Was wondering if most of you keep memberlist enabled or disabled? And reasons for doing either choice?
Cons:
- Spam, bots, etc gathering your information.
- Bad members chasing after other members, stalking, etc. Can search it quickly, to find their target.
- Resource heavy, forum load time decrease along with memberlist load time decrease, especially if having thousands of members on forum.
- Guests, along with spammers, bots and etc, can sit and just browse the memberlist all day long, using resources, memory, stalking your members, gather information and etc. Which penalizes you and your hosting account for their actions, when they are not even a member on your forum.
Pros:
- Can find your friends faster by searching for the first letter of their most used usernames.
Personally, I've been considering disabling the memberlist all together for guests and normal users, because they really don't need to view the memberlist anyway. In most cases, the normal users already know if their friends have joined the forums or not, either by word of mouth or invitation of some kind. Guests just do not need access to it period. The only ones that really might need access to memberlist is staff and staff alone. To track down harassers, track down those in need of help, or issue warnings, bans, infractions, etc in timely manner. I honestly don't see the need for it to be enabled to others except just staff.
What's your thoughts, suggestions, opinions...?