There should be a rule or something that if you haven't logged into your account after a certain amount of time, you get a 30 day warning before they delete your account. I've seen some accounts that haven't been active for years
No. People are allowed to take breaks.
Wish it would at least say when the last log-in was.
It is irritating to many; however, easily avoidable, while searching. Adjust the highlighted filter:
~ Sunset Snuggles
🦄 Enthusiast 🏞 Travel Fiend 🐘 Animal Lover
Hahaha, in the time it took me to type my post, a bunch of other ones popped up so I'm modifying mine a bit. 😆
Maybe instead of deleting accounts it could just auto deactivate users who haven't logged in for say 18 months (or whatever limit makes sense) so they no longer show up in searches. Or an alternative would be to have the filter that lets searchers only show users that have logged in within the past ___ time period default to a year so searches would only show inactive users if someone specifically changed the filter to do a maximum sweep search.
It would also be helpful for the search results screen to show how long it's been since the user logged in rather than having to individually click on profiles first. Let's say you want to check out profiles where they've logged in some time within the past 3 months. Since there's no 3-month filter, you have to set it to a year and keep individually drilling down into profiles until you pass the three-month mark. Not a biggie one way or the other, but would be a nice addition.
@SnugglyMel Everyone's profile shows their Last Online:
@Mark @KingsportCuddle has some fantastic suggestions, above. 😊
This particular old chestnut comes up every few months.
The site has said that it is looking at archiving old accounts. From a business perspective doing so is a mixed blessing.
Anybody who has been here for a good while knows that it is surprisingly common for people to return after an absence measured in years.
Always remember that virtually everybody who joins this site is or has been vulnerable in some way. And that the purpose of this site is to help us care for each other. (If you truly, truly believe that you're part of the 1% who aren't vulnerable ... well, then - spoiler alert - that means you are part of the 99%.)
And I understand people get vulnerable at times, myself included. It just seems weird that an account is still active even though the user hasn't logged on for months or years
Deleting the old accounts is a bigger job that it looks, from a coding perspective. It's the kind of thing that can go badly wrong. "I'm just going to monkey with the database. Fortunately, in the whole history of computing, monkeying with the database has never, ever had a catastrophic unforeseen outcome." It doesn't increase revenue, and it's not a security issue, so it's not a priority for the very small team that runs this site.
It also means that you can't say "we have X accounts" as a headline. So it's not great from a marketing perspective either.
@Gamer1992 I'm with you, believe me. I always filter my searches for active within the past week, or at absolute most, past month. Beyond that, even though many people have their settings so they receive an e-mail if they get a PM, some no longer monitor the e-mail account they signed up with.
@SunsetSnuggles Lol I only look at people who signed on today lol
It's also important that we bear in mind (when talking about deleting accounts or maybe even deactivating them) that if someone doesn't log in for a while, it doesn't necessarily mean they have no interest. I'll use myself as an example. I come from a small rural area with scarce few options within reasonable travelling distance. So there are stretches where I may not log in for a few months. Or you may have a situation where someone just needs to take a break for a while (e.g. other life priorities, a bad experience, feeling vulnerable or discouraged, or whatever reason). We want those folks to feel welcome to return to the community at any time.
Exactly @KingsportCuddle .
@KingsportCuddle 💯 That's why the deactivation feature is there, as well. And why a friendly e-mail reminder like this would be fair: "Hey cuddler! We haven't seen you log in for six months and we've missed you! To keep your account active, sign in within the next three months, to check out who's new in your area!" Then there could be a few more reminder e-mails, to give people a chance to log in, before any account change is made. All large e-mail platforms do this type of thing. I daresay it would clear server space and make site upkeep cheaper.
@SunsetSnuggles Indeed - I've seen some profiles where a user literally hasn't logged in for 5-10 years and they've probably completely forgotten about the site or are in a totally different place in life than when they set up the account. If the best way to go is account deactivation (and/or deletion), a funneling system involving several friendly reminders and a progressive phasing out of the user is a good approach.
And as I'm writing this, I'm curious... is there a feature (or could one be potentially added at some point) so that users can subscribe to an email to get a summary of local activity? So let's say in my case, I'd love to be able to go into settings and say, "Send me an alert (daily/weekly/monthly/etc.) that tells me how many people have logged in and/or joined the community since the last alert (either all users or a subset of users that meet a set of criteria (e.g. distance, age range, etc.). If I see an email saying that 3 new users within 50 miles have joined within the last week, I'm more likely to log in to find out more about them.
I would just use the filter like @SunsetSnuggles said. I myself am a perfect example. Sept has been my 10 year anniversary. I was gone probably five or six years and now I’m on every day. It’s changed a lot since I first started and I don’t remember if you could deactivate it or not. But it’s nice to know, It was easy to come back to.
Before I set my filter, I would just look and see how long ago a person was. Now I just set the filter for a month. There are a lot of seasoned veterans here who have a lot of good tips. It’s probably much easier to listen to them versus hoping something that does not irk everybody will get taken care of. Especially since it’s a free site. The person who owns it is not gonna change a lot of things, if they are satisfied.
This thread makes me wanna poops .
Sometimes I wonder… and not just about you @pmvines
Think maybe you can keep all of those in one place?
@pmvines - You should just change your name to pmpoops.
This doesn't have to be this complicated - the search filter works, use the filter.
There's too many ways arbitrarily changing people's accounts creates problems, most of them larger than what this would be arguably "fixing".
What the website could do for improvement, is tune the UX for the filter and search results:
Change the default filter? (e.g. within a month) To be honest I don't know what the default is for a new account, just assuming its "none" if this is a repeated complain.
"Showing by last online" on search results could say "Showing last online within ", the latter can be an obvious link that opens Filter tab.
It’s true that everyone wishes technology to work most conveniently for themselves, so that’s why this site has been organized in a user-friendly way (imo). Consider that some members might want to take a break. That can apply to anyone here. if they’ve put a lot of thought and effort into their profiles, they don’t want to lose all that if just taking a break. People have different needs here, its not about pleasing a few people’s wishes. The search filters are really easy to use.
If accounts were to be deleted or deactivated after a certain amount of time , as previously suggested , people would be logging in just to avoid the deletion/deactivation , resulting in them falsly show in searches as active and possibly available to meet. So better to leave it as is. If it's not broken don't fix it.
@Sooson 👍
@Sooson I'd wager that the percentage of people willing to log in to keep their account active would be minimal in comparison to those who no longer care. If someone hasn't logged in for three years, I'd put money down that they wouldn't log in just to keep their account active. Methinks they've moved on, and so should the site. But we will likely never know, as all this brainstorming and discourse by users rarely turns into action by the site. le shrug
I, for one, am glad inactive accounts are not deleted. I signed up like 8 months ago and after spending over 2 weeks trying to find someone local with similar interests and objectives as me I gave up. I decided to come back and see if anyone new had shown up that might be compatible.
@Curious_Bob Eight months is no biggie, and as long as your intentions are platonic, we're glad you're back! There are accounts here that have been dead for five and ten years.