Dopey wrote:
I had a good nose about before I left DIF at the members stats. (yep I am that sad

)
As of last weekend:
90,029 members.
63,601 of those members have never posted. Not once.
10,403 more of them haven't ever posted more than 8 times.
3,907 members in total posted there in 2013.
They're racking up over 1,000 new members each month, yet at least 90% of them never post. Some days a third or more of these newly created posters who never post were premium members too.
My friend has a bigger forum (by general activity i.e. hits, and active membership). I have never asked him but most of the accounts there were (and still are) dummy ones too. Mostly created many years ago (from when it started until 2004/5 when it really took off) - since then it's turned a modest profit (a couple of thou a year - nothing compared to the time and effort he sinks in still - he's on 24/7 call for it

). It's done for the love of the subject, not money and - go figure! - no more recently created dummy accounts!
All these fake sock accounts on forums are just for Google etc revenue imo. Apart from on
DIF where they are also bought into play when Sean/David/etc need a new voice to back them up.
Btw my friend's forum has an unlimited PM limit per day (sending) and 5000 inbox, and the costs for that are
comparatively negligible for his server space. On DIF you get to send 10 PMs within 24 hours and an inbox limit of two hundred - and Sean tried to argue with me once (on forum) that that's where the costs were, and it was
nothing to do with trying to force people to pay for premier membership to raise those ridiculous restrictions (that I have never seen anywhere else on the tens of forums I've been a member of - going back to dial-up server days).