Forum pruning (pre-migration) has begun

sothis

Forum Moderator
Anime-Planet Founder
Developer
We're moving the forum software over to xenforo in the near future (I hope). To help cut back on migration 'costs' and difficulty, we've started pruning and cleaning up the forum pre-migration. This includes pruning users, and also pruning old/non useful forum sections

Stuff that's been done so far (with future updates to be posted in the thread):

1. Deleted all users who haven't logged on in the last 3 years
NOTE: I may also prune users who haven't logged in in the last 2 years. This will remove around 26,000 of the forum's 36,000 registered users. It also means migration will be much easier. While I generally dislike deleting content, I think it's something we should do to make migration easier (2 years is a long time to not log in).

2. Removed all users 'pending email activation'
Around 4,000 users, most were 2012 or earlier and registered/last visited on the same day (never activated or posted)

3. Removed FAQ/tutorials section
This section was pretty much unused, the main/important topics that rarely came up were site questions that belong in the feature request/question/bug section anyways

4. Removed Creative Corner section
This was an executive decision I made today, and have been thinking about doing for awhile. The section isn't used much anymore, and has become somewhat of a honeypot for one-off self-promotion threads, usually from people who aren't site users and are just coming through to spam. Other site-user threads get posted sometimes, always self promotion for something, which is fine and all, but that stuff belongs in the user's personal profile (in your bio, etc)

I did move 3 sticky/big threads into general anime discussion (post your fav fan art and 2 others) and deleted the section. If you have personal stuff you'd like to promote (AMVs, personal blog posts, youtube reviews, etc), please put it into your profile bio from now on.

5. Removed Vendor Reviews section
This section was a remnant of when we used to have a vendor database (this is at least 1 version of the site ago, if not 2) for buying anime-related stuff. I don't see us bringing it back in the future and the section is generally unused and spammy when used

6. Removed Anime Reviews and Manga Reviews sections
These were old/locked sections that used to be used before we had user/community reviews on the site. I debated posting an announcement first about 'move these into the site by x day before I delete them', but while scanning them, they were pretty much all written by the (now MIA) site reviewing team, or other old regulars who aren't around anymore. Given the content is 3+ years old I'd hope those have been migrated anyways, and there's no easy way to manually move them. So, I removed the sections.

7. Removed a bunch of hidden/moderator/beta test sections that are unused

8. Removed "AniRec List of the Week" section
This is another forum section that used to be heavily trafficed, but has become unused over time. Funkgun has taken up the task of posting new thread, we chatted about the possibility of removing the section and he's given his blessing. We may re-invent the section in the new forum, or it might morph into something that encourages people to make custom lists on the site instead

9. Removed "AP V3" section
V3 has been out forever

10. Pruned all threads from "completed bugs"
Sure, it would be somewhat interesting to keep these threads, but most are bugfixes or years old. Pruning threads means a smaller database size/easier to migrate, and I didn't really see any value in keeping these around. Any newly completed bug threads will get moved into there, but the old ones are gone. In the new forum software I may put an auto-prune into place for the section anyways, removing threads that are more than a few months or year old.

11. Removed Chat Quotes section
Another once-interesting oldie that's become unused

More updates to come. In the meantime if you're reading this and haven't logged into your forum account in the last 2 years, do it soon :)
 
I've also removed the 4 'public usergroups' that were set up a zillion years ago (and were never really used)
 
That's good sothis, away with the old, in with the new. :)

No reason to have something that we won't make great use of. List looks good to me.
 
Well hopefully this will make the migrating easier and also maybe even speed up anything (though i don't suffer any slow stuff anyway but ease of free space in handy in the future ^_^)
 
You could clear out some of the older character submissions from the completed section of the character mod forums. Like some of the ones from before the guidelines for adding characters and tagging characters were totally set in stone.

It's the subforum with the most threads in the forum and the older some of them aren't easy to search out since the 1st version of thread titles didn't include series names. They really don't get referenced that much anyways since majority of the really old threads were done by somebody who is no longer a mod.
 
indeed, we have a thread open in the mod section about that actually. it's looking like we're going to prune anything more than a year old
 
2. Removed all users 'pending email activation'
Around 4,000 users, most were 2012 or earlier and registered/last visited on the same day (never activated or posted)
@ sothis - Either before (or during) the site move process, or at some point after the move, are you interested in pruning the obviously fake/duplicate/fanboy accounts? As not sure they will be picked up in the above mentioned sweep (based on the criteria you've stated).

The accounts I refer to are those that show no real activity other than having a few anime rated at 5*, and/or a single review/rec used to cheerleader that persons favourite anime. With such accounts almost always having either the same or a few days apart at best "Member Since" and "Last Visited" date stamps, with both dates being over several months old. Meaning it's pretty obvious that whoever created the account had no intention to use the site at all, or at least not that account (as it's a dup), and only created the account to artificially boost the site anime ratings for their selected anime(s), and promote said anime via a (usually) useless review and/or rec.

Judging by what you wrote for [2] above, I'm not sure if such accounts will be included in the pruning for this step (re: your "never actually posted" comment, which I assume won't apply to these accounts if they've posted a junk review/rec), but I can't see how it benefits AP to maintain such users in the user base.

Not sure if a script can be created to find accounts that are say X months old, and have Y days between Member Since and Last Stamp dates. And perhaps have <Z animes listed, but I'm sure such a script would turn up hundreds of such fake/duplicate/fanboy accounts. But I might have time and volunteer to track down such accounts if you are interested in pruning htem (and there's no automated/scripted way to reliably do it).
 
although a new member here
But feel like these changes will help.
Was surfing through sections of Custom sigs all day long

Lot of interesting reads
Though i feel the forums are bit laggy ,due to large no of Threads i Guess

Anyways, Nice to meet you all ~:megusta:

Hope these forums will keep me attached Like Pockie Pirates Game one( 5500+ posts, 9475 Prestige)

:troll::laugh:
 
^ Nice to meet you!:balloon:

On topic: I agree with what people said, good to see some cleaning, keep up great work.
 
Stuff that's been done so far (with future updates to be posted in the thread):

1. Deleted all users who haven't logged on in the last 3 years
Re-reading the OP again, am I correcting in understanding that the list of things in the OP has already been done? And if so, will we (the regular users) see the effects of the pruning before the site migration/redesign, or will it only be evident afterwards?

Reason I ask is that I just checked and there are several user accounts that have not logged in for 3+ years, but which still seem to be on the site (ie. have not been not deleted/pruned AFAI can tell). So thought I'd ask if pruned accounts can still be seen by regular users due to them not seeing the results of the account pruning until after the migration, or due to some accounts slipping through the pruning net.


Oh and I'll echo others in saying I couldn't agree more with the clean-up/pruning decision.
 
i set it to something not exact but it was close to 3 years, and yes, all those steps have already been done
 
Cleanup before migration is always a good idea, and it sounds like you've been making good strides! A hearty thank you for all your hard work, AP is a GREAT site!

 
i set it to something not exact but it was close to 3 years, and yes, all those steps have already been done
So should any user accounts that slipped through the net be reported or not? As at least the following two accounts seem to be active when I asume they should have been pruned. (although for reporting I guess a precise date would be needed as a cut-off. Can 1st October 2010 be used in that case or not?)

https://www.anime-planet.com/users/24912400 - Last visited April 24, 2010
https://www.anime-planet.com/users/Duo0484 - Last visited June 13, 2010

I suspect I could find and list more if desired and deemed helpful.
 
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