Something odd about LAD.

[Tallen]

On the Administrators page, where I can change and monitor the forums, it keeps track of people on line. I find when I am on this page that often there are "guests" looking at LAD. They are reading the forums but are not "members" of LAD. They will often out-number the members. These folks have been logged on and have reached as many as 158 people reading what is being posted here. 158 people all on at one time. Right now as I am writing this there is two members, Maestroh and myself, and 3 "guests" reading the forums. Last night when I was working on the forums, there was three members and 13 quests. While tking and travelah were posting, 13 other people were logged on reading what was being posted.

I don't want to read too much into this, but it makes me wonder, are we with our conversations teaching many without realizing it? If we are, this is a very hopeful and encouraging development. :pray:

I think all the members can monitor this at the bottom of the Main Page there is a list of who is on line with the number and names of members and the number of guests. I have no idea who these folks are, but thank you for coming here and reading LAD.

[Yodas_Prodigy]

I know that during the day, I will take a quick gander over to read and not log in. So, I am one of the guests at times. That certainly doesn't explain them all. I would think that a few other members do the same thing. Still, you do have the "Guest" lurkers who are not members.

[Tallen]

I know that during the day, I will take a quick gander over to read and not log in. So, I am one of the guests at times. That certainly doesn't explain them all. I would think that a few other members do the same thing. Still, you do have the "Guest" lurkers who are not members.

Yeah, I have considered that as well. Also I am aware of other forums that check us out from time to time. It can either be the leadership or the membership depending on the forum. I know that the day we hit 158 online, I had been to a Roman Catholic forum where I said a few things and then linked to the LAD articles. And secondly I had been to the web-site of Jelsoft, the folks that write the forums software, and posted a link to the site. They encourage people to link to their site so that others can see the uses of the software and get ideas for their own forums. Also, I am aware via email that a certain website will check out other "competing" websites to see what is being said about them.

It is easy to advertise on other boards that you can go to, there are literally thousands of them, to boost membership on your own board. Also, there are some "tricks" to get your website to appear when people do searches on the Internet. I haven't resorted to that, as I don't really want to be competition for people already doing certain tasks. I would rather link to them and let them continue what they are called to do. Instead, with LAD, I hope to have around a hundred or so that will use the site and find it a means to teach and place useful information on, so that the Gospel message is in a useful format. For instance Joe, lets say you have written a particular post on another site several times, or spent a lot of time and energy on a particular teaching. It would be nice to have it here on LAD so other members can use it, and take your work to other places and forums without having to do that work over and over, again and again. I can't tell you the number of times I have written a post, spent several hours researching and thinking of how to write it, then posted it, and later wished I had taken the time to save it so I could use the information without hunting through literally thousands of posts for it so I could use it again.

And really if you think about it, some of our conversations are filled with "golden nuggets" of wisdom. If we could go back and find them when we need them, it would be a great thing. And how many times I have wished that I could get an opinion on something and keep it later for reference. Really, if you think about it, if we could formulate arguments without straw-men, ad hominem, and other fallacies, we could be much more effective in our witness.

But you know YP, I am encouraged that we have lurkers and that our conversations are being considered, even if some of the guests are already members not logged in, we still find ourselves being observed. It should make us more aware of what we say.

[Holy Baloney]

Somethimes i have my computer on and leave it on lad, but i don't sign in. it may be that way all day cause i was heer and then went to do something else. i told a couple of friends to try it here maybe it was one of them to.