Lurkers

[Lugia3]

I noticed we get a new member every 3 or 4 days... Most never post, shout, or have any activity at all.

Even if they were bots, they would most likely post an automated message or log in to do whatever they are programed to do, but they don't. I'm not complaining, its just strange how we have so many "dead" accounts on here that are only months old.

[Savant_Ace]

I believe there are several reasons for this:

   As the search box often shows, a lot of the users are foreign. (I myself have muddled through making an account on a Russian forum or two when either I thought it was something else, or there was only a foreign source for what I was looking for at the time, such as a Direct 3D re-render of Frontier: First Encounters). Some are just people who are looking for a copy of the game and might be mistaken in thinking that you have to register to get a download link, and I'm sure there are a select few bots that are able to make it through the registration process, but are either too new or too old to figure out the posting functions. Of course this is all speculation, but its what makes the most sense to me.

[Flashy]

Yes, I thought the same. And maybe a efw of them are just people who registered out of curiosity but forgot about it and never came back.

[CK9]

Some of the accounts are people who frequented IRC, registered for the forum, but never posted.  Some are bot accounts that DO have posts, but the posts are in the mod/admin trashcan as spam.

I've argued for the deletion of old accounts with 0 posts for a long time, but we never do it because we don't mass-email and therefore can't warn the users about the deletion.