Category talk:Silent Users

I created this Cat to contain Users who created an account but never made any edits. A lot of these were almost certainly created by spammers. They may have been auto-blocked because they were used at an IP address known to be used by a spammer, but the accounts might later become usable if the auto-block expires, so they are worth blocking explicitly. Eventually, these accounts might usefully be deleted altogether.

I have blocked the accounts in this cat indefinitely, and ticked the box (well, left it ticked) to prevent account creation. I put a notice on the user's Talk page offering to remove the block if they contact us via the Flickr group, so there is something a real person can do to get back into the wiki. In fact, leaving the notice on the UserTalk page (where it belongs) made it easiest to put the UserTalk page, not the User's front page, into the Category (just by including 'Cat:Silent Users' in the notice).

There are a lot of these Users to work through (several hundred). For now, I mean to go up to accounts one month old with no edits at all. I've started at some time in April 2014, which was at the bottom of the first page of the User creation log when I started, I will work backward from there once I reach the present day.

If anyone has suggestions to improve what I have done, feel free to write them here! Any of the details can be changed:

• the conditions of the block
• the text of the notice left on the User page and its Talk page, and most of all
• the length of time people have to make an edit before they are liable to get blocked.

What do you think? --Dustin McAmera (talk) 19:06, 6 October 2015 (CDT)

I edited my own text (to make it accurate as to what I have actually done).--Dustin McAmera (talk) 08:05, 15 October 2015 (CDT)

I have got up to one month ago from today, and just need to maintain that. I think we need to start deleting the accounts, maybe after a standard time as blocked Silent accounts, to give any real people time to ask to be unblocked. Dustin McAmera (talk) 18:25, 21 October 2015 (CDT)

I was granted the user-rights to delete these user accounts, and am doing so, as of January 2016. The number in this category of 'Silent Users' had got up to 140, and at time of writing is back down to 87. Once the backlog is done, I anticipate this category having only a few members at any time, if I keep up with the routine work. --Dustin McAmera (talk) 09:23, 24 January 2016 (CST)