I lurked for about nine months before I even registered. I’d never been a longtime lurker anywhere else – if I didn’t want to jump in within a relatively short period of observation, it was because there wasn’t enough to hold my attention.
In other forums, I sometimes posted because there was an obvious (and, to my way of thinking, correct) argument or point that no one else had made. That rarely happens here! So for a long time I didn’t post because I didn’t see any reason to. I enjoyed just reading, especially the “Ask the Gay Guy” threads. Eventually I decided it would be even more fun to join in, and have been posting fairly regularly for nearly four years now!
I was a full time lurker for nearly two years before I registered. Now I mainly lurk and rarely post. And when I do post, it is so astoundingly boring that I rarely get responses.
Yeah, I lurked. I lurked mostly reading Threadspotting for … about six months. Then I joined when I felt I had something of worth. 11999 later, here I am.
I lurk quite a bit. I’m not usually very eloquent about something on which I don’t have strong feelings, and usually if it’s a subject about which I have strong feelings someone has stated my opinion better than I can. I do still post if there’s something that nobody’s adressed, though.
I lurk in GD and the Pit, but I very rarely post there. I post mostly in IMHO and MPSIMS.
First time on this site was to register and then post. Since then I’ve been doing a mixture, sometimes lurking for a while then popping up and dispensing knowledge, wit and opnions to all in sight
As you can see by by my join date and number of posts, I’ve been guilty of a fair amount of lurking. part of the time I was just AWOL, though, as there was something screwy with my login/password - I couldn’t get the board to recognise me.
I now check out the board regularly, without any intention of lurking, but I’ve always been a fairly quiet type and don’t always have anything to say. i"m still very new tthis stuff, and don’t want to come across looking like an idiot.
It really made my day when my second or third post was quoted, though; it made me feel like I did good!
I’m fairly new with the internet and I stumbled across this board, really. I lurked for weeks to familiarize myself with the rules and the tone of the board. Some folks on the message boards are just spoiling for an attack, it seems. I just don’t have the energy for that. There is enough combat and warmongering going on in the real world. I truly like this place that I have found. I would like to know why lurking is considered to be a negative thing on some boards, though. I belong to a message board for ferret owners and if you don’t post regularly, they will ask you to leave??? I don’t always have that kind of time.
I was a frequent reader of Cecil’s columns, and I think I’d maybe read “Threadspotting” once or twice, but I’d never been on a messageboard (despite having been on-line since 1995) and didn’t really understand all these strange names and so on. I didn’t really lurk so much as I knew there were SD message boards that I never read.
One night I was reading old columns and for some reason I surfed into the SDMB and saw a topic I wanted to post to, so I registered with my misspelled username and BAM, I was hooked.
I found The Straight Dope when my brother told me about Cecil. I found the SDMB a year or two later by following a link from another message board.
I lurked for a few months before joining, and then I broke with a lame GD question about the meaning of probability. It’s strange, but I think the main impediment to my becoming a registered member was the lack of a good screen name :o I still lurk more than I post. Actually, most of the posts I write go down the toilet (this one is teetering on the brink as I write!).
As I said in the “How did you get here?” thread, I lurked here pretty much daily from whenever the AOL site got pulled until August 2003. Is that a record?
I lurked because I figured I didn’t have much to contribute. I still don’t. The thing I like about the SDMB is that it doesn’t suffer fools gladly.
I am also curious to see when I registered, as I sure don’t remember. I had lost my password, and just recently found it. (Okay I did the little email request thing… so embarassing!)
-dl
I wish I had the courage to post more.
Maybe this will help?
I join things quickly, but I tend not to stick around - I belong to at least a dozen message boards, and post to only two of them (here and G’Dope). I compose interesting and witty posts in y head, and, when it comes time to actually reply, they turn out rather dull…
Welcome to the SDMB, Dalton Luceria. I guess. Sort of. Seeing as you started before I did, ‘n’ all…
I started off with a question in GQ and cruised Cafe Society and IMHO and MPSIMS. I lurked for a year in the BBQ Pit and Great Debates before sticking my neck out: those two forums are more rough and ready than the rest.
Alot of people will recognise the thread ,but once upon a time , someone went out and bought a balloon of some sort, and the hilarity began , lasting up to around 7 pages i think.
I caught that on usenet and linked in , and went from there.
Come to think about it , there should be a new thread forming soon , last years was the coolerofdoom.
Huh… trying to remember how I first found the Straight Dope. Well, one day I checked out Threadspotting, just to see what it was, and didn’t lurk very long before somebody said something I just had to reply to.
One of the great things about this board is we can vent steam in the Pit and chatter idly in MPSIMS, but lately I’ve found many interesting threads in GQ.
I registered and then lurked (under a previous name) and only posted when I had something to add that hadn’t already been said by someone else. Which is still the case. I often find that, especially in long threads, the point I wanted to make has already been made and I see no point in restating it just to get my name on the board or hike up my post count.
Also other boards I’ve belonged to have had various flame fights going on and I wanted to get the measure of the Dope and how one is expected to behave in it before I started. I guess it was a time to see if I like the Dope and if it would like me (hopefully it does, somewhat anyway!).
