Annononymous (Guest) Post Problem

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EWT
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Annononymous (Guest) Post Problem

Post by EWT »

I am describing a situation that has long been a problem for my phpBB board. Over the years, some registered users tend to become inactive or die or some such other reason that prevents them from participating in the message board. Not wanting to give perspective members a false impression of how big the active membership is or how active the membership is, I have been removing members who did not post for 12 consecutive months (I realize this is not how 99% of all board administrators run their message board). The problem with deleting members is that all the posts made by a deleted user become reassigned the username, "Guest". "Guest" begins to have quite a number of posts attached to it after several years. To further complicate the matter, if the original poster did not put their username somewhere in their post (and they normally wouldn't), then you have no record of who made the post sometimes dating back years ago. I would like to see a way of maintaining a user's username even though the user may be deleted at some point.

It seems there are only a few solutions that I can think of:

1. Delete all posts by "Guest" (not desirable)
2. Don't delete members (board gets deceiving as to its active membership size)
3. Write a mod that keeps the username attached to posts even though the user has been deleted (could cause other problems unless mod is well thought out)

Can anyone offer other suggestions, or is this now handled appropriately by phpBB 3 (I have not upgraded from phpBB ver. 2 yet), or is there already a mod that addresses this?
EWT
ckwalsh
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Re: Annononymous (Guest) Post Problem

Post by ckwalsh »

Well, it's easy to check :D

[Insert 5 minutes here]

I just created a user, made a couple posts, then deleted it with the "retain posts" option. It looks like it does keep the name of the user and doesn't rename them.
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Jim_UK
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Re: Annononymous (Guest) Post Problem

Post by Jim_UK »

My guess is that EWT has posted into the wrong forum and is actually using phpBB2.
Over the years, some registered users tend to become inactive

Jim
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ToonArmy
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Re: Annononymous (Guest) Post Problem

Post by ToonArmy »

Jim_UK wrote:My guess is that EWT has posted into the wrong forum and is actually using phpBB2.
Over the years, some registered users tend to become inactive
I was gonna chime in and say he may have converted but then I looked at his previous posts all 2.0.x related.
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Jim_UK
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Re: Annononymous (Guest) Post Problem

Post by Jim_UK »

Moved to phpBB2 discussion forum.

Jim
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Unfortunately they will not let you anywhere near it!
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Dog Cow
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Re: Annononymous (Guest) Post Problem

Post by Dog Cow »

As I recall, the default behavior for deleting accounts in phpBB 2 is that the posts are all set to Guest, but the username is also set, so it is as if a guest user posted and chose to enter in a username.

You can't search by username, but when viewing the post of a deleted user, it should state the username.
EWT
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Re: Annononymous (Guest) Post Problem

Post by EWT »

Jim_UK wrote:My guess is that EWT has posted into the wrong forum and is actually using phpBB2.
Over the years, some registered users tend to become inactive

Jim
EWT wrote:Can anyone offer other suggestions, or is this now handled appropriately by phpBB 3 (I have not upgraded from phpBB ver. 2 yet), or is there already a mod that addresses this?
Jim_UK/ToonArmy: No guessing required; I stated it in my original post. It seems to me the post was in the right place before, but no matter to me. I posted in phpBB 3 because I wanted to get an idea if it had been resolved in 3, which would encourage me to make the upgrade. It has been resolved, I have upgraded, and it works fine now. Thank you.
EWT
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