feather wrote:
thoreau wrote:
I have resisted thus far posting in this thread but I am in one of those moods so here is my take.
I feel that allowing ourselves to become too insular and distrusting of others means that we have allowed ourselves to be manipulated by those who have set out to do so.
I am a member on a few boards I am yet to make a post on. I sign up because I am interested in reading and 'getting to know' the place rather than jumping in straight away somewhere new which can at times feel intimidating. particularly on smaller, close knit boards where people have known each other for years.
My vote would be to not remove members until they break rules, not remove them because they might be someone else or because they are taking time to post a hello.
Please read below in the objective manner it was intended.
What do you then contribute to those communities that would justify you considering yourself a member?
How would the community be impoverished by your absence?
A googlebot or other web crawler at least has the potential to generate new contributors as a result of topic searches.
Any community which terminated your membership would not be excluding you from participation, you'd already elected to do that yourself.
There is a weakness here which is being exploited to the detriment of this community. It would be complacent not to address it.
If by addressing it hesitant or non-posting members were sparked into contributing then surely
both the individual and the community benefit.
I personally take offence at individuals who want the benefit of membership but wont lift a finger to sustain or enhance things for anyone else.
That has one assured outcome. the community becomes another web ghost town.
most of the places i belong to but do not post yet on offer information and discussion of said information, sometimes i promulgate that information or share a cause that they are interested in with others who would not seek it out otherwise - signposting the source of the info etc. I guess that my act of joining rather than just reading is a desire to show some anonymous solidarity, or to give the opportunity to respond without a 24 hour wait if something really piques my interest.
i tend to view non posting members as potential posters rather than non contributors or socks in waiting.
i would rather have people feel part of a community even if they dont post than feel rejected or unwanted by being removed before they are ready or interested enough to post
i worry that we are reacting to the threat of socks and disruption that may well make the place appear exclusive rather than inclusive.
we have lost a lot of cool people or had previously cool posters go rogue to the point that the core membership has diminished greatly. which may be fine with peeps.
The cool people you mention had many posts, certainly much more than 0.
The point is that 0 contribution is 0 contribution, simple as.
No-ones asking to remove low posts counts or even for that matter people who haven't posted in a long time, just 0 post members who haven't posted in yonks, simple as that.
In this way the members section remains a contributory members section which is what was intended all along, otherwise its a complete waste of time having a private members section innit
The rest of the forum is visible to everyone regardless of whether they sign up or not, so I fail to see what you're worried about.
