Regarding Banned Users

[DeltaSuicune]

I just noticed something earlier in my random thread browsing that could help boost forum space and loading efficiency.

Delete banned users' signatures.

They're not coming back, and their sigs (sometime obscenely large) take time to load in a thread you really don't care to wait for a long time when the user is long gone. I'm not familiar if PC has this temporary ban/account suspension policy (sue me, I'm coming back from a year and a half hiatus) which may make temporarily deleted sigs annoying to people when they come back, but that might be additional punishment. However, I don't see any other blaring problems with this implementation.

Comments?

~DS

 

[Guest123_x1]

How about pruning (automated deletion) banned users (and accounts that are unused after a certain amount of time) like on SPPf? Maybe that'll improve the situation over here! :P

 

[Arcanine]

How about pruning (automated deletion) banned users (and accounts that are unused after a certain amount of time) like on SPPf? Maybe that'll improve the situation over here! :P

I think not.
Look at it this way. Kairi used to be banned, now that's over 10K posts on PC gone. On top of that, that's over 10K posts showing up as "Guest". SPPF also deletes old accounts and deletes old posts. Where we don't delete members nor posts.


I'd be ok with this idea if we had another usergroup for temp-bans. That way if it's just a temp they won't lose their sig.
To me it's not that big a deal with sigs. I mean sure it might take a little time to load, but most sigs are within the limit. So it wouldn't take any longer to load then any other sig.

 

[DeltaSuicune]

I think not.
Look at it this way. Kairi used to be banned, now that's over 10K posts on PC gone. On top of that, that's over 10K posts showing up as "Guest". SPPF also deletes old accounts and deletes old posts. Where we don't delete members nor posts.


I'd be ok with this idea if we had another usergroup for temp-bans. That way if it's just a temp they won't lose their sig.
To me it's not that big a deal with sigs. I mean sure it might take a little time to load, but most sigs are within the limit. So it wouldn't take any longer to load then any other sig.

I don't see what the problem is with posts disappearing.. is there some high postcount competition going on that I'm not aware of?

Again, it may not be a big deal for people with higher speed connections, but loading a page with even 20 posts with huge sigs does take a toll on dialup users unfortunately.

~DS

 

[charizard_maa]

If you delete those post then it be information lost. I mean take Kairi for instance. )I just using her as an example) She may have posted in some forums that were informative like movesets and other info. Now if we banned her and delete her post then that information is lost. If somebody like me was looking back on a tread for infomation like a certain pokemon set or something and that post she posted was no deleted then I be lost, frustrated and probley mad.

 

[John Denver]

Example: Jkaizer was banned, and he was the starter of the original DCC. Meaning, had we deleted his account, then PC would have easily lost 50,000 posts...

So unless they posted something gross or obscene, not much point in deleting perfectly fine posts.

 

[Cherrim]

Deleting an account does not delete their posts, it simply changes the posts so their creator's name is simply reduced to "Guest" and there is no other information or trace of the creator associated with it other than the text of their post. :o So deleting accounts wouldn't affect postcount of PC, it would simply stand to confuse members about who posted what since they'd all show up as Guest.

 

[John Denver]

Though a mass post count delete would be usefukl with pr0n spammers...

*wink wink elbow elbow*

 

[Spectrum]

I think not.
Look at it this way. Kairi used to be banned, now that's over 10K posts on PC gone. On top of that, that's over 10K posts showing up as "Guest". SPPF also deletes old accounts and deletes old posts. Where we don't delete members nor posts.

Explains why PC's been so laggy lately.

I'd be ok with this idea if we had another usergroup for temp-bans. That way if it's just a temp they won't lose their sig.
To me it's not that big a deal with sigs. I mean sure it might take a little time to load, but most sigs are within the limit. So it wouldn't take any longer to load then any other sig.

DeltaSuicune said 'in threads', so that would be 2 minutes less for each page to load.

I'd expect you of all staff to jump on this idea like a magnet. ;\

 

[Supreme Edgeboy Max]

Eh, I just say that I'm for removing signatures of permanently banned users. Temp-banned users should be able to keep their signatures, and/or just made invisible to other users.

Deleting accounts and their posts = No.

 

[Guest123_x1]

Deleting accounts and their posts = No.

Having old posts that are several years old lying around and not being able to post to them 30 days past the last reply is what makes the database so big, causing so much downtime!
Maybe it'd make more sense to rid old accounts that have NOT made ANY posts.

-ottermi619-
Every several months, the Michigan Radio & TV Buzzboard gets its older threads pruned. Its proprietor says it's to improve performance.

 

[Sammi]

The database isn't down that much. Usually it works fine. :/

I'm against pruning, because that's alot of memories to delete. I mean, what if you wanted to look back, but it'd been deleted? That's just terrible to think about. ;_;

As for the acutal topic of the thread... it would make sense. Can't you make the sigs not appear without wiping them? o_O

 

[Guest123_x1]

paint with the wide brush

Can't you make the sigs not appear without wiping them? o_O

As far as I know, you can only turn off sigs for all users when it comes to showing or hiding them in the User CP. I don't think there is a feature for targeting individual users.

-ottermi619-
The "Ignore list" doesn't count, since it also hides posts made by users in that list.

 

[Sammi]

As far as I know, you can only turn off sigs for all users when it comes to showing or hiding them in the User CP. I don't think there is a feature for targeting individual users.

What about the admincp? Isn't there an option to turn off a usergroup's sigs? :/ I thougt there would be, but meh, maybe not.

 

[Supreme Edgeboy Max]

Look, pruning isn't necessary here. A few removed/hidden signatures will work. PC isn't a totally slow place y'know.. it has fast servers to work for it.

 

[pokejungle]

I like this ^^

But as a person on dial up, I personally don't think any of this would save *that* much loading time. I'm not worried about it.

I just think the world as a society has gotten so used to having everything fast we forget that we don't really need it that way~

It's not hard to wait the extra 30 seconds that an image loaded sig would take to load.

 

[Supreme Edgeboy Max]

I like this ^^

But as a person on dial up, I personally don't think any of this would save *that* much loading time. I'm not worried about it.

I just think the world as a society has gotten so used to having everything fast we forget that we don't really need it that way~

It's not hard to wait the extra 30 seconds that an image loaded sig would take to load.

Eh, and since post speed actually matters in places like DCC, posts with banned people in them is NOT that harmful for other threads.

Katsuro has the right idea.

 

[Arcanine]

Wow I just love it when "everyone" reads the posts before posting. <_<
"On top of that, that's over 10K posts showing up as "Guest"."
"I'd be ok with this idea if we had another usergroup for temp-bans. That way if it's just a temp they won't lose their sig."

I don't see what the problem is with posts disappearing.. is there some high postcount competition going on that I'm not aware of?

Again, it may not be a big deal for people with higher speed connections, but loading a page with even 20 posts with huge sigs does take a toll on dialup users unfortunately.

~DS

Some of you may not care. But I do, as well as a lot of members. Them posts are the history of PC, some of them changed PC to what it is today. I don't want to lose them posts, if they are gone then they are gone. Deleting old posts is not something I want.

And so? I'm on Dial-up and it may take some time but I still load the sigs. Deleting sigs of banned members isn't going to help much.

Explains why PC's been so laggy lately.

DeltaSuicune said 'in threads', so that would be 2 minutes less for each page to load.

I'd expect you of all staff to jump on this idea like a magnet. ;\

Ok, if so then explain to me why the new PC has more then 11 times the number of members, and more then 12 times the number of posts, but the old PC was slower and had far more downtime?

All of you have Cache, so you're not going to load the sig every time you go to the next page.


And since all of you care about loading times sooooo much for sigs I'll tell you a way that'll make your loading time speed up, because I'm in a nice mood today.
First click on "User CP", then click on "Edit Options" then go down about half way till you see "Thread Display Options", and look under that and you'll see a check box that says "Show Signatures", uncheck that, go all the way down and click on "Save Changes". And there you have it, a sure way to speed up loading times for threads.
And for the ones that doesn't take that option then don't complain about the loading times for sigs (aka Ty). Because that's like saying "I'm hungry" when you got food that's ready to eat. If you hate loading times then turn off sigs, it's that simple.

 

[DeltaSuicune]

Judging from the conversation here I can certainly surmise the general attitude of the uppers on the matter. If you judge the effort to not be worth the payoff, that's not my area of concern.

Indeed, since many people apparently misread or ignored what I actually wrote, I suggested to delete the sigs of banned users, not delete their whole account. Anyway, the idea is posted and shafted accordingly.

You wanted feedback for the board, you got it.

~DS

 

[Spectrum]

"I'd be ok with this idea if we had another usergroup for temp-bans. That way if it's just a temp they won't lose their sig."

They don't need to lose their signature. You can change that group's posting permissions to disallow signatures, and they'll automatically disappear from their posts.

Some of you may not care. But I do, as well as a lot of members. Them posts are the history of PC, some of them changed PC to what it is today. I don't want to lose them posts, if they are gone then they are gone. Deleting old posts is not something I want.

I don't want to lose those posts and accounts either, but the recent downtime and lag is a perfect indication that you need to do something to ease up the server load. =\

Ok, if so then explain to me why the new PC has more then 11 times the number of members, and more then 12 times the number of posts, but the old PC was slower and had far more downtime?

You don't remember the server upgrade last year? o.O

And since all of you care about loading times sooooo much for sigs I'll tell you a way that'll make your loading time speed up, because I'm in a nice mood today.
First click on "User CP", then click on "Edit Options" then go down about half way till you see "Thread Display Options", and look under that and you'll see a check box that says "Show Signatures", uncheck that, go all the way down and click on "Save Changes". And there you have it, a sure way to speed up loading times for threads.
And for the ones that doesn't take that option then don't complain about the loading times for sigs (aka Ty). Because that's like saying "I'm hungry" when you got food that's ready to eat. If you hate loading times then turn off sigs, it's that simple.

I already have signatures disabled, Arcy. That doesn't change the fact that large signatures add to server load. For images, PC needs to tell the browser where the address of the image it's trying to load is. But text is a bigger culprit of this. If there's a lot of it, especially with multiple colours, that can take up a couple of kilobytes, and when there's 100+ users browsing simultaneously, each viewing up to 25 different signatures on each page, it adds up.

So deleting accounts wouldn't affect postcount of PC, it would simply stand to confuse members about who posted what since they'd all show up as Guest.

vBulletin will change the name of those posters to 'Guest' only if you tell it to. Otherwise, it will display what the person's username was when their account was deleted.

You wanted feedback for the board, you got it.

I personally am thankful that there's somebody else who cares about PC, but when you're making a suggestion, it's never a bad idea to explain your reasoning. In fact, it would be good if you wish to avoid a debate because in about 90% of cases, the person responding misses the point you're attempting to make.