1000+

[isoaker_com]

Congrats to SSCentral.org for being the first water-warfare-related community I can think of that has passed the 1000 membership mark!

May another 1000 just be 'round the corner (good members, that is)!

[Silence]

Unfortunately, only 594 members have posted. Have there been "purges" here like at iSoaker.com?

Well, it's just the beginning of the season, so all the forums are likely to have a good boost.

[DX]

I don't think there's been a purge in over a year.

There better be a boost because I've honestly become kind of bored with the community. It's been nearly 3 years now and activity has not recovered; if anything it has grown worse. The amount of activity now is hardly enough to even keep WWc going.

[Ben]

I only go by the count on the members list which says 906 members. This discludes banned members, which at the point are mostly spambots. 94 members to go!

As for non-posting members, I see no reason to "purge" them. Often on forums for website administrators I see others deleting non-posters, claiming wild things like "purging increases my forum's quality" or "it gives people an incentive to post." Quality does not change between purged and non-purged communities. I think most administrators forget that always the majority of people will join, but not post for any number of reasons. This is a fact of life and purging does not help it.

A small percentage of these people also will come back after a few weeks, months, or even years, something most fail to note. Once or twice has an account I've had on a forum been deleted for lack of activity. I notice when I intend to participate. That gives me a bad impression and consequently I don't return.

Purging members does more harm than good. There is no disadvantage to keeping the members unless you want to improve some silly ratio or you have so many members that keeping them becomes a web space issue. This is probably a lot more information than most of you wanted to know though, but I wrote it, so I might as well post it.

With this being said, I have threatened to purge members before thinking it might increase posting, but I found that such threats were ineffective in mobilizing the membership.

Anyway, I hope activity will increase after my website update... but we'll see.

[isoaker_com]

Hmm... the front of the board, at least to me, says 1005 now. Oh well...

As for purging, I agree that a purging of just non-posters could do more harm than good as there are people who like reading and may eventually post, but haven't had the reason/desire to just yet. However, purging of spam bots and other banned accounts that may hold questionable links/contact info/email addresses I'd never consider a bad thing. I'd consider it a form a general cleansing; not a necessity, but not harmful either (unless a reduction in reported membership count is considered harmful).

Anyhow, if SSc has at least passed the 900 member mark of 'real people members', even if they haven't posted, that'd still make it the largest water-warfare forum that I can ever recall... just that 900 isn't quite as sexy a number as 1000.

[Ben]

I keep the spambots because it keeps them on record. We have their IP addresses and email addresses. Sometimes I notice a pattern and I ban something else. This has proved to be very useful. Their posts of course are deleted (moved to the deleted forum) and their membership accounts are not public any longer (which is why they are not listed on the memberslist). Nothing different really except these guys are on record.