Being labeled a "Lurker"

[Fango]

Originally Posted by Abac123

I guess that's me done with OCC and I'll have to stop recommending it to anyone as this leaves a bitter taste in my mouth.

I do not have any original work, meaning I can do one of two things:

A. Re-upload everything I have downloaded here in order to bypass this "ban" which I'm sure will be frowned upon
or
B. Start uploading watermarked and pro images, which WILL be frowned upon.

There aren't many sites which meet ALL THREE of the following criteria:
Free
Watermark-less
Amateur
and that means I am unable to do anything but A. or B. above.

I'm not rolling in money, I sc**** by every month. I certainly don't have a whack of money lying around to "bribe" my way out of this ban.

Roses are red
Violets are blue
Banned from OCC
Youporn will do

You realize this "ban" is just a 24-hour test, right?

Fango

[delux099]

Being labelled a "lurker" isn't nice, I guess it could have been put better.

[Roverlee31]

What is this lurker stuff? I do not have any original photos to post. Why don't they just make it a pay site and then no one will post.

[Noobtarded]

Yeah its annoying but it is what it is.

[dognheat]

My personal thoughts:

I "lurked" for a year before I made my first post. It took some time for me to get comfortable with uploading photos. I was posting on a couple of different forums before this became my favorite website. Here's why I love this forum:

1. The forum treats it's material (read: women and member's comments) with respect. The atmosphere remains positive because derogatory or inflammatory comments are not tolerated. Where else can you find that on the web?

2. There's an enormous depth of high quality posts. Most everything here has been built and maintained by volunteers (moderators, contributors, viewers, and the forum's owner).

That said, consider:

3. There's a cost to host, maintain, and deliver some 4 million photo, video, and ZIP files to 750,000 members.

4. There are no pop-up ads, banners, or other revenue generating gimmicks here.

5. Other websites exist. You are not required to come here.

In close:

6. I think this is a fantastic website. I am thankful for Alex's dedication, along with the other moderators who keep the servers humming. I am thankful for the contributors (whether they've made monumental contributions, or just a half-dozen original posts).

Bottom line (as a moderator):

7. There's an on-going need balance allocation of finite resources here. Instead of an abrupt closure or change, you are witnessing a thoughtful evaluation of how to manage resources to keep this forum strong and available for years to come.

[jc666]

Originally Posted by Abac123

I guess that's me done with OCC and I'll have to stop recommending it to anyone as this leaves a bitter taste in my mouth.

I do not have any original work, meaning I can do one of two things:

A. Re-upload everything I have downloaded here in order to bypass this "ban" which I'm sure will be frowned upon
or
B. Start uploading watermarked and pro images, which WILL be frowned upon.

There aren't many sites which meet ALL THREE of the following criteria:
Free
Watermark-less
Amateur
and that means I am unable to do anything but A. or B. above.

I'm not rolling in money, I sc**** by every month. I certainly don't have a whack of money lying around to "bribe" my way out of this ban.

Roses are red
Violets are blue
Banned from OCC
Youporn will do

Abac123, as far as I can see there are two easy ways not to labeled a lurker in the first place:

01 - Click the "thanks" button when you like or have downloaded something. It's called good manners and it bugs me a little that so many people here don't bother. EG: in the ENF section you're lucky if you get 1 "thank you" for every 20-25 viewing of a picture.

02 - If you like something post an encouraging comment. All it has to say is "Nice one" or "LOL" or "Thanks for that" or can be a link to other relevant content on the board. Again it's good manners.

But as Dognheat says above, the site owners are re-evaluating how this brilliant and FREE site is run, and IMO if that means getting a little stricter with those who don't contribute then so be it.

[ilikedropkick]

Originally Posted by jc666

Abac123, as far as I can see there are two easy ways not to labeled a lurker in the first place:

01 - Click the "thanks" button when you like or have downloaded something. It's called good manners and it bugs me a little that so many people here don't bother. EG: in the ENF section you're lucky if you get 1 "thank you" for every 20-25 viewing of a picture.

02 - If you like something post an encouraging comment. All it has to say is "Nice one" or "LOL" or "Thanks for that" or can be a link to other relevant content on the board. Again it's good manners.

But as Dognheat says above, the site owners are re-evaluating how this brilliant and FREE site is run, and IMO if that means getting a little stricter with those who don't contribute then so be it.

As someone who found this forum less than a week ago, but who has been a (contributing) member of many forums over the years and Usenet before that, I have a couple thoughts.

1. "Nice one" replies often get annoying. One celebrity forum I frequent is almost unusable because of replies that simply say thanks (it has other particular features that make up for that failing). The new posts list is about 80% older posts that have been bumped. This is why the thanks button exists. It's better to reserve posting for when you have content, or a useful or thoughtful comment.

2. My impression is that it's generally considered polite to lurk for a while before posting too much. That way you avoid being disruptive. This seems especially important given this board's apparent dislike of duplication (which I about learned by lurking). I could start posting today but I have no idea what's already here.

3. The thanks button is better, but it's meaningless if people just click it everytime they see or even save a picture. I don't click thanks enough myself, but I'd like for it to mean a little more than "I looked at this post and it was nice". That's what the views counter is for.

4. I contributed at another non-nude forum for years. It and a sister site eventually instituted a credit system. On the nonude site, this led to a lot of posts for credits. I had to leave the sister site because I had nothing to post. It looks like its doing OK, but it's very quiet since it's almost impossible to break in without original material to post.

5. Obviously, a site like this is expensive to run. I don't know what you've done in the past to raise money (see point 2), but wouldn't it be possible to raise money through smaller donations? The membership is too much for my limited budget, and I'm too new to commit that kind of money. I have no doubt that many are in a similar place.

Those are my thoughts.

[jackpiker]

is it me or am i not looking in the right places .
lots of photos are copy right on the net such as flickr. pbase .

To find photos that can be down loaded and posted on this forum is very hard.
Often when you find one or two which seem to new posts . When you log on some one has posted them . Before you can post yourself .

Its a shame they lock us out .
We are all trying to find items to post.

[ilikedropkick]

Originally Posted by Dalquaz

I post almost exclusively in the ENF section, and a good chunk of what I post is original work or scans of items I've paid for. Yet the rate of thanks per view can be almost shocking.

For instance my recent post: . The picture has currently 1719 views and 42 thanks. That's only 1 in 40 people who bother to click thanks. Not that I expect everyone who opens my picture to love it and click "thanks" every time. But 1 in 40 is a poor rate. Even on a very popular post I made in the same thread with 193 thanks, one of the two photos has 4317 views. That's not even 1 in 20 for what I believe to be one of my better posts in my "career" here at OCC.

I don't mean to be sour on OCC though. Dognheat's post is excellent and enumerates many reasons why OCC is so boss. And I don't look at "thanks" as something to stoke my ego. But it's a nice way to see what posts people are really into. Strangely, there also seems to be a type of member: "chronic thankers" as I will call them. These are the members who almost never post, but seem to always be online with their finger ready to click thanks on every post, almost no matter the quality. In a way, that's not any better than not thanking, because the "thanks" loses the impact. I try to reserve my thanks for posts that obvious work went into, feature something very attractive to me, original work, a comment I agree with, etc.

What fraction would be enough?

[Sacho]

Originally Posted by ilikedropkick

What fraction would be enough?

You can click thanks all the way down the page and if you click one picture to have a better look ,, all the thanks are removed ... I bet there would be many more thanks seen if this werent the case...