Possibly I don’t understand the FSM for deactivation. We recently deactivated a user twice, because, for some reason, they seemed to have a problem with forget pwd, and we sent two reactivation emails. The second time, the account disappeared altogether – it appears to have been somehow auto-deleted. We are able to create a new account with the same account name and the same email address as the previous one. What am I misunderstanding about deactivation?

[image] cpradio: I suppose I do (sort of). Granted, I think it only deletes them if they have zero posts too. This would explain the delete we saw. Old user, but no posts.

There is a setting purge unactivated users grace period days, if an account is still deactivated, has zero posts, and that grace period is met, it deletes the account.

Hmm. Set at 14 days for us, but we saw the deletion within 24 hours. This may be a bug.

When was the user account created? As it is based on the user’s creation date. Not when they were deactivated

[image] cpradio: When was the user account created? As it is based on the user’s creation date. Not when they were deactivated Do you mean that, if you deactivate an old user account to send a re-activation email, it will be deleted right away? This would seem counter-intuitive.

I suppose I do (sort of). Granted, I think it only deletes them if they have zero posts too. I’d have to find the actual logic in the code, but I think there are some fail safes for users that have “activity” when they are deactivated. It is only for users who have no activity. Edited: Code block app/models/user.rb 1146772de def self.purge_unactivated to_destroy = User.where(active: false) .joins('INNER JOIN user_stats AS us ON us.user_id = users.id') .where("created_at < ?", SiteSetting.purge_unactivated_users_grace_period_days.days.ago) .where('NOT admin AND NOT moderator') .limit(200) destroyer = UserDestroyer.new(Discourse.system_user) to_destroy.each do |u| begin destroyer.destroy(u, context: I18n.t(:purge_reason)) rescue Discourse::InvalidAccess, UserDestroyer::PostsExistError # if for some reason the user can't be deleted, continue on to the next one end end end

Deactivating a user because they report troubles logging in isn’t the right action. They should figure out if they entered the wrong email, forgot their password, or some other issue and fix that instead.

[image] neil: Deactivating a user because they report troubles logging in isn’t the right action. Multiple users have not been able to get “Forget password” working for them, which was the right tool but failed to work for them. For those for whom it failed, we tried to resolve their login problem by sending them a re-activation email.

[image] codinghorror: None of what you describe requires deactivating the account. What should be the next step when a user is not able to reset his/her pwd with forget password?

They should check their spam/junk folders, filters, and other reasons they may not be receiving emails. Also, make sure they typed their email addresses correctly when they signed up.

Deactivating a user causes account to be deleted?

Product Support

codinghorror (Jeff Atwood) August 23, 2017, 7:19pm 10

None of what you describe requires deactivating the account.

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Deactivating a user causes account to be deleted?

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