Our little forum is growing, in that we have been adding quite a few new members. If I were looking to compete to become one of the largest seniors forums, that would be a good thing. But what I really want is for this to be a comfortable place for people to talk about whatever might be on their minds, and for it to be just busy enough to keep people from being bored. I don't want to grow so quickly that we lose focus, or so that things get to be so hectic that it's not any fun anymore. In very large forums, people tend to form cliques, and too much comes to be about forming alliances and defending positions. New members can feel unwelcome or have trouble finding their place, and those who don't are afraid to voice a controversial opinion for fear of being attacked. I don't think most of us want this, and that's not at all what I think we have here. I am not writing this in reference to a problem. Rather, I am discussing potential future problems and considering ways in which we might be able to do a preemptive attack. When I am talking about growth, I am not so much referring to the listed number of members that we have. Some of the people on our member list never logged in again after registering an account, and others have never posted in the forum, although some of these nevertheless log in every now and then. A few have, sadly, passed away, but we retain their accounts as a memorial. One of these days, when I have some time on my hands, I will delete those members who haven't logged in for more than a year and have never posted. I would begin with those who haven't logged in since the day they created the account. I don't like deleting members who have posted because that leaves some of our older threads looking obsolete, and formerly active members sometimes return to the forum after long absences, so I like to have their accounts waiting for them. If all of our listed members were active, we'd probably already be too big. We could, of course, suspend new registrations, making the forum by invitation only for a time. My fear is that this might encourage cliques, but maybe not. I could do what I sometimes do when it gets too convoluted, and delete any new registrations that don't look like real names. Or we could just deal with the growth and try not to let it ruin us.
We've had some nice new additions to our forum in the last few months but most I know from SF so they really aren't "new" to me. I feel comfortable with them and I think we're getting biggger at a good rate. Yes, there are quite a few who join and never post but you can usually tell who those will be...sometimes I'm surprised and they turn into a regular on here. I'm still having a tough time with my anxiety so that's why I'm posting less than my usual. Just in a funk.
I think that if someone has registered and not posted for a year, they either have no interest, or they have possibly lost their log-in information. I remember we have had a few people who lost their password, and then could not log in, and with a new person, this might be more apt to happen. I know it would be a nuisance, but maybe before just deleting these people who have not ever posted and joined over a year ago, you could email them out some kind of a form letter explaining that they would have their membership deleted unless they respond to the email. Then I if they had lost their password, or even lost the link to the forum , they could email back and we could help them get logged in again. if I can help out with this, or even just deleting some of the ones who didn’t post, I am glad to help out in any way that I can.