There are a lot of people for whom forums are "completely new". They don't even know that the things which they are reading are called threads and that they themselves can create them.

Which is why we have the welcome guide, and point people to it in the welcome message every new member gets. The guide could not be any simpler, big pictures with big arrows saying do this

A-ha ha. That's incredibly niave of you to think that happy_geek. The stats speak for themselves.

I bet ppl join up, can't figure how to post, (even after reading the introduction) eventually figure out how to post. Then come back another day only to forget which forum they actually posted in.

Dani said something to me when I suggested something really insanely simple to force ppl into using code tags in the software development forums ...and then the penny dropped - web users are stupid and most can't speak english.


That's lost revenue.

Something else to take into consideration is the amount of time it takes to post. It's not just that if people find it difficult to post they'll go elsewhere. It is also if people find it takes too much time to post they'll go elsewhere.

Take the following scenerio: Someone arrives at DaniWeb as a result of a google search. They want to ask a question. For argument's sake, assume they are familiar with forum systems, and they are able to navigate their way to the new thread button. They see they have to register. They click to the registration page and fill out the registration form. Now they have to wait for a confirmation email to activate their accounts. They open their email clients, and click on the link. Now they navigate back to DaniWeb where they see they got a new welcome private message. They visit their PM inbox to view it and see a nice welcome message from Davey. Now they navigate back to the forum they were initially interested in posting in ... where was it again? Do they still remember that quick question they wanted to ask?

Now imagine if all the user wanted to do was comment on a blog entry. They might have just wanted to do a one-off quick reply, but it wouldn't have been worth the time or effort to register even if they do know how to do it.

Of course, you can see that the biggest hurdle in the registration process is the confirmation email. Unfortunately, this is a required evil. It is important to me because I don't want to waste server resources sending emails to nonexistant accounts everyday. It's important to my ISP because they want to know that all mail my server sends out is from an opt-in list.

Roughly one third of all member registrations never make it through the email confirmation stage. People are at work, they want to ask a quick work-related question, they register ... then they realize that they can't post until they've clicked a link that was emailed to them, but they don't have access to their email accounts from work. So they give up.

Then there are of course the batch who just enter something silly like test@test.com in the email space, not realizing that they can't proceed unless they enter a real email. Then they decide it's just not worth their time to go into their preferences and bother changing it.

Of DaniWeb's 151,000 members, a little over 40,000 have never activated their email accounts and therefore don't have any of the membership benefits such as the ability to post.

Each of these members received three activation emails spread over a week's time before the system gave up on them. Additionally, if any of these activation emails bounced, they received a DaniWeb PM encouraging them to provide a new, valid email address.

I guess I was really close on that one...

those people are silly then who wouldnt want to be a member of daniweb?

Most people KNOW how to register and post. They just don't want to bother doing it because it takes less time to do a google search and find what they're looking for than to register, post, and wait for a reply.

I agree 100% with Dani on this one. Forums are not the fastest way of finding an answer to question.

Even 15 minutes on Google will usually bring in tons more info on a particular topic than a forum thread will in weeks (provided it even lasts that long). In fact, Google is usually my first resource for solving my tech problems, whereas forums are my last.

However, I do have to give the credit to forums that they can usually solve your problem, assuming that you've posted in a forum that specializes enough in the topic, and you've taken the time to ask a good question.

Right now the main reason I visit forums is to socialize and have fun, which I not only do in the lounges, but also when I help people in troubleshooting forums or programming forums. Most people don't have time for this kind of thing (and usually the first thing that comes to mind when "forum" is mentioned is "help"), and besides, MSN seems to be the most popular thing for socializing over the internet these days.

I guess you missed the joke....

There are a lot of other ways, chatting (yahoo, msn, gmail) being the most prevelant.

I guess I did. Enlighten me?