Do you create "alt" or fake member accounts on your own site?

[Ghost]

Hello everyone,

I recently joined the blogging team and am considering writing an article about the pros and cons of creating alternate or fake member accounts on your own forum or blog. Many people have done this in the past to inflate the member/post counts & make their site look a bit more active. From simple comments to full on conversations with themselves, webmasters around the globe have considered this to be an effective way to draw in new members.

I personally do not like this practice as I think it's extremely misleading, but also difficult for an administrator to maintain. If they go on vacation or their internet goes down, all of a sudden a number of members stop posting. That can be an obvious hint by the way - if a group of members all post within the same few hours on a new forum or blog, it may be because the admin is managing all of those accounts.

So, I would like to hear your thoughts on this for my upcoming article. I also would love to get some good poll results. Don't worry, the votes will remain anonymous!

 

[Elli]

I can see the benefit of this, but wouldn't it be obvious that those accounts are the same person? People have a "voice" that they use in their writing, and if that same voice is used throughout the forum under different usernames, an observant visitor would likely pick up on that. Would an admin want to try to change their voice, or just hope no one notices?

 

[dojo]

Well, the problem is that NOBODY likes an empty forum. So, when you just start out, chances are it's pretty difficult to get those first members to help you with the growth. Another issue: you have not content, so the chances to get indexed by the search engines and actually get that initial traffic are also small.

I have done it in the past and recommend doing so. Creating few members at first and doing some paid posting gives a brand new community that initial boost it needs. This way you can start some interesting threads, provide some content and get others interested.

As long as it's not done in bad taste or used just to brag about how active your forum is, such strategies allow a new community to start attracting people who are genuinely interested in it.

 

[Cam]

I wouldn't say I'm against this necessarily, but try and not to make it obvious if you choose to take this route. A few years ago, I sold a webmaster forum to someone on Flippa, and the new owner set up all kinds of fake members when he took over the forum. Literally, he was probably posting from 15-20 different accounts at once. @John can testify to that.

Personally, I think it makes a lot more sense to just go with paid posting. I know no one wants to go around throwing money just for basic forum content, but when you can get 5-10 posts for $1, it makes a lot more sense to do that, instead of wasting your time creating 10 posts on a fake account that you have set up.

 

[dojo]

Well, it's actually pretty time consuming to do your own posting. I never tried from this many accounts, it's crazy tedious 😀

 

[Deleted member 29780]

As you said I think it’s misleading and would never want to mislead my communities members.

I’d advise taking the time you’d use managing fake accounts and apply it to marketing and getting members to join.

 

[John]

I wouldn't say I'm against this necessarily, but try and not to make it obvious if you choose to take this route. A few years ago, I sold a webmaster forum to someone on Flippa, and the new owner set up all kinds of fake members when he took over the forum. Literally, he was probably posting from 15-20 different accounts at once. @John can testify to that.

Personally, I think it makes a lot more sense to just go with paid posting. I know no one wants to go around throwing money just for basic forum content, but when you can get 5-10 posts for $1, it makes a lot more sense to do that, instead of wasting your time creating 10 posts on a fake account that you have set up.

I remember those days. 😛

If you're broke and 12 years old it's a good idea. If you have $5 going through that much trouble to spam the hell out of your forum is just a waste of your time.

 

[Page]

It kinda works both ways, But both have impacts and what ever path you take comes down to the site owner. With anything positive and negative. As for any site's even those that just started that it's not easy to build and keep it going, Creating fake accounts and making allot of good content to get the site off the ground is one way of going about it. You have five or more accounts with unless amount of content that's getting posted on social media though RSS feed and let the traffic come on. That's an fast option. But also allot of posting around and logging in and out to the point that you gotta keep the line going. Good for starting but very bad impacted for the future ahead. As site goes and time goes on then members will find out soon enough and once you have staff on they can check the IP. So it can but an very bad mark down the road to the point that it be an wast of time as the site might crash down and be not active.

Or take a long advantage around the world, Impact that I can think of that it will make the site look if it's nothing there and quiet but as time goes on and you get content it will start to build slowly. Longer to build but as for the future it be stable and worth the results.

ALT - Very Very slow start and willing to take allot of time to build. But in the long runs it does but positive on he site
fake accounts- Can't wait lets get it going, Good amount of traffic and it's getting so much new members YEAHHH.. But in the long runs bad impact.

 

[Bluezone777]

Nobody likes being lied to either and if you get caught, it will blow up in your face provided there is someone there to be upset with you in the first place. It's telling that someone doing this goes out of their way to conceal that the other people are just him under different names because even they know no one likes being deceived about anything. I never used fake accounts as I always knew a group of people who I could invite over during the two times I ran a forum which I admit was a long time ago now so not sure how things have changed since then. If I didn't know anyone who could join up in the beginning then I wouldn't have gone through with making a forum as I knew it wouldn't work out if I did. I guess you could pay people to post in place of that but they won't stick around once the money dries up and aren't likely to build connections with people not being paid to be there which is how a community gets started in the first place.

 

[Ravenfreak]

I don't get the point of having alternate accounts for your site, unless the other one was to test permissions. There's no other reason to have another account, and if someone does it to look like they have more members that's even worse, it's similar to lying.

 

[Shannon Apple]

No. I know for a fact that the users on our site are smarter than that. I have a test account with 0 posts for testing permissions. And a report bot account for alter-ego detection. Some of the members have been around the community since 2002. I've been part of it myself since 2006. I can tell you, they would likely spot my posting style right away and the posting style of any other member of staff. I wouldn't do it anyway, kinda feels like a BS move.

Ever permanently ban an account and then just know that it's the same guy back under a different handle? I have. If they behave, I've been known to let it slide, pretend not to notice and see if they've changed their ways. It'd be just like that. Spidey-senses. LMAO!

Like, years ago, I was a mod on a different community, maybe around 2004. There were these two Irish guys who were very close friends. The forum was relatively small, so everyone knew everyone. One day, one of them came onto the forum in a really bad way. His young friend had a heart attack and died, apparently, he had a heart condition that he never mentioned. Everyone was incredibly sad because they'd come to know this guy and in their own way thought of him as family. Fast forward 6 months, the guy makes a post from the dead guy's account, deletes it, and posts from his own account. As you can imagine, the community felt betrayed. He got a 6 month ban, the amount of time that he let the community think they had lost someone. Sure, the guy never existed in the first place, so we didn't lose a friend, but that level of deception was never fully forgiven.

 

[Elli]

@Shannon Apple That's messed up. I would feel so upset if I had mourned someone only to find out that they never existed. Ugh... This didn't even happen to me and I'm upset. What happened to that guy afterward? Did he stick around, or leave?

 

[Shannon Apple]

@Shannon Apple That's messed up. I would feel so upset if I had mourned someone only to find out that they never existed. Ugh... This didn't even happen to me and I'm upset. What happened to that guy afterward? Did he stick around, or leave?

He returned after his six-month ban. To be quite honest, he was probably a few biscuits short of a packet.

 

[apaynter]

I can understand why people would do this but I would not as I do not think it is the right way to create a community.

 

[Ash]

I'm not going to lie, I did this a bit when I was younger and didn't have as much experience with sites. The idea is to try and encourage discussions and make the place look a bit more active to get new members. If every thread just has 1 post, people are less likely to join.

 

[Page]

If every thread just has 1 post, people are less likely to join.

Hmmm, Even then if you lucky to get that.