount of space, and with the way database indexeing and lookups are likely performed, I doubt there'd be any noticable performance change.

If topics are locked, they will eventually work their way down, and get pushed to later pages. If you're concerned about them cluttering up your search results, than use the post date filter.
 

[Mez]

Forum cleanup done.

Apart from the programming forum any posts older than July 2009 have been locked.
Although I did close some polls that haven't been looked at since November 2009.

[Simpsonboy77]

Speaking of polls, is it possible to make it so a new vote doesn't bump the thread?

[Kayedon]

Simpson: Yes, they just need to click a radio button in the ACP.