guest to user ratio 10:1?

[the PresiDenT]

i notice that a lot of the time there are 10X as many guests online as users. I am guessing this is due to multiple reasons but wondering why it is this way? does this ratio represent mainstreams society on raw paleo...questioning/researching it but too afraid to 'sign in' to such a lifestyle (or forum  )
but i speculate its cause:
-ppl are afraid of and/or inexperienced of forums in general
-on the outside looking in...seeing if grass really is greener on other side
-evaluating to see we are not actually crazy, then user population will boom
-don't wanna post cause they don't know much and don't wanna sound dumb. purely infotainment

....thoughts/opinions plz, always fun, informing, and stimulating

[laterade]

I've been telling people about this site. F*ck being quiet. We have stumbled upon some real deal stuff. People need to know.

[TylerDurden]

One of the truly exasperating things about the Internet is peoples' reluctance to post. I have read somewhere that only c.3 percent of the members in an Internet forum post regularly, with c.37 percent posting very infrequently(once or twice a month or year), and the rest never posting at all. And that doesn't even include the vast numbers of non-members who visit the forums.

I suspect that the vast majority of guests are actually rawpalaeodieters but who just don't have the time to be active on the forum and read all the posts. After all, we all have different interests/priorities in life, and some people may view a rawpalaeodiet as just a mundane everyday means of eating foods and only think about it at all when having a meal.

[yuli]

i notice that a lot of the time there are 10X as many guests online as users. I am guessing this is due to multiple reasons but wondering why it is this way?

Funny I often though about that too and I bet its these three things:

- they are registered user that want to be able to log in to post but want to remain "anonymous" when they are in LURK-MODE, so they go in as guest user
-they are registered users that have Auto logging in or cookies for this site OFF so whenever they open the site they are logged off by default, and they will browse the posts as a guest until they see something they HAVE to post in, only then they'll log in
- they are guest users who are interested but have no time to post...I read other forums as a guest user and never post or make a login, I can only pick so many forums I can be active in as I have only so much time for this...so some may be people doing cooked paleo or are only interested in diet slightly and just browsing and reading is enough for them, I am like that on some forums but I still like to read them 

[Hannibal]

On Polish LC forum there are also more guests than users, usuallly.

[TylerDurden]

One of the problems with these diet forums is that one of the 3 primary reasons why people post is because they have some sort of a health problem that needs fixing, so that I am sure diet forums always look worse than they really are.    That in a way would explain why so many don't bother to post or register as many of them may have had no issues at all with a raw, palaeolithic diet and therefore couldn't be bothered to post.

[djr_81]

A large chunk of the guests are data-mining bots, usually from larger search engines, cataloging pages for the cache function on these engines. Harmless but misleading when looking at guest counts.

[Hannibal]

A large chunk of the guests are data-mining bots

How do you know that?

[RawZi]

How do you know that?

    I was going through the profiles the other day of a number of member accounts who had their birthday listed as that day.  They were all bots.

[djr_81]

How do you know that?

This is how the internet runs. I see it on every single forum I've ever been on. Some have something added to their database which shows "guest" as "yahoo bot", etc. but they're always there.

[raw-al]

Fear holds people back. Not me though.

[Hannibal]

I was going through the profiles the other day of a number of member accounts who had their birthday listed as that day.  They were all bots.

Yeah, I know, but they are the users, not guests, aren't they?

[KD]

Yeah, I know, but they are the users, not guests, aren't they?

yeah I was thinking the same thing. I don't know much about the sophistication on bots, but don't think they would have to become members to crawl this information. I also don't see how you can tell just by looking at a user if it is a bot or not? just because they have 0 posts? I just checked all the ones today. some are just people who joined and never posted or are partially adventurous spammers with e-mails and not bots.

not that it matters. But I mean alot of threads have 0 guests, so I assume most of the guests on active threads are actually people reading the forums and not data gathers. Many of which are members that arn't signed in, and others are people that typically guest the forum, fruitarians and other health lurkers. I mean how long would a bot have to lurk on one page...sometimes the guest number doesn't change much over an extended period.

[Hannibal]

. I also don't see how you can tell just by looking at a user if it is a bot or not? just because they have 0 posts? 

It doesn't mean that's a bot.
My friend chill (from Poland) had been raw paleo eater for couple of years now and his a user, not bot; he doesn't post, but he reads the forum regularly.