Closed accounts

Quality

Have been on board a few years and through my time i have been lucky enough to have made a friend or two.

But I have also lost a friend or too, from closed accounts.

Could there be a message board set up, for looking for someone to get in touch who is a closed account.

I often wonder where one or two have gone too.


And I swear I am not a stalker! Ha ha

Tallon

Unfortunately, boards doesn't want you to know who or how many users closed their accounts, so this will be a non runner!

4zn76tysfajdxp

Oh, Tallon's closed his account.


What a tragedy.

seamus

Quality wrote: »

Could there be a message board set up, for looking for someone to get in touch who is a closed account.

So, a forum for people who have closed their accounts? ^_^

I would have thought that if someone was an actual friend, they would get in touch with you or connect on facebook or whatever before they closed their account.

If they just close their account and disappear, then you probably think more of them than they do of you and they have interest in staying in touch.

minidazzler

Ledger Easy Rocker wrote: »

Oh, Tallon's closed (T)his account.

While I hate people who Fix my Posts.... I think in this case it's probably accurate

funk-you

Ledger Easy Rocker wrote: »

Oh, Tallon's closed his account.


What a tragedy.

Stay classy.

-Funk

Quality

seamus wrote: »

So, a forum for people who have closed their accounts? ^_^

I would have thought that if someone was an actual friend, they would get in touch with you or connect on facebook or whatever before they closed their account.

If they just close their account and disappear, then you probably think more of them than they do of you and they have interest in staying in touch.

Yeah that's right Seamus, nobody wants to be my friend.

Loner forever.



Anyhow tallon.

If you're out there message me

Frosty McSnowballs

I still love ya quality!

Pelvis Parsley

I reckon Quality is hot-I'd so add her to my facebook.

wnolan1992

I think there's some merit to this idea, but I don't see how it's workable on boards tbh.

Like, I assume what the OP means is that I could post a message saying "Hey X_USER, used to talk to you a lot on here but you've closed your account. If you wanna keep in touch let me know." and then if that person happened to read my post they'd either get back in touch (unlikely since I'm a complete **** and no one likes me ) or ignore it and get on with their lives.

In theory it's a cool idea.

But, there're a few problems.

The most major is you'd have to post contact details on this message board for them to get in touch which, I don't think I have to point out, is never a great idea. The only other way they could contact you is by opening another account and PMing and given that they closed their account in the first place, this is unlikely.

Another issue is the way Boards is structured. You could have a "Closed Account" forum (can't think of a better name ) where people could post threads asking about people. But (and this thread sort of illustrates it nicely if you read a few of the previous posts...) you'd end up with people who've axes to grind or grudges or ill feelings or whatever the hell you want to call it, flocking to the thread to have a pop. And if that didn't happen, you'd just have loads and loads of threads with one post in them which isn't really the way Boards is meant to be.

IMO a dedicated thread in a high traffic forum like AH might be a good idea, with a strict "No Chat" rule or something.

Femme_Fatale

minidazzler wrote: »

While I hate people who Fix my Posts.... I think in this case it's probably accurate

Oh look, some "insider knowledge" that people who don't know anything about Tallon will understand. Hardly the place for it.

Insect Overlord

Femme_Fatale wrote: »

Oh look, some "insider knowledge" that people who don't know anything about Tallon will understand. Hardly the place for it.

What do you expect? He puts his last post, (a very cynical one at that) before closing his account, in a thread about Closed Accounts. If someone wants to go out publicly, they have to expect a reaction afterwards.

seamus

Quality wrote: »

Yeah that's right Seamus, nobody wants to be my friend.

Loner forever.

Yeah, that's exactly what I said...

Anyway, wnolan succintly points out the problems with your suggestion. Closed accounts don't have any access. So in order for your suggestion to work someone would either need to post up their own contact details (no no) or the closed account person would need to re-reg to respond. In which case they're not really a closed account...
And the closed account would need to be monitoring boards for their own username. I imagine many closed accounters leave precisely because that level of obsession is disrupting their life.

In the specific case you PMed me, that person added you on facebook, kind of proving my original point. You already have enough information to locate/contact someone better than you could with a "missed connections" forum on boards.

Quality

Missed connections sounds good.

Sure most closed accounts, re reg and set up new accounts. And boards is so addictive I would think that it would be very difficult to cut it out completely from your life. You would defo be in for a lurk.

D

Officially the Data Protection guys stated that boards.ie should have a way for users to indicate to boards that they no longer want their details retained.

Closing an account indicates to boards "Please do not store my information."

Boards then need to delete the user's info.
The whole point of a closed account is that boards no longer has the user's details.

Someone from the office should be able to give a better explanation.*

*I may be horribly incorrect in my explanation

Dav

No, you've pretty much hit the nail on the head there D, that's exactly it.

We can't stop you closing your account and I don't think we should be providing any sort of facility to allow people to link their new account to an old one - this isn't to say you can't PM your friends with a new account if you've closed for whatever reason, but that's your choice and not something we have control over (because barring a court or police request, we can't read anyone's PMs).

anncoates

When you close your account and don't make yourself known to people you previously knew under your old moniker, there's obviously a reason for that.

Dades

If it's case where for Real Life™ reasons you have to break the bond and close your account to get some time out, then leave someone you trust behind with a contact option that can be requested via PM, and mention it in your closing post.

Of course if you really want to stay in touch with other Boards users, don't close your account.

shopaholic01

D wrote: »

Officially the Data Protection guys stated that boards.ie should have a way for users to indicate to boards that they no longer want their details retained.

Closing an account indicates to boards "Please do not store my information."

Boards then need to delete the user's info.
The whole point of a closed account is that boards no longer has the user's details.

Someone from the office should be able to give a better explanation.*

*I may be horribly incorrect in my explanation

If all the user info of a closed a/c is lost how are re-regs spotted? I'm just curious, this is my first a/c, but if I closed it and re-regged how could boards prove it definitely?

I know some re-regs are obvious - there's one who opens multiple trolling accounts, but what if someone re-regs and 'tones down' their style - can you be sure they're not a banned user?

RDM_83 again

shopaholic01 wrote: »

If all the user info of a closed a/c is lost how are re-regs spotted? I'm just curious, this is my first a/c, but if I closed it and re-regged how could boards prove it definitely?

I know some re-regs are obvious - there's one who opens multiple trolling accounts, but what if someone re-regs and 'tones down' their style - can you be sure they're not a banned user?

Just an idea but is that not like the prison debatein real life, if a banned user reregs and changes their behavior so they don;t get picked up and banned again is that not a good thing, e.g the ban working to "reform" a user.
Also are re-regs always considered bad, there's a couple of posters that are really blatantly obvious reregs that even i can spot them but they are not considered a problem because they are not problem posters. Is there a boards policy on re-reging

Tombi!

RDM, as far as I remember being told by mods: you can register your account and that's that... but if you close it, you can open a new one.
Obviously if you're gonna start causing trouble and got banned for trouble and are still causing trouble on your new account then yes, you'll get banned.

But I think the latter is on the discretion of the mods on what causes too much trouble.

shopaholic01

RDM_83 again wrote: »

Just an idea but is that not like the prison debatein real life, if a banned user reregs and changes their behavior so they don;t get picked up and banned again is that not a good thing, e.g the ban working to "reform" a user.
Also are re-regs always considered bad, there's a couple of posters that are really blatantly obvious reregs that even i can spot them but they are not considered a problem because they are not problem posters. Is there a boards policy on re-reging

It is against the rules for a sitebanned user to re-reg, or to re-reg to overcome a forum ban (permanent or temporary).

So, say I get sitebanned and close my account. I re-reg, if I behave and don't come to the attention of mods/admins I get away with it.

But if I end up in prison how do they prove I'm a re-reg if all my previous info is lost? I might have posted in a different forum than before. In the prison forum a user often has their previous username(s) used against them.

I'm not talking about someone closing an a/c for other reasons, many do and are obvious re-regs or will open admit to it.

I'm just curious about how a user is linked to a previous a/c when all data is lost.

MugMugs

I tried to read the terms a few times but got bored and gave up.

Cookies are used.

IP addresses seem to be logged for a certain period of time.

Browser type, system type etc are all also logged for certain periods of time and the short attention span of a lot of muppets generally seems to assist Admins in identifying who's who.

Dades

RDM_83 again wrote: »

Just an idea but is that not like the prison debatein real life, if a banned user reregs and changes their behavior so they don;t get picked up and banned again is that not a good thing, e.g the ban working to "reform" a user.

A user doesn't get permabanned to begin with, without having been offered several opportunities to "reform". It hardly makes sense that we allow them break further site rules to get one more chance.

---

The minutiae of how to find re-regs are best left classified, for obvious reasons. Suffice to say there are many tools at the disposal of admins and others to aid them in this task.

There's been some discussion recently regarding what is acceptable regarding holding second accounts, and what circumstances will avoid a siteban. Firstly, re-reging to avoid a ban is an instant siteban. And unless there's a very compelling reason offered that's for both accounts. Similarly, having a second account to sock-puppet in threads will also see two adjoining cells in Prison.

Second accounts created for honest reasons such as privacy on a personal matter, or to protect an identity may be allowable, though we'd recommend informing someone higher up of the intention rather than us finding out ourselves. This way one or both accounts are less likely to be summarily turfed, and the case for having two accounts will be looked on more favourably.

Lastly, and this seems to be the grey area, some users have two accounts for no obvious reason. This is where mod/CMod/admin discretion comes in. If the accounts both post in the same forum - even if not interacting - the chances are (at least) one will be banned. If there's no obvious mischief involved, then potentially one account may be retained at the discretion of the forum mods. In cases where the two accounts operate in different forums altogether then, unless the poster is racking up infractions etc. then a policy of "wait and see" might be undertaken. (If the poster is building up a rap sheet on one of both accounts, then obviously, they are in trouble and will be lucky to come out with one account).

There is of course, discretion, with every case. And as mentioned the rules regarding second accounts is something that has been discussed recently without actually formulating policy - so this is my take. The safest option is to not have more than one account without first running it past a CMod or admin. Otherwise there's every chance you'll end up with none.

Spear

MugMugs wrote: »

IP addresses seem to be logged for a certain period of time.

Browser type, system type etc are all also logged for certain periods of time and the short attention span of a lot of muppets generally seems to assist Admins in identifying who's who.

Your web browser sends all of this info, and often more, in the form a User-Agent string to any and every website you visit. There's nothing special about boards.ie in that regard.

The boards.ie diagnostic page will show a lot of that:

http://www.boards.ie/diagnostics

MugMugs

Spear wrote: »

Your web browser sends all of this info, and often more, in the form a User-Agent string to any and every website you visit. There's nothing special about boards.ie in that regard.

The boards.ie diagnostic page will show a lot of that:

http://www.boards.ie/diagnostics

The intention of the point wasn't to say that boards take more so that they use it.

Spear

MugMugs wrote: »

The intention of the point wasn't to say that boards take more so that they use it.

And I didn't interpret it as such. I'm making the general informative point that people give up a great deal of info without realising it.