I screen all members and make them contact me via e-mail asking for access by providing a username, password, e-mail, and the link where they found me.  It's been very effective.

Make sure they aren't bots. In most cases they can be human but make track of the time duration if that's too long ago like 5 years or 10 years ago. For me, I visited an old forum after 2 or 3 years.

On Christianity Haven accounts are not deleted. I've had friends who signed up when the forum first started and then forgot about the site and a year later went in and posted so there's no way I'd ever purge anyone from the system.

As for spambots, I go through each morning to look at New Registrations and for the obvious spammers who use Yandex or some other email that I know is known for spam, I'll ban them right off. Their account is still there on the system but they cannot log in. For the emails that I'm suspicious of but unsure if they're a real person who would add value to the site then I put them in the Moderator Queue usergroup. If they're real, they'll let me or another member know right away.

I think that as your site grows that having all those 0 accounts don't look so bad because many other sites have them as well.

We don't bother to delete them to be honest. Only if they're an obvious bot account or something like that, then I might remove the account.

I've actually seen the odd account with no posts later come back and post. Also, since our community is old, we've had members from the previous site create an account and never post, but they still kinda hang around. I'd like them to still have that contact if they wish to PM an old friend or something. Deleting accounts is kinda insulting. Heh!

Posted by: zoldos

I screen all members and make them contact me via e-mail asking for access by providing a username, password, e-mail, and the link where they found me.  It's been very effective.

that's not a bad idea, tedious depending how many you get but not bad.

Many people will sign up and not post, maybe they don't like the content on your site hence why they dont engage?

I keep then, you never know when someone might wanna come back and start posting and being a part of the community. If you delete the account, you're taking that option away from them as most people won't bother to re-register to a forum if they knew they had an account previously but no longer do so.  Some can look at it as "You don't want me here so i'll leave and go elsewhere."

Posted by: @nerdface

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I delete the following accounts automatically via cron jobs:

• Users with 0 posts after 365 days of inactivity
• Users with 0 posts and have been banned (spambots)
• Users who have been rejected from registering via moderation (spambots)
• Users who have not confirmed their email address after 365 days from registration

 

I don't really see the point in keeping them.. They add no value.

This is the best method, and what I would sometimes do as well depending on the forum.