I do not want extra or over moderation of my forum, I also want users to be able to take years off if they want and still be able to return to their account.
How can I ensure these accounts are not “automatically deleted as abandoned, deactivated account”
Those are users who never passed the email confirmation step.
So I can sign up to your forum as codinghorror@discourse.org and what blocks me from having this account in there forever and blocking the real owner from creating the account is the email confirmation. Accounts who never confirm are marked as such and removed so they prevent this type of abuse.