Early forum members question

[TonyM]

When this forum was first started back in June '05 there were a lot of people registering with their apparent real names or aliases and they never made a single post. Where did these people come from? How do you get mass sign ups to a brand new forum, all using complete names and then no posts?

[Thierry Martin]

When this forum was first started back in June '05 there were a lot of people registering with their apparent real names or aliases and they never made a single post. Where did these people come from? How do you get mass sign ups to a brand new forum, all using complete names and then no posts?

When we launched this forum, we advertised it to the members at CramersMadMoney.com as well as to the 80,000 newsletter subscribers we had at that time. We offered incentives, like free DVDs or eBooks to encourage sign-ups. The forum, however, languished until we merged it with CramersMadMoney.com - and when we merged the two forums, we deleted all the posts and accounts by the members of the original OnlineTradersForum.com and imported all of the posts and members from the CramersMadMoney.com forum. I'm not sure what is puzzling you - we have a normal ration of new sign ups to new posters - most new registered members never post. This is pretty typical for any kind of forum.

[TonyM]

The sheer number of people that signed up with a forename and surname and also never posted is what struck me as odd. Were the members that joined in June and July '05 imported/transferred?

[Thierry Martin]

If you go through the members from oldest to newest the ratio of registered users to those that post is the same. Maybe you are confused by the number of users with first and second names - before we switched to vbulletin software for the forum we used phpbb and the sign up screen for that asked for the users first and last names - when we switched the new members were asked for their "username" so unless someone knows that the system can handle spaces and multiple names most people register with a "handle" kind of name now. If you want I can change your user name. AJLighting just changed his to AJLightning recently.

[TonyM]

Ok, that answers my question, the forename and surname was an unusual thing to see in such large numbers.

No, I'm fine with my user name as is , thanks.