# What to do with inactive users
**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/what-to-do-with-inactive-users/385667
**Category:** Community Building
**Created:** [October 15, 2025, 9:16am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/what-to-do-with-inactive-users/385667 "2025-10-15T09:16:49Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Andro](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Andro)
#### Post date: [October 15, 2025, 9:16am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/what-to-do-with-inactive-users/385667/1 "2025-10-15T09:16:49Z")
I have some users who are inactive for months or years. What to do with them? I don’t want to delete them because they have made posts. I only just figured this out after looking into why certain emails have been failing for months.
Advice welcome!
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### Author:  [@NateDhaliwal](https://meta.discourse.org/u/NateDhaliwal)
#### Post date: [October 15, 2025, 9:34am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/what-to-do-with-inactive-users/385667/2 "2025-10-15T09:34:32Z")
Perhaps deactivate users? IIRC their posts will still be kept.
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### Author:  [@Rubi](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Rubi)
#### Post date: [October 15, 2025, 9:48am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/what-to-do-with-inactive-users/385667/3 "2025-10-15T09:48:02Z")
> [@Andro](#):
>
> I only just figured this out after looking into why certain emails have been failing for months.
Do you mean the Activity Summary emails?
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### Author:  [@Rubi](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Rubi)
#### Post date: [October 15, 2025, 9:48am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/what-to-do-with-inactive-users/385667/4 "2025-10-15T09:48:52Z")
> [@NateDhaliwal](#):
>
> Perhaps deactivate users?
If you are sure they are never coming back isn’t anonymizing the better choice?
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### Author:  [@NateDhaliwal](https://meta.discourse.org/u/NateDhaliwal)
#### Post date: [October 15, 2025, 9:52am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/what-to-do-with-inactive-users/385667/5 "2025-10-15T09:52:53Z")
What would be the advantage of anonymizing the user here? I’m curious. Also if the user comes back… what then? Creating a new user and merging?
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### Author:  [@Rubi](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Rubi)
#### Post date: [October 15, 2025, 9:59am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/what-to-do-with-inactive-users/385667/6 "2025-10-15T09:59:50Z")
Fair point. I was thinking if someone has been inactive for years then it is pretty unlikely they will come back.
But you never know…stranger things have happened before.
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### Author:  [@merefield](https://meta.discourse.org/u/merefield)
#### Post date: [October 15, 2025, 11:23am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/what-to-do-with-inactive-users/385667/7 "2025-10-15T11:23:36Z")
Leave them be. Do not change a user record unnecessarily.
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### Author:  [@EricGT](https://meta.discourse.org/u/EricGT)
#### Post date: [October 15, 2025, 4:40pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/what-to-do-with-inactive-users/385667/8 "2025-10-15T16:40:21Z")
The only change I would make would be to lock them into a lower [trust level](https://blog.discourse.org/2018/06/understanding-discourse-trust-levels/) such as level 0 or level 1.
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### Author:  [@ToddZ](https://meta.discourse.org/u/ToddZ)
#### Post date: [October 15, 2025, 5:49pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/what-to-do-with-inactive-users/385667/9 "2025-10-15T17:49:59Z")
I’d avoid deleting/deactivating too – but if emails are failing anyway, is there any downside to changing their email settings?
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### Author:  [@ice.d](https://meta.discourse.org/u/ice.d)
#### Post date: [October 27, 2025, 11:12pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/what-to-do-with-inactive-users/385667/10 "2025-10-27T23:12:04Z")
@NateDhaliwal I’ve seen u use iirc what is that?
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### Author:  [@ToddZ](https://meta.discourse.org/u/ToddZ)
#### Post date: [October 28, 2025, 12:06am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/what-to-do-with-inactive-users/385667/11 "2025-10-28T00:06:19Z")
IIRC = If I Recall Correctly
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### Author:  [@pHneutre](https://meta.discourse.org/u/pHneutre)
#### Post date: [October 28, 2025, 10:42am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/what-to-do-with-inactive-users/385667/12 "2025-10-28T10:42:36Z")
Just for your information, on [this topic](https://meta.discourse.org/t/number-of-users-and-legacy-posts/386199) I enhance that the number of users may be misleading and I too wonder what to do about inactive users.
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### Author:  [@bigfly\_sun](https://meta.discourse.org/u/bigfly_sun)
#### Post date: [December 24, 2025, 2:35am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/what-to-do-with-inactive-users/385667/13 "2025-12-24T02:35:01Z")
Write it into the guidelines, at least as a reminder first, to avoid accidental deletion, right?
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### Author:  [@Octoberon](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Octoberon)
#### Post date: [February 2, 2026, 11:49pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/what-to-do-with-inactive-users/385667/14 "2026-02-02T23:49:12Z")
I see users regularly signing up but never posting or logging on. I remove those on the basis they’ve not been seen for over a year and have never posted. They can always sign up again and not harm done to the forum content.
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### Author:  [@Canapin](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Canapin)
#### Post date: [February 2, 2026, 11:52pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/what-to-do-with-inactive-users/385667/15 "2026-02-02T23:52:57Z")
> [@Octoberon](#):
>
> I remove those on the basis they’ve not been seen for over a year and have never posted.
Why don’t you let the cleanup job delete them automatically?
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### Author:  [@Octoberon](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Octoberon)
#### Post date: [February 3, 2026, 12:04am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/what-to-do-with-inactive-users/385667/16 "2026-02-03T00:04:59Z")
Mostly because I didn’t know (or had completely forgotten) about that setting. 🙂 Discourse is one step ahead of me, again.
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### Author:  [@Canapin](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Canapin)
#### Post date: [February 3, 2026, 1:21am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/what-to-do-with-inactive-users/385667/17 "2026-02-03T01:21:11Z")
I suppose it wasn’t mentioned in this topic before because Andrew was talking about users with posts.
Look for the **Clean up inactive users after days** setting, it’s configurable.
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### Author:  [@Ed\_S](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Ed_S)
#### Post date: [February 3, 2026, 8:39am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/what-to-do-with-inactive-users/385667/18 "2026-02-03T08:39:12Z")
I can see this is handy for some use-cases, but just to note, I’ve disabled the auto-cleanup and I prefer to keep all accounts (other than spammers of course.) For one reason, my community started as a migration, and many accounts were inherited from the initial import, and they are real people who were at one point interested and active in the subject matter. It just so happens that they never (yet) became active in the new location.
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### Author:  [@stephtara](https://meta.discourse.org/u/stephtara)
#### Post date: [February 8, 2026, 3:51pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/what-to-do-with-inactive-users/385667/19 "2026-02-08T15:51:56Z")
I also keep my inactive users around. I think it’s slowly a question of what type of community you are managing. In mine, diabetic cats go into remission, or people become so autonomous they do not need the community anymore, and then something happens, the cat comes out of remission, or whatever, and people suddenly reappear after a couple of years of silence. In one such case, actually, the member was not that involved during her first stint in the community, but was much more so the second time around, to the point that she became a moderator. I don’t see much of an upside of cleaning up for cleaning up’s sake.
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### Author:  [@JimPas](https://meta.discourse.org/u/JimPas)
#### Post date: [February 8, 2026, 5:32pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/what-to-do-with-inactive-users/385667/20 "2026-02-08T17:32:07Z")
I had a similar situation with one user who was quite active, then suddenly nothing for over 12 months. It turned out his job sent him overseas and he was quite busy. When he returned home he popped right back on the forum. 🤷♂️
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