Have been viewing various country members and notice alot of them have not shown any activity for a length of time. For example there are members who join 17 years ago and last time active was ten years.
Some join six years ago and never sent or receive. Another example, I brows members in Northwest Territory of Canada, There are only two active members out of 15. Did not actually count. In my own country USA , has 20 plus page of members however mostly inactive people.
Suggest ( know it will take work) email all inactive members over 1 year if they wish being a member or just delete their account. and send email explain. They can rejoin under new or same name if it has not been taken. Start cleaing
you are on the money luna. i agree with you. you can message the 2 site managers and run it buy them. there could also be an issue with advertisers or some other money thing. message the site managers.
Given that you’ve only been on the site less than 6 weeks, you’re not really aware that 1000’s of members take breaks & come back to Postcrossing after months or years of inactivity. I was surprised to learn this when I was new, but now I’ve seen it happen many times in the 4 years I’ve been a member.
People’s lives regularly change & their time for hobbies changes too, but it’s great to see many people coming back to Postcrossing after a break.
When an account is inactive, the address doesn’t get added into the active pool of available addresses, so it’s not like people are given these addresses.
And yes, it would be a large, long & time consuming job to do this & the Admin staff is a very small team that has many tasks to do for those of us who are active in Postcrossing.
I understand the idea here, but then unintended consequences may have more downside than upside. At one point in my Postcrossing journey I had a really bad accident and wasn’t even aware I existed for nearly 10 months! Nevertheless, it was no fault of my own and definitely not neglect on my end. In the end, I had to step away for several years.
I think the fact that cards are registered on behalf of certain inactive users accomplishes most of what the majority of users are concerned about. Other than having to click a few times to find an active user from a region of interest, I’m not sure what there is to be miffed about?
I think that’s a good idea. It would help to get the actual number of participants per country for the statistics and also to get rid of ghostcrossers. And when someone receives an email and logs in their account (wich they would have to set to active status manually so their address isn’t given out unless thei are ready to participate again), then their account wont be deleted.
While at first it might seem a useful suggestion, there are some very valid reasons not to do so. @Bille mentioned a few quoting Ana. I would add:
■ I have been inactive (by choice) on the Official side of Postcrossing since 2021. But I still use my profile. How? When I participate in tags, RRs, private swaps, etc. and I want to know a member’s interests, I can do a search of that from my official Profile. Likewise, traders wanting to know my interests can check my profile if they wish. If I were to be deleted, that process grinds to a halt.
You stated “Know it will take work…” Okay why do you want to create work for the PostCrossing staff over a personal gripe?!?
This site will always have “short-timers.” Initial burst of enthusiasm followed by a departure for something else. That’s human nature. Whether these people exist on the rolls for weeks, months or years does not materially affect my life. My two cents…
I don’t care about the statistics and Ghostcrossers, but I absolutely want to keep my profile if I ever have to take a longer break from Postcrossing. I would be devastated if my profile was deleted, just because others have a problem with sleeping profiles.
All the lovely cards I choose to send would be gone! My holiday memories that I shared via travel mode! The cards I sent for Christmas, from Meetups! Precious cards that I kept for years but finally sent to someone because they were a perfect match! (I often browse my “sent” wall because it’s worth something to me. )
Ghostcrossers happen, they simply stop doing Postcrossing without registering incoming cards, for multiple reasons. Deleting inactive profiles won’t change anything about that - besides punishing members who took a break after registering all incoming cards.
@lunarrv15 This suggestion isn’t new, it was made several times since I was a member, and it wasn’t made by “seasoned” members who indeed sometimes take a break from their hobby. No-one needs a clock ticking for the comeback, demanding to log on in time, otherwise your profile is gone…
And it’s nice to come back and start with for example 40 traveling cards, which you’ve “earned” over the years, instead of having to start allover with 5 cards.
I don’t know. A few years ago, I stopped being active on postcrossing for a lengthy period because it just didn’t fit my life. After that, I rejoined the happy community with more fervour.
I think I wouldn’t have liked it if they had thrown me out just because I had some other interests.
Apart from that, it doesn’t harm anyone if people stay in the system, does it?
Well, there was a discussion about how some members are scared of uploading pictures of their postcards because of the server space. Deleting dead accounts would free up lots of server space. Think of for example all the unused accounts from Taiwan, where students create lots of accounts during an english projekt, send one or two cards and then never log in again. Why hoard those accounts? They won’t come back.
And the account wouldn’t suddenly disappear. You get an email, telling you to log in once. Logging in doesn’t even take a minute. If you choose not to do that, how can you be surprised that the account is gone?
But the system already sends emails to inactive accounts. I don’t know how many and in which time intervals but you get notifications.
I also had longer breaks because of many reasons. I’m a member since nearly 17 years and I would have been very disappointed if my account had been deleted in these times.
you don’t know if they would never log in again, they might rediscover passion for postcrossing in later years and come back to their account.
I have my account for more than 12 years now, and I stopped doing postcrossing after I finished high school, but then I came back to it 6 years later or so once I graduated college and started working and had time and desire for postcrossing. I was very happy that I could come back to my existing account. I am sure there are a lot of members who come back to postcrossing after long breaks.
As many here have already mentioned, life happens to all of us. Postcrossing is not our main profession or job irl. It’s a hobby. And when things get in your way, hobbies are the things you will not immediately think of first. They mostly come last.
This year I lost my mother and was confronted with a multitude of errands connected to her loss. As I’m the “last man standing” of my family, literally, I had to face them all by myself and reach out for help.
Trust me, postcrossing was wayyyy down on my to-do list!!! Does that mean I want to quit, or don’t like it anymore? No!
Furthermore, I realised that I prefer to send fewer postcards with a bit more effort put in, because I do not have endless space to store over thousands of postcards. I had to declutter one flat and move because of my mom’s death. I do not want to repeat this process on an annual basis.
Accidents happen. Life changes. Sometimes people have no control over it. If you got severely injured in a car crash or severely ill, postcrossing will be not your first priority. When I was new here, I thought the same but learned quickly that there are many valid reasons to be inactive on postcrossing, and laziness is not necessarily the main one.
This is exactly what I sometimes wondered about when I was new. How many people are active only in the forums. I bet it’s a lot. Some people only like certain cards and tags would work much better for them.
I’ve read about this topic several times, and every time I find myself disagreeing. I think it’s good the way it works now: your profile is there whenever you want to come back to it, no matter for how long you are inactive.
I’m one of those who had a profile then chose to delete it (my own choice). Then several years later I missed Postcrossing and wanted to continue with this hobby. I was so sad when I found out it wasn’t possible to re-activate my old account and I had to start a new one from scratch. I wish it was possible to re-activate my deleted account. I would have been even more sad I think, if the deletion of my account was done by the system and not by my own choice.
Ive been on postcrossing for a long time and during these years i always have some ammount of time when i dont do it. Oficial or unofficial… i am either super into it or taking a break. I would be so sad if my account would be deleted!
It is very unlikely for someone who only created an account because their teacher told them to, send 1 postcard, registered 0 postcards and has not logged in for 4 years to rediscover their passion (wich they didn’t have in the first place) for this project and come back. Plus it would barely make a difference for them to simply create a new account should they want to be part of this project again out of their own free will.
I understand that people with 100+ send and received cards would not like to start from scratch.
But it would be great if the mayfly accounts would be deleted. In my opinion at least.
Billie - quote { Why do you want these accounts to be deleted?} bring accounts up-to-date as who are active members. For example the Island of Tuvalu says there profile is close since 2011. I assume they do not know to close it out or put it in inactive status. Few from Hawaii have been inactive for a length of time. They have will direct swap. I sent message for direct swap. It has been three weeks of no response for direct swap as they have on their profile. So, do I assume a no response is a way saying not doing direct swap or they just are not going to reply
If someone is “not active” and update their profile to this status, will it display on their profile page?
@lunarrv15 If inactive accounts/users bother you so, you can always send them messages!
I don’t know whether the number of messages depends on the length of time one has been a Postcrosser or how many cards one got registered, but if you can only send out few messages at first, then they will not ‘overpower’ you and if you think you can make Postcrossing better, you can work your way through the profiles.
The good thing is, as with sending official cards, you don’t have to do more, than you can!
And it always amuses me endlessly, when new Postcrossers are full of ideas for ‘improvement’, when they, themselves, have yet to prove, how passionate or determined they are about Postcrossing!!!
My holiday memories that I shared via travel mode! The cards I sent for Christmas, from Meetups! Precious cards that I kept for years but finally sent to someone because they were a perfect match! (I often browse my “sent” wall because it’s worth something to me. 
)
