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New features: Marking members as "unreachable" and "stale"

We're always reluctant to say goodbye to members, but on the other hand we're committed to keeping the list current. As a result, we try to clean up the list at least annually and (sadly) delete members who haven't logged in for a long time, or whose emails bounce.

We're starting a new approach to this now, though, that gives a bit more of a grace period. When emails bounce for a user, we're going to mark them as "unreachable" (use the "misc admin" tab on the user administration screen.) We'll mark them as unreachable and say why. At this point, they won't show up on member searches or on the map any more. In the same way we'll mark members as "stale" if they haven't logged in for more than a year, and they'll disappear from searches and from the map. (Notifications are also turned off when a member is marked unreachable, so those pesky bounces will go away.)

When a "stale" user logs in, they automatically become not stale, and get a message saying that their status has been restored. When unreachable users log on, they get a message explaining that they're considered unreachable at their current email address, and a note to Roger is requested.

Here are the changes:

  • New fields for each user showing unreachable, unreachable_date (when they were set unreachable), and a note about why.
  • Same new fields for stale users
  • Administration interface on the "misc admin" tab for administrators to set or unset the status of these two.
  • Searches and the map no longer show unreachable or stale members
  • Unreachable members get a note on login saying their status
  • Stale members get set to not stale when they log in, and get a message to that effect.
  • The total count of members will not include unreachable or stale
  • Member profiles show "unreachable" and "stale" if they are.
Update December 24, 2007: We have implemented these changes and cleaned up the list quite a log.