Who are all these guests?

[bergerud]

Every time I look at who is logged on the the forum there is between 5 and 10 times more guests logged on than members. Who are these people? Are they mostly Carvewright owners or potential owners? I suppose there is no way to know. It seems that a very small fraction of Carvewright owners are forum members. I guess if you can access all the forum information and file downloads without signing up, there is no reason to sign up!

I would think some forum members might be offended by all of these quests who only take and do not contribute. They do not offer any carving patterns, repair tips, or techniques. I wonder if it would be a bigger and more diverse community if they had to sign up to download files. Once signed up, I bet many of these quests would contribute.

I would be interested to hear what you think about these quests.

[fwharris]

I believe most are CW owners. I have spoken with a lot of people who said "yes" they know about the forum and "visit" often to get great information. Some are not "out going" as most who post and in some respects as computer savy either. Some also do not login until they want/need to post.

I guess I will have to try getting on with out the log in to see about being able to download, not sure if that works or not...

EDIT: WELL I GUESS YA CAN....

[bergerud]

Anybody can download from this forum. I think other forums require membership. I suppose it is in LHR's best interest to offer this anonymous service to its customers but it is really the "forumoholics" that make it work. I am not sure that the setup is fair to those members who work so hard on this forum.

[Woodripper]

As a "newbie" most of the time I have not logged-in in the past and am sure I was listed as a guest. I come to the forum and have learned so much from everyone just by reading. Thanks to all for sharing.

[pkunk]

The majority of them are Bots & Spiders. Some are spammers, which when identified by their Ip address, are banned by a Mod. A few are potential or shy CW owners.

[lawrence]

As a "newbie" most of the time I have not logged-in in the past and am sure I was listed as a guest. I come to the forum and have learned so much from everyone just by reading. Thanks to all for sharing.

And WELCOME to you!

We would love to hear more about your experiences- thanks for speaking up and again, we always enjoy hearing more

Lawrence

[atauer]

The majority of them are Bots & Spiders. Some are spammers, which when identified by their Ip address, are banned by a Mod. A few are potential or shy CW owners.

That is exactly what it is. Bots and Spiders actually help the forum get listed sooner on most search engines, and most of the guest activity you see are bots and spiders that are pulling search information for a search engine, like google or yahoo. Then there are the spammers, as pkunk stated. Most of the time, the spammers are caught by their IP address. The remainders are people researching or simply just too shy to sign up.

[pkunk]

If you click on the 'xx users online' it will bring up the page that identifies all the users, guests & Bots & Spiders along with their IP addresses.

[lynnfrwd]

We do have "good" spiders, but I actually looked at those online early this morning and out of the 90 something that were online at the time, I only counted about 6 spiders from google & msn. I was pleasantly surprised.

At one time, we had it so that you could only see attachments & download links, if you logged on. Unfortunately, that kept potential customers from looking at things like My Albums. I would like to see more people actually logged in, but this forum is a tool for sales, as well as support.

I do think we have a lot of people just looking and with all of the attention we have gotten recently on the other forums like CNCZone, Sawmill Creek, routerforum, and others, I do think we have quite a few guests.

Because of spammers, we have to have it so that you cannot post until you are listed as a registered user and logged into the system.

[GrammaPam]

Sometimes I actually log out to view the posts that didn't get read earlier in the day. Only the posts since last viewing show up when you are signed on. If you didn't have time to read them all you don't know how all the problems and projects are going.
G.P.