On your forum, have you ever made fake members just to get more activity on your site?
I used to do thatwith my previous forums, but am trying to control myself. I'm finding that I enjoy multiple personalities too much for comfort. -lol-
So anyone else done this?
I have before but it has no permissions but banning ips/e-mails/other.
I mostly use it for to see who is leeching the forum when i am not online on the Admin account but online on the other account. I think all forums should do it, it is a good idea to find out who is spamming instead of a moderator deleting it and not telling you.
I have done it for plent more reasons to.
Yeah it's very important , especially if you have a new forum you need someone to boost it . when i made my forum - i posted like 100 posts using a fake member -😉- and it worked
I can say that I have never done this with any of the forums that i have owned. I don't think that it's necessary. You should advertise, and let the people you have close contact with about the site, and I think that's the best way start a forum.
I have. But it don't work as far as drawing in new members. Some forum software such as IPB you cannot use the same e-mail address for every fake member you create which makes it difficult to do on an IPB board. Its used a lot to up the member count to attract "live posters" which as I said is not often effective in many cases.
In my opinion creating fake members is a great way to create an interesting and (apparently) active community. Because nobody will join an empty forum laying the foundations of your forum can be the hardest part - especially if you've got no "online friends" to help you. By creating fake account(s) you can give guests the impression your community is active, as well as being able to guide the discussions just as you want them. The advantage of this is that members will catch on to what kind of community you've tried building, and logic would suggest they follow suit, leaving you with the perfect community.
But...it's not actually likely to happen that way. Sometimes it can be a pain logging in / out all of the time between different accounts. Additionally, members can get suspicious if they see the same spelling / grammar mistakes in every post, guests might catch on that the posting sequence is the same for every topic. And finally, once you stop using the fake accounts then your instantly 3/4 active members down than you appear to be.
At the end of the day, I think it's good if you're looking to build a solid foundation but have no help. It's not perfect, and it can become very frustrating - very quickly, but some of the biggest communities with 300,000+ posts are known to be started with duplicate accounts.
I'd be interested to hear other people's experiences ~smile~
I've never made fake members to draw in activity..or for anything at that matter.
I find it to be low,if you can't draw in real members..then you should just rethink your board or do something to it to make it more appealing to make people want to join.
I have made a fake member for my forum, but it had nothing to do with forum activity. I usually used him to talk to members without having thee title 'admin'...I guess so some users aren't so afraid of getting in trouble lol. I don't use him as much now.
I have an account to test out member permissions, find out how bans work and other stuff. It's not really imaginative, just ''Test Member'' as the name 🙂
