Mostly every time I visit this forum there are people logged in! Even more than one person. But most of them never post something..
I wonder what they are doing instead...

Im using a very useful feature of my web browser called "tabs", so i can stay logged forever if i want while browsing other sites. Oh, and did you know that you have to be logged to download a file ? That's why i signed in in the first place.

Hmm yeah...
but you at least post something..

Dude, you don't have to post something every time you visit. I'm quite possibly the most frequent poster here. I check up several times a day, and most times I don't post anything. I post when I have something to offer, but that isn't always the case. Often times, I just learn something new or don't have any answers.

Also, a lot of new users tend to lurk for a while. I lurked for several months before I ever posted anything.

I encourage people to contribute as often as they can, but if you're new to Pd, you're more likely to be looking to learn than you are to try and educate. It takes a while to get to that point.

My main reason for registering at all was to get all the nice patches in the attachments

i can't see any way to allow guests to download patches, so yeah... you need to log in to do that.

However, on a more serious note, could all the stalkers please make themselves known, so we can give you a firm talking to.

It is doable, and I vaguely remember coming across the setting for it. The output~ section allows guests to download. I seem to remember that Obiwannabe set it that way to test and see if it would be a problem before opening up the forum for guests to download attachments (a number of list users complained that they only browse here so often and kept forgetting their passwords). This was, like, two years ago, I think.

So we could open it up. I personally don't care either way. Thoughts?

Ok, i found it. (it's part of the attachment mod)

I have opened up downloads to guests as well now, on all areas of the forum.

Obviously if we see a bombardment of spams with attachments or something, i'll have to turn it off again, but i can't really see any technical problem with allowing guests to download patches.

One issue though, is that if people grab patches without being logged in, it's feasible that they are less likely to come back and say 'thank you'. But when i think that through, it's also possible that by allowing guests to download, it maybe opens up a 'trial period' for potential future users, a percentage of whom may in fact end up registering.

Indeed, when the logging-in is only used to track downloads it's a bit pointless i guess, unless someone wants to do some serious business intelligence on that data of course .

I'm under the impression that people who want to try out pd are usually rather nice persons and will show their gratitude at the appropriate moments anyway...

I don't really care much that I had to register. Now I'm getting more and more into PD and will ultimately probably post some patches or comments too, or long for sharing thoughts and tossing ideas around.

@domien said:

...,unless someone wants to do some serious business intelligence on that data of course .

This is not facebook...
(for backgrounds just google eg. "datr cookie")

Oh well, i'm not using facebook, so no evil tracking cookies for me there... But then there are the google analytics cookies for this forum (__umtz) , so someone might be doing business intelligence on our pd behaviour after all

Oh well, i'm not using facebook, so no evil tracking cookies for me there...

The funny thing is that you even get this cookie if you visit the facebook-frontpage without ever having been registered...

But then there are the google analytics cookies for this forum (__umtz) , so someone might be doing business intelligence on our pd behaviour after all

Uh I didn't know that google-stuff at all.. It seems to be best to delete the cookies every now and then..

Hello, I'm one of the lurkers. I've been checking the forum daily for several months now while I've been learning Pd.

I was going to wait to post until I either had an unsolvable issue or helpful knowledge/experience.

I couldn't help but jump into this conversation (since it took a turn toward web cookies), to share these links with you all:

http://duckduckgo.com/?t=
-This is a great, no tracking, no-search-saving search engine that I've started using for all my searching, and this:

http://www.ghostery.com/

I've been using to monitor and block the tracking scripts from Google Analytics, DoubleClick, ClickTale, etc.

Will i come on often not for the downloads i would not call my self a stalkers to say .I am working on my own stuff that not done. If i have questions or problems i check the forms for the solution and if i don't find it i ask for help here or on the irc (for the kind of small ones and sometimes i come when no one is there ) there is alot of old post that i read up on also that's great i find some usefully things for my work but its not like a whole patch there is alot of things that i want to do my self i do post my patches up when it's done I have ideas in my head that i have not learned how to do and still thinking of alot of ideas. I want to do amazing stuff with Dsp that has not been done but not only with pd.

@Piggy Just Martians checking whether we have figured "it" out yet......

I like the "shy dog" effect when the icon appears for someone writing a response but then just disappears without anything being posted.