Account without prolonged activity - to delete or not to delete?

Question

Data storage

Good day!

What do you think: if a person has registered on a resource, but does not visit it for a long time, is it necessary to keep his account?

Indeed, on some resources, they are deactivated. On others, the base continues to be filled with them.
Both the first and the second have both pluses and minuses. How to find a compromise?

Answer 1

Well, as if a compromise solution is not to be deleted without notifying the user. It seems to me that the ideal option is to send an email with a link to confirm that an account is needed. The person will follow the link and confirm that the entry is needed, if not delete it 7 days after sending the confirmation request. IMHO reasonable...

Answer 2

Definitely not.
Once a week, we definitely hear from a "lost" user - "Damn, I was in the army, I thought everything, but here's a surprise, the account still exists. Thanks!"

Answer 3

Yes, it's debatable. But it’s more pleasant for me, when I go to a long-forgotten site, to find that I registered there a year ago.
Although now I am confused by the inscription “On the site for 1 year and 1 month”, because I really start using the service only now.

Answer 4

Perhaps you can create a field in the database that signals the user's activity, if the user is inactive, the field goes to false and all entities associated with this account are not used, the user is notified about this, but always has the opportunity to return his account simply by going to the site and by changing false to true, I think there are many more ways to reduce the load using such a field.
Or you can store such users in a separate database, from which they can then be returned when the user is moved to the inactive database, it is also worth notifying him about this.
In any case, it’s not worth deleting, anything can happen to users, someone decided to live a year away from civilization, someone has huge projects at work and doesn’t have time to visit the resource, there are thousands of options, and deleting in any case will lower loyalty, bits don’t care but people don't.

Answer 5

In my opinion, it is optimal to do something like "Archiving". For example, a person has not logged in for a year and his account is archived, while a letter is sent to his mailbox before and after "archiving". And in the archive, all this is kept for no more than, say, 2 years, then it is deleted.
Pros:
- We do not lose users
- We unload the database
Cons: -
you need a place for the second database, for the archive

Answer 6

Do not delete.
If these questions arise because functions like get_user_name start to work slowly with a large number of users, then I would change the way user information is stored. And people are happy, and do not slow down. There are no cons.

Answer 7

Never delete user-filled data under any circumstances. After all, anything can happen)
If this in any way affects the performance of the system, make a newsletter that its data has been transferred to the "archive", and send a link to the recovery.
When "archiving" transfer user data to another server.
And don't forget to create a recovery system!

Answer 8

In any case, the best option for a user is not to permanently remove the user from the database. Perhaps you need to stop mailings after a certain time and warn the user about it.
To count dead souls, you can check the 'IsDead' checkbox next to each user after some long time.

Answer 9

For some reason, no one remembered that deleting records from the database often creates additional fragmentation and can slow down query execution. Although of course for most sites (where less than 100 thousand registered), the slowdown in requests will not be significant.
But can anyone tell me what is the point of deleting inactive accounts?

Answer 10

In my opinion, if you are sure that you will no longer need this account, then you can safely delete it.
Also, when registering (well, for example, to receive hidden content (such as links), some information is indicated, such as age, mobile number, city of residence, etc., which, in the event of a "loss" of the database, can cause you any harm - then it is also desirable to delete such an account,
but remembering cases of hijackings of the same uins, by means of re-registration of deleted/"deactivated" emails... Maybe they still need to be kept active?
So it all depends on the purpose for which the account was registered.

Answer 11

Delete for sure! But after some reasonable period, at least 1 year, after notifying the user about the planned removal. If numbers are more important to you, even if they are numerous "dead souls", such as in social networks, poking long numbers in front of investors and the target audience, then of course it's up to you ... :)
Moreover, on many services I would very much like to see the "self-destruction" function. Sometimes you need to delete an account on your own due to non-use, so that you don’t remind yourself of yourself anymore and don’t annoy others.

Answer 12

I sometimes go to some sites where I registered for a long time, years later. I'm glad the account is alive.
why delete? it's a pity that-whether)
above about isDead and fragmentation correctly written.

Answer 13

No need to delete. Here I have my distribution on TPB for 6 years, and I can log in and add a comment or change the distribution. Removed for inactivity - could not.