TBR lurkers - Discuss here (1.Viewing)

Most of you know that you have to be a member to read in the TBR forum, but when I look at the board statistics I see a number of members that have never posted or participated on the forum lurking around in TBR.

As you all know the board is a free resource, but I find it a bit selfish that people are continuously using our free resources without giving back to the community. In other words, they have never posted, never introduced themselves, and never contributed any content.

So the question I have for all the contributing members is should we just ignore it or should we implement a change.

I was thinking of restricting the TBR forum to anyone who has not reached 25 posts.

I think if you want to use our resources you should at least contribute to it's content.


Opinions on please....

MapleDots said:

I was thinking of restricting the TBR forum to anyone who has not reached 25 posts.

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Agreed, and maybe 50 posts to make sure.

I would restrict it even more. In order to look at those areas you need to maintain a specific post count a month. 10/month

As we all know, TBR is also not on google so it encourages us to share among our domaining friends without fear that an end user will see what we bought on TBR. So I really like @theinvestor suggestion that to use the TBR forum you have to maintain a certain post count per month.

That basically assures that only domainers would read that section making that part of the board pretty exclusive to TBR participants.

MapleDots said:

As we all know, TBR is also not on google so it encourages us to share among our domaining friends without fear that an end user will see what we bought on TBR. So I really like @theinvestor suggestion that to use the TBR forum you have to maintain a certain post count per month.

That basically assures that only domainers would read that section making that part of the board pretty exclusive to TBR participants.

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Totally agree. Last thing we need is an end user joining and being able to access all that information easily.

theinvestor said:

Totally agree. Last thing we need is an end user joining and being able to access all that information easily.

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Yes, agreed and this way we can discuss acquisition cost without having to worry about end users seeing it.
In reality that's pretty slim anyways because the forum is not indexed and guests are not allowed to view it but increasing the restrictions on that forum might be a good idea. Hopefully it would also encourage the lurkers to participate increasing the content. In the end forums are content driven and to thrive we need new content every day. I will admit I struggle that so much of it depends on me. I'm happy every time a member opens a new topic and that is why the members with the most TOPICS are considered the most valuable members.

Agreed, I try to help out with new topics but I think every person uses a forum differently. Some do like to lurk…others like to post. We are all valuable.

Heck, there are times I disappear for weeks.

We all have lives outside of the forums and sometimes it’s hard to keep everything going at full speed. At the end of the day we are all here for the same reasons. We are all passionate about domains and the future of them.

As a lurker myself, I agree with the restrictions. There is a wealth of information on this forum to uncover. And the TBR discussions, though they are nice, are just icing on the cake.

I think something like 50 posts is good, and as has been mentioned, a post-per X limit would hurt regular members who might want a break, take a holiday, get sick, etc.

Good idea, let's out the lurkers!

on a related note, I have to say that one of my pet peeves in domaining are those who NEVER share a sale or sale price, yet always seem to be curious about other sales and sales reports. to me it's just selfish.

now, there are ofcourse times when you have an NDA and can't share, or maybe you sell a domain in a niche that isn't well known and will cause more competition for that keyword when you're trying to acquire more similar domains, but I think everyone has some sales that can be shared especially if you've been at it for years. just a pet peeve I have, can't help it!

I believe 50 posts to view is too much. The reason being is that let’s say someone just joined today. Then they have to post 50 times before they can see certain forums? I do understand that it encourages more activity on here (which is what we need) but I think cutting that number in half makes more sense to me.

I don’t think the value of a member should based on the number of post, I actually think quality is more valuable then quantity, but whatever is fine, I just think you need to allow everyone to do things how they like do things. if you want to block a lurker then block a lurker, but to treat a member like a guest or lurker cause he has a low post count is not the right approach, IMO. Someone can make 50 post in a few hours, how does that help anyone? I want quality post not someone just trying to get over a quota. Just keep it simple. If you wanna block lurkers , just block lurkers from viewing TBR section or any section you want. I agree with Samer saying everyone has a value in different ways, Personally I’m just getting back into the domain forums, I don’t want to have every new member trying to make post just so they can view a section. Quotas is gonna only bring on low quality post like this one…

Or we could do any of the following:

• X posts
• X likes
• approval by admin

Stewie said:

I don’t think the value of a member should based on the number of post, I actually think quality is more valuable then quantity, but whatever is fine, I just think you need to allow everyone to do things how they like do things. if you want to block a lurker then block a lurker, but to treat a member like a guest or lurker cause he has a low post count is not the right approach, IMO. Someone can make 50 post in a few hours, how does that help anyone? I want quality post not someone just trying to get over a quota. Just keep it simple. If you wanna block lurkers , just block lurkers from viewing TBR section or any section you want. I agree with Samer saying everyone has a value in different ways, Personally I’m just getting back into the domain forums, I don’t want to have every new member trying to make post just so they can view a section. Quotas is gonna only bring on low quality post like this one…

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My initial idea was 25 posts to read TBR, I don't think that is too unreasonable to ask.

As far as a valuable member goes, yes of course everyone is appreciated but we have 3 notable member awards which can be seen here:

Member Statistics

Members who take the time to contribute content are the most valued members because they are the glue that drives the website.

I think 25 posts is ok. If someone goes around making 25 useless posts just to qualify, they will make themselves look like an idiot to the forum. There is enough content on here to make 25 posts in a reasonable amount of time, and a chance for newcomers to share their thoughts and experience with everyone else. There is probably no perfect solution to address this but if newcomers have good intent this will add value to the forum.

I think it should be enough to be a registered (verified) members. Many people visit regularly but go long periods without regular postings.

Rocmary said:

I think it should be enough to be a registered (verified) members. Many people visit regularly but go long periods without regular postings.

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Hey Blair, nice to hear from you again.

To anyone new here @Rocmary and I have done some business in the past, he has some great domains

Hi Frank, forum is looking good. I will try to contribute more regularly.

Rocmary said:

I think it should be enough to be a registered (verified) members. Many people visit regularly but go long periods without regular postings.

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Now to address the question...

I'm sorry but I disagree, I have put hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars into the forum/resource and some members are constantly contributing content. Therefore I don't think it's too much to ask for new members to contribute a bit to the content to read the most desirable parts of the board.

We need participation to get sponsors, I cannot keep funding the project indefinitely and content drives everything. If I keep everything open to guests and members that have never posted then they become a drain on our resources. Cloud services are not free and we need to assure the forum can carry itself moving forward.

So unfortunately I have to explain it and tell everyone that the forums that have come before us did not have the participation and eventually they ended. So it's only by asking everyone consuming our resources to contribute to them (in the form of content) that we can keep the forum viable.

The only other option I would have is to make some forums pay or subscription sections and I don't want to do that. I do however want to maintain our sponsors, that income goes a long way to paying the bills and again that is all content driven. Without daily content things go stagnant, then members don't visit as often and after that we lose our sponsors.

So its a circle where one part depends on the other and quite honestly I drive so much content that it cannot be expected of me to continue at that pace. I need members to help, my wife is threatening divorce because she says I spend too much time here. If I don't open topics things stagnate and I don't want that all to be dependent on me. It is definitely not too much to ask the consumers of our content to participate, even if it's just a few posts or topics here and there.

We are a small industry and when you talk about a forum that is only based on .CA extension we are even smaller. So, if we were a big forum I could understand not having to post or choosing to do as you wish.

The problem is there aren’t that many Canadian domainers. I believe there is literally less than 100. So if we are not generating content ourselves who will?

I do think it’s a bit unfair to expect others to post and create content and discuss TBR while others are just lurking. At the end of the day if you have time to lurk and watch every thread why do they choose not to post? So from that aspect I have to agree with @MapleDots

I’ve been down this road before and if people are not on board you can’t continue as it becomes physically exhausting doing it all yourself. So I’m with Frank on that.