Why are always so many guests online?

[Quabbe]

Hey there,

maybe a stupid question, but I ask it myself every time I see how many guests are online. Like yet, 12 members and 38 guests are online.

Are these simply regular but unregistered guests, browsing around the forum, or are these searchingbots or anything else? It just interests me.


Quabbe

[Steel General]

Probably a combination of 'lurkers' and spam-bots, etc.

[LonewandererD]

Can you even 'lurk' on this site? I thought you had to be a member to see any attachments posted here so a guest would have to join first before starting to 'lurk'.

-D-

[ProfGremlin]

You can read the text of posts but you have to join to see the attachments, you're correct there LonewandererD. It's how I ended up here. I was able to read through the various tutorials but had to join in order to see the attachments illustrating them. By the time I had read through a handful of tutorials, I was hooked.

[Ascension]

You can join but just never say anything - that's lurking, guests are visitors who haven't registered and, therefore, can't see the pics except on the main page. I'm pretty sure that the spambots won't register but many of the visitors will. I don't know the actual numbers but I would guess that we get the guests to become members at the rate of about a dozen a day...that's pretty good. A lot of folks don't have anything to add to a discussion that hasn't already been said (I don't say anything if it has already been covered), some folks are afraid to say anything cuz they might get jumped or that they might sound stupid or condescending, some just want to look at pretty pics and never come back, and some are just looking for maps to D&D adventures...I guess there are a few real-world pros who do different kinds of mapping (like the real stuff) who come here either by accident or just to check up on interesting new ideas for using the software or for inspiration. Doesn't bother us, every eye is a word of mouth to someone else and that's how we grow. It would bother me if we only had like 1 guest and 138 members online.

[Redrobes]

They are mostly harvesters scraping the site for information like indexing but unless they call themselves a bot then its impossible to know that they are. I think the lurkers must get a login and then not post which is sorta ok so long as they aren't wholesale scraping the images away and re posting them. The members and lurkers are probably more responsible for slowdowns of the site than the indexer bots tho.

[Surveyor]

I am a lurker by most standards. I am new to this site and it will take me another month or two to get to know the site. In the mean time I just like to "eavesdrop" on conversations and threads to see what interests people on this site. I am also blown away by some of the art stuff and find it very enjoyable to examine the maps in detail . As a newby in cartography, I feel inadequate to offer opinions or suggestions. I think that there will be many others who will feel the same way as I do. I am a member of other forums including most Gimp forums and I am a moderator on a completely different forum. Most "lurkers" are people who are interested and admire your work , consider it a form of flattery!
Cheers
Surveyor