Question? Do you always login when you visit.

[Richy]

I've been watching the numbers of people on this board for the last few days and have noticed that the number of guests is almost invariably outnumbering the number of members logged in at any one time. The question I have is, Is the high number of guests due to members just reading the board but can't be bothered to login. Are there a significant number of people who read this board who aren't members for one reason or another. Is the number of guests indicative of the other problems that this board has at the moment. To give an example of what I'm saying, writing this there are at the moment 5 members logged in and 13 guests. A couple of hours ago, I noticed only 2 members and 15 guests. I've deliberately put the poll in this topic group so guests can actually participate.

[jo]

While most of the Guests will be real people, at least some of the Guests will be search engine spiders from Google, Yahoo, MSN, etc, indexing the site, whilst others will be malicious bots that are harvesting email addresses from member profiles to send them spam later.

[chris100575]

The majority of the time I do log in because usually I'll want to post something while I'm here, but if I'm just having a quick look I don't. Chris

[Danielinheels]

Well, looking at the ratio of responses to views for most threads, you can tell that there are PLENTY of people who just look around here, but don't post - either they are members and didn't have anything substantive to add, fans of the site who just read, or as was suggested, email address harvesters. This is especially common in picture-heavy threads. btw I voted for the second option of six.

[Dawn HH]

I stay loged in constantly. If for some reason I find that I have been loged out, I immediately log back in. I also have things set so that I don't have to retype my name and password in each time. Cheers--- Dawn HH

[Shafted]

I always logon from my home machine, but when I'm at work and want to pop in, I don't due to company policy.