How Come Dept.

[princessphone]

How come there always seem to be more guests than members using this forum? I would assume (probably wrongly) that many guests are repeat guests. What's the benifit of NOT joining? Are they former members that have been kicked out - I mean banned?
Just curious.
John

[DavePEI]

How come there always seem to be more guests than members using this forum? I would assume (probably wrongly) that many guests are repeat guests. What's the benifit of NOT joining? Are they former members that have been kicked out - I mean banned?
Just curious.
John

No-one has ever been banned that I know of. Most I would guess are those who only visit occasionally and who haven't seen the benefit of joining. The only ones I might call banned are the spammers Dennis continually has to deal with and keep out of the board by refusing memberships. We used to have a big problem with spam robots trying to join, and to prevent that, Dennis instituted the policy requiring new members to email him (so he could ascertain their interests).

Often if a post here is mentioned on, say the TCI or ATCA list, we will see a flurry of non-members viewing. I would suspect also the largest number of non-members are people coming from Google and other search engines to view posts of interest to them.

Just thinking... Some of these may actually be members who haven't taken the time to sign on -- they would show up as a guest until they did. If you have your browser set to remember the log-in, it will automatically sign in.

Dave

[Doug Rose]

When I am at work, I cannot log in as my company does not allow it. So, I am a guest. With the way Internet Security is more and more companies do not allow signing on a blog. I have not been able to get personal email at work for at least 10 years.....Doug

[WEBellSystemChristian]

I think a lot of guests that are on the forum are just people doing research on a particular phone, and they do a direct search using Google. I'll search for something about a phone directly from Google, and the first search result that pops up is usually a topic on this forum that related to what I was looking for!

[Sargeguy]

Members who navigate to the page without automatically signing in are recorded as guests, and when they sign in they are then recorded as members, but the count still shows them as guests having visited.

[NorthernElectric]

I visited the forum as a guest numerous times before joining.  I got there by way of searching for information on Google.  After a while, I noticed that this search hits pointing to this forum came up a lot because it contains a wealth of information.  So I joined.  Likely, some of the other guests will too.  Some never will.  I have belonged to other forums where you had to be logged in to read much of the content.  The result was a large membership, but a relatively small number of regular contributors.  On one of these, out of over a thousand members, probably about 30 accounted for 90% of the posts.  Maybe about another 40 or 50 members posted occasionally, and the rest were either lurkers or no longer visited.

[twocvbloke]

I can't even remember exactly how I ended up here, probably also looking for info on phones (think it was for info on my 500DM to the left there after I'd got it), but this forum's been a pretty useful source of info, aswell as a place to share what I've learned to date, along with helping those on the other side of the pond on how to make UK phones work on US lines...

[Dennis Markham]

I often browse other forums without joining that forum.  It's easy to do research without becoming a member. Eventually if one goes back enough they'll want to ask a question or two.  In that case they have to join.

If you reading this out there.....many people have registered for this forum and have not sent me the obligatory e-mail letting me know they're a real person.  Their registration requests are just sitting there awaiting moderation.  I figure by the names that most are "real people" but it's difficult to take the time to send each one an e-mail asking to state their intentions.

We have the instructions in the "Registration Instructions" section of the forum and also before one clicks the "I Agree" page when registering.  The instructions are in bold red...but yet many still do not comply.

Off soapbox now...

Dennis

[princessphone]

Thanks everyone for the enlightenment, John

[JimHyak]

My ipad never keeps me logged in, even if I check the box. 98.27% of the time I'm just a guest unless I feel compelled to reply to something.