How do I hide an inactive member's items?

When a suspected inactive seller is brought to your attention, you can start the process to hide their items very easily. Just browse to one of their items, then click on their profile name and start a private message. Be sure the item you were viewing attaches to the PM. Send the private message and a timer will start. If the member has not had any activity after 14 days, the member's items will be hidden from view in the categories, feed & member profile. Read on for more info!

We know inactive members cause frustration in communities. They may visit once, upload items and forget to return. Or perhaps they move, and don't remove their items or themselves from the community. Whatever the circumstances, items where members are messaging or commenting and not receiving responses are frustrating!

We created a way to hide inactive sellers' items to help with this problem. This should help prevent new interest from being given to these items until the member comes back. This feature kicks in with any message of interest on an item, but is a bit hard to explain the details to members. It will likely be better for the admin to start this process, rather than explaining all the details to a member.

Key notes about this feature:

Interest is defined as someone clicking the message button (generating an interested comment), OR someone sending the seller a private message with the item attached
The seller will be warned after 4 days that their items will be hidden soon
Items will be hidden from view in the categories, the feed and on the seller's profile - This is the best way to tell whether the seller's items are hidden - just check their profile. If their items are hidden, they will not show here.
Items will still be visible via direct links (such as in a watch list, private message item link or from a notification for the item)
Posts in Miscellaneous categories will not be hidden - this applies to categories such as Community Events, Admin Tips, SBD & any other category that is considered Miscellaneous and does not contain regular items)
If the items are still visible 8 days after messaging, it is likely the member is active on VarageSale, and just may not have responded to the message for some reason