Suggestion: Keeping SC Members only --no guests or 'lurkers'

[Momof3girlies]

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[bargain_hunter_lola]

I believe this has been brought up before, many times.

It's my understand that Boo wants the forum to remain open to all viewers.

I'm guessing it's because it's boosts views (and also advertising revenue). It was also said that it increases membership because people generally don't want to sign up to a forum that they don't know what's on it.

I do agree with you though, it would be nice if we could somehow have open forums but also private members only sections.

[Momof3girlies]

I'm talking about 'lockdown' as in members only, get rid of the 'guests' period. Become a member and see what all the perks are. why have a membership here if you can just be a guest and lurk at all the goodies SC has to offer. Deals and such should only shared with the members. I think we would interact more with each other without the 'peeping toms'. just my two-cents.

[Momof3girlies]

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[Natalka]

Momof3 - it's been explained to me that the vast majority of that number are bots, not real people lurking.

[Momof3girlies]

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[GoJays]

Years... I've been saying this for years. It'll never happen though

[Momof3girlies]

Really this needs to change. Bots or not, why do you need bots in here ? SC should be members only--you can still go invisible if you wish, but at least you're a registered member not showing online. keeps those whom are really truly banned from SC from lurking on as a guest. If you're a registered member you should feel comfortable enough to post more often, share with the registered community not sharing with the public eye. my idea is public can register to become a member of our community.

[momi]

Lol....
I am visiting this site almost from the last 6 years,may be more then that and I use to visit it every other day but I joined 2 years ago.

[momi]

As Of now 100 member and 1499 guests online

[FallenPixels]

The bot guests are google, yahoo etc, they send "crawlers" searching the internet all the time for new pages that they add to the search engine. These links help people find SC (and so join SC)
A large number of SCers are also invisible and show as guests even though they are logged in

As mentioned, the lurkers also help generate the advertising views that help pay for SC to remain online.

Boo has been asked numerous times over the many years I have been a member and has always been against having SC locked to outsiders. Given the other deals forums are open, many people will not sign up and simply go elsewhere. Why sign up to something they cannot even check out first?

[Momof3girlies]

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[Boo Radley]

Most of the lurkers are actually people not bots. Bots count for about 20 to 30 of the 1000 to 2000 guests/lurkers. These are Canadians who are also using deals and coupons to save money for their family. SmartCanucks forum has been open to public since its inception and very lightly moderated (with a few key exceptions) because in essence our ultimate goal is to share the deals with as many people as possible. I remember especially during the 2008'ish recession I got many heart-warming emails and messages from people who told me how much SmartCanucks had helped make their family's life easier, raised their standard of living and helped them afford to buy more things for their children despite one or both family members losing their job or getting a drop in their salaries. During that period I was dealing with many problems, drama, legal issues and financial issues on SmartCanucks and if it wasn't for these messages I don't think I would've continued working on the site and would've shut it down.

Money wise, the forum is actually one of these sections that costs a ton of money to run because of the size of the database and amount of servers required and makes about the same in revenue as expenses because many people zone the ads out and never click on them. If I close it off from the public the expenses will remain almost as high but the revenue will drop which wouldn't be a smart decision.

I do however agree that something needs to be done to reward members and people posting and adding deals versus lurkers. I may have an idea... Instead of closing the forum to the public let's keep it open and use the rough difference in revenue from ads to have a rewards program for contributors where they get gift cards etc. for sharing deals with us. I tried doing something similar about seven years ago and it wasn't well run because I was in school and had less experience in general. If we were to do it again it would be much more professional and much better organized and run. I'll do some digging into this and see what I can do but what do you guys think of all this and the overall idea?

[bargain_hunter_lola]

@ Boo Radley

I love that idea! Benefits everyone

As always if there's anything I can do to help SC please don't hesitate to ask.

Thanks for all your hard work and for making SC such a great community.


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[bluerose]

Read this as a guest and signed in to say Thank-you.