Lurking and lurking

[norwich36]

::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]



1. _______I define myself as a lurker and I am taking this poll.
2. I feel a sense of connection to the people I read on livejournal, even though I seldom/never comment:
______Yes
______No
______Sometimes

3. I lurk because:
_____I am shy
_____ I don't have time to actively participate
______I feel that I don't have anything to add to the conversation
______I prefer to stay in the background
______Other

4. Elaborate on "other":

5. I have been lurking for:
____under three months
____3-6 monts
____6 months-1 year
____over one year
____over two years

6. Will I ever delurk?
___No, I'm happy remaining a lurker
___Maybe, if I work up the courage
___Yes, when I have something to add to the discussion
___Yes, when I have more time

(Cut and paste into the comment box; put "X" on the appropriate line). Or feel free to just write answers in the comments).



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!

Comments

[norwich36.livejournal.com]

At this work retreat I was just on, they did these teambuilding exercises. A lot of them were the kind of thing that make me insane, but one of the actually helpful ones had us talking about aspects of our personality that we loved and aspects we would get rid of if we could. And at the top of the "get rid of" list, for me, was perfectionism, because I have found it to be practically crippling in my own life. There are so many things I haven't experienced because I let the fear of not doing it right stop me from trying. So I completely understand about perfectionism stopping people from getting more involved.

But of course, if you play it safe, you may learn a lot about the people you read, but they don't learn about you, so you miss out on actual friendships. (One thing that helped me a lot was to send people private email to talk about things when I was feeling too shy to post on lj).

But the feeling intimidated by other folks being smarter--sure, there will always be people who are better writers or better artists or better essayists or whatever, but you probably have more skills than you know, and you only develop them if you try! (And lots of the best writers in fandom posted really scarily bad stuff back in the day, so everybody has room for improvement).