Quote:
Originally Posted by Flamin' Francesca
But I LIKE lurking. I'm just not very extroverted, and I think in the long run, it is counterproductive to force people to post just to have access to things like the exchanges. It's not very encouraging and probably not the best way to draw people out. I'm sure most lurkers will go back to their "evil" ways as soon as they have the required ten posts. I would plead for allowing people access to anything truly glass-related like the exchanges and keeping the political and other areas open only to the people who have posted ten or more times. How about it, oh Torchbug gods?
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Francesca, the purpose of having it set to only allow people with 10 or more posts to participate in the exchanges is for the protection of the members. The same goes for the Flea-Market area. In the past, not on this forum but others, people have been ripped off because they trusted people they didn't really know. We encourage posting so that we can get to know you, not because we want to force people to post just to get more posts on the forum.
My feeling is, if you don't want to post and get to know everyone, why would you care whether you have access to the exchanges or not? You have to post to join the exchange anyway and I like knowing and talking to all the people I get a bead or whatever from. It makes it that much more special to me.
As for the Campfire and other personal areas, we have those set up to 10 or more posts because we had some people being stalked, and some lurkers here who would read things and then twist them around to mean something else and post them elsewhere.
I'm an extremely introverted person. Very shy in real life. And when I first discovered the internet and chat... many many moons ago, I was overly sensitive and afraid to post much of anything. I didn't want anyone mad at me and it really upset me if they did get mad. I got over that real quick. You just have to. And once I did get over it, I enjoyed myself much more than I did when I cared what online people thought of me.
Don't get me wrong, I still would like people to know I'm a decent, nice person. But these days, if I have an opinion, I'm no longer afraid to share it.
So really, we're just trying to get people to overcome their shyness and get to know us and allow us to get to now them, while at the same time, trying to protect our members from people who would try to scam and/or take advantage or hurt them.