Newest C-Brat?

[AK Angler]

So... The newest registered user is "zzasgai99123198" ?!? What kind of a name is that? I for one am suspicious of someone who doesn't even have the courtesy to come up with a user friendly name. Was it generated by new email grabbing spam software or what?

[TyBoo]

[TyBoo]

Well sir, it didn't take long for him to reveal his motives. Yep - he was a spam guy.

His email address says he is in Russia. I don't know if Bill can flatten his tires way over there, but Red Fox is pretty close, so maybe we'll sic him on the guy.

Thanks.

[Alyssa Jean]

Mike. Just a thought and maybe not very well thought through, but...there have to be many many people who have registered on this site and then faded into the sunset. Would it be of any benefit to drop any registered name that has not posted anything in the last year. Or some length of time. It's nice to think there are 800 and whatever members, but we all know that ain't so.

[TyBoo]

Yeah David, that's a tough one. We can check the frequency of each user's visits and prune the ones who have not returned after signing on. But then, maybe they're just having a bad year or something? I don't feel good about "pruning" the roster, though.

On the old MSN sites it used to be that a site's ranking on the activity list was determined by the ratio between the total number of members and the total message posts. That caused a lot of managers to prune the member list often. We didn't bother to do that on the old MSN CB site, and it was still #1 every day of every week for over a year straight. Here, none of that stuff matters, anyhow, mainly because there is not the perceived competition and also because this forum gets more message posts most days than the top MSN boating sites get in a week.

There were (are) however, 68 banned spammers on the old CB site, and I think zero on here (unless this last guy comes back). I think all the banned members over there were the nasty folks, who have a rightful place in the world, I guess, but not where my youngsters are often going. Not much risqué stuff in this Pub, though.

Probably the biggest and most harmless pruning can be done for the duplicate users. A lot of folks have signed on and either forgotten their password or wanted to change their username, so then signed on again with a different but very similar username. That is no big deal, but we really appreciate when we hear via PM that they wish to remove the duplicated username. There are as many as a dozen of those on the list, most of whom have posted under one name and not under the other.

Anyone can look at the memberlist and sort by total posts, and then find how many have posted at least one message. The really amazing thing about this place is that it is always in the 40% to 50% range of participation. That is phenomenal for a public forum with the popularity of this one (at least in my mind, having only the MSN sites to compare to).

As for dropping legit users who have never posted, my C-Brat mentality will not allow me to do it. Those folks joined for a reason, and that reason could very well be as good as the one I joined for. Maybe they are just a little more bashful than me. (Like PatA - he's still a few hundred posts from the pinnacle).

And what about Chivita Dave? He was absent for a long time, and now we find it was because he was busy moving his family to Alaska where he got a job managing a new hotel with its own private marina up on some big famous body of water up there. I would be more likely to ban his butt out of jealousy than for so long a period of nonparticipation.

I can say this, though. The number of page hits this place gets compared to the number of registered users is amazingly high. I think the registered users create a small fraction of the actual site traffic. They can't be doing a big portion of it, because there aren't enough fingers on the memberlist to click that many mouses!

[AK Angler]

[TyBoo]

If you are closer to Russia than RF is, then you can be the agent. Your mission, Rod, should you choose to accept.........

Quick. Right now. Weather report in Wasilla. Here in NW Oregon it is clear, calm and 35º (and that would be above zero).

[AK Angler]

Actually, I'm in Anchorage right now doing homework at the university. But here it's 28 and clear... I think. At least it was before it got so dark I couldn't see up...

That quick enough?

[Physalia]

Tyboo -

I want to thank you for not pruning guys like me off the members list. I know I don't contribute much to the conversations. However; I check in almost every evening and I am learning a heck-of-a-lot about the boat that I have dreamed of owning for at least 15 years. Next year is going to be the one!! Have to get mamma's new kitchen built first [We tore out her old one a year ago and she is beginning to get testy!!

Anyway, I really enjoy the site and hope to meet some of you on the water next year -

Gary

[Physalia]

Tyboo -

I want to thank you for not pruning guys like me off the members list. I know I don't contribute much to the conversations. However; I check in almost every evening and I am learning a heck-of-a-lot about the boat that I have dreamed of owning for at least 15 years. Next year is going to be the one!! Have to get mamma's new kitchen built first [We tore out her old one a year ago and she is beginning to get testy!!

Anyway, I really enjoy the site and hope to meet some of you on the water next year -

Gary

[Alyssa Jean]

All good points Mike. It was just a passing thought not brought on by anything other than curiosity of some of the background stuff that goes on in a forum like this.