Regarding the recent news on user purging

[soph]

If you've seen the recent LJ news post, please be aware that it was written from the wrong spec. While I (soph, the original author of this post), am not staff, this has been confirmed officially by staff and the news post has been rewritten accordingly.

Only accounts that have no entries, or have only the initial welcome entry, will be purged.

A new news post is not being made because of the issue with News posts and notifications; the backend would likely crash if two News posts were made so close to each other.

Please repost this! There is a 'Repost this' button at the bottom of this entry.

The full specification (reworded by Sophie for clarity):

Users:

• A user will not be deleted if they are set to memorial status, or any status other than "visible".
• A user will not be deleted if they have a Paid or Permanent account.
• A user will not be deleted if they have logged in in the past 24 months.
• A user will not be deleted if they have any entries in their journal other than the initial welcome entry. (That is, they may be deleted if they have 0 entries, or if they have 1 entry and that entry is the initial welcome entry.)
• A user that does not come under any of the above points will be marked as inactive and a warning email will be sent. Another will be sent 15 days after the first. After 42 days from the first notification, one final notification will be sent, and 4 days later, if the above points still hold true, the account will be purged. (Note: This point has been updated following staff confirmation.)

Communities:

• A community will not be deleted if it is set to memorial status, or any status other than "visible".
• A community will not be deleted if it has a Paid or Permanent account.
• A community will not be deleted if it has any entries other than the initial welcome entry. (That is, it may be deleted if it has 0 entries, or if it has 1 entry and that entry is the initial welcome entry.) (Note: See below.)
• A community will not be deleted if there has been a new entry or comment to the community in the last 24 months. (Note: See below.)
• A community that does not come under any of the above points will be marked as inactive and a warning email will be sent to all of its maintainers and moderators. Another will be sent 15 days after the first. After 42 days from the first notification, one final notification will be sent, and 4 days later, if the above points still hold true, the account will be purged. (Note: This point has been updated following staff confirmation.)

Note that both of the points that I marked with "(Note: See below.)" appear in the specification, so I'm a bit confused about which one will apply, or if they both apply. However, I looked at the code and it currently implements the same check for communities as it does for users with regards to entries, meaning that if the code were to go live now, only communities with no content would be purged. However, according to staff, the code won't be going live for another 1.5-2 months, so the code might be changed in that time. It got a mention today because they wanted to be forthright and communicative about the changes.