Forum:SH Archive/They've been gone for too long!

I'd like to propose a small addition to our User page policy, but before ever taking it to CT I want to make sure at least somebody shares my POV first.

We have an enourmous amount of inactive users, thousands if not tens of thousands of them, which is normal for any wiki. Many of them have been inactive for 2-3 years, which means they are extremely unlikely ever to return. Now, I believe that keeping their userpages and talk pages is not only okay, but necessary, but one thing bothers me: their user images. Our policy allows every user to upload 3 images, no matter how silly, stupid or non-canonical. But if the uploader puts an image on his page and then leaves the site forever, why are we forced to keep it? We regularly delete canonical images unused on the site, but have no way to get rid of fanart uploaded by someone who made no edits for years - is that right? Perharps the user made only 5 small edits years ago, perharps he made no main namespace edits at all, we're still dragging their images over these years. We put our efforts to maitain them: we categorize them, rename them, re-license them, while they no longer have any importance for the site whatsoever. Is that really okay with you?

I suggest the following: only active contributors should be allowed to keep their user images. Images of user gone years ago must be purged (not their userpages though). I suggest we use 18 months-long absence as a point of no return - a year and a half is enough time to make sure the user won't be back (although the length of the time period is of couse a subject to debate). When 18 months period since the last edit made by the user is passes, a droid would replace his page with Template:User left. That will serve double purpose: those browsing the page will know that the user is gone and whatever images they had on their pages will become unused, giving us a chance to finally delete them. The information on the userpage itself, however, will not be lost and could anytime be accessed from the page history.

This will allow us to get rid of hundreds of old images once implemented and will constantly add more images to our deletion list once their uploader's 18 months have expired. At the same time, regular active users won't have to worry about that at all, since even one edit per year would be enough to keep the userpage and the images intact. So, does anyone support this crazy idea at all?  Mauser  Comlink 02:08, 7 July 2009 (UTC)