Last modified: 2007-04-02 07:02:56 UTC

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Bug 3521 - Feature request: Optional account deleting
Feature request: Optional account deleting
Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 6397
Product: MediaWiki
Classification: Unclassified
User login and signup (Other open bugs)
unspecified
All All
: Normal enhancement with 1 vote (vote)
: ---
Assigned To: Nobody - You can work on this!
:
Depends on:
Blocks:
  Show dependency treegraph
 
Reported: 2005-09-20 21:07 UTC by Filip Maljkovic [Dungodung]
Modified: 2007-04-02 07:02 UTC (History)
0 users

See Also:
Web browser: ---
Mobile Platform: ---
Assignee Huggle Beta Tester: ---


Attachments

Description Filip Maljkovic [Dungodung] 2005-09-20 21:07:06 UTC
It would be lovely if MediaWiki had the option of deleting inactive accounts.
Now, this isn't really good for Wikimedia, but other corporate wikis or simply
wikis that want their user list clear maybe want to have the autodeletion of the
inactive accounts. Say that if a user hasn't accessed his account for e.g. 3
months (that could be flexible - customizable in the LocalSettings.php), the
account could be deleted, but the user (talk) pages would still be intact. So
basically, the user would have to be deleted from the database and since
deleting really active users (the ones with many edits), similar to renaming
them, isn't very safe, the autodeletion might refer only to accounts that have
~3000 edits. After that figure (or any else for that matter), the account could
become undeletable. I see some possible problems with all of this, but it
should/can be tested and I think that it might work.
Comment 1 Rob Church 2005-09-20 21:37:16 UTC
First problem would be that deleting any row in the users table would be unsafe,
as it leaves references to the user all over the place, which could cause all
sorts of wonderful errors.

Second issue is that you assume some sort of daemon/TSR which runs the software,
which isn't the case. This couldn't be 100% automated; either it would need to
be part of the index.php script (which increases server load) or you would need
to use a maintenance script, which defeats your objective of the process being
automated.

It is a nice idea, but as it stands, it would be problematic.
Comment 2 Filip Maljkovic [Dungodung] 2005-10-26 09:37:37 UTC
OK. Maybe that is good. Since this vision cannot be run like a daemon, it
doesn't necessarily have to be automated. There could be a special page e.g.
Deleteinactive that would do the work upon starting it (and would be available
to sysops only, naturally).

As for the database, I don't know how to sort that out...
Comment 3 Andrius Ramanauskas 2005-10-26 09:45:22 UTC
Deleting users permanently is not acceptable in many cases - this cannot be undone, also mentioned problems with references. So a better 
approach would be - disabling user accounts, so disabled user is not visible in user list, cannot login, but it is still visible in 
referenced places (history, etc), and this can be undone by reenabling a user.
Comment 4 Filip Maljkovic [Dungodung] 2005-10-26 09:47:25 UTC
I like the idea, Andrius. It's even better. Someone willing to do it? :)
Comment 5 Rob Church 2007-04-02 07:02:56 UTC
Closing as a duplicate of bug 6397, which is more feasible.

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 6397 ***

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