RN Your Account 2.30.01 - Delete User...

Posted: Mon Jun 08, 2009 5:34 am

Why is there no option to delete a user in RN Your Account 2.30.01?

Sometimes you need to be able to delete the account so you can create a new one.

Sometimes youa re dealing with a Know Spammer....It needs to be deleted. The option to add the e-mail domain to the banned list would be nice too.

Just a thought....

Dawg

Posted: Mon Jun 08, 2009 5:53 am

You have to first deactivate the user and then you will have the option to remove the user.

You can add the email domain to the blocked list under the Limits tab.

Posted: Mon Jun 08, 2009 8:05 am

Code:

You have to first deactivate the user and then you will have the option to remove the user

This is really annoying on Nuke. Just not change that. I always have that issue I want to remove and then I just suspend then I go to that option and then I can remove.

Shocked

Posted: Mon Jun 08, 2009 10:05 am

jakec wrote:

You have to first deactivate the user and then you will have the option to remove the user.

You can add the email domain to the blocked list under the Limits tab.

Why?

Just Have Modify, Deactivate, DELETE in the menu.

I never even knew it was there. I was deleting them from the database.

Just my .02....

Dawg

Posted: Mon Jun 08, 2009 10:52 am

I mean that sometimes I forget about it. LOL

Posted: Mon Jun 08, 2009 2:10 pm

users are stored a bit cross country in your database. I think it has already been discussed in a long long topic.

Posted: Mon Jun 08, 2009 2:27 pm

This way it also gives you chance to change your mind. Wink

Posted: Mon Jun 08, 2009 6:50 pm

I prefer it the way it is now but this doesn't mean it might not change in the future.
Being able to suspend a user means I can instantly stop them from accessing all parts of the site that require normal user authentication and I still have access to the users details if I want to check there IP in NS or block their email address or anything else I might need their details for.

The reason the 'delete' tab in the menu does not appear until a user is suspended/de-activated was simply because there is no information to show under that tab until a user is de-activated. As it is quite possible that RNYA may contain more user related options in the future, I think we tried to keep the number of 'tabs' on display to a minimum to avoid screen clutter.

Posted: Mon Jun 08, 2009 6:50 pm

We should have a direct delete capability. Even a batch delete capability where you could have a text file with a list of users to be deleted and the system would take care of it.

However ... and not to be contrary:

if you just delete them from the database you will create relational problems in the database tables that will be hard to reconcile later. The present remove function in RNYA takes care of a bunch of things for you, like news articles the deleted user may have posted.

at the same time, if you use RNYA to deactivate a user there is no way that I know of to reactivate them. If there was then "deactivate" might be marginally useful if you wanted to "change your mind". Right now it isn't and you might as well just directly delete them. Except you can't so you have to do deactivate and then remove as a matched pair.

Site Admin Joined: Jun 04, 2004 Posts: 6433

If you delete a user, the same user could come back and register again with the same user account and email address. Why delete? Just suspend, and that's it...

Posted: Tue Jun 09, 2009 1:35 am

Quote:

If you delete a user, the same user could come back and register again with the same user account and email address. Why delete? Just suspend, and that's it...

If you suspend it then he will use another email and another username. Anyway. I used to suspend it but it stays in our database for nothing. Better to delete it and then if he didnt register well he must do it again.

Posted: Tue Jun 09, 2009 1:49 am

sexycoder wrote:

Quote:

If you delete a user, the same user could come back and register again with the same user account and email address. Why delete? Just suspend, and that's it...

If you suspend it then he will use another email and another username. Anyway. I used to suspend it but it stays in our database for nothing. Better to delete it and then if he didnt register well he must do it again.

lol , I think we are turning around a small pot of flower figuring where the entrance is.From my point of view there is no solution to really remove a user from the site.You can always suspend the account and ban the IP address.

Posted: Tue Jun 09, 2009 5:27 am

Yes, you can create another email address and user ID, just like you can spoof an IP address. But in doing so, the person must go to the effort to do that (create and authorize another email address), whereas there is no difference in your effort to suspend and to delete. By suspending without deleting, you also have a record of what happened and why you suspended (i.e. it is not staying in your database for nothing - it's staying there as a record of what happened).

Either way, he must register again - so, to summarize the differences, the benefits of suspending without deleting are:
1. He must register a different email address (extra effort)
2. You have a record of what happened

I haven't heard a valid reason for deleting yet...

Posted: Tue Jun 09, 2009 5:33 am

...but at the same time, I'm am not against providing a direct delete function for those who still want to do that.

Posted: Tue Jun 09, 2009 7:11 am

Quote:

I haven't heard a valid reason for deleting yet...

Html Newsletter does this:

Code:

if ( $msnl_iView == 1 ) {  //All registered users





         $sql = "SELECT `user_id`, `user_email` FROM `".$user_prefix."_users` WHERE `user_email` > ''";

If I am not mistaken, even if the user is deactivated you will be sending them emails if you choose to send them to all registered users.

On my site I try to keep the email lists cleaned up. If I get non-deliverable email returned from a html newsletter mailing I deactivate and then REMOVE the user so that I am not sending a lot of unnecessary mail off into cyber space. Over time this adds up.

Posted: Tue Jun 09, 2009 7:58 am

Good point. Groups mail probably does something similar but I think RNYA gives us another function we can use for this is_active() which we didn't have until very recently.

Posted: Tue Jun 09, 2009 8:21 am

fkelly, there is nothing like facts to make a point. Thanks!

I would suggest we add a request to have the newsletter check for active users in addition to providing an immediate delete function. That way, everyone has what they need regardless of which path they take...

Worker Joined: Mar 30, 2009 Posts: 132

sexycoder wrote:

Quote:

If you delete a user, the same user could come back and register again with the same user account and email address. Why delete? Just suspend, and that's it...

If you suspend it then he will use another email and another username. Anyway. I used to suspend it but it stays in our database for nothing. Better to delete it and then if he didnt register well he must do it again.

IIRC you can also block the email to like @mail.ru once you ban the spammers main email domains they use it stops alot of the spammers

and yes I know some spammers use @yahoo.com ect.

Posted: Wed Jun 10, 2009 6:54 pm

The HTML Newsletter send is really an issue brought on by the new RNYA and not thought of by me until just now. I should simply just fix the code. Shocked

If there are other places where we may have missed the extra options, we should correct those to.

So, do we still have a valid reason for Delete? Wink

BTW, just playing Devil's Advocate. I am not apposed to a direct delete option either.

Posted: Wed Jun 10, 2009 7:59 pm

I would like a Delete option AND a Delete and Ban option. That would make it EASY to do away with the *&%#$^%&*.

Smile

Dawg

Posted: Thu Jun 11, 2009 6:37 am

Typical user who wants it all... Smile

How would the ban option work? Ban that address or that domain? (If you say, "Let me choose," please suggest how the interface would work for that...)

Posted: Thu Jun 11, 2009 7:30 am

I think we need to step back a bit and look a bit at the "archeology" of RNYA before we reach any final conclusion. What we now consider "deactivate user" is contained in a program named deleteuserconf.php. I suspect that the authors of CNBYA were thinking of a single step delete but then changed their minds somewhere along the path. The deactivate step does this:

Code:

    $db->sql_query("UPDATE ".$user_prefix."_users SET name='"._MEMDEL."', user_password='', user_website='', user_sig='', user_level='-1', user_active='0', user_allow_pm='0', points='0' WHERE user_id='$del_uid'");

It then goes on to delete the user from any nsngr groups (this is a straight delete) and call a program to handle phpbb deletes.

So you can see that it is impossible to "restore" or "activate" any user who has been deactivated ... his name, email etc. are gone so there is nothing meaningful to "activate". To me, this makes deactivation a meaningless and unnecessary step.

It is in removeuserconf.php that we actually delete the user by doing this:

Code:

$db->sql_query('DELETE FROM ' . $user_prefix . '_users_field_values WHERE uid=\'' . $rem_uid . '\'');


   $db->sql_query('DELETE FROM ' . $user_prefix . '_users WHERE user_id=\'' . $rem_uid . '\'');

Interesting ... and something I've never considered ... the PHPBB delete must be taken care of in the deactivate step since it doesn't happen at the removeuser step.

If we wanted a useful deactivation we could leave the associated information with the userid ... but we'd need to look carefully to make sure that didn't have negative ramifications elsewhere. Then we could have a reactivate step.

On the other hand, to answer M's question directly, yes I would prefer to have a direct delete step. But we'd need to essentially combine logic from the deleteuserconf and removeuserconf to do so ... so that when we actually removed the user from the table we also took care of groups and phpbb. ... which raises another can of worms in that we've got phpbb logic so baked into RNYA that you can't even NOT LOAD Phpbb as part of RN without causing database errors. But I didn't mention that.

Posted: Thu Jun 11, 2009 7:40 am

I think thats why some was seperated out, so the phpBB stuff is handled seperately.

Posted: Thu Jun 11, 2009 8:12 am

No question the PHPBB stuff should be handled separately ... though in an ideal world we'd test whether PHPBB was loaded before "calling" it ... but the fact that PHPBB is handled in the deactivate step kind of supports my conclusion that the CNBYA folks were originally thinking of having one delete step but then separated it into deactivate and remove ... while leaving some illogical loose ends.

FWIW I just took a look at deleteuserconf_phpbb.php and removeuserconf_phpbb.php. In the delete (which is really the deactivate step) the user_id gets removed from any bulletin board groups it is associated with. Then in the remove (which is really the delete step) the user_id gets changed to 1 (anonymous I think) for any posts which that user has done (as well as in some associated tables (topics, topics_watch etc.) If we went with a straight delete option we could probably just include the deleteuserconf_phpbb and removeuserconf_phpbb programs sequentially.

Posted: Thu Jun 11, 2009 9:43 am

Just an FYI. I added the NSN group stuff in 2.3.01 and moved/added the phpbb stuff together and in separate files. I agree about the separation of phpbb and RN that is why I put them in separate files Wink

.

Everyone also needs to remember that we also have the suspend function. There for the only reason to have the deactivate function is to keep track of their name and email because really that is all that is left of them.

Upon "removal" we could have an option to add the name to the Blocked Username Strings. So that would only leave keeping track of the email as any possible reason to keep the deactivate function since as i said before we have the suspension function.