Why are there lots of accounts that seem abandoned?

[Obari]

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.

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[NeuroticFish]

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.

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.

[Obari]

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

[NeuroticFish]

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

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

[Obari]

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

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.

[MainIbem]

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.

[NeuroticFish]

Can you refer me to that very topic please?

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

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.

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.

[Obari]

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 to strong going to 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.

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

[MainIbem]

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.

[electronicash]

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.

[mk4]

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.

[coupable]

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

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.

[isaac_clarke22]

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>".

[DdmrDdmr]

<…> 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.

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 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.

[Welsh]

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.

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.

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.

[Dunamisx]

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.

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.

[Stalker22]

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.

[Peanutswar]

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.

[lovesmayfamilis]

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. 

[Outhue]

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.