Should we flag inactive accounts that were likely spammers?

On one hand they are still accounts which might be useful for the numbers game.
On the other hand, if someone signs in after 3 or more years it looks like they have been around for years and their credibility would be falsely boosted.

How frequently do you suppose such sign in gaps occur?

I think they should be left alone. Reason: we don’t have enough evidence to suggest they are really spammers unless they put a spammy avatar or something. Yeah, we know they may be spammers, but there’s no way to prove it.

Looking back, I did look like a spammer when I first joined. Broken English, odd active time, a question with a link… So it’s possible that the accounts we suspect to be spammers may just be a confused legitimate user.

I think it’s better that we flag them when they show more obvious signs. It’s not like Fluther will run out of room for new accounts anyway :)

[Mod Says] If you think a profile is suspicious, please feel free to flag it! There’s nothing wrong with asking us to look into something, and flagging does not automatically lead to banning, so you don’t have to worry about false positives. We’ll only ban the account if our investigation yields good evidence that an account is intended for spammy purposes.

And since we have access to a bit more information, we can sometimes prove things that aren’t obvious from the public profile page.

Thanks! I’ll flag them now and put a note in the comments.

I’m flagging them as “something else” and adding the comment “Is this a spam account? They followed me.”
I hope it helps.