Should Forum Administrators Use Multiple Accounts to Boost Activity?

[Lord Saru]

I think forum owners, because of the time and effort they put in, as long as its legal and within the bounds of rules, nothing is against the steps taken by him/her to boost activity and that involves creating second or third accounts too 😀

 

[Baw$e]

I never done it myself. I see how it could sort of help, but I rather not inflate stats with fake members. It'd also be more work to maintain those fake accounts.

 

[jweb]

Reddit actually used this method to grow their community in its early days and yet, they’re still doing well today.

How Reddit Got Huge: Tons of Fake Accounts

According to Reddit cofounder Steve Huffman, in the early days the Reddit crew just faked it ‘til they made it.

www.vice.com

But early on, Huffman said that using fake accounts driven by the founders was key to building the tone they wanted to the site. Basically, by populating the site with accounts whose strings they pulled, the Reddit crew could shape the discourse and sharing of the site in the direction they wanted, and as the real user base grew, those standards held, allowing the fake accounts to fade away.

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I was just thinking this when I came across this thread.

I never done it myself. I see how it could sort of help, but I rather not inflate stats with fake members. It'd also be more work to maintain those fake accounts.

One of the very first forums I started, I did this, and it became a juggling act with me fumbling a few times (posting under the wrong accounts )

I'll just stick to the one account.

 

[Felly]

Not something I'd do. Sites I've created in the past have had "one account per person" rules, and I believe the rules are for all, myself included. If my members can't have multiple accounts, why should I? Most I'd be okay with is having a second account that only has member permissions if I'm trying to test something in the early days of the forum to make sure everything's running smoothly, but I wouldn't be using it to make many posts, if any at all. Eventually, the account would become unnecessary since I'd ideally have a member base that could point out those issues for me to fix if they became apparent, and I'd just let it become inactive completely. Not to mention I'd have to maintain it, and it's enough work being a forum owner as it is.

I'd rather have bots that can automatically post things from news sites or rely on post exchanges to help generate posts and activity than to try and do it all myself.

 

[Naza]

I think forum owners, because of the time and effort they put in, as long as it is legal and within the bounds of rules, nothing is against the steps taken by him/her to boost activity and that involves creating second or third accounts too 😀

Exactly! The key goal should be to keep increasing the activities on a forum as long as the law doesn't forbid it. It is also necessary that they work on being creative while at it.

 

[1stop]

Yes, I think it's allowed. Nothing wrong in having multiple accounts to boost our forum's activities.