Forum user purging
 

As our user count on the forums inched closer to 10,000, I had to do something to bring the number back down. No, it's not that I don't want lots of users on our forums; it's just that I wish more than 20% of them were legit users. To help clean things up, I removed all users who signed up but never activated their accounts, and also those who have never posted (or are spammers). Some stats:

Before Purge

Total Members: 9,971
Database Size: 390.6MB
SQL Records: 206,382

After Purge

Total Members: 2,651
Database Size: 375.8MB
SQL Records: 178,833

The users that were deleted consisted of:

Users with 0 Post Count: 5,297
Users Awaiting Confirmation: 2,024

No regular user should have been affected by this, but if you are in some way, let me know.

O_O

dude....wow.

:D

I reverted our registration back to questions and answers, so I'll see if that slows down the spam registrations. It never used to, but these questions are a little more difficult, harder for most bots to answer. We'll see where that goes...

Just testing to see if I was purged, whew. :D

Burn the Spamming! Kill the Spam!! Purge the Spammers!!

Spammers are among the world's worst scum. They deserve to be rounded up and forced to listen to a selection of the world's worst music. Bieber, Britney Spears, the Jonas Brothers. Play it in a loop non-stop, until their brains liquefy.

I think you forgot the barney song in there after every other song :D

I knew I was missing something.

If were going old school don't forget about the song that never ends. Pretty sure that alone after 5 days in solitary could drive even the strong minded insane.

I sure don't regret moving to a moderated system for new users. Here's an idea of the spam you don't see:

Attachment 1365

I used to go to the forums on pinkfloyd.net, but it looks pretty much like that picture now.

Wow, I wish they were all legit users! At least you save a lot of space and cut down on the spam.

Some forums just let that thing slide, so that it "appears" that their forum has a ton of users. And while 10,000 users looks better than 2,000, this is where I can't make a compromise. I'd rather have a forum with genuine users than one with 80% spam users. Stats wouldn't look so good if there are 50,000 posts and 25,000 spam users :D

I totally agree, 100%!

^ Respect! :cool: