Adding Fake members

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Adding fake members into the online list will help?

What if there is an plugin that will add fake users in the online list to make the forum appear busy. Well! there is an plugin for that

You select the member that you want to add to the online list, from your members list. Once added, the fake user will appear to view the forum index or read random topics. Then have a choice to remove it
 
Empire said:
Adding fake members into the online list will help?
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Will help accomplish what exactly? Do you think that will increase new registrations? I don't see how it could unless you had a huge paragraph of names showing as online at all times. Of course, people will join and see that all those people aren't posting, possibly fake and they might get turned off.
 
If those fake users are all just viewing things and not posting, it wouldn't really achieve much. You could have 100 people online, but if there isn't any extra discussion happening alongside that, then why would anyone be enticed to join?
 
Yeah, I agree with the others. It will appear at first sight that a bunch of people are active on the forum, but if they aren't posting then it is going to show through.
 
I don't like this idea. I'd rather have a few people online who are actually posting than a lot of fake members doing nothing. It looks unprofessional to me.
 
So does someone actually expect people that you deceive with cheap parlor tricks to not only join but make quality posts on a board run by a charlatan? I will tell you that you might get a community together for a time but ultimately one person is going to figure it out and expose it for everyone else to see and whatever you might have built up by these cheap parlor tricks will come tumbling down like a house of cards and your reputation will be stained by it as a result. I personally wouldn't recommend doing anything of the sort.
 
All replies so far as saying bad idea 🙂 Good to know as I also don't want to go ahead with that. Just hard for an low amount of content and members on a two year old website.

End of the day to make the website more active keep doing the old way with SEO
 
Empire said:
All replies so far as saying bad idea 🙂 Good to know as I also don't want to go ahead with that. Just hard for an low amount of content and members on a two year old website.

End of the day to make the website more active keep doing the old way with SEO
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I agree that adding fake users won't help. Also, if the members you choose to fake being "online" are real members of the forum I think that's pretty unprofessional. I would try more organic ways of gaining content to boost activity like exchanges, more promotion/advertising, and using posting services. What's the activity like on your forum currently?
 
Time to look for more resources that will help
 
I've heard of this kind of plugin before. I pretty much agree with what has been said.

I understand the idea that making sure there are at least a few people online whenever anyone visits can be persuasive but I think the impact is minimal and not worth risking your reputation for a bogus display.

When were the forums posted last usually has a bigger weight. Fake anything to give a false image of your community is a bad idea. These cheats are rarely as helpful and they destroy the trust of your members.
 
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Another alternative is to hide your online list, as well as individual forum stats.
 
Another related thing would having one member pretend to be many different members. Is it ethical?
 
I used this tactic ten years ago when I opened my first ever forum and it worked briefly but after a while stopped because I didn't feel it was very honest
 
Jason76 said:
Another related thing would having one member pretend to be many different members. Is it ethical?
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Well, I did it with two members accounts and it worked but hasn't resolved much
 
For fake members, I think might as well make an exchange deal, that way you get a genuine person.
You are going to be posting either way and posting in other forums can give you ideas while you are receiving posts back in your community.
 
I remember pulling this stunt when I was a noob to IPB. It was all about using the plugins: Makoto Fake Content Generator, plus the Traffic Generator plug in. Create 1,000+ users and use the traffic generator to display 200+ people online from member usergroups only. It was all fun and games until I remembered I was on IPS Cloud Hosted and the bill was up. Andd thats when I understood why in the description they said not to use the traffic generator on cloud hosted

Did I achieve anything? only very little for a very short time and ended up paying a lot of money. It's better to hire people here to post for you and promote than to pull that stunt.
 
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