Lois & Clark Forums Forums General Discussion Off Topic Unregistered

What does it mean when a user is listed as Unregistered? I posted something in the Presidential Challenge thread and noticed that Suggs_With_A_Box is now listed as Unregistered, so I wondered what that meant.

Suggs had messaged me to ask to have his account deleted because he has no time to spend on the forum any more.

Unfortunately, the only delete option available which wouldn't also delete the threads Suggs had started and a lot of posts from other members resulted in just labelling him unregistered. It seems to fall way short of deletion, to be honest - I was expecting it would at least change his username to anonymous - and pretty useless really! But we're stuck with it.

LabRat

Adding my 2 cents - I'm chief developer for a forum software package (not this one)

Usually the poster's screen name is stored as part of the message along with their user ID - this is so that in the event a forum allows guest posting, the guest can use a screen name. Usually guest messages are also flagged internally as such.

Forum software usually determines whether a poster is a current member or an ex-member (unregistered) by if it can locate data for the User ID. If it can, that person is registered and the software will create a link to their profile. If not, then they are ex-members.

So, from where I'm looking, the software here is working properly - Suggs is an ex-member with valuable contributions rather than a spammer (the global delete function as described is designed to get rid posts by spammers).

In fact, in theory, should Suggs choose to return, it should be possible for him to use his old user ID and with (possibly) a few admin edits, get all his posts linking to him again.)

Of course, you COULD (maybe) ask for a mod that would replace the Screen Name with 'anonymous' for ex-members.

I noticed that when you search by author, an unregistered person won't show up, while a registered person will.

I don't know the actual innards of THIS software, but generally a search for a member brings up (internally) their User ID so all their posts can be found, no matter what Screen Name they were using. Unregistered/ex-members don't have valid User IDs so the search function can't find them.

I don't think it will be what Suggs was hoping for - he was pretty keen to erase any trace of himself as much as possible - including removing his stories from the Archive - but it seems to be the best we can do.

I do hope he returns to the forum at some point. He'll be missed.

LabRat

I don't know the situation for adding mods (modifications) to this software - but you might want to ask them if someone could create one where you could list the Screen Names you want to be 'anonymous' or 'name withheld by request' and it would do auto replacement for you. (This shouldn't be actually changing any of the raw data, just a find and replace of the Screen Name during display.)

OK I don't know why this would be a big deal. If he wanted to be deleted that's his choice by why worry about how the software handles his display name or whether he is listed as registered or not.

However, since it seems like a big deal please give me a link to one of his posts and I'll see if I can find his member number.

Each profile is stored in it's own file. Example my information is stored in 000002.bin. If I can find his member number then I can change the name in the database to what ever you guys want it to be. But without that entry I'm going to need to open a ticket with UBB to see what I can do.

Not that I care but one of his posts (pulled from the TOCs) is Suggs post

Mike

I suspect this looks 'out of hand' because I'm the one that has to come up with these solutions on the software I'm working on. The software here behaves in a pretty standard manner - ex-members that don't have all their posts deleted during the removal process stay listed by their screen name.

(I know for a fact that there an 'ex-member' doesn't have a profile to edit. And I'm betting that's the same here.)