Is it wrong to delete inactive members from your friends list?
By inactive I mean anyone that has not posted in the space of a year. I found myself going through my friends list today and half of them have been inactive for 12 months and over and it niggles at me. I mean I understand, people join and get excited and before you know it they move on and find something else to do (or for unfortunate/unseen circumstances they become inactive).
Well it just makes me think that if I clear through and delete these parties then should they re-activate their tea lifestyle I can re-add them in the future and there is no harm done. Another part is wondering if by deleting those inactive profiles I’m offending any of them in some way?
(For the record I have deleted inactive members, it’s not until afterwards now that I realise what I did may be rude).
it’s not wrong at all to me.If they are really inactive, I mean don’t even post comments or replies to topics they probably won’t see it.
And if they re-activate their tea life I’m not sure they would remember exactly how many followers they had.
I would like Steepster to mention on our profile when we were present last time (as whatsapp does…seen 2 days ago or seen last time the 27 of January…)
I do the same thing, I delete the inactive followers. I like things organized and up to date :) Its just a weird pet peeve I guess.
KittyLovesTea I’m fairly new to the site and find myself “following” people just to PM and then we both usually delete each other after the exchange…mostly because we don’t share the same taste in teas and it can be overwhelming when (while looking at the tealog) trying to sift through reviews. That said, I don’t think it’s rude at all. It’s very kind of you to be concerned and your note alone stands to prove that you’re not doing this out of spite. If you still feel bad, I guess one option would be to send them a quick PM before un-following them. Maybe some wise and more seasoned Steepsters can help by giving their opinions.
I really wish you could PM someone without each person having to follow eachother. It would make things so much easier.
Lala, you can PM people who follow you. You don’t need to be following them back to do so. If you PM someone who follows you, they should still be able to reply to it.
I say it’s not wrong. Even active members whose tea posts you’re not really interested in… I’ve kind of reached my limit on people I can keep up with in a day, so I’ve been going through and removing people. I do apologize if anyone is offended, but I need to spend less time on the computer.
I agree – I’m starting to get a bit overwhelmed with posts. I wish we had a way to create reading lists : then when I’m short on time I can follow a few people, otherwise I can read everyone’s list any leisure.
And I feel like deleting inactive people bow that I’ve read this too! I don’t need the ego boost if “x ppl follow you.” :p
You can, sort of. There’s the all new posts page, if you’re ambitious, and the dashboard for busy days. :D
(I did this for a long while some time ago, but I think site activity increased too much for it be possible. I mean it when I say ‘ambitious’. I still wish I could do it that way, though)
I don’t think it’s wrong. I don’t do it just because every now and then someone pops back in who I have missed and I would have missed his or her re-entry if I had unfollowed. Plus, as I sometimes disappear for periods of time It doesn’t bother me if others do also (though I may worry).
You know what’s even a bit tougher? when there’s an active poster who you followed, only now you sort of wish you hadn’t, but they follow you…and now what? and nothing against them im other than that you just don’t enjoy reading their tasting notes as much, and not even for good reasons, just because you’re a person and people like and dislike things at different times for different reasons.
I haven’t been deleting people, but I also just don’t pay attention to that stuff much…I’d say either way is fine :)
No way, girl! I’m going to follow you always…whoa, that sounded creepy haha.
And I can totally imagine why someone might find my tasting notes to be extremely off topic and needlessly verbose, so it’s not like I’m suggesting that only I out of all steepsterites ever can decide to unfollow people haha.
I don’t worry about deleting inactive members but that’s because I’ve been one in the past, myself… this year I’m making a solid effort to do more logging and also make more of a social effort on here! There’s also the fact that as an Aussie I don’t have access to a lot of the teas y’all drink so reading back through posts isn’t a heavy priority of mine because I don’t recognise many if any of the teas being drunk. ;)
Of course it’s not wrong.
Who you follow and who you don’t follow is 100% YOUR choice. Someone following you doesn’t mean you should automatically follow them if you don’t want to. Not following someone is ALSO not rude or snubbing the other person. For heaven’s sake, if I had to follow everybody who followed me, I’d have to follow nearly 900 (I can explain this) people! O.O There aren’t enough hours in the day to keep up with that sort of list. It’s not like the fact that you’re not following them have any bearing on what they can see from you at all. The only thing it means is that they can’t PM you, and if they want to contact you that way all they would have to do is drop you a comment to either PM them first or follow them so that they can PM you.
Inactive people on your follow list can clutter it up a bit if you have trouble keeping up with too many people and if half the people on your list are inactive it’s impossible to figure out when you’re reaching the limit before it’s too late.
(Explanation for the huge amount of people following me: Back in the days when Steepster was young and I was enthusiastic, I didn’t want to miss anything so I routinely clicked follow on just about everybody I could find. A large part of these people obviously followed me back. After a while this became horridly unwieldy and I realised that I could trim the follow list down heavily and just read from the all new posts page instead of the dashboard, and then just read the dashboard if I was busy. This worked for a great long time as well. Of course I completely lost track of who I was following and who I wasn’t. There was a good handful of people I could have sworn I was following but wasn’t. Later on this became difficult to keep up with as well (more site activity, I expect) so now I’m just back to the dashboard and my trimmed down follow list again. (Even that is hard to keep up with sometimes) I am pleased when someone chooses to follow me, but I honestly don’t care if someone stops. All it means is that I can’t PM them, and really, what are the odds that I want to do that? Out of 900 people? I’ve decluttered my own of inactive members a time or two in the past, but it’s such a hassle when you can’t see at a glance their latest activity, so I don’t bother anymore. I’ll do a more heavy cut when I can no longer keep up.)
Is there a limit on followers, like friends on Facebook? I didn’t know there was one.
I agree, it’s totally a personal choice who to follow. I tend to follow people who write interesting notes or who are very active regardless of the type of tea they drink because I’m interested in all types of tea. I don’t as often follow tea companies because most of them don’t post a lot, and I often don’t follow people who are just joining until I know they’ll be posting notes relatively regularly. I have to confess I don’t read every note all the way through, often I skim, or sometimes if I’ve been away a while I’ll only read through the first couple of pages of back log. I still mostly follow people who I find fun to read. Most of my following is motivated more by social networking “giant tea party” considerations than anything else.
I don’t know if there’s limit. I didn’t find one back when I tried to follow everybody and I got up to some 1100 or so before I had to give up. There were a lot of trouble with the dashboard loading very slowly at the time as well, and there was a theory that having it load an enourmous follow list might make it worse.
I’m like you, though. I don’t read every word. I skim a lot and if a post is about matcha, I tend to just skip it because I’m not interested in matcha.
You’ve also been active for a v. long time on this service so it’s not surprising you have a lot of followers (and you give great note). I remember when I was inactive being surprised by the occasional email that someone had decided to follow me and a little embarrassed that I wasn’t delivering any new content to merit the follow, at least in my own opinion.
I send those emails directly to archive in gmail, so I only see them if I go and look at the tag. I don’t need to see those, only the ones with comments in. I like getting those, even if I rarely comment myself. It’s nice to have the others in the archive though, since it has happened a time or two that something has gone wrong with the dashboard and I couldn’t load the notices tab.
Some random observations:
I always add whoever adds me as soon as I see the notification – very often, it’s just someone who wants to talk to me about something, rather than someone who would like us to be Best Followers Forever.
I pick the people I’m dash-faithful to based on three criteria -
- either, they drink teas I like or want to drink, and I enjoy seeing what other people say about those teas (surprisingly few)
- or, they drink teas I find daunting or know very little about, and I would like to learn more (surprisingly many)
- or, finally, they write like motherf*ckers (Blame the Dear Sugar column!) and I want to listen to their voices even if all they do is post grocery lists
Many of the people I follow fit into more than one of these categories.
I’m pretty sure all of you also know about the 1% rule and participation inequality in general. My guess is I get maybe 17-18 average likes per post, and pretty few comments overall. This hasn’t really changed over time, because the same people tend to be active and communicative, and I found them pretty early on when I returned to Steepster.
The reason I prioritize following people who interact with me is because I have found that they are also typically the ones who teach me the most about tea, and who are most generous with their time, knowledge and feedback. I really appreciate them!
I try to keep the list of people I follow pretty clean, mostly because it gives me internet sads when someone just disappears, and then I go check on then after five months, and they’re still gone, and I have to worry a little and hope they’re okay.
And, finally – it has happened on numerous occasions that I just randomly unfollowed someone I really like following and who is following me. It feels like Steepster does this sometimes, but it might also be touchscreen issues when I use my cell or iPad.
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