Has the policy regarding reactivating deactivated accounts changed recently?

I was under the impression that reactivating accounts was never ever done, for no reason what so ever...

Yet, recently (last week) an account was reactivated about a week after the player deactivated.

Not going after anyone in particular here, just interested to know what the rules and policies regarding deactivated accounts are, and what exception was made in this case.

I'll happily supply the account in question, but probably just as well not to post in public.

On a related topic, why on earth was players given the ability to deactivate their accounts anyway? (Instead of merely letting them time out over a few months)

It serves no purpose other than cause the leagues a ton of problems related to players deactivating in the heat of the moment and regretting it the day after...

i thought someone had deactivated and recently played them, but didnt want to ask in case i could be wrong!

Players used to be able to delete them, rather than deactivate them. When you deactivate now, at least you see that they did, in fact, exist.

And a player assumes full responsibility for his or her own account. It's not up to funkypool to reestablish someone's account name when they deactivated it "in the heat of the moment". If they join a clan, then we assume that they know that there will be wins and losses. If they choose to deactivate, then that's their choice.

http://www.funkypool.com/terms


EDIT: If you DO deactivate, though, you can always use Contact Us to talk to Admin. They aren't, as everyone assumes, robots, and they do have sympathy.

Edited at 16:58 Sun 21/03/10 (GMT)

Thanks, but that in no way answered my question Katie....

1: What is the policy on reactivating accounts?

2: Why have a feature that serves no purpose and only causes problems in the first place?

It's reversible with the help of an admin.
Remembering back when gandalf was hacked and deactivated.

Well, to pull a simple equivalent:

There is a reason why NASA didn't but any off switches on the Mars Rovers.... Someone could accidentally push them

That's all I'm really say here too: Do players really NEED any way to delete, deactivate or otherwise stop their accounts? In my opinion, no!

This game has a relatively small player base - far too small for the database to have any real size issues.

Time out accounts after 2-3 years and that's all you really ever need.

Well for some people it could be they want to leave the site but know unless they got banned or deactivated, they would just end up logging back in.

This way they can choose to have the option of coming back removed so they would have to create a new account to come back which could put them off, starting from scratch

Well, at least that would be only their own problem, and frankly one that would happen far less often than the main problem we have now: People wanting back in.

Besides, if they really don't want to use the site anymore but lack the discipline to stay away, they will just make a new account anyway

I know i wouldnt bother, im lazy like that

The reason they deactivate is to release some of the 'heat' so they should have better discipline there

Just remember that leagues are a secondary feature on the site. I would assume that only a small minority of people would regret deactivating, and if they do and they cannot have their account re-activated, they can always make a new account.

Absolutely, and I'm merely using that as one example of the downsides to deletion/deactivation.

When discussing whether something is good or not, there's always an equation to solve, balancing pros vs cons.

When there are no pros what so ever, it hardly matter how secondary you think the cons are. Nor are we discussing something that is a lot of work to do either - removing a single button/link from the web site is a 10 second task for Nick.

This is a far broader topic than merely the relation to leagues flumpy.

Why try to debate/marginalize the drawbacks of a feature no one needs in the first place?

Why discuss how small or large the drawbacks are, to a feature that brings nothing good?

What *I* would like an answer to, preferably from spinner or nick himself, is what good reasons there might be to have a player controlled deactivation at all.

Edited at 22:04 Sun 21/03/10 (GMT)

so when the person asks to have their account back they can say no and be total power loving fools

It is a legal requirement for users to be able to remove their personal details from the site database if they wish.

This used to be done by allowing users to simply delete thier account, however, this caused problems when other users jumped in and aquired the username, and led to the forums being messy and hard to follow with "deleted user" all over the place.

So, the deactivation system was put in place to solve a few long running game issues (have a look at the older forum threads) whilst satisfying legal requirements.

There has been no change in policy and reactivating has always been possible in exceptional circumstances, its is just (apparently) extremely rarely noticed!

Then by gods make a feature allowing players to reactive themselves. The current system causes constant trouble.

And either let people reactive or don't - the current system is hardly fair.

As for this:
"There has been no change in policy and reactivating has always been possible in exceptional circumstances, its is just (apparently) extremely rarely noticed!"

Then I strongly recommend updating the section Emma quoted to match what you just said. The terms say it is permanent and irreversible. So which is it?

[QUOTE=janmb]Then by gods make a feature allowing players to reactive themselves. The current system causes constant trouble.

And either let people reactive or don't - the current system is hardly fair.

As for this:
"There has been no change in policy and reactivating has always been possible in exceptional circumstances, its is just (apparently) extremely rarely noticed!"

Then I strongly recommend updating the section Emma quoted to match what you just said. [B]The terms say it is permanent and irreversible. So which is it?[/QUOTE][/B]


you have to be someone special.

In theory, deactivating an account is by its very nature something an individual member does not do lightly, and is something they've had to maturely put a lot of thought into, just like deleting one's Facebook profile, for example. If even asks you if you're sure when you go to deactivate your account (as I found once when I pressed it by accident!). But like spinner said, the circumstances for reactivation have to be exceptional.

Apart from that, in general, if the process were not permanent and irreversible, then you'd have people deactivating and reactivating their accounts willy-nilly which would make a mockery of the process.

^^ Exactly.

Nobody can deactivate their account without it being a very deliberate decision where they have to both re-enter their password and agree to secondary confirmations.

The help section is perfectly accurate, as when deactivation has been completed the user permanently loses access to the account and the process is irreversible.

As with any system, however, manual changes have been made under exceptional circumstances, much like name changes etc, when site errors or changes in policy have deemed them necessary.


Might have had a little more to do with the lack of people to operate them

Edited at 00:04 Mon 22/03/10 (GMT)

As I am sure you know jan, if you want specific answers from admin regarding an issue, you should use contact us. Luckilly in this case spinner has been able to provide you with an answer, but admin can't get onto every forum post

Just to add in my two cents, I kinda agree with you on this Jan, but surely in specific, remarkable cirsumstances people may need to reactivate their accounts for certain reasons i.e. account being hacked. Its not like we will re-activate an account if someone was drunk and they decided to deactivate their account then regret it the next morning.