Cleaaning out a group?

[Jae Serrao]

Ok after looking through MY groups, I have noticed that there are some that haven't logged in in over a year. About how long, if at all, should you clear out these no longer active SL members from your groups? This is just a opinion poll really, as I don't see it being necessary, but it could help balance out who I target with new information and ideas.

[Peewee Musytari]

I never kick people out with reason, as they aren`t doing any harm, but I guess if they annoy you being there you can.

[Camden McAndrews]

There might be a technical argument for cleaning out moribund avatars:  Each time a message goes to the group, the server has to check every group member to see if that member is on line.  That's a lot of accesses to the database.  Group notices would be similar; having notices and inventory offers stacking up in dead accounts and then checking to see if they have expired must put a significant load on the asset server.

 

I suspect (but don't know) that if everyone cleaned out the dead wood, group chat would be noticeably improved.  I'm thinking about the time that Linden Lab noticed that half the accounts log on only one time, and based some key business decisions on that observation.  My guess is that the great majority of those one-timers were intentional--spammers, freebie grabbers, spies, and other mischief.  That would up to a heck of a lot of clutter.

 

Beyond the technical question, it depends on whether you think clutter in the list of members is a good thing or a bad thing.  It's good (albeit deceptive) if you boast about the number of people who are in your group; bad if people would be using your group to find other people.

[Irene Muni]

I usually clean my groups of no longer active SL members. But just because I want the number of members is as accurate as possible.

[Peewee Musytari]

Camden McAndrews wrote:

There might be a technical argument for cleaning out moribund avatars:  Each time a message goes to the group, the server has to check every group member to see if that member is on line.  That's a lot of accesses to the database.  Group notices would be similar; having notices and inventory offers stacking up in dead accounts and then checking to see if they have expired must put a significant load on the asset server.

I suspect (but don't know) that if everyone cleaned out the dead wood, group chat would be noticeably improved.  I'm thinking about the time that Linden Lab noticed that half the accounts log on only one time, and based some key business decisions on that observation.  My guess is that the great majority of those one-timers were intentional--spammers, freebie grabbers, spies, and other mischief.  That would up to a heck of a lot of clutter.

Beyond the technical question, it depends on whether you think clutter in the list of members is a good thing or a bad thing.  It's good (albeit deceptive) if you boast about the number of people who are in your group; bad if people would be using your group to find other people.

Interesting theory.

Each dead account would ofc be capped after 25 items of clutter, but you could have a point that all the unnecessary system checks may effect the overall smooth running of SL.

Now we can blame the lag on all the dead bodies

[Jae Serrao]

See this is what I was thinking too.  As a network admin I see thins stuff all the time, but more so with mail exchange servers and file storage.  I have been devising a plan at work to put a time limit on dormant/deleted employee accounts and to offload them onto a back up and then remove them from the system.  This got me to thinking about SL and groups with "dead bodies."  Now my group isn't all that big yet with just over 325, I don't see it being an issue ATM.  But there are groups I belong to that are update groups that have 4K+ and that has me thinking about chat lag, notice lag, and general accountability to being truthful in advertising.  I don't brag or use my update groups member count as a way to bolster sales, its just there to inform and educate people who like me/my stuff.

So I will have to gradually figure out what it is I want to do and see where my group goes.  I was thinking hit 1K then do a cleaning.  Followed by a cleaning for every 1K hit.  But I don't want to seem rude to those who may just have Internet issues and are just waiting to get back on some day. So what is the length of "decomposition" I should wait for before calling in the cadaver dogs, lol?

[Camden McAndrews]

A little follow-up: Recent hands-on experience rather strongly reinforces the benefit of cleaning out ancient clutter from group membership lists.

 

A technical glitch (a group maintenance bot collided with a server upgrade) caused the Builders Brewery group's bot to remove all of it's 14,000+ members, except for those who had a role other than "Everyone." Group membership dropped by 90% overnight. Yoicks.

 

The group grew back to several thousand members in just a couple of days, but there is still a remarkable improvement in the reliability of group performance; it's near 100% now, while at it's peak, group chat was usually laggy and often we couldn't connect to the group at all. Group moderators also noted that now it's much easier to find people in the list of people who are currently in group chat when they need to do some moderating.

 

Based on that experience, I'd recommend cleaning out the clutter unless you have a compelling reason not to.