Pruning the Membership List

[Boxholder]

I think your plan is very reasonable and fair. Unless having a large "membership" list is important I think pruning it would be prudent.

[SlownEasy]

Your plan sounds logical and reasonable to me.

[Hot Rodd]

The only place you will find fair is in the dictionary... Do what you must do to trim the fat..

[Cavechu]

Jackson,

Your plan of action to prune inactive members and other stated parameters seems to be of sound judgement and reflects fairness in your attempt to do what you must to make this forum a more effective and informative web site for contributing mongers to enjoy and share their findings. I salute you.

[CaptChaos]

It sounds like a good idea to me. If users are just going to lurk and use the info found here and not contribute they should be left out of the membership. I would also like to comment about the posting e-mail addresses for backchanneling info. I know you stopped it for the non senior member. I think you should consider stopping it for all members. If the information is worth diseminating it is worth diseminating to all not just exclusive individuals.

You have a tough job Jackson. We appreciate the effort and patience with all of us.

Thank you.

[Carb]

I think that the "pruning" that you suggest is quite logical. The request for backchanneling defeats the purpose of the board. My only hesitation in posting about visits to certain AMPs, etc. is that I am afraid that too much information will attract LE and get some of our lady friends in trouble.

Question! Is there a way to post the same message of general interest on different locations at the same time?

[Kinesics]

Your improvement plan for the membership has been articulated well and exhibits the signs that you have thought through various factors and attributes of the membership management. Membership at the WSG is the privilege, and not the entitlement or right of the registered members. When each member is granted the privilege, each member should implicitly or explicitly understand there are governing rules and the protocols that should be observed or followed. As long as you communicate such rules and protocols, which you have already established, with active, inactive and semi-active members, I’m certain that your membership management plan will be supported by majority of the members, especially active ones.

Member contribution to the board would follow classic 80-20 rule: 80% of contributions (quality and number of postings) would be contributed by top 20 active users. 80% of members and non-registered users will equally benefit from generous sharing of experiences of other members.

Hence, I don’t think there will be any adverse effect by executing your plan. Even though I have not actively searched similar forums, I think your forum is the most comprehensive from the perspectives of quality and quantity. And, it is complement of Mr. Jackson! Therefore, you should lead rather than follow on this subject. I understand you would like to know what is the best practice out there. It is very nice of you.

Whether it is necessary for you to go through these motions is completely how you feel about it. If your gut feeling gears towards it, I think you should follow through with it.

Again your strategy is sound and good considering the site is privilege based and fee-free. My day job is to head the IT organization (Senior VP, Information Technology) of a major US corporation and your strategy on this topic is impressive. I wish some of my high-paying lieutenants had passions of yours and skills of wide-ranging thought process. Your service and dedication for all those lust-seeking men out there deserve a congressional medal.

If there is anything I can do to help you run the forum, please let me know.

Wish you the best with continuing success professionally, personally and hobby-wise!

Greetings,

The best leaders I've met always solicited the opinions of other people and involved them in the discussion, but they are also decisive in making the final decision on their own.

Jackson

[ManWithStamina]

I do not mind "a little summer cleaning". I look forward to reading the various topics on a daily basis. If its good for Jackson, it's good for me.

Man

[Blunderer]

It all sounds pretty reasonable to me but you should be aware (I have managed some webby stuff for some TV channels) you are letting yourself in for a messy old time trying to negotiate stuff like this with the public at large.

In your position I would be far more tempted to go with some sort of far more automated ongoing pruning process with something not dissimilar to the following rules:

One off job: All accounts not logged into for a year delete.

Daily cron jobs:
Any accounts that haven't been logged into for 6 months -> email -> wait a week, then delete.

Any accounts which contain the same email details, send warning to both, then delete whichever ones are not logged into within month of recieving the warning (that explanation was clear as mud, hope you get the point).

Users more than 3 months old who have posted only messages (excepting to test areas) which appear to contain the same email address, delete.

Finally, publish these rules somewhere (the gist of them anyway) and to all who pay no heed, be damned. Let's face it, no matter how useful this stuff all is and no matter how hypersensitve folks get, it is still only a bloody username on a forum. The kind of people that are gonna be kept up nights by a policy such as this probably should have had their test tubes cyanide lined before attempting to gestate anyway.

If you need a bit of help, send me a sample of the user database (real details obscured of course) and I will write the scripts to do it for you - it should only be about 20 mins work.

Regards :)

[Knuckhead]

Dear Jackson:

I read your comments on the opeing screen, and I have to say I agree with many of the points you raised regarding pruning of the membership list.

The first few points regarding the "orphan" usernames due to forgotten passwords, lost email accounts, etc... should raise very few eyebrows. If anything, those members will be glad to get their originally intended usernames. The point to consider (Just like Airline Frequent Flyer programs... LOL) is to make sure that if you restore an "orphan" username by combining it with another username, the seniority status should also transfer.

Quite frequently we see posts such as:

"XYZMEMBER, regular member, posts 1- Hi, I will be in XYZ city during this time. Any info on the scene?"

We all know the problems associated with this type of post. The answer is often in the same page, only a few posts back! Often it starts a flame war between the ofending agent and "hard core" old timers, which is an absolute waste of band width and hard drive space, not to mention the time of the thousands of mongers who read it.

Perhaps you or one of the other members has a solution for this, short of out right denying to post this kind of message for first timers.

The other problem associated with haveing so many members wiht little or no acitivity, is that they vastly dilute the pool of moderate frequency users such as myself (about one post a month) so thaqt our name does not come up for "senior membership" as early as it should.

Overall, you raised some very good points and I support you in pursuing them.

[Member #4198]

Hey, Jackson, you are doing a fabulous job here. I have seen the growth of this forum over the years and am really happy at what I am seeing. You truly need to be commended on this.

I post primarily under International - Asia - China - Shanghai section with Goldwind as my handle. I think all your suggestions are well thought out and with a forum like this, problems like that will never go away. I am just wondering if by NOT doing any of what you proposed, will it make this site slower or any other negative effects? Because it seems like a monumental job to do what you suggested by yourself. I hope you get paid somewhat and I still am awed at how you are able to pull this site off all by yourself.

If you want people to monitor different parts of this site (like Big Doggie, etc), just tell me. I would like to help out with this site and maintain it THE source of information.

Yours sincerely,

Goldwind

[Scorpio]

There is nothing wrong with deleting inactive (for over a year) or useless members (just wanting information without contributing actively themselves). It would certainly make the whole administration of the site easier, and the quality of the posted messages would be improved.

By the way the WSG-forum has a good quality-level in my opinion and it is a very useful source for people traveling frequently, as well as for those who are simply interested into the mongering scene.

Jackson, keep on with the excellent work done so far!

Cheers, Scorpio

[VilunyaChert]

Jackson--

You write on the main page, www.wsgforum.com:

2. For all "Inactive" members, defined as users who have been members for more than one year, and who have never made a single post: I am planning to post a notice on the front page of the forum advising them....

I see one small, maybe inevitable, problem: Probably there are plenty of people like me who have http://www.wsgforum.com/vforum/searc...&action=getnew
(or maybe the search form for some local area) bookmarked, and never check in at the front page at all! (So, okay, today I did check in there, because I saw your new "Pruning the Membership List" forum when I looked at the new messages, and I figured something was up.) People like that won't know what hit them.

I don't have any solution!

Anyway, keep up the good work, you're fantastic. And the new hardware seems to be working real good.

[dsmsugardaddy2]

Sounds fine to me. How do I make sure I'm still alive on your new membership list?

[Admin]

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