Posted by Adam Quinan on November 17, 2006 at 00:44:55 from 72.136.51.111 user Adam.
In Reply to: Re: Listening (was lurking) posted by PeterH on November 16, 2006 at 23:42:21:
If it comforts you, Peter, to think that most of those registered are not really looking in, fine. However I can quite believe that there are a good number of on-lookers who are avidly enjoying every pearl of wisdom but feel that they cannot add anything to the conversation.
To put another perspective on the subject, I am a member of an email list that discusses only two topics, Patrick O'Brian and "everything else". There are over 1000 registered email addresses on the list, and bear in mind that this is an email list so they don't have to go to a website the email comes to them. Of that 1000, only about 100 - 150 are active posters, the rest are lurkers who may very occasionally pipe up. The administrators prune out dead email addresses but some people have more than one adress registered and there is a facility to switch off the flow of mail if you are going away. Despite this the total posters can't number much more than about 20% of the number of readers.