Operation Audacious Phoenix

I'm fully prepared to have this suggestion denied, because I support the idea that inactive accounts remain untouched. However, I also think this is a low-impact feature that doesn't fundamentally affect the existence of a profile or its usability.

Currently, if a user who created character profiles becomes inactive on RPR, their account remains preserved, including their characters and their custom URLs. The type of URL I'm talking about:

https://www.rprepository.com/c/milena

Without the custom URL at the end, the link would be:

https://www.rprepository.com/site.php?char=34180

My suggestion is for accounts that are 100% inactive and haven't been logged in to for at least 12 months have their custom character profile URLs removed. At this point, I'd wager that a user isn't actually using this custom URL anymore because they're not using the site itself, and losing the URL is not going to alter anything about the character profile - it is still available with the site.php?char= URL and they can always pick a new URL when they login again. It could be paired with reminder emails after 6 months without activity, and another reminder a month before that? With the growth of the site, we'll run into the problem that more and more custom URLs will become permanently unavailable due to inactive accounts, which can be a frustrating part of a feature like this.

It doesn't affect site usability technically, and it's usually also easy to think of a different custom URL, so on that argument alone I wouldn't mind this suggestion being turned down. It would just be nice to have custom URLs be prioritized for active users.

i think this is a good idea!
i’m wondering if it could be applied to player profiles as well?

I don't like the idea to be honest. It may open a can of worms and issues like how people domain sit and charge absurd amounts.

Probably not, since the URL is so directly tied to the account, but for characters it's optional and can change on a whim. User profile URLs require real money to change since they are the username, and are considered static for as long as the account exists when no money is involved, so it's a totally different thing.

I don't like this. Say for whatever reason you fall on financial hardship or other hardship. Maybe medical, circumstantial, etc and are unable to log on.

A year or so passes and you want to check up on your characters but your name has been changed to USER83229 or something, -then- you have to buy a name change token, and even if you don't, you'll have to choose another user name.

Or, if a good friend is somehow gone for an extended period of time you lose the ability to find them quickly. That's me assuming there would be several randomly generated user names on your friends list.

So far as character URLs I'm pretty indifferent?

Can you give an example? I'm not sure what you mean with this.

I'm kind of with Fiebs on this one - look at Furcadia's aftermarket alt trade. There are expiration timers on those, but also paid 'permanent' features that use 'keeping the name' as their selling hook, and it's blossomed into a very odd mess.

Timers also don't take into account extended hiatuses, external links that would have to be cleaned up, etc.

We're big, but we're not THAT big - UNlike Furcadia's alt-trade, this brand is more discreetly cosmetic, and unless you're gunning for a large and common name, I don't see this becoming too big of a point of contention, and have seen some fairly fun and creative custom URLs already out in the wild, as it were!

Personally I like the idea of character individual url links only defaulting after 12 months of not logging in at all. Even a login and log back out should reset that and I dont think it should be tied in any way to the character

If this were employed, I seriously dont see Kim taking financial advantage of it by selling permanent url fixtures myself, and if someone were to ask me I'd be against that concept entirely.

I understand the idea of extended hiatus and feel for those who step away for a time, but I also think sanne is right in prioritizing active membership.

That being said I did change all of my character URLs today and ran into 2 surprising alien names that were already taken, so I wonder if the problem isnt as obscure as you would suggest? Idk honestly, just thinking out loud.

Oh and I'm against the idea of defaulting usernames or any actual character names or the like. The url links I'm supportive of but character and user names should remain indefinitely.

Hmm. I do know some folks who don't actually roleplay or use the RPR for much other than an actual storage spot for their character sites - but they do frequently link to them from elsewhere (like from Furcadia descriptions, for example). If there was some kind of expiration involved in the character URLs, I can imagine that getting frustrating if they happen to miss signing in before the expiry date and suddenly their URLs direct to the 404 page or to an entirely different character.

I won't give too many details but I've previously had people offer me money for the RPR URLs I have on my profile. I declined and gave them one as I wasn't that smitten with the oc or profile.

That sort of existing behaviour would only be amplified if people were watching profiles and waiting for the URLs to expire/default and then sit on them and offer them out for money. You may have to buy back your URL from someone like this.

After some reflection, I think I don't want to implement something like this at this time.