I SEE YOU GUESTS!!!

[RollCasket]

I have the forums open in a tab most of the time and I gotta say...what's with all the guests and why aren't they members yet D=

It's usually 1 or 2 but I've seen as many as 5 guests lurkin around. Are they just bots or am I scaring people off by talking to myself half the time, lol.

[Soeroah]

Data ghosts. Aaaaaaaaaaah!

[Bear]

I actually think that they are Chinese bots most of the time - which may also explain the high number of views per thread. But who knows?

We get probably on average 3 Chinese bot registrations per week, despite my efforts to keep them at bay. I found out that I could work on implementing a DNS block list that would block everyone from China, and I just may do that because I really hate having to police the registration process. If a forum user is just lurking, and wants to join in on a conversation they feel passionate enough about to register, I want them to be able to do so without me having to pre-authorize their account before hand.

Add DNS Blocklists to the ever growing items of things I want to do with the site/forums haha.

[Eccs]

I'm probably one of those usual lurkers hehehe, I usually get to the comic through forums, since I have it bookmarked. I don't always log in since I'm generally on during lunch breaks

[RollCasket]

GASP UPON GASPS! You should totally post more though, we won't bite, if only because I haven't figured out how to do that through computers. I usually have it so it auto logs me in though so I don't have to worry about it.

[Eccs]

Hmmm I would post more if I had more time during lunch breaks, been too busy @ work to do more then check out comics maybe once or twice a week

I will try though

[Fixxxer 117]

I bite, but only if you want me to.

[th3squirr3l]

There will always be people that lurk as guests for some reason... People that apparently have JUST enough time to read all the threads, but apparently don't have enough time to register or comment. Or they feel they just have nothing important to say.

I was one of those on another site for a while, decided that I would put an end to it, and posted literally once. I haven't been back since. Oops.

[Bear]

I lurked on another forum for about a year before deciding to register not long ago. It was very active and I only checked a few threads that were interesting to me. I didn't really feel like I had much to say, I just enjoyed reading what was being said and posted on.

I decided to take the plunge and register and start participating because I started to feel like in the sea of people there, I was finally starting to recognize people and wanted to actually interact with them.

Forums can be odd; especially in super active ones because you want to chat but it can feel like you are standing in a room full of strangers and have no way of breaking the ice. I think that is why I personally value a "I'm new here" thread, as a way to introduce yourselves. In a big forum that gets perhaps 100s of registrations a day, I suppose there is really no point to it, but just to jump right in and start chatting feels so awkward, at least to me.

[ThePaul]

I'm apparently quite skilled at jump right in and pretending like I belong. Or at least, people always ask me what my username was before whenever I jump in and start using the same Memes as everyone else. Although that can be just as annoying as not knowing what to post, too, because some people forget you already told them you weren't here before. Then they call ghost busters and it gets really weird from there.

That being said, I still love making, "Hi, I'm new here," posts, cause I can make weird (and probably imaginary) claims about my life that I probably wouldn't be able to throw into normal threads.