NationStates

To prevent nations being deleted for inactivity, shouldn't there be some sort of feature where you can assign a code and then if you forget it, send it to your email address?
I suppose it would be a good thing for those who do post here frequently, but also for those who don't - who just check in now and again.

It could work, but how would be another matter entirely...

Might an official "Hey! Save your fricken nation!" email at 25 days of inactivity suffice?

There already is such a notice in your nation's RSS feed. Also, I'm not sure, but logging in on the forums should keep your nation alive now.

Pythagosaurus wrote:There already is such a notice in your nation's RSS feed. Also, I'm not sure, but logging in on the forums should keep your nation alive now.

Where is the RSS feed?

Unibot wrote:Might an official "Hey! Save your fricken nation!" email at 25 days of inactivity suffice?

Well, maybe not that strongly worded, but yes, an official email may be a good idea.

There already is such a notice in your nation's RSS feed.

So if some used Gmail they could set something like this up easily.

Where is the RSS feed?

http://www.nationstates.net/page=subscribe

Hope that helps!
Unibot

Thanks for the link it's really helpful.

I suppose emailing people with a link informing them their nation will be deleted, and to click to reconfirm might just work... I remember some PHP script that did that for an
image gallery on a car website.

Pythagosaurus wrote:There already is such a notice in your nation's RSS feed. Also, I'm not sure, but logging in on the forums should keep your nation alive now.

I've found the easiest way to log back in, after timing out from spending a couple hours away, is just to click the "Nationstates" banner. Coincidentally, this renews my login on the game.

I had a think about this idea some more, and some possible ideas came up:

• Forum accounts should still be kept active even if nations are ex-nations - login to the forum account and your nation could be reactivated?
• Send a random string, e.g. A030303KAJDJFJF with a "Your nation will be inactive in X days. Please click on this code to reactivate it. Once you do this, your nation is now active again."
• Allow people to "lock" their nations - not quite the same as a vacation feature - but still good idea for those who participate infrequently here on the forums, but log in every now and then.

You're really over thinking a minor problem. Yeah, it would be nice if you got an email warning you that your nation was about to expire, but it's simple enough to set that up yourself using the RSS feed. If the nation does per chance get deleted, it's quite easy to restore it - you only need a password, and you needed that to log in anyways. You don't need some special code. Forum accounts are much the same as nation accounts - log in and the account is reactivated. It's not a particularly big deal. And allowing people to lock their nations is a poor idea. All that would result is people locking their nations and then leaving the game, forcing the mods to leave those nations alive. Vacation mode provides you with 60 days between logins - if that isn't enough time, you really shouldn't be worried about playing this game.

Valipac wrote:You're really over thinking a minor problem. Yeah, it would be nice if you got an email warning you that your nation was about to expire, but it's simple enough to set that up yourself using the RSS feed. If the nation does per chance get deleted, it's quite easy to restore it - you only need a password, and you needed that to log in anyways. You don't need some special code. Forum accounts are much the same as nation accounts - log in and the account is reactivated. It's not a particularly big deal. And allowing people to lock their nations is a poor idea. All that would result is people locking their nations and then leaving the game, forcing the mods to leave those nations alive. Vacation mode provides you with 60 days between logins - if that isn't enough time, you really shouldn't be worried about playing this game.

OK, fair enough, I see your point. Forum accounts though, can be deleted easier than nation ones, though...