There are nearly 20,000 HarpTabs.com members. That's great isn't it ?
Well, I've been playing with some statistics based on the information in the Member List with a little help from Microsoft Excel. The sad truth of the the currently 19480 members, only 2,400 (barely 12%) have ever posted anything. The vast majority have neither posted a tab nor written an entry in the forum. Of course, they may have started a "Favorites" List or added a picture to their profile. That is not directly visible from the members list, but a random check of 20 Members who had made no posts or forum entries showed only 2 who had maintained a favorites list. So I guess we need a new member category of "not yet active". These would move into the next category, that is newbie, when they have done at least something (even is it is just creating a favorites list with one entry). The earliest member in this new category would be seek2reveal . His account was created on 2004-05-05.

And just 9 people have contributed over half of the total of 14,682 tabs posted !

Add a song to Favorites and they're "active?!"
I like your concept, but I don't know if any criteria for "active" would be fair. I'm thinking about a some kind of time limit sort of thing. If a member POSTS something...anything...they're active. But if they haven't posted anything in...I dunno...30 days(?), they're no longer active until they post again. Is that fair? What if Walt is sick for a month? What if I fall out of a tree or get mauled by a leopard? Perhaps "Currently Active" would be a better name for the list.

I don't even know if Nick could make a program that could keep up with that stuff. Anyway, how would that look on the homepage:

Currently Active Members: 5

Hmmm....Maybe we best leave it how it is.

I dunno.... The more I think of it, the more it seems a can of worms that should be left alone...

But that's just my two cents worth.

Sick for a month, I've been sick all my life

I seem to remember another topic close to this one. The topic conversation mentioned that visitors may think that they needed to be members just to look around and that would explain a large number of members with no activity.

Maybe that if a membership has never had activity it gets archived after 12 months. Maybe it's just not important, but I'm guessing that with a higher member count, the more inviting for companies to advertise on the site and help to keep it up and running.

I don't see the issue. Does it matter if an inactive member is officially designated as being inactive? Does it makes the site better somehow?

And personally, I could do without a time limit behind me telling me that I must post something-- worthwhile or not-- in X days or else be marked "inactive" (if I even cared, but I'm still not clear about how this would affect anything).

That's just forum life. People sign up for them and don't post or come back for whatever reason. It doesn't hurt anything, so I don't know why we should feel the need to police it.

Yep. I say leave well enough alone.

OK. Maybe the categorization "not yet active" is not the best because it could imply that after that you are active which is not always the case. Many users are very active for a while and then just, well, fade away.
But I still think it is useful to distinguish between someone who has posted a few tabs and maybe a few forum entries or even just one of these activities, and somone who has merely logged in once to change their password. Then what about the new category being called "not yet activated". It's vague enough, yet somehow understandable.
I agree that those who have once achieved a sort of active status should then be left alone and not moved into a "dormant" state even if nothing is ever heard from them again. But anyway these are a tiny minority.

First off I record every time someone signs into the system so I can easily say if someone doesn't sign in for x amount of time they are inactive...

Now I also know that people don't always sign in... I know I don't, I just check the forum and see what is going on and then leave. I am sure I am not the only one who does that.

We could do this is a separate box and not a rank. There would be a checkbox on the profile for active and if they are active it is checked and if they are not active then it is not checked.


Oh and on a side note, seek2reveal was someone I used to work with. When I was first writing the site he created the account to help me test logins so he is the second user on the site. I always just left his account on there.

I don't sign in either, except to post tabs. And there's probably a limit to how long I can keep finding sheet music I like to be able to do that.

I still don't see what's to be gained with an active/inactive checkmark. Not sure who benefits and how. If my vote counts for anything, I vote to leave it alone.

It sounds to me like most people want to leave it the way it is. I don't see any harm in it if people's rank didn't change but the majority rules.

Majority?! We still have nearly 20,000 more votes to count!!

Some people don't vote and others are going to just vote for a third option and throw their vote away

I once saw an account of a guy, wich the last time that he signed in was in 2009.
And he had no forum posts.
But he posted 2 or 3 tabs.

I think that accounts like that sould be kept, just for the tabs, but those guys that don't sign in for a year, and don't post on forums, and only use their accounts to "add favorites" should be deleted due to inactivity...

In fact, it could be a good idea. When you create an account there could be a special warning that says
" WARNING () Account will be deleted if user's period of inactivity is bigger than 12 months (or so)." and you could e-mail the people either warning them that their account would be deleted or just saying that their account is already deleted. Most people wouldn't even care, since they havn't logged in for a year.

That's my suggestion.

There are a lot of good reasons mentioned above for keeping it like it is. CJD may have given the best one:

"...with a higher member count, the more inviting for companies to advertise on the site and help to keep it up and running...."

The amount of members is not a problem right now... if it was I would create a script to automatically remove accounts which have done nothing and are inactive. Now that we are on our own hardware resources are not going to be an issue. I have freedom to do what ever we want/need to do.

If the amount of members are not a problem then I would leave it the way it is. Besides I think if we get rid of inactive users that would get rid of kintaf,and Nick you don't want to get rid of him/her/it.

On the subject of the "service" account "kintaf": I've just noticed that it is fatnik in reverse. Surely just an unfortunate coincidence?.