Light posting

I posted a version of this to the ACT-KM list after posting up my spreadsheet.

In any month 30 - 80 people will be posting. The total pool is 236 people for the period.The majority of people are light posters. So the majority of posters slip in & out of posting on ACT-KM. The line between the "light poster" & " lurker"identities is a fluid one that people cross. Lurkers get a bad press - which I think is caused by a poor understanding of the ecology of online groups. In much the same way that a stranger is friend you haven't met yet so a lurker is a potential (or past) poster. So the lurker/light poster identity pool is potentially a valuable source of diversity in an online group.

N.B. The median number of posts per participant for this period was 3 and 27% of registered list members posted at least once during this period. So the majority of those involved do not post and those that do post lightly.

I tend to view these infrequent posters as the "long tail" of most online forums (be they email or web-based). They have a valuable role to play and they need to be given space to play it. What about the other end of the spectrum?