Comments | soph: Regarding the recent news on user purging

soph

Regarding the recent news on user purging

Jul 15, 2010 06:47

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 ( Read more... )

livejournal, livejournal-only post, psa

Comments 35

lady_angelina July 15 2010, 05:57:29 UTC

I'd already ganked azurelunatic's PSA on the clarification, or I would have ganked yours, too, because you explained this so awesomely, and I like bullet points. :3 I hope you don't mind me linking to this entry, though?

soph July 15 2010, 05:58:09 UTC

Go ahead :)

lady_angelina July 15 2010, 05:59:13 UTC

Thank you! <3

eclective July 15 2010, 06:55:28 UTC

Oh, I think this is a good thing, personally. I'm tired of running into never-used journals with neat usernames, and wish someone else could have them.

soph July 15 2010, 06:57:30 UTC

Right, it is a good thing. It's just that the news post initially said that it would be all inactive users over 24 months that would be deleted, not just those that have no content. And that would have been bad. :)

charliemc July 15 2010, 08:44:13 UTC

This is extremely CLEAR and well-stated, thanks! We're all looking for ways to understand this, I think...

(The comment has been removed)

soph July 15 2010, 10:13:34 UTC

This is just to clarify the inactive account purging. As far as I understand it, suspended account purges are still manual; there just happens to be one going on at the moment.

(The comment has been removed)

soph July 15 2010, 10:16:45 UTC

Oh, and as for deleted-but-not-yet-purged users, they'll keep getting deleted after a certain time period automatically, but that time period is changing from 60 days to 30 days.

(was going to edit my comment but you replied first :D)

[edit: Actually, I'm starting to get a bit confused too. Let me find out officially and come back with clarification.]

Thread 8

djonn July 15 2010, 16:10:51 UTC

This is much clearer than any other formulation I've seen, and that's excellent. However, I'm still slightly confused on one point:

Most of the comments to the news post -- including mine -- have read "entries in their journal" (your fourth "user will not be deleted" case above) to include entries posted on the user's own journal page, but to exclude comments made in other users' journals and posts made to LJ communities.

If this reading is correct, then it follows that an account which has zero or 1 posts on its user page, but which has made many comments in others' journals and/or posts to communities, still goes "inactive" after 24 months, and that the comments and posts made from that account in other journals/comms are subject to deletion when the inactive account is purged.

If this reading is incorrect (as suggested by a post from bluemeringue deep in the comments to the news post), then it follows that accounts such as I've described are in no danger of being counted as "inactive" under present definitions -- but the wording of the ( ... )

soph July 15 2010, 16:21:46 UTC

A user which fits all the points listed in my post will be considered inactive regardless of the number of comments they have made in other journals or the number of posts they've made in any communities, and will be purged. However, none of these posts or comments in other journals/communities will be deleted; that would only happen if the user was suspended.

So if I became inactive and my account was purged, my comments to other journals (for example, news) and my posts in other communities (for example, ljskins) will remain intact. The exception is if I was suspended for some reason, and my account was purged while it was suspended. If that were to happen, all of my posts and comments would be deleted, no matter where they were.

[edit: Sorry, the above isn't true, because I forgot I have posts in my journal, obviously. :) Let me rephrase: If I made a new journal and used it to comment in news and make posts in ljskins, but did not otherwise update my own journal, the above would apply. Sorry for the confusion!]

Does that help clarify things?

djonn July 15 2010, 16:56:28 UTC

Unfortunately, it doesn't...though that isn't strictly your fault.

Ther difficulty from my perspective: you and bluemeringue appear to be 100% in disagreement on whether my hypothetical user case (no posts on journal page, many comments/posts elsewhere) would count as "inactive" after 24 months of not posting to their own journal. You say yes, this thread says no (see the 4th and 5th posts from the top). And from the outside of the sandbox, I don't have a good way to reconcile the disagreement ( ... )

soph July 15 2010, 17:54:26 UTC

I see what you mean about the staff disagreement. I'll see if I can get more details.

In the meantime, as far as I know, there are three components here, not just two:

1. The current code that kicks off the purging for suspended accounts.
(I don't know where these files are as I haven't looked for them.)

2. The pending code that automatically notifies and purges inactive accounts.
This is covered by three files:
* bin/worker/inactive-accounts-find,
* bin/worker/inactive-accounts-notify,
* cgi-bin/LJ/User/Inactive.pm.

3. The backend code which purges accounts however they eventually get purged.
This is covered by:
* cgi-bin/LJ/UserManage.pm,
* most files in the cgi-bin/LJ/Worker/UserManage/ directory.

The code that I was looking at was a combination of #2 and #3. Of particular note to your query is the "is_inactive_user" subroutine in the cgi-bin/LJ/User/Inactive.pm file. This is what implements the checks described in my post, and it's worth noting that the other two files call this in some way; the first one (inactive-accounts- ( ... )

Thread 10