A great player from ToS just joined here recently and had to take the name RealRasputin (adding the "real" part).

There are a fair # of deadbeat profiles/players. The ones who joined and dropped out after a few games, leaving team members hanging, causing imbalances in games.

I am not saying Rasputin is such a person, but it did just get me thinking if it would be worthwhile to do a name reclamation at some point. Erase the profiles of anyone under 20 games played and who haven't logged in for like 4 months. Might see less of those Paul5839478572 names. And make new joiners happier that the good names aren't all taken. Perhaps a bit of a luxury project, but if not so hard to do, could be nice! Helps make the site more welcoming.

Maybe, as a first step, kill all of the created accounts that haven't been activated after a month.  I have one of these out there since I used an email that I thought was active and it was not.

Yes, I believe a good way to promote player retention is to delete players accounts.

One month for "unused" accounts seems very reasonable.  Unused might mean someone that hasn't "taken a turn" since joining.  This would catch those accounts where people joined a few games but then never bothered to come back to the site.

Six months for inactive accounts should be a minimum.  I think one year is better.  But I can think of potential issues:

For instance, what happens to that player's designs if they have any.  I'm thinking of active boards that people play? Surely they wouldn't disappear.  What about game histories of that player?  If I go back to look at a game that I played against Bugs Bunny two years ago, how do I know which Bugs Bunny it is? Does it matter?  I don't know.

Deleting an account shouldn't wipe it's history -- rather, just change all instances of the "name" to the account/player ID number, which would preserve that history and free up the name for someone else to use. Does that make sense?

So all boards that the previous owner of the account created would be ..where?  Who would be "in charge" or "responsible" for them?

Alpha wrote:

Maybe, as a first step, kill all of the created accounts that haven't been activated after a month.  I have one of these out there since I used an email that I thought was active and it was not.

I just meant wiping the accounts that have been created, but were never used.  There is an authentication step where you have to go to your email and authenticate the account to finish this creation step.  As I said I have one of these accounts and never made it in so I never joined a game with that account.  I had set it up to be a testing account but put in the wrong email.  I think there are other accounts like this and it makes sense to once in a while wipe these away as all they do is hold names although they are unusable (1 month to finish the authentication seems like more than enough time).

As for removing inactive accounts, I think that there are many issues that would crop up as was mentioned and I think that some players who have gone inactive for months at a time have returned so I am not sure this is very desirable.

Deleting accounts that have never been activated or have never played a game is fine.

Anything else will cause more trouble than it's worth I think - I don't like the idea of renaming accounts that have been used for games and deleting them will cause database issues, some pages will start erroring out for example if you view an old game. 

How about changing the name of an inactive account, perhaps with a code that suggests the month and year of deactivation?  For instance, if the the account Idontplayanymore became inactive one year ago today, it could be renamed Idontplayanymore0111.

Doing this would retain the account for all archival purposes, and technically, if a player knew when their account was "deactivated" they could pick it up again (albeit with a slightly longer name).

Players could receive a warning email the month before deactivation informing them of the account's impending name change.

Of course, premium accounts that are paid in full (like if you're on the ten year plan) can not be "deactivated".

^ Had the same thought, M.

M57 wrote:

Doing this would retain the account for all archival purposes, and technically, if a player knew when their account was "deactivated" they could pick it up again (albeit with a slightly longer name).

And then have the longer name forever?

Yertle wrote:

M57 wrote:

Doing this would retain the account for all archival purposes, and technically, if a player knew when their account was "deactivated" they could pick it up again (albeit with a slightly longer name).

And then have the longer name forever?

Well, sure, ..I suppose.  They could "petition" to get it back if it hasn't been taken.  The whole point is to free up popular/common names that aren't being used, right?

tom wrote:

Deleting accounts that have never been activated or have never played a game is fine.

 

I would suggest not doing this for at least another 6 months.  I've talked with several players who are waiting for their games on ToS to end before making the full transition to Wargear, even though they've already setup an account here.  Many have not started a game on this site yet.

I've been playing on both sites as I wait for my Plus membership to expire over there.

While there seems to be a lot of accounts that have 0 games played I still think this is a bad idea.  Unless there is some sort of storage/memory issue.  If somebody does decide to come back and then they see their ID has been archived they will totally just leave.

Seriously, if I couldn't have RiskyBack I am sure I could come up with another name and had the same amount of enjoyment of the site.  Let's not start doing stuff to alienate potential players just so somebody else can use a screen name, it seems a little silly to me.

AttilaTheHun wrote:

 I've talked with several players who are waiting for their games on ToS to end before making the full transition to Wargear, even though they've already setup an account here.  Many have not started a game on this site yet.

I've been playing on both sites as I wait for my Plus membership to expire over there.

I think this kills this idea.

Amidon37 wrote:

AttilaTheHun wrote:

 I've talked with several players who are waiting for their games on ToS to end before making the full transition to Wargear, even though they've already setup an account here.  Many have not started a game on this site yet.

I've been playing on both sites as I wait for my Plus membership to expire over there.

I think this kills this idea.

I agree this ends the debate in my mind, along with RiskyBack's alienation argument which is pretty much where I stood anyway. 
However, I still think unactivated accounts should be cleaned up since these are most likely caused by incorrectly typed emails which cannot be fixed until after the account is activated, ...  I mean if you cannot at least activate your account within a month, the you haven't really signed up in my mind.

I suppose <shrugs>.  I don't see it as a deal breaker.  Just logging on to keep your name active once a year seems reasonable to me.   A little e-mail reminder the month before your account get appended is also a reminder to actually come and play on the site.  The process to get your name back could be the touch of a button.

Really? There are people on ToS who have signed up here but haven't played a game (because they're waiting for Tos to blow up or something like that??)  How about a little incentive to get them to play here? ..Play a game or lose your name!  Sorry, but I think these excuses are lame.

How about a two-year grace period?  ..ten year?

I am not really concerned about those who have an account, but haven't played a single turn (I do understand and take the first come first serve idea so no argument from me.  no need to kill old activated accounts or change player names). 

My objection is to change a player accounts who have played many games (ex. Hugh, asm, ... ).  In my mind they played enough and assisted in the sites development enough to keep their names.  Plus, this is not worth tom doing a major overhaul of the sites databases to handle such a change even for those who have played one game and got booted never to return again.

Lastly, how fraking difficult is it to come up with a player tag?  When you try coolguy and see that it is taken, try something else.  If you are married to your tagname and missed out on it because someone got it first, too bad.  Try coolguy2

Alpha wrote:

  Try coolguy2

or coolguy37

you know how long it took me to come up with a suitable alternative to weathertop (for an email address while i was tryin to switch hosts) when i found some dofus already had it ... and didn't use it, and still has never used it? 

but i understand your point.