Re: [44net] portal purge

The Canadian system is even more vague, as callsigns do not expire (unless you do, and even then the government doesn't keep good track of them - someone has to tell them), and yes, some people have multiple call signs. I live/work in the US now, but still operate under a Canadian callsign (need to go sit those Extra exams - so many things to do - so little time!). I don't think there's a problem in getting people to check in yearly, but I agree with the idea of only starting to warn people 90 days before expiration. Getting quarterly messages will only cause them to be ignored, in my experience, they become neither 'important' nor 'urgent'. I've worked on many user registration and accounting systems over the years, and I've found that the systems that start warnings when it's close enough to the expiration date that it has become 'important' to the user and long enough away that it hasn't yet become 'urgent' work best. I've also found that it's good to have a 'soft' and 'hard' cutoff. Even the HR system that I deal with sometimes has issues (like late renewal of individuals' contracts), so if the account isn't for something serious, I give some hang time. Given that this is truly non-serious, a soft hang time of 4 weeks (after which entries get disabled) and then a hard cutoff of six months would make things easier for both sides the data could continued to be stored off line, it doesn't really impact anyone except a little bit of hard disk space). Users have a soft landing, and can (after their system stops working) just sign in again and get 'the power turned back on', and its less overhead for the maintainers - no need to re-enter data when the user finally realises that the lights are out (at least in most cases). Hams can wander off for several years, and then go - oh, time to get started again! - and then reconnect with the community. Anything that can be done to make this painless is a good thing. I *would* say that entries and subnets would be subject to reallocation after the six month hard cutoff, so anyone who leaves things too long may need to reconfigure their network. I'll be happy to help with the programming, I've done this kind of work many times. I also program in SQL, Perl, PHP, Python, C, *nix shell(s), and *way* too many other languages since 1972 - including at least a dozen assemblers, but let's not go there! - full resumé upon request. (No, I'm not looking for another day job, I have one! :-) - Richard On 6/20/15 5:55 PM, Don Fanning wrote: