Deletion of inactive users

I don't think this is a good idea, mainly because sometimes users will leave for a certain amount of time if Real Life takes over and will expect to return. I can imagine how upsetting it would be to have your user deleted as you were an able to get online/had another commitment.

A lot of users join every site as they will (every now and then) check what other sites are up to or how their friends are doing in a certain position they may have obtained on the other site. A lot the German staff are friends and I'm there to see how they do and explore what the German site has to bring. To delete users would also bring down the chance of possible activity stats on the site. People will be caught up in RL sometimes, deleting their accounts would be in some cases heartbreaking especially if they had a serious reason to leave.

That's just my opinion on the matter.

Just to clarify I did not mean deleting them after a couple days or weeks of absence but if they have not been online for 5 months or more.

Or the users that have registered but never actually did anything for 10 days or something. I don't think they'll ever come back. I think it's a great idea that would make for so much more overview.

I would love for this idea because I'm trying to get some of my users hopelessly deleted on different platforms because I created them to lurk when the websites opened but never planned on using them, or the users became worthless. But the management is making a pretty big deal out of deleting my users and are saying I should just change my e-mail and never login, but that would still mean the users are connected to me and my ip-address, and I don't want that either.

So please allow the management to either delete users when they request for it, or make an option in the settings tab to do it ourselves.

I agree with you. 

I'm the leader for the backstory team on WoPFR and inactive users are very problematic. For instance, the wasted time to check this profiles ...

If an user is inactive for a while, we can send him an email before delete his profil, an email to inform him that if he don't come back we delete his account. 

I think that it should be possible to remove an WoP account yourself. So if you don't like your account on one of the World of Potter sites for any reason at all, you could delete your account there.

(sorry for my bad english)

Just bringing this up from the depths. Now that data protection has changed, I think it's worth looking at this again. I also saw something on the news about what Twitter have done with a similar issue regarding their inactive users and it got me thinking about our inactive users.

Obviously when we create an account, our personal data such as email, password, DoB etc is stored, which is absolutely fine while we're active.

We now give people the option to have their accounts deleted if they no longer want an account or don't want us to keep their data, which means we no longer hold their personal data and that's great, it complies with all the data protection regulations.

However, the inactive users that will have missed this change, will still have their accounts and their data being held, which they may not want.

Twitter have released a statement recently to say that any account that has been inactive for 3 months or more, will be deleted after a certain date, unless you log in before and complete the data protection and marketing questionnaire. This is because if you don't log in, you haven't given them permission to hold your data, haven't completed your data protection preferences, so to cover their backs they will remove your data.

I think that something similar should be done here, if possible. The best thing to do, would be to send an email that is automatically generated at maybe 2.5 months inactivity (10 weeks, similar to the fortnightly VIP email that is sent) saying that if at 3 months they have not logged in, they will be considered inactive and their account deleted so we are not holding their data. If they want to keep their account, they can then log in, and if not their account will be deleted at 3 months. That way we are covering our backs having informed the player their account is at risk of being deleted, and we are also not at risk of breaching any data protection regulations by having inactive users who would rather have deleted their accounts.

The other option is enabling an option to delete your own account, so if you no longer want to play you can just deleted your own account.

I feel like 3 months is far too little to wait. People sometimes come back and use their old user and such. Some people also used money on getting them aged up.

Which is why an email would be sent as a precursor to avoid those who want to continue to use their accounts the chance to log in and stop their accounts being deleted.