OoooOoOooo, we've just surpassed 5,000 members!

NorioDS

Merry xmas to GFSA ? What an awesome xmas prezzie!

Manfred-Klose

awesome.

AlanRatcliffe

Not yet - I've still got to go through the last 200 or so and weed out the bots and link spammers.

But soon...

FruitarGeek

Alan Ratcliffe wrote: Not yet - I've still got to go through the last 200 or so and weed out the bots and link spammers.

But soon...

So you actually hand pick every person that requests to join this forum? What a mission

AlanRatcliffe

I just double-check new members once a week or so. A little time-consuming, but worth it. Most bots or spammers are really easy to identify.

DonovanB

One out of every 3 members is a spammer or bot.

Recently we've seen Teleboy, PGRatedBob and visitmysitetobuysextoysnow join.

But I think the bot is Bob... ?

ezietsman

Wouldn't a captcha at the registration page as part of the input help to minimise the number of bots?

NorioDS

ez wrote: Wouldn't a captcha at the registration page as part of the input help to minimise the number of bots?

We already have that. Sometimes it's humans registering in an effort to get some links to one of their spamsites.

Mannoroth

Is there an expiry period for lack of activity? Lets say a person registered back in 2007 and hadn't participated since, will they remain indefinately? I'm only wondering how many of the almost 5,000 participate actively.

Guess it doesn't matter really ? just wondering..

NorioDS

That's the thing with forums, it's ALWAYS a small percentage that are active. Out of 5,000 members, you'll probably find 50 that are hardcore regulars. Then the levels go up till you reach 1,000+ people who have never posted but lurk on a daily basis ?

It's quite hectic but it's just the nature of forums. What's nice for us (Alan and me) is that 3,000+ of those 4,900+ members are on the newsletter which means that, once a week, we get a chance to invite them back to look at the forum. Sometimes that converts lurkers into regular posters ? So we're winning the good fight, 1 lurker at a time ?

deefstes

Joe Moore wrote: From the GFSA site stats :
Most Online : 388 - January 09, 2011, 02:50:18 am ? ,.... a massive spambot registration ?

Not at all. 02:50 am is when this place is pumping. You're missing out. ?

AlanRatcliffe

Yeah - it's pretty much the norm for a forum to have a small group who are active all the time, a larger group of registered members who browse but rarely post - most people come to get information, rather than share it. Also, at any given time there will be ten times more unregistered "guests" browsing the forum, reading threads than there will be active members.

The important thing is the forum is still growing, rather than stagnating or going backwards. Every month there are new members and pageview stats go up (1.5 million last month!). People are using the forum, whether visible or not.

NorioDS

Not only growing but growing at a much faster rate than before and all that without advertising. I'm quite impressed - she's come a long way since 2007!

Mannoroth

Well good job guys, as a forum noob I now feel a bit better as there is actually a level lower than noob, namely "Lurker"... ?

Great to see that the forum has grown, will spread the word to fellow guitaros!