Inactive accounts purge

[charmian]

By now, I'm sure that everyone has heard about how LJ is purging inactive accounts.

See here for a more detailed explanation of what's going on there:
http://soph.livejournal.com/206549.html

Anyway, as currently stated, the purge most likely will not affect most users negatively. It seems the only users positively affected by the change are those seeking to rename to a desired-but-in-use username, although it seems that many of those people aren't satisfied anyway because the username they wanted isn't going to be up for deletion.

I wonder what technical or other benefits the deletion/purgation of inactive user accounts has? Does it somehow reduce the strain on the site?

Comments

[damned_colonial]

If they're deleting comments by the inactive users as well as entries, it might clean up spam I guess? But I would have thought it was a drop in the ocean.

[sophie]

They're not deleting comments made anywhere other than the journal that's being purged; that's only happening for suspended users, as far as I know.

[azurelunatic]

Since spammers get suspended, that would in fact clean up spam.