Bitcoin Forum

I've been going through the forum lately and I've seen alot of accounts that seem abandoned and I've been tempted to know what really happened to them.
I've been seen some high ranked up to hero ranked accounts and so much low ranked accounts that seem abandoned with last login showing over two to three years ago and I really wanted to know if the forum has any provisions to check up on its members either through email or whatever means if a member suddenly stops appearing online.

Please pardon me if this topic has been discussed, and I will be glad if I'm pointed to it So I can know what happened, and hope I'm asking this in the right thread.

No, the forum doesn't check on its users. Even more, the forum is privacy oriented, hence the users can easily use it without offering any real information about themselves. So any user information you see may or may not be real.

So when somebody disappears, it can be anything, from broken computer and lost password to giving up the forum for whatever reasons or having personal problems (including death).
If the user has friends in here, they may announce that, but that's also not a rule.

Sorry if this is not the answer you've been looking for or expecting.

You did enough justice to the question and it's fair enough but if it was just about forgotten password, I think that can be recovered expect cases when you don't have access to your email
I was also thinking about death as the case but the accounts were much to record the case for just death.
Thanks for your contribution senior

Maybe I've oversimplified some things (and you do have a good point!), but the overall answer ... I won't change it ;)

Also imho the correct ways to handle the account are:
* use a reputable open source password manager, keep all the passwords there under a strong password you cannot lose
* stake (there's a topic for that) a bitcoin address of yours, in case all the other things go wrong (hack or worse), you can still use that for recovering your account

Can you refer me to that very topic please?
It doesn't seem right to me if an account that has been grown with so much efforts upto a hero rank and it will be abandoned because of death.
I think sure account is worth inheritance and could be passed to relations left behind.

Now lemme use myself as a reference here, if a user abandoned there account have it in mind either they are occupied with work in the office or and most of them find it very hard to comply with the rules possibly the new law of ranking. Some lost their phone or system whereby it was very hard to start affresh why some could found it time consuming due to lack of patient coupled with family pressure.
Yes all this things I explained are also some reason for not being active most especially me, my coming back was due to less activities and I have not been too strong then going through stress myself rather than just catching cruise around the forum.

So just as Neuroticfish already explained, here is a total privacy which whatever the owner do doesn't really affect rather maybe from close relatives Information could be revealed about such users so will suggest you don't bug yourself that much rather than devoting time read some helpful material.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=996318.0
It's advised you also sign a message with that address. You can refer to this discussion for more info on that: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5420452


Actually no. If an account changes hands it may get tagged (red feedback). Getting other's account in most cases ends bad from attempts to scam to people thinking the new user is more knowledgeable than he actually is.
It's not that difficult to grow an account and it's the honest way. It also comes with gathering knowledge on both bitcoin and the ways of this forum.

You're points are understood but I guess you haven't stayed away for a year or more, just my guess but I've seen some very highly ranked accounts staying off for over three years or more, when we still have people like myself still trying to grow and t me it's a call for concern

But I have spent about either a year without coming online, even if I comes online I will only read the latest update and goes off but at the case of abandoning account for about 3 to 4 years not pretty cool but nevertheless nothing much should be your concern towards this rather to get educated the more, forum is actually large enough to locate your study areas and put interest to contribute on.
Thank you.

back in the early days of bitcointalk, the forum allows users to register without verifying accounts from email.

you as a user can register with an email you can create on the spot like random letters. for example fuckoffefnkdfoiahrerererfand@gmx.com and you can already use the forum. if you forget the password, you have no way of recovering the account. and so if you want to participate again, you will have to register another account.

Probably the same exact reasons why people abandon their social media accounts? Mostly the fact that they're either got bored, or they forgot their login credentials and didn't care enough to gain back access to the accounts.

The account ownership can be verified by the original email that was used during registration or the Bitcoin address published in a post that has not been modified.
On the forum, there are an unknown number of people with an unknown number of accounts. Some prefer to use one account despite having more than one account, while there are many active accounts controlled by one person.
The forum supports privacy and does not have the duty to encourage users to explain their absence in any way.

Yeah, like mk4 just mentioned. It just pretty much users that are just doing their own lives. Their lives does not revolve in the forum anyway just like in any other social media sites.

Forum does not need to run a "check" for users that aren't active. Important announcements could be a good "email" to remind user about the important news in the forum, but I don't think that's worth implementing at all for just a such feature. It is not like LinkedIn where you could use the emails such as "who viewed your profile" or "new jobs for <insert role here>".

I beg to differ on this one. An account has a lot to do with the person that runs the account. Having the account run by a second person after death, though technically feasible, could seem rather odd and even potentially deceiving, since likely the former owner and the, lets say heir, are likely going to differ in ethics, style, knowledge and interests. An account on Bitcointalk is likely not going to be top of mind amongst the things to deal with in the aftermaths of one passing away though.

The exception, perhaps, would be a business account, which one might want to keep on running after the owner passes away, although here we are potentially walking on a tightrope, since the reputation built by the former owner, and associated trust (not strictly speaking of the forum’s Trust here) were earned by the former, and one wouldn’t want for it to be abused or side-tracked by the latter.

I'm more in line with the idea that people should create their own account, and not mess around with buying/selling/inheriting for the most.

Edit: It would be nice to get an update on this analysis (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5069738.msg47925043#msg47925043) I did years ago, but I lack the data. Amongst other thing, it showed the number of "abandoned" accounts per year and/or rank, though obviously not the reasons.

Natural variation of a online forum or even a hobby. Users lose interest, they lose Bitcoin, they lose their accounts or they've become millionaires sat on a beach. There's a ton of reasons, and most of the time they aren't disclosed publicly. Although, a bunch of the accounts you've probably looked at have also probably been banned. A huge percentage of the accounts that aren't active any more are banned.

Yeah, business accounts make sense. However, any other account really doesn't, and as you say it should probably only be continued by a partner that is also part of the business or for example if the business had an employee running the business account on here. Other than that, it's probably not really a business account.

We have many reasons that could be the possible guess to why those accounts were left been inactive, some were actually alts and the user may find it not in need of it anymore, sone were tagged and left by the user, some were from deceased user, some accounts were also created to serve a specific purpose of which whenever this aim is achieved they left them, some were as a result of lost password or inaccessible of  the user and so many reasons, this is a platform and a community that brings people together across the world to discuss bitcoin and creating a profile can be a permanent thing as long as the user isn't against the rules, one can come back active regardless of how long as far as you can have access to your created account.

BitcoinTalk is the biggest forum in the industry and I feel like a kind of living museum, or a tombstone of sorts, for all those who participated in a specific period. You can see how the project evolved, compare different views of users from back then to now. You can see all the different points of view from different people, from miners to investors and developers.

There's nothing wrong with someone losing interest in an online platform. People lose interest in things at different paces and for different reasons. However, one thing is for sure: the cryptocurrency market is growing, and forums like BitcoinTalk are still at the center of this market.

There's a lot of newbie came here with different purpose some of them want earn through the signatures and services and some of them want to learn more regarding with the their current issues and learning progress which is good because sooner or later they will contribute for the benefits of all. That's the common action here in the forum but we cannot deny that not all the time we can focus here in the community because we need to deal with in real life too like tons of works, problems and more so they need to conquer those that they need to seek something for their life.

I just imagined a situation where a user decided to leave the forum, and before that, he left an explanation letter in which there was a reason for his departure. OP, this seems ridiculous. No one is obliged to visit the forum every day; everyone has a different attitude toward the forum. But yes, after the pandemic, many people who were famous users disappeared from the forum. We learned a lot of bad stories, so it's a pity that these people are gone.
But in all other cases, you should not be bothered by the lack of people. Another question is when users suddenly appear on the forum after many years of hibernation. This sometimes draws a lot of attention, because the previous owner of the account does not always return from an awakened account. 

There are many reasons why bitcointalk forum accounts can get abandoned, it's either one of the follow or there is more...

1. They moved on with their lives.
2. People die every day around the world.
3. They give up on crypto, I believe if they are still into crypto their accounts will be functional.
4. They lose access, lost password to the email account they used to register the forum account.

It is not the forum's responsibility to check on the users so I think you should let go, in 2020 for a whole year I uninstalled my WhatsApp and reinstall in February of 2021, needed some time alone and Whatsapp was a distraction.

Illness can make a user not active as some illness are lifetime illness, private reasons and lost of password as aforementioned can make the user inactive both high rank and low rank.

As for newbies some of them lost interest due to in the urge of getting merits and if it didn't work out the way they thought this can also discourage them since they came to the forum thinking is a place to make money. OP are you thinking of leaving someday the forum is an open community where people come in and go out when they are tired of the place. In this forum privacy is first

There's many reason why they're abandon their account, it could be they got negative tag because they're cheater, illness, dead, busy, migrate to shitcoins etc. Of course you can't know the reason except the account tell it to everyone or you contact them in personal message, but what's the reason we need to know their reason? life goes on, there's an old users will leave this forum and at the same time there's a new user create an account in this forum.

I think if such happens, there are some thing to be considered although I don't find it to be a genuine reason which are:
1. Posting partain
2. Posting in another local thread from the previous
3. Lack of spelling or inappropriate information
4. Posting to gain merits ( which I call it to be eye service)
5. Random meriting
6. Partially change of mails or password (which are not enough reason because the real own might change password or emails)

This is an independent forum and it is also like a marketplace where people come and go when they reach a certain destination.  Therefore, it's hard to know the reason why a certain high-ranked user account was abandoned years ago if the user is not your friend or someone from a local thread who decide to share some of its private information that will lead to her absence on the forum just like how Pandukelana2712  did.
Having said that, we both know the world was hit by the Covi-19 during the interval mentioned by the OP which lead to the loss of life of many people worldwide.

It's not just a loss of interest, but various life situations that simply force some members to change their lifestyle and redirect their time and energy elsewhere. The OP is thinking in a way that is wrong in the sense that someone created their account just to profit from the forum, and then suddenly abandoned that account. And at the same time, he does not take into account that not everyone is here exclusively for profit and that most of the accounts he mentions were created long before the merit system - which means that their owners did not have to invest in them anything more than their time.

As for your thinking about this forum as some kind of crypto-currency center, I think that is not correct considering how many active members we have that give some value to the forum compared to all those bounty hunters who together are worth absolutely nothing.

For the new generation, the concept of a forum is not something attractive, and that is why most of them spend their time on various social networks where, frankly speaking, they will not learn much and have a much higher chance of becoming victims of a scam.

It reality it depends on the person behind that account because the last decision in the owners of the account and also we all know that there are many reason why they abandoned that account like they are busy in real life which they don't have extra time to focus on the forum or else the user of that account don't have any interest in this community,   and also what other said above the owner of that account died.

True. Not just from the "concept" but also from how the site looks overall.
I might go a little off-topic here, but I am 90s guy and I had used old sites before like MySpace and Friendster. Surely new generations would not really like those sites since they do not really look "modern" unlike what we have these days. This forum felt like the OG sites before like I mentioned that I would endlessly appreciate.

Knowing that this forum is also focused in crypto is a plus for me and not just because it is sort of giving me nostalgic feeling of the OG sites.

This is the philosophy that the content is not so important, if it is not integrated into something colorful, shiny with hundreds of emoticons and the possibility that you can delete each of your messages and of course all this on your smartphone. There have been tons of inquiries over the years on the topic of mobile app for this forum, which only proves that we will have a hard time attracting some new kids to join us if we don't provide them with what they want.

I think everything will change when we get a new forum, we just need to be patient a little more ;)

You are probably right. Forums were the place to go for years and are filled with a ton of valuable information to back it up. Unfortunately, they are nowhere near as influential as they used to be. Though that doesn't mean that forums are completely useless in 2022. There are various social networks available on the internet, but imho, the best way to get advice on a given topic is by using forums. You just can't find the same level of quality and information elsewhere. People take their time to write a post, or reply to one, which means that the quality of the content is usually better than on other sites. You can go back and read their posts at a later date, which is another advantage of using forums.


On the other hand, I agree with you about the new forum software. It's about time that the forum get a new, modern design. The current one looks like it was made in the early 2000s. It's boring and outdated, which is not at all helpful in making the user interface appealing to younger generations. I hope that the new design will be more modern, engaging and intuitive. I also hope that the new design will help to increase the activity on the forums, as it's something that we all want to see happen.

People sign up on the forum for a lot of reasons. You may be surprised if you carried out a poll the answers you would get. And at some point when their objective is achieved, they stop visiting. I will focus on the techies and founders who sign up to get answers their technical questions and once they get a satisfactory reply they stop visiting the forum. I have also seen folks who sign up to get participants for the grad school research. Once they get the participants to answer their survey, they stop visiting the forum. I can go on and on but I believe you already get the point now.

I believe many persons here have pointed notable reasons why an account could be abandoned but I just want to add that some might be maybe that the user of such account might have been engaged into something bigger and time taking that do benefit them alot and such a person couldn't just be at two places at same time and decides to let go of the account .

Perhaps, it could be a dream job and that has made them got weary of the forum.

Many accounts that may be abandoned are from long ago... we might assume the account owner has a large balance of cryptocurrency and abandoned their old socials as a safety precaution... Many old accounts are also locked and it is very hard to get an account unlocked, especially when untouched for years.

We've got alot of dormant accounts; not because the forum suddenly became unbearable for anyone but you seeeee....we all have our private lives and plans to put into materialization so for this reason, alot have decided to refrain from the forum. Some haven't even had the chance to decide whether or not to stay; as dead quietly bully 'em into endless slumber.
I don't think peeps in here get any direct informations from anyone that goes inactive for a while; apart from some that knows virtually, an important personality in here, that's been trusted over time. If informations are given from sources like that, about a user inactivity, then we'll get to believe 'em.

Sandra 💇

Merit introduction might have also contributed to this dormant accounts. Merit was introduced just about 4 years ago which means before, you only needed activities to rank up and many of those dormant accounts you see got to their respective ranks mainly through spamming the forum. There wasn't much effort put into building their account so they can always abandon it when the reason for creating the accounts in the first place was no longer effective. Many created those accounts to participate in bounties as it was the hype of the forum years back.

But all that stopped or became less relevant 2/3 years back when projects started using IDO and IEO to create awareness about their projects and raise funds which means bounty became less or zero profitable as such all the accounts created for abusing that privilege became dormant. This is just one of the factors that contributed to those dormant account and they're basically ghost account and not authentic users so no need checking up on them If that was even a thing over here.

There are different reasons why there are lots of accounts that are abandoned. Death is also the case of why the account is abandoned as you can see it but it isn't abandoned at all if I say since the owner died (well you can consider it the same as abandoned). The other is it is an alt account that didn't get to ranked up due to merit implemented years ago. It could also be because the newbies who are introduced to this forum are educated in a different way like the one who told them about the forum taught them that they can earn money by joining bounty campaign which is true (most of it are scam anyway) and that might be the reason. It is also possible that the account's password is forgotten and the email used in creating the account is fake or not accessible because when you create an account, you can type any email you want even if it can't be accessed. Let's say, I create an account and I type abandonedaccount@gmail.com then it will still possible to finish creating the account.

I personally don't mind that the forum is the way it is, because to me the content is much more important than how the forum actually looks - although it would be desirable if we finally got a new forum considering how much money and time was spent on that project. And will it help us to get more new members who will not be just bounty hunters - that is a question that we will have to wait for some time to answer.

Many reasons for account owner to abandon their accounts and will list some of popular reasons below.

1. They didn't get any campaigns to join with and continuous declining by sig campaign managers what makes them tired to post here in forum.
2. They get red trust and they get discourage then abandon their accounts.
3. They got better life outside world and they choose to abandon their accounts.
4. Their life didn't depends on forum so they just come and go here.
5. They find this forum as a toxic place so they decide leave because they can't take the politics here.

To many other reasons which people can add up and we have individual reasons why we stay here or we decide to leave.

Ah yes, although I am okay with how the mobile view looks like anyway. It is not like I had any issues. Even in my freelancing career, mobile app or mobile-friendly sites has been taking over the web development so I am not surprised that it would even be a continuously inquired feature here in the forum.

I understand those "new kids" are looking for modernization of web applications/websites, but it should be known that keeping up with the technologies is hell of a pain let alone maintaining it.

The reasons may be different, but we can say for sure that many accounts were blocked due to violations of the rules of the forum. But on the forum you will not find confirmation of whether the account is blocked or not. In order to find out whether the account is blocked or not, you need to use https://bpip.org

I hope they're living their life, probably a break or they didn't want to participate in the discussion or the reason can be any. Well, there is no loss for the forum but for themselves cause bitcointalk is a place where we can keep up the knowledge about cryptocurrency and a lot other things up to date.

Some of the reputed members even left bitcointalk for various reasons for example the red trust queen Lauda but I guess many users are still surfing in guest mode or anonymous new accounts. :D

These are what I think can lead to someone abandoning his or her account in this forum.
I. Work: they are occupied with their jobs. I have a friend that is an active member of this forum before, ever since he started his banking job, he doesn't have time for the forum again.
2. Having a negative trust in their account.
3. Not being able to rank up or find a good bounty.
4. Loss of access to the account(forgotten password)
5. Can't keep up with the forum posting all the time without being paid

Can we take the forum to be like a social media platform like facebook for instance; when a user abandons his or her facebook account for some time does Mark Zuckerberg send email to the facebook users asking them why they have abandoned their account?
Such a thing does not exist or exist only in a company where you have to get tangible reasons to absent or officially reesign. Besides the forum has millions of people and it would actually be impossible do what you asked in Op.

I think the only person that will dispear and it will give the forum concern is theymos.

Such a valid reason... It will just tell us that not all here will stay forever and even these investors/traders also leave in the future like resigning from their job for a better place or opportunity. Perhaps, it always happens and the number is increasing, yet some will also fill them but still do not know how long they will stay in the forum.

It is just life and it was our choice to stay here or leave. Some people had enjoyed will stay but those who are not, of course, will leave.

But I haven't been online for at least a year, and when I do, I only stay to read the most recent updates before leaving. Leaving your account unattended for three to four years isn't very cool, but you shouldn't worry too much about it since the forum is actually big enough for you to find your study interests and put your interest in contributing to them.
I'm grateful.

I still observed that and the forum is transparent to know everyone activity, if you want to know, but the other side, i think is the because of bear market that many people are running away, by doing another business to sustain their life and family.

There is no definite reason why many bitcointalk accounts have become inactive, however some users are known to have passed away or no longer wish to use the forum. Each has a reason, and I think only the user in question can verify the reason because all the reasons mentioned here by many users are just probabilities.

The following shows a comparison of active and inactive user data in the last 3 months [1]. Again every user has their reasons and it is their choice.

https://i.imgur.com/zEWOYwJ.png

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[1] - https://bpip.org/

In addition, i will say that some of them purposely abandoned their account, and it's not that they have forgotten some accessibilities of their credentials, like some of my social media accounts is not functioning any longer but my passwords are with me, so i believe that maybe two reasons while people do abandoned their social media accounts, either they are fade up to that particular social media or they can't recall their login details.

If you are meant is a social media account from Twitter, then the most logical reason is because they forget the password or other accessibility that cannot recover accounts such as losing email access or verification phone number is no longer active, some social media accounts limit their services if accessing without login then the choice Another is to create a new social media account for news updates about crypto on Twitter.

Like the way i explained, we have different dimensions that can contribute for someone not be active or be functionable in social media, really you are right, and if you peruse through our discussion or reasoning concerning this, you notice that we are having a similar point concerning the challenges of not be active in social media, i comprehend seriously that one of the major reasons while some people is not been active like before, it's because of misplaced of login credentials.

Most likely, these accounts are temporarily abandoned or if not abandoned, maybe the owners completely disposed of their account and focused on a different path. My friend who introduced me to this forum is unfortunately gone and inactive at the moment. Also, there are also some users who got banned by the moderators for violating the TOS and Rules of this forum.

It somehow sucks if a well-known person here in this forum takes a break. Like, you see them actively discussing on boards then suddenly they just vanished. Maybe others are just taking a temporary break since sometimes, this forum can also be draining at the same time.

Death is a possible cause. Sometimes we don't get to find out that a member had passed on until a few years later when someone would stumble on something leading to such a revelation. Cases like that abound here. A second reason is loss of interest. At least I know of four people I introduced to this forum who got registered but stopped posting after awhile. They didn't even stay long enough to understand the workings of the forum before they stopped. Another could be merit. The introduction of the merit system actually made ranking up a bit difficult. That makes it also difficult getting into campaigns. Those whose sole aim is to earn find it difficult staying if they can't rank up and get into campaigns would just leave.

Thank you seniors for doing justice to this topic but I really can't find it easy comparing this forum profile to some social media accounts, because there are alot of privileges one could enjoy in this forum and I wasn't really bothered about some new accounts been abandoned but those accounts from even Sr member rank and a while lot at the Hero member rank been abandoned.
It is true that there are a while lots of reasons why an account just be abandoned and one prominent one is in the course of death.
I also learnt on the course of this topic that the forum didn't actually make provisions for email initially when this forum was created but got updated along the line and we new users should always make try as much as possible to always update and verify our linked email.

Thank you for you Mr candid response to be honest I work as a public servant when my friend introduced me to Bitcoin talk he showed me how much he was making and the opportunities that abound. So I joined I was active because I was working in a section that gave me time to log on my internet and make a few post so my activity rose up but in about 2 months I didn't get any merit I felt discouraged and this my friend never even encouraged me with any merit when some of my post were okay I read quoted researched before posting but never got merits I remained a newbie then suddenly I was posted to an office that i hardly come online due to the nature of the job my activity reduced and my posting reduced then just last week when I opened I noticed that I'm suddenly a junior member with about 5 merits to my name... So I'm kind of encouraged to be posting at least weekly irrespective of my schedule....