Started hosting my own Radicale instance a while back and cleaned up my contact list when I made the transition.

I clean it up every few years. People who don't chat or answer eventually get deleted. The past is the past.

I periodically clean things up. Getting older means removing dead people at an accelerating pace :/

The contacts I last removed were some classmates and school contacts of my daughter, who just finished university...

I don't delete contacts. Once you're in, you stay in until the end of time. Got a family member's phone some years back, their contacts were added as well. I'll never call any of them, but their numbers will exist even when they no longer do.
The eternal agenda cares not for the living or the dead.

number taken over by a spammer. but i still have backups of old version of my contacts list.

I haven't deleted any, but I've kept a few so that I can make sure they are blocked.

The last few died.

I needed to stop calling her. 😥

Earlier this summer. I was cleaning my whole contact list out, removing duplicates, using it to remember folks I would like to catch up with. I've managed to keep my contacts list migrating from my first Nokia brick phone I shared with siblings about 20 years ago, so it was full of a lot of crap.

"Ginger, really good at math" is one contact I deleted. Was it Ginger the name or ginger the hair color? Was it a classmate or someone who was killer at splitting up a restaurant party bill? Idk, I have no recollection so out they go. So does "Stay Away from Steve" and "Another Mike, red ball cap" and "Good dancer Jess". "Shouty Shorty" remains because she's still my friend who is short and very loud.

Thanks for the reminder. I just wiped 110 contacts.

Three had passed away. Many were colleagues from over 20 years ago. A lot were army buddies from over 25 years ago. Some ex-partners of friends. Too many fast-food places from cities I haven't lived in in forever.

Keep in nind that Meta and Google know your phone number, address, birthday, etc because your friends keep you in their contact list.

I moved. No longer needed the details of local businesses.

Trump supporters that were friends/family of mine are dead to me like Juanito. Don’t need that derangement in my life. Nothing admirable about Trump. A lot of contracts were deleted. Fuk em

Got a new sim last week. Had some numbers stored on the old sim. I saved a few, but didn't bother relocating most of them. That's the same as deleting them, right?

My dad died in 2014. I still have his number saved. No, I don't delete contacts very often.

I do it periodically. My phone contacts are restricted to friends I speak to frequently, family, certain work contacts and a limit of 3 people I don't really talk to anymore but am leaving the door open for.

Probably my mother’s landline when she moved…but I don’t have many contacts. And then her cell phone when she died.

I removed my landlord right after I moved out of that lunatic's house.

Because they were names I’d been scrolling by for years and will never, ever intentionally call them. Nothing bad, just things like old work contacts, or even people from college and high school that were added decades ago and never left my phonebook.

I never wanted to delete them just in case one day I needed to get in touch with them, but it ended up turning into a digital junk pile that I need to clean out now and then.

I can always add them back in if we ever cross paths in the future.

I keep them because it's a resource. I can ignore a call if I need to.

Couple weeks back. I moved countries a few years ago and those people I haven't spoke to in a decade before that so no point on keeping them.

toxic old boss from before i got my professional job.

I sometimes have multiple entries for the same person for whatever reason (home and work numbers, say) so will merge them and delete one. Or occasionally will see one that was definitely temporary and delete it. Contacts apps that I've used have all sort of sucked. On my computer I just use a text file with revision history in git. In a contacts app I'd like the app to track when contacts are added or revised, but I haven't seen one that does that.

The only number I remember removing is one that someone apparently stopped using and it was taken over by a spammer. Otherwise I leave it to know who is calling.