Cutting and Pasting Etiquette

[CanadianScroller]

I am not sure exactly what that indicates. There have been over 1500 members that have made at least one post, The rest are either just reading in the sidelines or lost somewhere else online
I will look into the active status, I imagine it is those who have posted over a recent time frame.
That being said, if a patron goes to a library for research and doesn't check out a book would definitely slip through the active status network.

There will be other criteria for pruning There are some quirks that spammers seem to use and we can pull them out from casual readers.

[workin for wood]

ok, no more need be said I guess...now I know it's an insider situation. Good or bad, we have lots of replies to the thread now!

[BobD]

The active members number has been there as long as I can remember...but that may be because I'm an admin...I never realized that others couldn't see it.

To be honest, I know the numbers are inflated a bit because of all the spammers we catch and ban before they can post. But if we delete those accounts, they can just reregister...so we're stuck with the inflated numbers.

Bob

[Dragon]

I run a gaming board with a friend of mine and my "job" is to eliminate spammers. I do this many times a day. You can usually tell those by either the name they choose or the email address. I've never let our membership get swelled up by spammers. It becomes hard work to prune later.
Diane

[BobD]

Do you run into them re-registering after you delete their accounts. I've always thought that if you ban them, they can't reregister with the same IP address...I can prune them easy enought (90% are banned or are users waiting for e-mail confirmation).

Bob

[Randy]

Originally Posted by BobD

.....To be honest, I know the numbers are inflated a bit.....

And so does anyone else who has half a brain.

I'd be willing to bet that there is not a single chatboard on the Internet that has a really accurate membership count and I say, "So what?" First thing you would have to do is define active member and you will never get a strong consensus on what that means anyway.

Then there are lots of people who sign on and maybe make an introductory post and then never post again even though they come back and read and learn on a regular basis......do you count those as members?? And how do you differentiate them from those who sign on of curiosity, make a post or two and never come back again?? And what about those who are active for a while and just disappear for 6 months or a year....are they still members?? Maybe they are our military heroes who are doing a tour in Iraq or Afghanistan or are spending their days on a nuclear submarine at 1200 ft? Personally, I don't care that much about membership count.....in some ways it is not much more meaningful than post counts!!

For whatever it is worth, when I am interested in a ballpark figure for the active membership of a board I look at the membership list and count everyone who has made a post in the last year and has at least 10 total. This is going to miss some folks who spend a lot of time on the board; but don't post much...lurkers... and it is going to count some folks who make a few posts to solve some specific difficulty and then never return as regular visitors.

As I said earlier, I don't think it is that big a deal and suspect that the administrators have better things to do with their time than nit pick the membership list for those who aren't truly active members.

[Dragon]

Banning an IP address will do no good. My own IP address changes every time I get on the net. I do ban certain addresses such as *@mail.ru
When I find a lot of users with the same domain I will ban it using the wild card *
We found that this will help a lot. They always find a way around it. Lately I've been getting gmail and I can't ban that.
You always get new users regardless of if you delete the old ones or not. We prefer to delete them.
We did put in place the approval first which means that I have to approve you before you can post.
If I am unsure about a new user then we send a nice welcome also asking where they have found us. If they reply then there is a real person behind the request and we give them a few months to post. If the address is no good then they get flushed asap and if they do not write back they don't have a long life on the list.
If you have someone who is on a lot then maybe that person can keep your member's list up to date.

Hope this helps
Diane

[Minnesota scroller]

I'm not sure I believe the 4447 figure for members. Just a month or so ago, it was less than 3000. Then, the site had a few problems. All of a sudden it jumps to over 4400? That just doesn't make sense.

[lucky788scroller]

Why does that number really bother anyone? Sure, its nice to know exactly how many members there are, but we all know the active ones, and a lurker is really no problem, we all gotta learn! Dale

[tas2181]

While by some standards expressed here I would be considered a lurker, ( I have only one post since joining) I do not consider myself to be one. When I feel I can help someone or have a question that I feel that someone on this forum can help with, I will post.
To post a comment to every post someone makes, just to get my post count up, is to me a waste of my, and those reading the posts, time. As a member of various forums and lead moderator on one of the larger groups, it amazes me how some of the frequent posters look down on those who don't post very often or not at all.
As long as the so-called lurkers are not posing any problems or spamming the forum, what is the difference.
Some people are averse to posting as some are averse to leaving voicemail messages, etc.
I am with Dale, "We all gotta learn!"

Respectfully,
Tom