The Forge has continues to grow by leaps and bounds over the past year, but I haven't really noticed a huge swell in posts. As of this post, we have 374 members with zero posts, 159 with 1 post and 106 with 2 posts.

This has led me to the conclusion that either 1) People have been joining the Forge and then bailing out, or 2) There are a lot of lurkers about.

Overall we have 922 members with 10 or fewer posts. I think it would be helpful to be able to tell where these members stand. not to chalenge their participation level, but to gauge how many people are actually making use of the forum in some way.

Are theese members getting use out of The Forge?

Are they feeling intimidated and bailing out after joining?

Is something else going on?

Anyone have any ideas other than demanding that lurkers speak up? Is the forum software capable of calculating the number of hours a member has been logged in?

,Matt G.

I ain't tongue-tied, I just got nothing to say.

On average, I post once per week; but I spend at least 30 minutes a day reading here. Since I am not as devoted to game development as most of the regular posters, I feel that most of my input probably lacks the hard-earned wisdom of an indie veteran. On the other hand, I really do get a lot out of reading the discussions. If anything, it has turned me on to some really good games.

In the mean time, I will tinker with my designs and pipe-up only if I really feel compelled to.

Thanks,
Mark J.

I answered a similar post dealing mostly with statistics on the forge some time ago. I admit I do mostly reading here so far, but there is so much information to absorb and so much previous discussion to reference. When I pose a question I want to be informed about what's already been said on it to avoid repetition. So most of the time is spent reading tons of linked threads and doing searches on terms.

If you're just concerned about abandoned accounts, I'm sure the sysop has ways to tell if they've logged in within some time and can trim where necessary.

regards

Trevis

I tend to come here daily and post often. I have no life. I suspect other members are actually working on game designs. I have no life.

I am lurking, but I am here!

I'll throw my lot in with the lurkers. Personally, I don't have much to say on most of the topics of discussion here. But that doesn't mean I don't find the information presented to be interesting and sometimes useful. The fact is, I wouldn't have created an account if I hadn't wanted to chime in once. And now twice. Lurkers don't get a lot of respect in weblog and BBS communities, but they're always there. Especially at a site like the Forge. There's a lot of information here that isn't readily available anywhere else, and a lot of unique insight into RPG design.

Demanding that the lurkers speak up won't do any good. Most of the time I tend to agree with the general direction of conversation, and don't feel that I have anything to add. Why would I want to shout ME TOO all the time? The only way to get me to speak up more often would be if the people I agree with stopped posting so much. But that would probably also cause me to lose interest in the site. It's a Catch 22 situation. But since you were wondering, I'm here and I'm getting as much value from the Forge as I possibly can.


Dwayne

That's good to know Dwayne. Through much of the Forge's history (brief as it is) there were only a couple of dozen registered accounts that were clearly not active posters. Over the last several months as word has gotten around that there are some great hard hitting discussions going on here literally hundreds of new accounts have been registered. And several new active contributors have come on board also. But as a result the number of obvious "lurker" accounts has increased 6x (sextupled?).

So from time to time its good to discover that there are actual "active" lurkers (i.e. reading and interested) as opposed to folks who looked around and never came back.

We also are well aware that sometimes the jargon filled discussions and high post rates of the most active members can seem a little unwelcoming. But we really do like to get new perspectives and new contributors involved, so any current lurker should feel fully welcome any time they want to delurk and start or add to a discussion.

I think that the rate of increased lurkers or hit and runs is higher now simply because The Forge has become a bit better known. So a friend says, "check it out." And you do, but after registering you find that it's not your thing. So you leave.

This probably happend a lot less in the early days because those who found The Forge were probably looking hard for just this sort of site.

Who cares about the lurking population. If they are interested, they'll delurk. If they're not, they won't. I can't see changing things much to try to get them to delurk. The Forge isn't a popularity contest, and serves it's purpose well as is, IMO.

Mike

Mike,
I'm not try to get the lurkers to "delurk". That's their perogative. I'm simply curious about whether or not they are there at all. If you look at the Forum Statistics you can see that the most users we have had on the Forge at one time is 35 and that was way back in October. It seems to me that it should be much higher than that whether people are posting or not. If we could somehow log a person's "total hours logged in" it may indicate how many peopel are truly utilizing the forum.

I'm just wondering if the Forge is as big/popular as it appears. Are we really making a difference outside the core Forge posters? Are gamers coming around and looking at roleplaying in a new way? Or are we just spinning our wheels? It's important information to know IMO.

,Matt G.

My point, Matt, is that this implies that we're doing something wrong potentially. That there is something that we could do to make The Forge more popular than it is now. For Lurkers, Hit and Runs, whoever.

A) Maybe The Forge is not as popular as the stats would imply. But I garuntee you we are more popular than ever before. There are, objectively more posts coming in than previously there were.
B) I'm not sure being popular is, or should be a goal of The Forge. Ron, Clinton? As was discussed recently, is it The Forge's job to evenglize, or to simply promote the creation of good games that speak for themselves?
C) Even if we could prove that there was some potential audience that was being somehow turned off by what goes on here, what would you propose that we do about it? What change could we make that would not cause the level of discourse here to suffer?

Every couple of months or so, somebody comes out with one of these, "I think there's something wrong with The Forge" post. But they can't tell you exactly what the problem is, or what should be done about it. The concern shows that you're really dedicated, Matt. But I think that it's all going very well, and until presented with a compelling case, I'd rather we talked about something more productive.

Like when you're going to put out another game. :-)

Mike

B) I'm not sure being popular is, or should be a goal of The Forge. Ron, Clinton? As was discussed recently, is it The Forge's job to evenglize, or to simply promote the creation of good games that speak for themselves?

C) Even if we could prove that there was some potential audience that was being somehow turned off by what goes on here, what would you propose that we do about it? What change could we make that would not cause the level of discourse here to suffer?

I'd rather we talked about something more productive.
Like when you're going to put out another game. :-)

Matt Gwinn wrote: Or how about a quarterly indie newsletter that goes out to retailers? It could play up the indie movement and how the industry can be strengthened by what we are doing.

I'm just stalking Jared.

Seriously, most of my design work is for D&D (and most of my activity at EN World), but I wanted to participate here as well. There's some damn cool ideas floating around here, and I'm hoping to take advantage of some of them. Maybe I'll even be able to give a little bit back in return.

- Kevin Kulp
Admin, EN World

Matt Gwinn wrote: [...]I think it would be helpful to be able to tell where these members stand.[...]

Are theese members getting use out of The Forge?

Are they feeling intimidated and bailing out after joining?[...]

Ok, time to stop lurking again. I come here at least every other day and spend a 10-30 minutes reading. Like Psyke I think most posts have such a high quality (which mine most likely will not have) that I'm kind of initmidated and don't post very often...

Please don't change anything, I like The Forge the way it is...

cheers
Frank

Samachadreal, one of the things that I like best about The Forge is that it's members are so willing to reference (and provide links to) similar and helpful threads. Often, you'll find that posting a thread about a subject will turn up more useful results than a serach on it would, in addition to a few fresh insights.

I joined just a little while ago; two months and two days ago, in fact; and have found that speaking up usually is more helpful than sorting through piles of info.

JME,
-Jeph

Jeph wrote: Samachadreal, one of the things that I like best about The Forge is that it's members are so willing to reference (and provide links to) similar and helpful threads. Often, you'll find that posting a thread about a subject will turn up more useful results than a serach on it would, in addition to a few fresh insights.