In defense of lurkers

[Jen Reese]

--- In HPFGU-Feedback at yahoogroups.com, "glovvgirl" <glovvgirl at y...> 
wrote:
> There have been a few comments on this new board on the subject of 
> lurkers: trying to limit their numbers, possibly removing them 
from 
> the list, and/or forcing members to opt-in again if they haven't 
> posted for a while.
>
> To the extent that this list has problems, they do not come from 
> lurkers.  On the contrary--most the complaints I have read are 
about 
> people who post and what they do or do not do.  Lurkers, on the 
other 
> hand, cause no extra work for the list administration, and they 
never 
> violate posting guidelines.
> Furthermore, presumably lurkers are lurking because they don't 
have 
> anything to say.  Do you really want to force them to post so that 
> they can say, well, nothing of value?
> 
> Make posters jump through hoops if you must, but leave us lurkers 
> alone. :)


I'm the one who made those proposals, and so far no one has agreed 
with me that I've seen <g>. So I don't think those suggestions will 
go any farther than that.

My original thoughts were brainstorming, throwing out things I've 
wondered about in the past. This is my first internet group of any 
kind, and I didn't understand exactly who lurkers are in a group 
like this. In my mind, as I scrolled through the member list, I 
imagined that many of the names I'd never seen were people who 
forgot they signed on to this list, or weren't really interested 
anymore but didn't bother to unsubscribe. Now I know better. 

I've also found out that the *number* of members is not the problem, 
which was my inital thought. 

So, this forum is proving to be a good place to learn more about the 
process!

Jen Reese