What happens to the accounts of banned members?

sidetrack · #1 Sep 23, '12, 8:22 pm

Do there postings just stay there forever seeing as how member themselves anyways cant cancel their own accounts?.

7 Sorrows · #2 Sep 24, '12, 3:27 am

sometimes if a member is suspended or banned, their postings on a particular thread might be deleted depending on what they were suspended or banned for. otherwise, i think their postings remain.

Sirach2 · #3 Sep 24, '12, 4:04 am

Yes, they stay in place because it would interrupt the flow of posters that replied to them. A reader could easily be confused without seeing the context of the banned member's post. It would be a monumental task for the moderator to delete each and every post that the member contributed all over the forum.

**Dale_M** · #4 Sep 24, '12, 5:02 am

I have seen banned members with low post counts have everything scrubbed: their profiles and all of their posts. Often it is done to spammers, but I have seen it used for persons who might be considered trolls or persons trying to circumvent a ban.

I think the likelihood of everything being scrubbed decreases with post count. The process may involve more work or disruption as the number of posts increase. I just checked one person I know was banned, and her posts are still there.

**Joe 5859** · #5 Sep 24, '12, 7:42 am

Yes, I've seen some banned members who have tens of thousands of posts. To delete all their posts would poke holes in a whole lot of threads. And really, I don't see a need to delete anything but the posts that may have gotten them banned.

Sirach2 · #6 Sep 24, '12, 8:27 am

The difficulty arises when one of us wants to refer to something they know was posted by a banned member. If we try to access their user name under "member" search, the message comes back "Sorry - no matches."

To get around this, I use the advanced search function, type in the user name on the right, and click "posts" rather than "threads." All of their posts appear. If you need a specific post, just add the "keyword" in the left side and all occurrences of their posts with that word will be returned.