Lurking and lurking

::Waving at everyone:: I've been travelling a lot, if you've wondered where I've been lately. And today is my last day to play on lj for a while, since I'm going on a work-related wilderness retreat tomorrow, with no net access for several days (*sob*).

But while I'm still here, I wanted to do a poll. I just read this entry on metafandom, discussing a Guardian essay which suggests that "of 100 people online in a given community, only one will produce content. Ten will comment on it, and the other 89 will simply view it." cofax7 tends to disagree with this statistic, at least in reference to lj, but I'm not so sure.

As you know, I lurked for years myself, so I'm more inclined to think there are quite a few people out there who are reading along (and maybe feeling connected to fandom) who talk little or not at all on lj. In fact, I imagine there are lots of lurkers reading out there who don't even have lj accounts. Ok, maybe they're not reading my exciting journal--clearly their loss-- but they're probably reading journals of their favorite authors.

SO here's a poll just for lurkers! Lurkers--that is, people who almost never or never comment or post entries on lj-- come take my poll! If you don't have an lj account, feel free to answer the poll questions anonymously in my comments; behind the cut I'll put a cut-and-pasteable version of the poll. And if you want to delurk long enough to explain why you lurk, feel free to do so in the comments.


[Poll #782913]

( The poll for people without livejournal accounts )

And all you non-lurkers out there: did you ever lurk? Here I'm talking about more than hanging out for a couple weeks getting the lay of the land--let's say to call yourself a former lurker you had to have lurked for at least 6 months. If so, why? And what made you delurk? Since you're all claiming to no longer be lurkers, I'm going to make you actual comment to respond to this, rather than giving you ticky boxes!