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Remain active to keep your account.

Posted: 2019-01-24, 09:36
by Admin
We've been doing annual user account purges for years, but those new to this forum may not be aware of this privacy policy upheld on this forum.

Since we've recently re-evaluated the inactive period, let me make our policy clear in this post:

Every year, usually around the start of the year, we remove user data[1] from accounts that have not been logged into for the last 2 years before the purge (usually using Jan 1st as a cut-off date) meaning any accounts with 2-3 years of inactivity at the date of the purge will be removed with their posts retained. This removal is irreversible and if your account has been purged you will have to re-register on this forum.

The criterion for account removal is logging in, not posting. You never have to post anything on this forum from your account but we do ask that you log in at least occasionally to indicate your account is still actively being used by someone and is not just collected personal data sitting on our servers.
In addition, these purges are performed to remove cruft left over from spammer accounts.

So, as the topic says: remain at least marginally active to keep your account. If you don't, your account will be removed.


[1] The only data that will be retained is the account's registered user name on posts made by that account. Everything else will be removed.

Re: Remain active to keep your account.

Posted: 2019-01-27, 15:13
by Aztec
Good action but 2 years is too much, if a person doesnt log in within 30 days it's very unlikely he/she will do it again, some ppl created accounts to solve a doubt and then after 2 or 3 posts regarding the issue they dont come back. 30 days is better not only for accounts but for non-sticky forum posts too, prevents necro-threads and keep database small and clean.

Re: Remain active to keep your account.

Posted: 2019-01-27, 16:25
by Night Wing
Aztec wrote:Good action but 2 years is too much, if a person doesnt log in within 30 days it's very unlikely he/she will do it again, some ppl created accounts to solve a doubt and then after 2 or 3 posts regarding the issue they dont come back. 30 days is better not only for accounts but for non-sticky forum posts too, prevents necro-threads and keep database small and clean.
I'm not in agreement with your proposal and I'll explain my reasoning.

I dual boot with linux Mint; which I'm in about 98% of the time and Windows 7 which I'm in 2% of the time. Linux Mint comes out with major versions of Mint and these versions are good for 5 years. As examples; Mint 18 came out in 2016 so reaches it's EOL (end of life) in 2021. Mint 19 came out in 2018 and it's EOL is 2023. Along the way, every 6 months, there is a point release for these versions. So for Mint 18, there was 18.1, 18.2 and finally 18.3. The same thing occurs with Mint 19. So there is 19.1 which I'm running right now and there will be 19.2 and finally (19.3).

Once logged into the Pale Moon Forums site, I usually stay logged in for 6 months at a time. Once a point release is released for Mint, I wipe (format) the hard drive and install the new version of Mint. When I do this, I manually log into the Pale Moon Forums site again so I don't mind logging in per forum rules which state once in every 2 years.

But I don't want to log in every 30 days like with your proposal because that is way too short of time in my opinion because with your proposal, that is just a lot of unnecessay work for the Admin. I'm sure the Admin has a full time job and purging accounts every 30 days would get old very quickly "for him" since (I'm guessing) he's got other pressing priorities he'd rather be doing if you get my drift.

Re: Remain active to keep your account.

Posted: 2019-01-27, 22:37
by Sylvermoon
Aztec wrote:Good action but 2 years is too much, if a person doesnt log in within 30 days it's very unlikely he/she will do it again, some ppl created accounts to solve a doubt and then after 2 or 3 posts regarding the issue they dont come back. 30 days is better not only for accounts but for non-sticky forum posts too, prevents necro-threads and keep database small and clean.
Also not in favor of 30 days. I only post if I have a question or a problem. That doesn't happen very often. I do log in after nearly every update though, because before I download the update, I want to make sure no one's having any major issues with it....

Re: Remain active to keep your account.

Posted: 2019-01-27, 23:12
by Moonchild
Aztec wrote:Good action but 2 years is too much, if a person doesnt log in within 30 days it's very unlikely he/she will do it again, some ppl created accounts to solve a doubt and then after 2 or 3 posts regarding the issue they dont come back. 30 days is better not only for accounts but for non-sticky forum posts too, prevents necro-threads and keep database small and clean.
30 days is silly for forum accounts. Even if people are unlikely to post again for the same (resolved) issue, this is a community forum, and the same people may come back later with different questions or simply to chat or actually help others with -their- questions.
Also, deleting posts is not a good idea because a lot of people use the forum for research (and having it be a reference for information around Pale Moon is actually one of the goals of having this forum).

Re: Remain active to keep your account.

Posted: 2019-01-27, 23:31
by Walter Dnes
About the 30-day suggestion... does "logging in" mean logging out first and logging in again? Does refreshing a page or making a post count? I've got 10 "Work Areas" on my desktop. Since I have the ram, and palemoon.org doesn't run tons of javascript. I leave the browser open.

Even when I update to a new version, I...
  • killall palemoon
  • install the new version
  • start Pale Moon, which restores the page I had before, and I;m usually logged in
I hibernate the machine if I'm going to be away for a few days, so it doesn't think it's stopped at all. About the only time I totally shut down and do a full reboot is for a new kernel, every 2 or 3 months, or quicker if there's a kernel exploit (speculative execution, etc) requiring an immediate update.

Re: Remain active to keep your account.

Posted: 2019-01-28, 00:37
by Moonchild
It means "being active while logged in" -- either the action of logging in or requesting pages in a logged-in state (including posting). logging out and back in isn't necessary -- just requesting a page in a logged-in state will mark your last activity as today.

Re: Remain active to keep your account.

Posted: 2019-02-01, 00:43
by GigaWatt
Aztec wrote:Good action but 2 years is too much, if a person doesnt log in within 30 days it's very unlikely he/she will do it again, some ppl created accounts to solve a doubt and then after 2 or 3 posts regarding the issue they dont come back.
And they will be purged after 2 years if inactivity ;).
Aztec wrote:30 days is better not only for accounts but for non-sticky forum posts too, prevents necro-threads and keep database small and clean.
Well, if the PM forum administration enforces this, they will probably be the only forum that does this.

In any case, good to hear that you've raised the limit ;). Not exactly the number of years I had in mind, but still, it's a move in the right direction IMO ;).
Off-topic:
Can I set the mini profile next to every user's post to be on the left instead of the right?

And is there a quick reply option somewhere in the profile settings? I was looking around, but I couldn't find one.

Re: Remain active to keep your account.

Posted: 2019-02-01, 18:18
by Moonchild
GigaWatt wrote:In any case, good to hear that you've raised the limit ;). Not exactly the number of years I had in mind, but still, it's a move in the right direction IMO ;).
It's called "compromise" :)

Re: Remain active to keep your account.

Posted: 2019-02-02, 03:58
by GigaWatt
Moonchild wrote:It's called "compromise" :)
Agreed ;).

Re: Remain active to keep your account.

Posted: 2019-02-11, 14:02
by Rollingthunder
Admin wrote: Since we've recently re-evaluated the inactive period, let me make our policy clear in this post:

[...]accounts that have not been logged into for the last 2 years before the purge [...] will be removed with their posts retained.

So, as the topic says: remain at least marginally active to keep your account. If you don't, your account will be removed.
Reading this I'm wondering what good a forum post does to someone who hasn't logged into this forum and thus quite possibly has not read it for the last two years. Since this post is currently about 3 weeks old I would remember getting this info via e-mail.

Also I actually don't right now understand what this has to do with privacy. If an account with - most likely- a nickname is removed and the only two things remaining is said nickname and the post(s) attached to it, this doesn't fulfill the users "Right to be forgotten" but only removes his opportunity to have control over his posted content, eg. deleting or adapting his posts later on.
Thus, in my humble opinion, it actually decreases the adherence to the principle of "My data belongs to me" because you lock out the owner and effectively only delete most of the connection and post related metadata of the profile but the (nick)name.

Hence I'd suggest to at least sent out an announcement of your intent to do so beforehand every year with a 3 weeks respite before purging.

Re: Remain active to keep your account.

Posted: 2019-02-11, 14:29
by Moonchild
There is no "right to be forgotten" as in a right to erase your entire footprint from history. There is only the "right to have your personally-identifiable information removed". A nickname is not personally-identifiable information.

When you post on a forum, your post will become part of that forum, which is public (and as a result perpetual, because that is what the nature of the public internet is). If you are uncomfortable with that, then don't post publicly anywhere.
Even users with active accounts can't delete their own posts after a short grace period, so in that respect there is 0 difference, and nothing is "taken away" from users who have their personally-identifiable information removed from the database in a purge.

Sending out any sort of mass e-mail from the forum results in disproportionate responses from e-mail recipients and a ton of extra work for staff, as we found out when we mailed people about tightening password requirements on the forum a while back, so we will not do that again. Plenty of users visit the forum as a guest, including people who DO have accounts, and they will see the announcement made. On top, as with any website you use with a posted privacy policy, it is your responsibility to be aware of the practices of the websites you make use of, including any data purges that may be part of account management. Ignorance of our privacy policy is no excuse.

Re: Remain active to keep your account.

Posted: 2019-02-11, 14:45
by JustOff
Moonchild wrote:Sending out any sort of mass e-mail from the forum results in disproportionate responses from e-mail recipients and a ton of extra work for staff, as we found out when we mailed people about tightening password requirements on the forum a while back, so we will not do that again.
After reading this, I had an idea, how about an opt-in opportunity to ask "Please send me a notification by e-mail if my account is going to soon be deleted due to inactivity"? Personally, I would be happy to subscribe to just in case.

Re: Remain active to keep your account.

Posted: 2019-02-11, 15:34
by Admin
JustOff wrote:how about an opt-in opportunity to ask "Please send me a notification by e-mail if my account is going to soon be deleted due to inactivity"?
That is technically not possible in phpBB.

Re: Remain active to keep your account.

Posted: 2019-02-11, 15:36
by Admin
Moonchild wrote:Ignorance of our privacy policy is no excuse.
Or ignoring board announcements like this one, for that matter.

Re: Remain active to keep your account.

Posted: 2019-02-11, 19:01
by New Tobin Paradigm
I did mention how pissed off people got when they got an email.. ANY email from the forum.. right? Pretty sure I did.

Re: Remain active to keep your account.

Posted: 2019-02-11, 20:00
by Moonchild
So, there's the group of people who want to register with temporary e-mail addresses or preferably no address at all because they are convinced we're going to send out annoying daily mails to them (WHICH WE DON'T). Then there's the group of people taking offense when we DO send out the extremely rare e-mail for critical account information and who send staff extremely angry and venomous replies and demanding instant manual deletion of accounts because we DARED send out an e-mail, no matter if it's critical. Then there's the group who would like courtesy e-mails after 2 years that their account is about to be deleted. All of these are mutually exclusive. So how are we supposed to run this forum again? What? use common sense? naaaah :eh:

Re: Remain active to keep your account.

Posted: 2019-02-11, 20:18
by twp2pm
2 years is fine. :clap: 30 days is not wise. :thumbdown:

I might check posts (not login) on a daily basis, but not have anything I need to post for a period of months. Take that as a complement to the devs for a good product.

Re: Remain active to keep your account.

Posted: 2019-02-11, 21:43
by New Tobin Paradigm
I thought one year was fine, personally..

Re: Remain active to keep your account.

Posted: 2019-02-11, 22:57
by Moonchild
New Tobin Paradigm wrote:I thought one year was fine, personally..
Well there seem to be more than a few people who have an approximately yearly recurrence, for whatever reason -- so extending it to 2 years is making it absolutely clear people are extremely unlikely to return if their account is stale that long. It won't be extended any further.