What do other #instance admins think about this rule?
"inactivity
I am building an active community. Therefore if accounts have not been used for fifteen (15) days after creation or have been inactive for three (3) months they will be subject to removal.'
I would like to know if its to harsh, if its crazy and should be removed and why. Is it great and why?
#mastodon #mastoadmin #instanceadmin
🇳🇱
@n0btc Lots of instances do it, as the admin of QOTO I do not and would be actively against it (though you do whats right for your instance).
The issue is simple, deleting users removes all of a persons content. If I spend months accumulating content and followers and disapear for a month id be devestated if all my pictures and friends were taken from me.
While I understand you want an active community, does that really change anything meaningful for you.. If you have a 10,000 user instance with only 50 active users will the timeline or feel of the instance be any different than having 50 users all active? I would think not.
If your main concern is just users who post once a month, but consistent, even then i wonder, why is that a bad thing (kg the posts are quality). Moreover we dont hve that rule here and that seems very rare. Users tend to be active here if they post at all, users that are inactive tend to be lost forever. usually.
@freemo the users who have signed up so far have all created the account and then done nothing with it. No profile pic, no bio, no posts. Looks like name squatting/bots to me
@n0btc Thats a bit of a different situation (handling spam). If thats your main concern no need to make rules on idleness, just say accounts without posts after 15 days of creation get deleted. That would be fair and a bit different than what you suggested.
But just from my expiernce with dealing with being the admin of a rather large instance (5K + registered users). Most of the time bot/spam accounts will start posting their spam within a day of creating the account. I have yet to find a single account in over a year that was idle for extended period of time before acting as a spam bot later.
The way we handle it is simple. We ignore idle accounts unless their description suggest they might be spammy. If it is a clear spam account, instant ban, if i think it might be but am not sure i silence the account and notify the user to reach out to me if they are a legitimate user. If post-silence it actively posts spam i fall back to suspending.
@freemo odd. These have just done nothing.
@n0btc @freemo I think plenty of people sign up for things, get overwhelmed, and log out never to return (or to return much later!). That's been true of another community I run. We have a process for reclaiming usernames over there, so I wonder if that's possible on Mastodon from the admin side. I know if a user deletes their account, the username cannot be reused.
