Why?

titoxd.wikimedia wrote:

From what I gather, several reasons:

• Some users believe having too many inactive accounts overstates the amount of

actual editors in Wikipedia

• Would allow for easier usurping of nice, simple usernames that have never been

used

• Removal of sleeper vandalbot accounts
• Removal of sockpuppets

I'm personally a bit cautious of the proposal, but I'm just bringing it up here,
so it actually gets seen by the devs.

robchur wrote:

Define unused. There are lots of reasons to maintain an account which isn't used
for editing; viewing preferences and maintaining a watchlist are two that I can
think of offhand.

Deleting *crap* usernames is an issue that ought to be addressed, but even that
isn't safe.

It is worth pointing out that we do have a script that removes unused user
accounts, although it doesn't have the time threshold and it still isn't perfect
about determining what constitutes unused-ness.

titoxd.wikimedia wrote:

The definition of "unused" that is being thrown around is 90 days, although
several editors said that they wouldn't mind a longer timespan of inactivity.
There's a whole bunch of ideas being thrown out on the talk page I brought up above.

Since the user_options field contains a user's preferences, can the blob
attached to a username be checked with the default setting, and if both are
different, then the account be marked as "kept"?

lcarsdata wrote:

(In reply to comment #4)

Since the user_options field contains a user's preferences, can the blob
attached to a username be checked with the default setting, and if both are
different, then the account be marked as "kept"?

That would proably work just as well.

Some concerns have been raised with respect to (a) blocked accounts, and (b) accounts
made because the user has the same name on another Wiki project. Although I'm all for
deleting never-used blocked accounts after 90 days (or some longer agreed-to span),
is it possible to generate a list of all accounts that meet the following six
conditions:

1. No edits, ever (including deleted edits and page moves)
2. No history in the block log or any other log other than recording page creation
3. No changes made to user preferences
4. No items on watchlist
5. No identical username on any other Wikimedia project
6. No logins to that account within the past 90 days (if it satisfies the concerns

of some editors, we may just as well start with accounts with no logins after the end
of 2005)

With respect to Rob Church's comment above, I am also all for deleting *crap*
usernames, particularly those containing mindless vulgarities or personal attacks
against other users (unused or no).

pmanderson wrote:

There are also concerns about doppelganger acounts, which are, according to
[http://en.wikipedia.org/Wikipedia:Doppelganger]] supposed to be created and left
unused (and, of course, unlogged on). Please add condition

7.No user page exists. (User talk pages may exist for some accounts we want to
delete, because they've been welcomed).

dmehkeri wrote:

Any chance of going ahead with this?

Not really, no.

Prodego wrote:

*** Bug 10299 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

axel9891 wrote:

*** Bug 11202 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

• Bug 12215 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

fredgandt wrote:

(In reply to comment #9)

Not really, no.

Could you or another dev explain why?