Suggestion to: Jason & Moderators;

After being on this Site for awhile now, I have noticed that the Ratio of Non-Members to Members at any time is like a 4 Or 5 to 1 Ratio. Non-Members being the 4 or 5 and Members being the 1. Example: today, right now, Non Members {74} Members {16} and this is usually something close to the Ratio at any given time.

So Jason is there a way for you to {Automatically} have anyone that is Not a Member, go to a "Sign-In-Message" that says, take an Extra-Minute and {Join-GreenHybrid}. It is Free and we would like to have you as a Member.

Well, that's it and It (IMO) would add some New Thoughts and Ideas to GreenHybrid. This would be a good-thing, Right?

Always Thinking;

Terry

 

It's typical at any given forum that lurkers will outnumber members by several times.

There is no easy way to do anything else to encourage them to join.

Also, some of these guest are bots for search engines like Google. They are putting new posts here on their search engines, which eventually leads new members here.

 

I moved your comment over here Delta to be in the proper thread.

 

No problem.

 

It is true that in most forums, guests outnumber members. By making guests register, however, we are both discouraging them from visiting (after all, we don't require them to post -- so registering would have little purpose) and limiting search engine spiders' ability to scour the website. The more "open" our content is, the more people will come.

 

If people don't have anything to say, why should they join? Personally I think it's better that people are just stopping by, doing a bit of research, rather than posting the same questions over and over.

 

jason;

That was not meant to be for people viewing the GreenHybrid forum that they {Had} to Register or {Be-Come} Members. It was a suggestion that they had in front of them a Message that {Invited} them to join and they could become a member and it would only take them another minute, and it is Free.

I guess I did a poor job of explaining this. I hope this makes my original suggestion clearer.

Terry

 

I'll say it again - it's very normal that there are more guests than members. If you look at the member list sorted by number of posts, you will find most members have posted zero to five times - very normal at a forum.

I've probably told at least twenty people in person about GreenHybrid and have yet to see any of them on the forum. Maybe it's my green and orange mohawk that turns them off...

 

Delta Flyer;

Could Be:

Terry

 

If any of you have been in MSNBC Groups (groups.msn.com), you will love this forum. Anyone can start a forum at MSNBC and people are lurking to join new groups, but there are downsides....

For one thing, the MSNBC forum software is visually attractive, but slow and primitive. Even if you have a broadband conection, it's not as fast as navigating GreenHybrid with it's vBulletin forum software with a dial-up without web acceleration. No search capabilities, statistics on how often a thread was read, listing just the posts since your last visit....they do have a free place to put a few pictures.

There may be hundreds of automotive forums at MSNBC, but the way they list them is very flawed. A program rates the activity weekly. The assumption is any post, no matter how trivial is activity. It measures members that join, new webpages, etc, but removing inactive members helps ratings. As a result, members get dumped and competing forums get trolled.

I've beat this to death - lots of lurkers is the norm.