This has been raised a couple of times (in one guise of another) in the last 4 years or so that I've been a member but doesn't seem to get a resolution.
I feel it defo gives a false reading of the site and it's general day to day activity.
I must admit the way the birthdays are now set out does give a better 'snapshot' of the situation, it's more apparent when you see profiles side by side that there are duplicate profiles, as most folk simply use the same name but with a number or symbol before or after it. Although there are/have been others with completely different names too.
'Inactivity' is an enigma ... don't know if it's a few weeks, months or years. Perhaps as suggested 'a cull' of long standing inactive profiles would make the stats look better in that the current active members standard & subscribed show the site is in full use.
Matt is there a way of making inactive members 'sleep' in the background sort of thing, so they don't show on the birthdays etc but you can find them in search facility if required .. perhaps with an inactive search button? Or am I being stupid?!
The last paragraph was purely out of the fact that I sometimes check up on old mates profiles to see if they have been online.
I don't use any other form of social media n although I do have phone numbers and can call em. I do think it's nice to get a message from time to time in order to catch up with each other in this busy world we live in!
1) Note on the profiles means they've been offline for like 1 or 3 months I think.
2) Recently online means within the past week or two.
3) The search page allows you to A) sort by last-accessed date, so the further you go into the results the less recent the members are. B) Completely filter people out who were not online within the past Week, Month, Year
4) Out of the 80,000 members we have, 20,000 logged in within the past year, approximately.
5) Leaving old account available (rather than deleting them) gives people an opportunity to come back to the site and fetch old photos, messages etc if they ever so wish to (many people come back after years away. Not having to rebuild their friendships, profile, photos etc gives them more reason to come back).
6) People contacting old profiles (Wishing happy birthday etc) triggers an email to them and helps pull them back to to the site. Win-win!
There's literally zero benefit to deleting old accounts. Number 3 above gives you enough control over search results to filter out those you don't want to see.
But imagine you was offline for a year and we deleted your account. A few months later you came back and had to rebuild all your profile up, you'd lost all your PMs, forum posts, event attendances, photos etc. Would you bother recreating it all? I bet not! Most people would just be pissed off and leave for good.
But if you came back after 2 years and found your account and profile still available - there's a much greater chance you would start using the site again.
I'm seeing lots of old members coming back and using the new site now. We had a 6-fold increase in people sending PMs and Nods in the past month!
Just to add to the debate, Im chatting again with someone who I talked to on my first week here in April. They then disappeared off the site until a couple of days ago, so about 9 months as an inactive member, and now back again.
've been away a few years and then come back....... Like a bad penny 🤣🤣🤣😋😋😋😋 and I must admit I like the fact I'm still here and a lot of mates are still here too.... Awwwwwwe group hug 🤗 and keep us hands where I can see em 😂