There are many inactive users. Is there a possibility that if someone has not been present for a period of two or three years, a reminder will be sent to them and if they want, they can delete their account?
This forumโs accounts are the same as the main openstreetmap.org accounts, they are not separate. But not every OSM account is here until they themselves join the forum, which then itโs linked to their account as part of the OAuth process.
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It is possible to have multiple accounts on OpenStreetMap.org, as stated in OpenStreetMap account - OpenStreetMap Wiki, as long as multiple accounts are not used to evade a user block. So itโs fine to have accounts that are dormant without reminding the user to delete the account (in my opinion).
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I think there are users who registered and forgot they were registered and they can have an impact, so we will send them an email and if they want to go back and edit, they can go back and edit, and those who donโt want to continue should delete their account.
Just an innocent question, but why would this be preferable? If users who have had a few years of hiatus (for whatever reason) ever wanted to continue contributing, they would have to set up a new account. I say the less barriers for contributing the better!
Why would โinactiveโ accounts in the system be a particularly bad thing? Whatโs the downside?
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They donโt have to close just a recommendation for those who donโt want it, and thatโs a bad thing because, for example, there are people who have a single question and thatโs why they open an account, and then thereโs a load.
A load? On what? I admit that I donโt know this for sure, but Iโd imagine that there are not that many users (active or inactive) on OSM that it would particularly burden the system. Even a person who originally created an account for asking a single question may in the future decide to contribute further. I donโt see a reason to nag people to close their account for any reason (other than abuse in which case we donโt need to nag them, but simply close the account).
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We only send a reminder once a year, and why is it busy because each user takes up space on the servers.
Why do you put inactive users in your server?
I speak Hebrew, so I use Google Translate to translate what I write in Hebrew, and it never makes any mistakes for me, and today it did. I apologize. It was referring to OMS servers, so I fixed it.
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The resource usage of an active account and a deleted one is pretty much exactly the same. Thereโs no reason to start deleting accounts.
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Ask the technical department.
Are you speaking about the account on the forum (c.osm.org) or on OpenStreetMap (OSM.org)?
Irrespetively of that, I think itโs not necessary to delete accounts and/or send out reminders.
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Everyone has their own opinions and to check you need a survey
Sure. But Iโd say that before putting anything to a survey or a vote, it would be nice to have a clearly stated and checked reason and rationale for any action. It is precisely such a clear reason that is missing in your proposal.
Furthermore Iโd say that it is not on usโwho refuse or oppose the actionโto โask the technical departmentโ, but rather on anyone who proposes anything to ask it beforehand (see the Burden of Proof).
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I asked on several different topics but the answer is rarely
- There is no such thing as a โtechnical departmentโ
- Basing technical/operational decisions on community polls is not a great idea
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This is technically possible; it would not even require action on the part of the OpenStreetMap operations team because anyone can (a) find out which accounts have not edited for a certain time and (b) send them a message.
However, encouraging these users to delete their accounts would be a very bad idea! Account deletion would have the following undesirable consequences:
- You would not be able to contact the user any more. If you encounter a strange edit five years later, the user would be listed as โdeletedโ and you cannot send them a message; even if you write a changeset comment, it will not generate an email to the user as it would with an un-deleted user.
- It would be difficult to connect edits by the same user - you wouldnโt be able to click on the user name in the web interface and see what other edits they made. This can sometimes be helpful in judging the quality of contributions.
- The user profile would go away, even though it might contain important information that helps interpret their contributions (e.g. โI work for the XY roads departmentโ or โI use an ABC GPS for my OSM contributionsโ).
Therefore - donโt do it.
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Read this, it really helped.
[Of course it wasnโt the main consideration but it pushed him]