All these guests lurking....

[Populus Romanus]

EB is one of the largest providers of new members, including myself. They have a screenshot contest that they run, perhaps adding the official blessing of the .Org staff would give EB lurkers a better image of what the rest of the forum is like.

[Andres]

EB is one of the largest providers of new members, including myself. They have a screenshot contest that they run, perhaps adding the official blessing of the .Org staff would give EB lurkers a better image of what the rest of the forum is like.

Sounds like an excellent idea

[a completely inoffensive name]

You know, some people who join the forums can be a pain in the ***, but they could also just give up after a year of fooling around and decide to start contributing after that for years to come. I wouldn't write out those that join and are not particularly helpful with good conversation in threads at first.

But you banned AP, so no luck there anymore.

[Ludens]

Just to be clear: all I wrote was that lurkers chose not to post for a reason. Even if we could get them to register, that doesn't mean they would start contributing, meaningfully or otherwise.

I am not particularly worried about them causing trouble. Rather, I think we'll be seeing many one-post members. And a forum stands or falls with its community. One-post wonders do not contribute to that, no matter how wonderful their post. That doesn't mean they're bad, just that they aren't necessarily good either.

[Tuuvi]

Personally I think our membership is fine as it is, there's no need to attract tons of new members and get all those lurkers posting. Maybe we could use a few here and there but I worry if we got dozens of people signed up and posting the forum would get too crowded and I wouldn't have time to keep up on the threads I'm interested in. I hate it when I go to a forum and the newest day old threads are 20 pages long already.