Inactive accounts are deleted as soon as is possible in order to reduce administration workload and also comply with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) with respect to personal data (email address being one).
Filters which determine whether a Registered account is inactive are as follows.
1. No posts within 3 months of registering.
Registering an account has implicit taking part and posting messages. The clue is in 'message board', what the forum essentially is.
Re-registering after an account is deleted is allowed within reason to cater for plans not working out, e.g. anticipated acquisition of a CF falling through.
2. No activity logged by the board within 2 years of the last post submitted.
This allows for projects taking forever to finish with things like family and finances to consider.
Notes
Posts to toggle the 2-year time-out have to have some relevant content of course. 'Hello' posts in Introduce yourself don't count for this if no active part is taken elsewhere: that's cheating.
'Active' applies to requesting or receiving assistance via the forum as well as helping if you can or simply taking some relevant part in discussions.
PM (private message) and email traffic via the board stays private so cannot count towards 'active'. (No-one else has access to PM or email traffic including forum admin, deliberately so.)
Club policy is to retain posts when an account is deleted after 2 years inactive. Such posts cannot be accessed by the original poster if they re-register even with the same username, email address and password (built-in feature of the board).
There is no obligation to post messages for Subscribing Members who also have other benefits such as free access to the Reference Library for research and private study and preferential service from the club Parts Department.
More information and Subscribing Member application form is on the
Join the club page.
.