Has anyone done this here? Creating fake members to help you jump start your community? Or are you against this idea? Personally, I don't see any point of creating fake accounts just to talk to yourself and build your posts count - but what does everyone think?
Sounds scammish to me..I would never do something like this.. I mean I have friends who would obviously willingly help me if I asked them.. I would hope everyone has some friends they can use instead of fake accounts. I mean think about it. Instead of having your normal friend conversations in real life, just have them on your site. This will easily boost your content after a week of doing this
I've never done this or used the fake user stats mod. I think it's best for admins to be honest with their members and guest.
I don't think there is anything wrong with it. The initial start to a community can be tough and anything to get it going is OK. We've all probably had conversations with ourselves once or twice in the past.
I don't do this. This isn't that much better than generating fake traffic by using those traffic generators. Not just that, but that takes an extreme amount of effort to have fake members, and then have to speak on each "fake" member's behalf.
I honestly don't see the point in doing something like this in a forum. If a person feels the need to talk to themselves, don't they really need a shrink? The only place I think it's acceptable would be on a chat site.
I have seen an entrepreneur do this to a Call of Duty forum called COD4Boards and it has gone to become one of the most popular COD4 forum on the internet with a massive 100,000 members community. When the site was at least 20 thousand members strong, the guy sold it to a technology/gaming network. I don't think it's right, but if you're that committed to making your bacon, you'll do it. I'm committed to making the bacon, but in today's marketplace, there are new tools available to all of us that makes this tactic useless.
There are forum owners who do this. I do not believe you should because you are misrepresenting your forum. As mentioned, it is rather pointless anyway because any conversations are fake and thus adding no real value to the forum.
Totally pointless... As your community gets bigger you will get so many fake accounts created *for* you, it's absurd (I think we are somewhere around 130,000 banned users).
I don't like having fake member counts, I rather just complete post exchanges, even if those members won't return after the exchanges are complete. They are still real members, so it doesn't mess up the stats.
It's not something I have done, or probably ever will. I have two accounts on my forum: my usual one and one I use for testing features/permissions.
Personally I'm against the idea. I once had a forum owner suggest I make alternate accounts to give the illusion of an upstart forum being active. It's better to be honest from the get go and find some people who may be interested in helping you boost activity or even start-up.
I'm against using fake members. If you don't have traffic, you don't have traffic. Spend your time adding something to your site that will bring in more people rather than spending the same time trying to trick your users into thinking there's a lot more people there. I don't like taking shortcuts and this seems like one.
I've only created fake accounts to see what logging in as a regular member looked like, since, as an admin, you get to see much more than a member does. I never posted with any of those fake accounts, though. That's a bit lame.
Oh right, good point. I do have a couple fake accounts that have various levels of permissions. I just want to be able to see what other people see occasionally.
