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We are officially beginning our next username purge immediately. We are going to be setting any account that has been inactive since January 1st, 2010 to a deleted status. The accounts will have a 2 week period before their accounts are purged via the normal nightly purge process. We will not be posting a time when this purge will occur, nor will we be posting a list of purged accounts. If you receive an email stating your account was deleted, you have 2 weeks to log in and undelete the account. Please be aware that even though you don't see any posts or comments on an account, activity can be as simple as logging into the site or looking at your friends' page.
As asylums do not have an associated email address and usage is not as easily tracked, we are not going to include them in this purge. As always if you find an asylum that is inactive and you would like to take over maintainership, open a support request as there is a process to handle this.
These will be handled on a case by case and first come first serve basis.
As asylums do not have an associated email address and usage is not as easily tracked, we are not going to include them in this purge. As always if you find an asylum that is inactive and you would like to take over maintainership, open a support request as there is a process to handle this.
These will be handled on a case by case and first come first serve basis.
Such output is frequently viewed long after the person who posted them is no longer active on their journal. I frequently follow links to recommendations for items three or more years old. For those of us who are active and do look at those things they enhance our current experience on IJ. Those journals were there yesterday and they are gone today. There's no way to archive something that's already been deleted and there's no guarantee that person is around to set the account back to active.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not against purging user names to improve site performance. I'm not against purging journals that are empty and user names that are simply being held for no reason. I'm particularly not against purging spambot accounts. But accounts are being deleted that are not spambots, or empty, or user name squatting. These accounts have content that regardless of use by the owner was still used and enjoyed by others who currently use & frequently pay for their use on this site.
Purging these journals may hold benefits for the site, but even so, deleting journals with content does diminish the experiences of current & future site users (nothing more annoying than following a link to discover the journal has been deleted).
I'm not upset at the purging of accounts, but I am less than impressed with the administration.
I think most of us recognise that the site is not an archive for our content and are appreciative of what Squeaky does. Ultimately as Squeaky is the owner he can do whatever he deems necessary. Those of us who have not changed email addresses, died, or in other words still care about our content will go through and 'activate' our accounts and hope others will do the same. But I do view the loss of that content as a loss for the site. That's just me personally, and obviously others may and clearly do feel differently.
How do you have no control over it? You can undelete it in about five seconds. It's very, very easy to undelete them. Just put accountstatus in your bookmark toolbar and log in and out a few times.
The number of people who've actually died or legitimately don't have access to their accounts (you can request a lost password with an old e-mail, by the way) make up a very, very small portion of the journals being purged, and those specific incidents can be submitted to support.
What I'm saddened by is others, not me, who have made icons, written fiction, or been in games, that may not take the time to activate again or may not even check the email in time to do anything about it. I don't have control in the sense that once a journal that I do not own is in delete status I can no longer view it to save anything.
Just a few weeks ago I was following links for old fiction recommendations -- and I do mean old, like 2005 - 2008 -- some of which were located on IJ. I'm appreciative of entries that are still available many years later. That type of content is part of why I'm here. I've seen fan fiction entries posted in 2007 with feedback comments dated 2010 and 2011. This is not all that unusual. Just because the owner of the journal walked away doesn't mean the content is no longer appreciated or valuable.
The definition of inactive being used in this deletion/purge means that some of that type of content will not be available by July of this year, and I do view it as a loss both to me personally, and to the communities who would continue to enjoy that content in the future.
But you can undelete it, make the content viewable, and save it.
No, that doesn't mean that the content is underappreciated or value, but there's no absolute right to view it if the author has no desire to make it available to you any longer. This is not very different than Geocities in that respect.
Then I suggest that people contact the individuals involved... Any purge will inevitably cause some inconvenience. It's a cost-benefit situation.
And the reality is that fic and icons and anything else you enjoy could disappear tomorrow. The owner could delete it or mark it private, their photohost could go belly up, all sorts of things can happen. This is the internet. Link rot occurs. It's not something you can control.