![[info]](https://www.insanejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
This is going to take probable 3-4 weeks to get all of the inactive accounts as there are a lot of them and I don't want to kill the servers doing this.
As always you can see what usernames are available here.
http://www.insanejournal.com/purged_use
As always you can see what usernames are available here.
http://www.insanejournal.com/purged_use
Unfortunately this is a website, and that data has to be maintained on a server, and that server is run through cables/electricity, and is at it's very basis costing the website money each and every day to maintain.
It's not a journal that you can write in and cement into a wall and forget about. A paper journal is self-sustaining, requires no outside resources. It's not an external harddrive you can add data too and then unhook from your computer and the wall and leave alone. It constantly has to be maintained to allow people who want to interact with it to be able to access that data.
Other people do support the website, but as ~squeaky said in another post, he is barely above water currently with the amount of lost traffic (which is lost ad revenue) and the amount of journals the website has to maintain. I think he's going about this very fairly. There are many administrators who would not even bother informing it's users that their journal has been deleted, or that they are at risk of losing their content. He's giving everyone fair warning, he's making no rash decisions (because as he stated previously, people have been asking for this purge for months) and he's responding to comments and providing information in a timely manner. What more can you really ask for?
And not only is ~squeaky giving fair warning, but you have an additional 14 days to save those journals and their content. It's not like everything is being deleted right away.
Unfortunately, ~squeaky has bigger problems to tend to than a few missed journal entries from roleplayers. He needs to make room for data, and for new users who might actually use the journals he's purging instead of sit on them like a 2 year old claiming a toy as theirs and theirs alone yet never playing with it. Yeah, it sucks. I'd hate to lose some of the stuff I've written over the years I've been here, but that's why I ran to go back up the things I remembered liking. And I did all of that ages ago.
In the end, it's really no one else's fault but your own, for lack of a better way to say it. Sorry.
You're allowed to not like how it's being handled. I understand. It was a bit of a shock that there was actually going to be a purge on this wide scale, but if I remember correctly in my knowledge of IJ history, there was one a year or two back already. It just seems like a logical way to go if we want to clear up space.
But that's just my two cents.
As for lost traffic, though, that's awful, but the way this purge is being handled has left a bad taste in my mouth. I have a few journals who whose paid accounts need renewing and I have a few new journals I was considering buying paid accounts for, but I don't think I am now. I don't see any point in paying for something that the site's owner doesn't consider important enough to hang on to. I see where you're coming from, but I still don't agree. I think the data we users put into the website is just as important as moving a few usernames.
And, honestly, you knew that purges happened when you signed up for IJ.
This is the same method we have used in previous purges.
Why is it the site owners responsibility to judge what is worth holding onto? I've received 6 emails in the last hour about old accounts being deleted, and honestly it's a reminder to me of what's worth holding onto and what I don't need anymore. The data is important, sure. It's a part of the site. What the real issue is is what the purpose of the site is, which all, again, goes back to interaction. Your data may be important to you, but it stopped being a part of the community when you stopped being willing to interact with it. When you stopped logging in. Your data is still affecting the community and the website and it's servers, and is a cause of sacrifice for other users who are here now and want their content to be maintained on a website that works. Why should anything or anyone or any website have to sit and wait for you to be interested in it again?
All you have to do is change the account to Activated and everything is fine. It's as easy as logging in in the last year and five months would have been, but apparently it's too much to ask. How is it not fair for you to ask ~squeaky to maintain your data when all he asks of you in return is that you log in and show that you are still a part of the community?
I really just want to let this go and agree to disagree, but at the same I feel like you are upset not because of the process, but because you're being inconvenienced. Be mindful and aware of the impact your data has on the website as a whole, log in and show that you are still a part of the community and would like to give people the opportunity to access your data, and there would never be a problem with your journals in the first place. This is not a data storage website, this is a blogging website with a community of real people, that is supported through ad revenue, money, electricity, time and energy spent by ~squeaky, and the interaction of the members of this site.
Haha, I feel bad playing devil's advocate again, but yk it's nothing personal. :> The thing is, that aspect isn't really Squeak's prerogative? Whether or not the data is deemed as important enough to hang onto depends on the journal owners. If they get the email and can't be bothered to undelete their journals, then it's their choice and their responsibility -- then it evidently didn't mean enough to them, who are the main people it matters for, really. And if they've moved on from their email accounts and haven't set up email forwarding, then it's also their bad for not thinking ahead to preserve their possibly-precious data, not IJ's. A year and a half is quite a long time. Stuff can't just jangle around cluttering up the servers indefinitely.
(And I've already seen one girl on my flist return and be like "oh hi, just popping my head in because I got this slew of notifs, what's up guys?", so I know that it's not impossible. It might still happen for some of the journals you're bummed about!)
I know that you guys preferred LJ's method, but just voicing from the other camp: I actually think that LJ's purges were extremely inefficient, because accounts could go unused for like, 6 years but still never be cleared out because they had one entry going "hi testing". There are tons of pointless journals like that that no one cares about, but they're never caught in the purge, due to LJ's relaxed algorithm. IJ's might be operating on stricter guidelines, but it gets the job done and owners have the legit opportunity to undelete.
But! Different strokes for different people. I get that my ~reasoning~ probs won't sway any minds, but I just wanted to toss in these two cents (or two dollars, as it were). :D