Question about member list

[Hawk]

Just a curious question here. Why is it that the member list shows 21,940 members yet the board lists over 97,000 members?

Is the join date the actual member join number? For example, if you go by join date on the member list I am shown as number 615. Maybe my memory is fading, but I thought I was number 800 and something. Maybe I just can't remember that far back.

Does the board have any policy for removing member accounts after no use or very little use after a long period of time? I know some boards will purge membership after a substancial period of inactivity.

OK, it was more than one question, but I swear none of them were really important anyway.

Later, Hawk.

 

[El Orans]

Just a curious question here. Why is it that the member list shows 21,940 members yet the board lists over 97,000 members?

Not everybody is displayed on the member list. You need 5 posts or more. This is done to counter spambots. Also, a lot of our members limit themselves to reading instead of posting.

Forum spambots surf the web, looking for guestbooks, wikis, blogs, forums and any other web forms to submit spam links to the web forms it finds. These spambots often use OCR technology to bypass CAPTCHAs present. Some spam messages are targeted towards readers and can involve techniques of target marketing or even phishing, making it hard to tell real posts from the bot generated ones. Not all of the spam posts are meant for the readers; some spam messages are simply hyperlinks intended to boost search engine ranking.

This category of spambots has gained considerable notoriety since November of 2006, with the introduction of XRumer, a forum and wiki spambot which can often bypass many of the safeguards administrators use to reduce the amount of spam posted.

The easiest way to prevent spambots from posting on forums, wiki, guestbook, etc. is to enable email activation by installing a mail server on the host (eg: Sendmail, Postfix, Exim.), since most spambot scripts use fake or randomly generated names on real email providers, the emails will mostly never be successfully routed to them.

Is the join date the actual member join number? For example, if you go by join date on the member list I am shown as number 615. Maybe my memory is fading, but I thought I was number 800 and something. Maybe I just can't remember that far back.

You're #1606. You can see that on the Contact & Group Info tab of your User Profile. Look for "This Page".

Does the board have any policy for removing member accounts after no use or very little use after a long period of time? I know some boards will purge membership after a substantial period of inactivity.

We don't remove inactive user accounts. We do remove accounts created by spambots.

OK, it was more than one question, but I swear none of them were really important anyway.

Doesn't matter, we'll answer them anyway.

 

[Hawk]

Thanks, inquiring minds like me wanted to know.