Removal of accounts that never logged in

From: http://blog.secondlife.com/2007/07/10/june-2007-metrics-published/


/me starts a pool on how big this number is.. Any takers?

I'd bet the number of 'used once' accounts would be the larger number.

And even bigger: Ones not used in the past 6 months. But I guess any start is a good one.

I dunno, there are an awful lot of people out there with computers that don't meet even the minimum spec for SL. Those people would have created an account, downloaded the program but never been able to actually log in and start orientation. It would be interesting to see how the numbers do break out:

1) Created account but never logged in
2) Logged in but never completed orientation/transferred to mainland
3) Transferred to mainland, never logged in again after initial visit
4) Never logged in again after more than 2 visits

How the %$&* can you have an account without logging in?

It's been a while since I created my account, but isn't logging in PART of the creation process? 0.0

And yeah, accounts that have only logged in once would prolly be HUGE. The metrics would mean more if it was "accounts logged in within the last 30 days" at the shortest timeframe.

~Jessy

I'd bet that for all of the above it's at least 5 million.

Actually, I specifically remember creating an account more than a year ago, and then the program had an issue with my pc. I think at the time I was running windows ME and it didnt like it. I forgot all about it and redid it when I went to XP... hmmm I wonder what that last name was...

Yes, but... can some of those old last names be opened up? Huh huh huh... please?

Mari

It's mind numbing to think about.. I would say 6.5 million??
but that's just a guess

Nope. Case in point. I went to the website shortly after they opened the floodgates to completely unverified accounts, and I created three accounts as quick as I could, then logged in with one of them and ran him through Orientation Island and onto the Mainland as fast as I could. My intent was to see how fast a determined griefer could create an armed and generally disposable/untracable alt that needed to get nothing directly from the Player's actual account or any other accounts. In less than 5 minutes, I had three accounts, and one was a black wolf running around the mainland armed with several weapons, including a "nuke rezzer". All from easily accessed freebie sites. (No, he never fired any of the weapons or griefed anyone. Just obtained the weapons and 'non-newbie' avatar, at zero cost.)

After running that test, I decided I didn't need any of those three alt accounts. I told LL to delete all three, and *two of them had never logged in*. LL did NOT delete the one that I logged in with maybe three times - the one I armed. He still exists, though since the forced password change happened I haven't been able to access those three accounts to again request the deletion of the completely unneeded accounts.

I would imagine there are tens of thousands of accounts that griefers have auto-generated, and never actually logged on with, just so they would have a pool of 'dispoasable ammo' to grief with.

Hey sort of off topic but where's the info on users from around the world? (e.g. how many people logged in from Zaire?)

I think that's going to be a big one. I have had to help friends who have been in SL for a year or more to get out of the damned new Orientation Island because the tutorials didn't work. I personally wasn't able to complete the tutorials because the HUD stopped working- I was lucky enough to have done it when we still had a Live Help channel and someone told me how to escape. I've seen several posts here from newbies who were stuck there too.

How many more real newbies get stuck in that broken first-time experience and never come back? (Personally, I don't mind it, because it seems to have stemmed the population growth. )

Honestly I think the actual active population of SL is closer to 100k considering there are 30k-40k on at any given time...plus it's worldwide so the population probably goes in shifts...

But yeah, they should delete accounts that haven't had more than 2 hours use or any transactions in the last 6 months. I do realize there are people out there that have a business on an account and make money but only log on every once in a while. Those guys should stay. But if you're no payment, no transactions and only a limited time online over 6 months you should expect to have to start over again if you ever come back.

Hopefully they get a little more aggressive with this, but at least it's a start!

i wonder how these inactive avs affect performance/stability.

Well, from what I understand each person's inventory is stored in the system...that includes the library that everyone starts out with.

I wouldn't be surprised if the whole "losing inventory" issue got a lot better if they just deleted all the accounts we all know aren't getting used!

I also think it would be good to get rid of the library and just have a place (maybe at the welcome area) where you can pick what you would actually want and leave the rest. All the inactive-after-one-login accounts would have empty inventories!


mmmm...science!

When they talk about what's gone wrong, the problems usually (IMO) seem more related to either bugs, hardware problems or the number of people logged in. I'm not sure that tossing a bunch of users that never logged in will help any of those too much.



The library doesn't cost anything - each resident doesn't each get their own copy of the library, we all just get pointers to the same read-only version of the library.

Objects take up server space. Less objects will take up less space. It wouldn't solve all of SL's problems, but it sure would help!



I'm talking about the library of textures, avs and clothes in the inventory...the different new guy avs you can wear, the generic textures everyone gets. There's one copy of all of that for every avatar that's ever been activated. This is almost certainly taking a toll somewhere.

If there was a physical LL Library in-world where you could get that stuff for free then it would save on resources overall IMO because not everyone would want that stuff and not everyone would know it was there! I would venture to say that a lot of people don't know about the library in their inventory...old or new!

Well I know some people, like my RL mother, who has an account and who spent hours agonzing over her shape and stuff who wouldn't want to see her account deleted through inactivity. She's only been on for a few hours in January, but you never know when you can teach an old dog new tricks.

Maybe LL should send every account that's been inactive for at least 6 months an email telling them that their account is getting deleted unless they log in for a couple of minutes or something.

Well, that's what the response was about, too. By way of demonstration: if NewB and NewA each looked at the UUID of SomeTexture in their Library folders, they'd be the same. [edit: doh! texture was a bad example since they're always the same. Substitute your favorite inventory type here.]

The trouble only starts after NewB actually logs in and starts rezzing dozens of those funky Fireworks Launchers.

That would be cool. I wonder what the number of residents online would climb to the day the email went out. Could be a test of the system.

Oh.. Maybe "default inventory" would be better than "library" to describe that stuff.

Unless we're really talking about many tens of thousands of users, I still don't think it has that much impact. Making a copy in your inventory of, for example, a 100-prim object doesn't take any more space than making a copy of a 1-prim object. Or a texture or of clothing items. What's a gigabyte (or 10) to a database measured in terabytes?

/me starts a rumor that the cleanup Meta mentioned is a step towards cleaning up LL's bookkeeping so that they can be sold.

If they really wanted to clean house on the asset servers, a better bet would be to go through everybodys Trash/Lost & Found folders and purge everything that looks like a prim with 100% default settings. I'd bet that this would have far more impact than pruning users that never made it in-world.


Nothing at all against your mum but if she hasn't logged in in 6+ months, why would she be upset about getting pruned?

Bad Idea...I'm in the military, and I can be called up at a moments notice to deploy around the world for up to 18 months . When I get back, I'd still like to have my account available with my lindens, land, and inventory; especially since spent 2 1/2 yrs on here.

I think anybody with a premium account (assuming that's mainland land you have) would be totally off the table for user-pruning.

It would have to be, given that as long as it's being paid for, it's 'active' no matter how often you log in.

I think at least an email before removal.. with a two week waiting period, would be great.

I see to believe it! and how far back are they ASSUMING this wil happen? I don`t believe this one little fur ball worth!