Confused

there may be 1044 people on the site, but around 90% of those people can not post. they cant post because they are not members, hence the term lurker. so if all of the lurkers that we have every day, became members than we would be talking real activity! So come on lurkers make an account! its free! even the kids can make accounts(i am a kid myself sooo....)

i don't know either. this is the BEST and NICEST coin forum on the web, though

The "active users" isn't a count of the number of people logged on at that moment, it's a count of the number of different IP addresses (users and lurkers) that have accessed the site in the past few days - Bobby would know the exact time period it tracks.


Some people are just following Google search hits or links from elsewhere. They find the information they're looking for (or not) them move on.

Some are people that are just happy to read the information on the forum, and see no need to actually register and post stuff because they don't think they themselves can contribute anything worthwhile.

Some people might want to contribute but are simply shy, or are fearful of ever registering for anything on the Internet because "They" (whoever "They" are) will find out that they exist, and/or that they collect coins.

Some of them are not people at all - they're robots, working either for the search engines or spammers looking for openly published e-mail addresses to spam. Look at the list of active members and you'll see a robot that's online almost all the time - "Google" has been given an "honorary membership" so the Admins can more easily track what it's looking at.

Speaking for myself, I "lurk at work" - I often read the forum pages, but I'd rather not actually log in while I'm there, because I use the "Active topics since last login" to navigate around here and I'd lose track of which parts of the forum I haven't seen yet when I get back home again.

I'm told that a 90% lurker rate is fairly typical for an open forum like this one.

"Wonder why the lurkers won't join?"

I can answer this for myself, but I'm sure others feel the same way. I lurked on this board quite a while before I registered. All my questions had been answered by browsing the threads, so there was no need to post. Then one day I came across a post that I felt I could actually contribute to. I had something to say, so I registered and posted.

Yes I did join, but I still lurk a lot more than post.....lol

I too, lurked for a while. What got me to post is when I had a question that I couldn't find an answer for. Then, just like omaha' and Coins', I figured out I could actually help people from time to time.

True. There are lots of people that just think their questions would be dumb so they don't say anything. The problem with that is if everyone thought that way, there would be no questions asked at all.
Then too there are a lot of people that watch and see someone that does ask a question on this or other forums and their question gets lost in a barrage of other topics. Sort of like you ask what time it is and after about 5 replys, someone is explaining how watches are made. Then into the complete history of time.
Other reasons some don't want to join is the fear of someone being able to track down who they are and where they live. You see that sort of stuff on TV and if your house is full of coins, not something you want known.
Of course too there are just people that think they don't know enough about coins to even get into the conversation. So they too just read what everyone is saying.
When you think about it there are probably many reasons some will not join, will not participate even if they did join.
And too you must remember that some people do have a few other things to do so they only get on the forum occationally.
So now it's up to you to really get things moving. ASK, ASK, ASK.