black panther Posted March 29, 2008 Share Posted March 29, 2008 The number is skewed to start with. People are forced to sign up if they want to read the posts. When I joined it was an option. You could read the posts and browse the forum without joining. I like that better as when you have people that join that way, they are more likely contributors than tire kickers. Now we have a lot of people signed up but just looking or checking things out and not adding anything. That is fine as well as I hope they get alot out of the forum and get the answers they are seeking but would rather see how many true members are on the forum and contribute. Those true numbers would tell a whole lot more. Just my 2¢ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
caserri Posted March 29, 2008 Author Share Posted March 29, 2008 The number is skewed to start with. People are forced to sign up if they want to read the posts. When I joined it was an option. You could read the posts and browse the forum without joining. I like that better as when you have people that join that way, they are more likely contributors than tire kickers. Now we have a lot of people signed up but just looking or checking things out and not adding anything. That is fine as well as I hope they get alot out of the forum and get the answers they are seeking but would rather see how many true members are on the forum and contribute. Those true numbers would tell a whole lot more. Just my 2¢ BP, You are correct. The forum has been closed to non members. A lot of contemplation went into the decision. It was a trade off either way and I decided that we were better off being closed. The open forum invited many more threats to the security of the board. Members were complaining that the info they were posting was being displayed on internet search engines. We were also the target of unwanted spambots. We were receiving literally 3 to 5 new sign ups each day that were nothing more than spammers trying to advertise their pornography. I was able to clean them up quickly however I cant imagine what it would be like by now. We have only received 1 spam sign up since I closed the forum several months ago. They were drawn to us through search engines. Since the forum is closed to non members, we do not get crawled by the major search engines therefore our exposure on them is very limited. It's a trade off that I can live with. I would much rather have "tire kickers", the lesser of the two evils, than spam artists. Not to mention, the tire kickers do help the forum in their own way. They don't use any resources and they are a magnet for other "good" things that forums need to survive. Steve Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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