lurkers

There are quite a few lurkers on HN who don't post or who have multiple accounts with varying karma.

She's not counting the loyal lurkers such as myself that have cut ourselves off completely.

Most likely the lurkers don't care, but if a majority of mods or content producers care it could be a serious issue.

It is true that the culture of OSS contributions and IRC lurkers is a very small subset of the available talent pool.

But it seems like all of the moderators and content contributors do, and if they leave, what does it matter what the lurkers think?

At the same time, there is a lot of interaction between subreddits, and reddit still has a front page that is viewed heavily by lurkers.

He is asking about the percentage of lurkers vs active users.

I would make it free for contributors, and paid for lurkers (i.e., monetize karma).

It lets lurkers see both sides of the discussion.

Another downside i see is that lurkers are a major portion of theses websites revenues, and the sites don't really want to remove content from their eyes.

HN is that conspiracy of love for many lurkers.

If we follow the 90-9-1 model: 1% of reddit's user base contributes new content, 9% interacts with that content, and 90% are lurkers and consumers.

It's true that many Reddit users are "lurkers" who simply read the site and never contribute.

That may be true as the "lurkers" main interest is to consume the information made available by voluntary work of the contributors and moderators) and they, of course, don't benefit in the short term from the blackout.

I always think of the people on the sidelines who might be lurkers, interested in engaging the community, contributing, whatever and who read those kinds of comments, thinking: "There's no room for error, those people are really aggressive".