When Should A Gallery Be Deleted?

I should point out that just because a gallery is not active does not mean no one is there. I can see putting the inactive ones in a separate location, but I would not delete the accounts entirely.

I have an account with Rubberslug so I can post (very rarely) or use/browse the shop. I do not have an active gallery here because the amount of work that would be required to transfer my gallery is more than I want to deal with. (I created my online gallery a few years before Rubberslug existed and it contains around 400 items)

For those who are interested, my inactive gallery is active at http://itamejihada.net/

I think inactive (2+ years) galleries with no cels, or galleries that mention that all cels have been sold/traded should be deleted. There is no point in keeping empty or abandoned galleries around.

It seems like the mods would be able to leave accounts active while still closing empty galleries. Is this possible?

There's two things to be clarified here
1) Does the mod on the site have time to do all that work? Will they have time to contact gallery owners who "fit the criteria"? Or will it just be a "big announcement" and would that be sufficient enough?
2) Does "closing" a gallery lets the owner keep their account active or does the account and gallery get "deleted"?

To be honest I'm kind of torn between seeing the artwork vs cleaning up RS. On one hand it's nice to see what used to be there but then that seems to be just a nice extra and I would really rather see it in the new owners gallery. There are a lot of "repeat" cels on rubberslug which comes from unattended galleries and "graveyards".

One thing to remember is that it kind of takes away from the browsing experience... But more importantly, these unattended galleries and/or repeat cels take up RS resources that affect everyone. Someone can correct me if I am wrong but the reason the artwork search isn't updated automatically is because it is resource intensive, so we're left with 6-12 months wait and/or updates in animation title search only. Another thing is that I think eating up the resources of RS even affects the forums with those disappearing replies... And then there's the "can't upload" picture for the updates... Well I might be all wrong here who knows, maybe those problems aren't related to "resources".

I say clean up RS but don't delete the account per se because we don't know what others use it for. Alternatively a gallery can be "closed" and emptied. Closing a gallery just to hide it from view but have all the content still there won't really help with resources... And if that's so, then keep the galleries up since there is hardly any "real" advatages in just hiding them. If there ever came a point that I didn't want to use RS' gallery functions anymore, I would still like to keep my account because that's the only way you can interact in IM, posts sales and contact people on sale on RS shop.

Well, if there are no pictures in the gallery, then it's not really taking up much space, right?

And I'm with the folks that kind of like the "old" galleries with no activity, but have pictures still up, because at least you get to see those pictures. One less "black hole" gallery. :)
PS - Matt, I apologize if you sent me feedback and I didn't reply! :O I always check my feedback emails, just in case one of the twelve pr0n spam feedbacks is a legitimate response. ^_^;;
And there should be a ribbon for you for doing that!

I agree that it can take a while to update items. I recently finished updating items from 2006. I don't think that anyone should be penalized from not updating in a timely 6-12mos fashion, simply because they have other things going on in their life and/or they can't find any artwork that they want or can afford.

What would be nice is if we could just create a 'dead' gallery where all artwork from galleries that have not been updated in 4+ years could reside. What contact information RS does have regarding the owner could be saved so that, should someone really see an item they want, there's a possibility that they could contact the original owner of that item.

As for the gallery responses, that may or may not be an accurate measure. Because of the porno spam I've gotten from RS, all those items get eaten up by the spam filter. That's why I posted that the best way to contact me would be through Beta on the feedback page. I would imagine that with all the recent spam that RS has had that many other users have done that as well.