Numbers of a different sort…

[Cathunter]

Many thanks for all the work done by Jeremy in the website transformation and to the anonymous member who funded the new server! Once again, the WGA is setting the standard in many ways.

One question- I was just looking around and see there are “527 active members are currently registered with the WGA” according to the member list, but 1819 users registered on the forums. Is there anything in place to purge inactive users from the forum registrar? Understanding we have some out-of-state guests, what other reasons might there be to to have such a large difference between the number of active WGA members and the number registered on the forums?

Thanks!

[GeoPink]

I know some of this was touched on in our discussions as a board. The majority of the difference is in the fact that anyone who has ever in the last five or so years since the site has been active had to have an “account” on the new site. This was to preserve the archives and old forum posts. So anyone who’s ever posted, even if just once in November of 2003 gets an account as a WGA Friend here on the new site.

The other folks that fall into that category are: Out-of-staters, Doubled up accounts not reconciled (one member account not matched with a separate forum account), duplicate accounts, sock puppets, forum spammers, etc.

The more accurate number is (obviously) the WGA members. And with the new site, these numbers will fluctate as the account/membership will drop off the “active” list after a year of inactivity here at the site.

There are still some issues that will need to be addressed eventually as well, regarding a more accurate accounting of our membership , but first things first. Lets get the new site broken in!

[Jeremy]

The actual breakdown of the registered users is (as of today):

530 active WGA members
75 active WGA friends (made a post or registered for an event in the past year)
652 inactive WGA members
275 inactive WGA friends

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1532 (does not add to ~1800, probably another bug :()

We have a lot of people who registered as WGA members but who never renewed their membership. Most of the inactive friends are people who registered for the message boards, made one or two posts, and then never returned.

At some point, hopefully a Board member or two (or any WGA member for that matter) will volunteer to clean up our membership list. There are many duplicate accounts, some that lack the necessary membership information, numerous so-called joint accounts, accounts with invalid email addresses (200+ at the last count), etc. We can delete user accounts so long as the person has not made a post in the forums… once a post has been made, the best we can do is to mark an account inactive to prevent it from being used again but it is still in our database.

[rubeeslpr]

Cathunter,
I LOVE your avatar!

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