I know t hat now lush must charge to be member because you have so many members and although i uerstand the need to charge
why do you keep all those who haven't even posted here in years? i have seen people on friends lists that not seen here for years
I understand that but I also understand that you have people here that haven't even signed in for years.. don't they also incur band space? why not, since most of your membership plans are one year, if someone has not logged in for over a year, delete their account since they would no longer be a member. wouldn't that save space?
Some members do come back after a year or two or more. Who knows where they've been?
If something happened to me, I'd sure love it if my stories and all were still here for people to enjoy after I'm gone. And if I'm gone, I mean I'm gone, no longer existing.
not sure really how to work it but not really talking about those that were active members, i was talking about those that came on for a week, a month or so, then just left. I have seen on some friends lists where people posted one or two days, 5 years ago, and never again
Gav stated it correctly - there are things which have a significant resource cost... and other things have little cost. "Hit and run" accounts most likely don't require a lot. Now, it is true that a plethora of little costs do 'add up', so, perhaps some cleanup might be worth consideration for hit and run accounts. Hey a byte here, a byte there (hmm.... now THAT sounds interesting, Ginger!). Anyway, I digress. I think that the current charging rates are quite fair. I'm rather amazed that Lush could operate with no charges for as long as it did.
Biz's comments... I'm torn. Yes, I can see that if one decided to no longer pay for a membership, they would like their stories preserved. BUT, is that a rational expectation? True, the stories themselves have value - to Lush, so does that 'pay' for their preservation? Text is very compressible, so a lot of words takes little space. BUT, space is still required. The issue, seemingly, is a way to manage this without incurring personnel time costs which obviate the savings in space.
Okay, Lynn. shut up. That's enough.
I also imagine that the nominal number of accounts helps with advertising revenue. The benefits of deleting inactive accounts would appear to be pound foolish.
I've friends in real life who have joined Lush specifically at my behest. All are active duty military, U.S. or Canadian, and most (all but one) are currently deployed. Deployments can last up to 18 months, and the break between deployments can be less than four months.
Point being, sometimes there's a valid reason for someone not to be on Lush for 18 months or longer. The Sandbox does not lend itself to Lush.
The flip side, of course, is that servers and electricity and whatever else it takes to keep this side up and running do not come for free. So support Lush on behalf of those who can't, buy a Lush Platinum Membership!
Want to spend some time wallowing in a Recommended Read? Pick one! Or two! Or seven!
I hear everyone's reasoning on this and I can see both sides of the argument. I think gav could probably safely delete the older accounts that were created, and only used the day they were created, and never since. then again, those would probably not really free much space as the majority of those are pretty blank anyway. I do think that people who come on and load their profiles with pics and videos and music during their trial period, but can't be bothered to buy even a bronze membership, should lose all the pics and such, and perhaps not be able to earn any additional badges. if they can't contribute to the cause, then they should be permitted to use only the bare minimum of resources. and that should include posting anything other than text in the forums. And I do understand there is the occasional good reason why some people are gone for long periods of time, but I do think that anyone gone for 4 or 5 years probably are not going to return. and I say that, having a few good friends on my list that have been gone a long time, but I keep them there in hopes they will one day return, even though i know they probably never will.
what may actually help more is to delete old forum threads that have not been accessed in more than say 5 or 6 months. the forums are filled with pictures and links and other bandwidth using posts. I bet that move would make a difference. the only possible issue i see is the post count once those are deleted, but i am sure there is a way around that... Keep the post, but delete any links and/or pics and move the shells to a hidden folder; get the post count from the person's profile where they are also stored and leave them untouched even if the thread itself is deleted. just 2 examples off the top of my head of ways to get around a possible issue.
