I see new people joining all the time, but never see them comment and are not active at all.
What happened to them?
Waiting for the new upgrade maybe?
They aren't interested in learning how to do this one.
Maybe.
There are a couple of reasons for this. First, a lot of people come here for a reason. On most sites, they join and are allowed to follow through with whatever action they started right away. Here, they have to wait for approval, which kind of makes coming back to complete that task rather "meh." If I lifted the manual approval, it would increase initial engagements, but it would also make the site vulnerable to trolls, spammers, and puppets.
Others who come here by referral and join sometimes get overwhelmed by the complexity of the site. They don't know where to dig in, so they don't.
Lastly, probably 10-20% of our new members join because of specific groups. Their activity in them won't show up on their profile and some of them, particularly the fetishists, join to lurk in certain groups. They can only see inside the groups after becoming a member. So, they're here and sometimes active, but you wouldn't know it because they never come to the main Q&A or blogs.
There have been times when I've had more free time and have gone back to check in with newcomers after a week or two- just popping in and saying "hello" gets them started. They realize there are real people here looking for engagement. So, if you wind up with free time and want to see if you can spur activity, I'd suggest going and being friendly with the newcomers or creating more discussions that anyone can join in. They'll start to come out of the woodwork.
Makes complete sense. I agree we all need to work a little harder in getting discussions going too.
Thanks JA, and I agree with you and will do my best to encourage more activity.
Maybe we should offer cupcakes to go with the coffee LOL.
Good question! JA has the answer.
Now there's an idea!
They are bad netizens.
I'll give a short answer. Maybe they just want to belong to something.
Maybe
maybe theyre just too busy to come on here, i can get that way myself
We all can get busy but why join a site if you don't pop in once in awhile to at least say hi?
