Hi.

Since you asked, hi.

Hi.

Hi.

Hi.

edit: to add some potentially useful information, I think the biggest reason I haven't participated is that I feel uncomfortable with the existing ways of contributing (solely, as I understand it, top-level posts and comments on those posts). I know there has been discussion on LW before on potentially adding forums, chat, or other methods of conversing. Consider me a data point in favor of opening up more channels of communication. In my case I really think having a LW IRC would help.

I've just introduced myself.

What's the point of this? Surely there are more direct ways of doing a survey of how many users we have? Or are you just trying to encourage participation?

hi

I'm not sure if I count as a lurker...

I comment enough that I can top-level, but all of my comments come in relatively short spurts of activity interspaced by much longer periods of inactivity (say a day or two of activity per 1 or 2 months). Perhaps a good standard would be to go up to a randomly selected group of readers and ask if they know me by my screen name. Last time I checked this the answer was no, so I guess I'll call myself a lurker, but if anyone objects, I won't say boo.

Anyway, hi!

Hi!

I wonder how you're going to enforce your karma targets if other people are more generous (as seems to be the case already).

Hi.

Er, I have posted comments a few times, but I still consider myself a lurker... Bah.

Hello

I've only been aware of this site for about a month. While i find the articles and discussions enlightening, probability theory is still very new to me. Once i have a more intuitive grasp of its implications I plan to participate more heavily

Hi.

I have posted a few times, but I self-identify as a lurker because I only very rarely post, and feel increasingly disinclined to.

Or should that be "decreasingly inclined to"? Or are they equivalent? (See, this is why I don't post much.)

Hi. I don't often comment because generally I doubt I can really contribute much. I'm lurking, but taking notes, I've still got a lot to learn but I plan to learn it: on top of this, I need a job, so I'm also attempting to tackle that at the minute, at an admittedly inefficient pace. The most karma I ever got was for a 'Selfish-Jeans' joke. Which admittedly was brilliant. But yeah. Hi.

Hi. Too bad High Five Day went already.

Hi.

Hi.

Hi.

I'm a grad student studying social psychology, more or less in the heuristics & biases tradition. I've been loosely following the blog for maybe six months or so. The discussions are always thought provoking and frequently amusing. I hope to participate more in the near future.

Hi. This motivated me to register instead of just RSS-lurking. So that removes one barrier to potential future participation.

Hi,

i am technically not lurking as i prepare my anti-akrasia article.

Martin

Hi! I'm not anti-posting, but I never do for some reason.

Hi.

I've been lurking for a while, looks like. (My how time flies.) I'll throw my name in the pot of wanting more communication channels like IRC (looks like a room's setup, time to check it out!), especially less formal ones to ease transitioning to formal comments / top-level posts. The proportion of high-quality posts and comments around here seems awesomely high, but unfortunately makes it uncomfortable to just dive into. I also feel like I need to read all the sequences, in which admittedly I've made a pretty big hole so that there's not many posts left. (Currently going through quantum stuff, also picked up a copy of Feynman's QED.)

Hi,

I am (almost) a lurker. For some reason I find it very difficult to post anything in online discussions forums, so I usually don't.

Awe, this made my night! Welcome to all!

Hi.

I've read nearly everything on less wrong but except for a couple months last summer, I generally don't comment because a) I feel I don't have time, b) my perfectionist standards make me anxious about meeting and maintaining the high standards of discussion here and c) very often someone has either already said what I would have wanted to say or I anticipate from experience that someone will very soon.

Hi.

edit: I suspect LW has fewer lurkers than average. Speaking as a lurker, the conversations here are not easy to follow (this is more the structure rather than content, but sometimes the content gets pretty esoteric). I've limited my participation to reading top level posts of interest, and the comments if the article is sufficiently fresh.

Hi.

I often feel like I have very little to add. Hence the lurking. Also I only recently finished with most of the sequences.

Hi!

I’ve been reading LW for about a year. Most of the rationalizations that came to mind for why I haven’t yet made the transition from lurker to poster boil down to social indifference or low conscientiousness.

Reading this topic made me think about why I hadn’t posted, and the more I thought about it, the more I realised that I hadn’t thought about why I hadn’t posted. Looking more deliberately at potential foregone losses in utility to myself (and maybe the community) from my non-involvement, it seems like I should force myself to at least see if I don‘t get downvoted.

Hi.

Hi there!

I've been reading OB and LW for years and hardly said anything. This is typical of my behaviour on online communities generally, although it's worse here due to the unusual calibre of the discussions. Even this comment involved several edits and a lot of dithering, but since you asked...

Hi

Hi!

Hi.

I registered and started posting a while back, but since then have reverted to lurking. Partly due to not having time, but I can also identify with reasons some others have given.

Hi!

Hi!

I've been registered for a few months now, but only rarely have I commented.

Perhaps I'm overly averse to loss of karma? "If you've never been downvoted, you're not commenting enough."

Hi.

Hello ~

I've been reading this site for several months, but I still feel unqualified to actually post anything. I've yet to entirely read all of the sequences, and I also lack the math/science background that appears to be relatively common here (I'm an industrial design student). As a result I'm (perhaps excessively) wary of posting something that's redundant or has a glaring flaw I ought to have been aware of.

Thanks for giving an excuse to make a first post, though.

I don't count as a lurker anymore, but could I have some karma anyway?

Or maybe some USD, if that meshes with your plans.

Hi.

I'm a lurking Australian psychology student. I'm trying to devour information and acquire the skills to help me to separate the wheat from the considerable amount of chaff in my field of study. I'm so fascinated by this blog (worked through most of the sequences in the space of about two months) because to be honest it has more content than my university course.

I have been toying with the idea of posting some of the arguments I've been in recently which would be kind of a case study where I could point to where they might have gone wrong in cognition, but I kind of feel that it might be a bit pedestrian to most readers of this blog.

Hi, been reading this site since it split from OB, but have never commented, though on occasion I have been tempted.

Hi! I discovered this site via OB a few months ago and have been lurking ever since. I've commented only twice before but have been reluctant to comment more as I haven't yet read anywhere near as much of LW as I would like. I'm very interested in many of the very common topics of discussion here, such as rationality, AI, etc, and hope to be able to make a contribution to our understanding of one or more such topics in the future.

Thanks for the excuse to comment, and to the LW community at large for creating such a fascinating site.

Hi! This made me register: first barrier overcome. I don’t think I will ever contribute that much, but maybe I will add a comment now and then when I have something intelligent to say. What I have read here and on OB has contributed quite a bit to my thinking.

Hi.

Hello there.

I like the idea you're getting at, but there is a slight problem with it: you can never truly gauge the number of lurkers because some of them won't respond to this post. But I suppose you can get a better approximation, so I won't go as far to say that the whole thing is futile.

Hi. I'm a part-time lurker, part-time active participant.

Hi.

Hey ho.

Hi.

Why would Less Wrong have an abnormally high percentage of lurkers? Also, being a lurker is not in black and white. For example. I mostly just lurk, but I post comments occasionally.

Hi. I am a very occasional participant, mostly because of competing time demands, but I appreciate the work done here and check it out when I can.

Lo!

(I apparently had an account already, although I didn't remember this until I tried to comment and my usual name was taken in the registration screen.)

Hello; I enjoy reading this site, but feel kind of inadequate to actually post something when so many of the main postings here are so erudite.

I'm a lurker. I follow via the rss feed. LessWrong is in my "firehose" folder, meaning its a limbo-state. I might promote it to an actual folder or I might unsubsribe.

At least, thats until I find some more nonsensical classification scheme for my rss feeds.

Hi there. I lurk, mainly for the purpose of learning, but also because of significant time demands elsewhere.

I just read the RSS feed for a Yudkowsky fix since he left Overcoming Bias.

Hi.

I only subscribed yesterday, and I didn't even have an account before now, but I'll consider myself a lurker and post here. There probably won't be a better time to join the community anyway.

Nice to meet you guys.

Hello

Hi. I keep forgetting to log in, and mostly just watch the front-page feed in Google Reader, but I do pass interesting articles and posts along to friends and family. They generally seem to like it, so that's good. I'm interested in what you might call community outreach via my comics where I try to subtly involve issues of rationality and such. Feel free to drop by and suggest themes I should use.

Hi

Coi

Hello.

Greetings!

Hi.

Hi. Like others have said, I tend to not post because I feel I can't add anything constructive to the discussion.

I don't think there's anything wrong with that though. A good part of learning can be knowing when to be silent and listen to what others have to say.

Hey!

I'm subscribed via RSS, so I don't really see comments, but I might start lurking on the actual site.

Hello!

Hi

Been reading Less Wrong religiously for about 6 months, but still definitely in the consume, not contribute phase.

It feels like Less Wrong has pretty dramatically changed my life. I'm doing pretty well with overcoming Akrasia (or at least identifying it where I haven't yet overcome it). I'm also significantly happier all round, understanding decisions I make and most importantly exercising my ability to control these decisions. I'm doing a lot of things I would have avoided before just because I realise that my reasons for avoiding them were not rational. My boundaries are much more sensible now and getting better weekly. Still a work in progress, but I'm incredibly happy with where things are going.

So, a big thanks to everyone who contributes here. Can't thank you enough :)

Hi.

Hi. I was an occasional contributor on OB and have posted a few comments on LW. I've dropped back to lurking for about a year now. I find most of the posts stimulating -- some stimulating enough to make me want to comment -- but my recent habit of catching up in bursts means that the conversations are often several weeks old and a lot of what needs to be argued about them has already been said.

The last post that almost prompted me to comment was ata's mathematical universe / map=territory post. It forced me to think for some time about the reification of mathematical subjunctives and how similar that was to common confusions about 'couldness'. I decided I didn't have the time and energy to revive the discussion and to refine my ideas with sufficient rigor to make it worth everyone's attention.

Over the past week I've worked through my backlog of LW reading, so I've removed my "old conversation" excuse for not commenting. I'll still be mostly a lurker.

Hi. I'd never not lurked anywhere until I not-lurked here now.

Hi.

Hi. I read the RSS feed.

Delurk:

Hi

Back to lurking...

Hi, long-time lurker. Fell in love with the blog after two posts, and spent some productive hours reading the Quantum Physics sequence. I think I introduced the blog to the XKCD readership, or at least the ones who read the Science forums there.

Hi. I've been lurking on OB+LW for around two years. I took the step of making an account a few months ago. Eventually I'll post something meaningful.

kthxhi

Hi.

Delurking from the woods of deepest Wisconsin. Doug Sharp here, old school game developer (ChipWits, King of Chicago http://channelzilch.com ), just finishing a novel about kickstarting the Singularity by stealing space shuttle Enterprise ( Hel's Bet http://helsbet.com ). Debugging the Human OS has been a longtime interest of mine, so I keep an eye on Less Wrong. As an ex-5th grade teacher, I'm interested in the possibility of translating ideas emerging from LW into teaching people how to think clearly.

hi

Hi. I may have posted a comment or two, cannot remember. But I have been lurking for a long time.

Hello. Long time lurker. Well I made an account a while ago and plan on contributing once I get the material. It seems like a wall I have to get over but I don't doubt I will with time.

hi. Why do I lurk? because I only visit occasionally, only for insight, and not because I feel any great need to belong. But please keep up the good work.
Naturally "less wrong" willl have an even higher percentage of lurkers than others. After all, you challenge the biases we use when we see ourselves, the world ... and less our conscious, identified selves know about that the better. But still, we return...

I've been reading this blog for about half a year now and loving it after Accelerating Future (I think) referenced it for something. I don't post many comments because anything I'd have to contribute usually already is, but I find that if you surround (or read) more intelligent people, they have this peculiar way of making you the same. Keep going Less Wrong, a lot of us are learning all sorts of great things from you!

Hi

Hi. I've been subscribed to the RSS for a few months now.

Hi. I've been reading lesswrong since the start. I had overcomingbias.com on my RSS feeds before that became Robin Hanson's personal blog, and followed the threads onto this site.

I don't generally feel the need to comment on the posts here. My mind does come up with questions and opinions from what I read, but I've found that if I wait long enough, someone else will usually chime in with something close enough to my own thoughts that I feel my point has been made, even if not by me.

I have thought of a few things that might have made an interesting top-level post here (and with these, I haven't always found someone else pipe up with the same idea), but I never got around to writing them, and with no comment-earned karma score, I don't think I could initiate a top-level post anyway. I guess I could write them as comments in the open threads, were I more motivated to do so, but as I have other priorities, I'd prefer to just read.

I don't find any of the above particularly problematic--I quite enjoy reading this site, even without writing anything myself. But, since my "hello" cannot be redundant here, no matter how similar it might be similar to other ones: hello everyone! Here I am!

And now back to lurking.

Hi, I'm a reader from Eliezer's OB days, still lurking as I don't have much time or much to add at the moment. Hopefully this will change soon.

Yeah I'm a lurker...

Although now I have an account, I guess I have no excuse...

Hi. I lurk because I haven't had time to read enough of the sequences, and because I usually read posts well after they are published. By the time I get around to reading an post, all of my arguments and counter-arguments are already presented for me in the existing comments. That's a big part of why I liked the site in the first place.

Hi, lurker here (male, Chicago, attorney, 30). I am a regular Overcoming Bias reader who followed Eliezer to this site. To quote Buster Bluth: "You guys are so smart!" (slides off chair).

Hello.

Now can I get some Karma score please?

Thanks.

If we have a higher percentage of lurkers, then what bell curve are regular commenters on the far end of?

Hi. I'm a lurker here, working on my PhD in Computer Science at the University of Wisconsin. I've only been reading for the last few months, but I've gone through all the major sequences in the archives.

Hi.

Hello I guess.

Hello. I've been lurking here and on OB for sometime now. I started reading OB at least at the beginning of 2008, possibly in the last few months of 2007.

I lurk on almost every forum that I read on the internet. The mere fact that I'm logged out of a forum that I'm registered on can be enough to cause me to say, "screw it" and not post for months. I frequently get, "Wow I remember you" as a response to my sparse postings.

My penchant to lurk coupled with my lack of confidence that I have anything worthwhile to contribute to this community made it seem doubly unlikely that I would ever post anything here. But I'll stand up and be counted now as part of this experiment, as it's the only contribution I can really make.

Cheers, and thanks for posting all this delicious lurker chow.

Hi!

I'm a highschool student who has been reading (and lurking) lesswrong for many months now. I have always found the blog posts to be very insightful and enlightening, and I greatly enjoy reading them. I'm a young aspiring transhumanistic biologist who just can't wait to get his hands dirty debugging and retooling the human body and mind! Please, keep up the wonderful posts, and I will be sure to contribute as soon as i find that i have something really good to say.

Hi.

It's been quite a while since I posted here, so long that I initially couldn't remember my username. I rarely have much to add, and even though "I agree with this post" posts are, I think, slightly more accepted here than in some places, just agreeing doesn't by itself motivate me to say so most of the time.

Hi! Longtime RSS reader from Mountain View.

Hello. Didn't realise I had an account here, but I think one got autogenerated from a single comment I made at OB in early 2008.

To be honest I was somewhat surprised that LW turned out to be so much of a self-help support group, and I somewhat miss the time when I could go on OB and just have my mind blown so many ways every day. The work on decision theory that's being done here still has the sort of brain-everting quality that keeps me coming back for more, though, so I happily pick the promising posts from the sidebar regularly in addition to keeping up with the front page. I guess I'm addicted to the feeling of my brain being violently rewired :-(

I see a lot of karma etiquette talk here. Are there guidelines for awarding karma points?

One issue comes to mind - the popularity sort combined with the fact that many people often only read the first few comments on any blog.

Hello.

Hi.

Long time lurker here. Seattle WA. I've been following what Eliezer has had to say since 2003. Started way back on extropy-chat mailing list and reading SL4 archives, read Overcoming Bias since around 2008, and now I read here. I only lurk because I find that getting involved in discussion is too interesting, it distracts me from my projects.

Lurking from Tampere, Finland

Hey friends. I was able to join in a couple of fascinating LW/OB NYC meetup conversations; I don't comment here much but certainly read daily. Thanks for all the thoughts/insight.

Hi! I'd like to suggest two other methods of counting readers: (1) count the number of usernames which have accessed the site in the past seven days (2) put a web counter (Google Analytics?) on the main page for a week (embed it in your post?) It might be interesting to compare the numbers.

Hi

I must say that I consider myself a lurker and even though I wish I had something constructive to add to <enter discussion topic here>, I often don't.

Hi!

HI.

Better 90% lurkers than 90% useless comments :)

P.S. No OpenID login feature in here? Or It's there but I don't see it?

Reluctantly relinquishing my lurker status.

Good morning, people. I'm assuming it's morning somewhere. Adam, from Australia. A friend of mine's been talking about this site for a while now. I had an unusually misanthropic weekend, full of people committing crimes against reason and logic, so I decided to search for some rational thinking. I remembered this place, loved it when I first clicked on, and have subscribed.

Well, I don't count as a lurker anymore but I only started posting about two weeks ago and lurked about 2 years before that so I think I qualify to comment about it. The only 2 forums where I post(ed) at all are LessWrong and INTPCentral.

INTPCentral was more of an experiment to see if I could sustain posting for an extended period of time. It didn't work and after 2 weeks I lost interest. LessWrong has less chance going the same way because of the high level of most top posts. That's my first barrier to post. The online community has to be interesting enough to make me come back.

The second is a certain reluctance to comment at all. I think that has to do with my aversion to attention (although this doesn't fly when I'm with friends. Then I have no problem with it). The only reason to call attention to myself is when I can significantly add to the conversation or to correct someone. That also makes it difficult for me to comment on a top level post that already has been thoroughly analyzed in the comments. Adding a comment that doesn't add anything does look too much like yelling 'me too, me too'.

hi

Hi.

I came here following Eliezer when he left OB. I think the main reasons why I am not participating more are:

• I am an undergraduate student just starting to learn about rationality. I often struggle to understand the main posts and I am quite far from being able to contribute useful knowledge, new insights or a qualified opinion to any of the discussion here.
• But why not ask more questions? I usually consider asking questions an extremely important thing to do. The problem is, although I have pretty much read all of the current posts, I have not yet caught up with all the older material. So I think I do not have the right to ask questions and bother you with things that you might already have explained elsewhere in full detail. I feel like I should first do my part of the work before I can expect others to take the time and explain things to me.
• I am from Germany and not an English native speaker. Writing something in an environment with such high linguistic standards is additionally intimidating (I regularly come across words in LW posts that I have never seen before and have to look them up - to me a sign that my language skills are not appropriate to write here. Coming to speak of it: please excuse my bad language!)
• the karma-system clearly conveys the message that the community only wants the most qualified contributions - I simply do not feel fit to provide them.

By the way: I was a silent reader for quite a long time. Then I finally signed up a while ago to vote for a comment that I thought should get more attention. This did not work because as a newly registered user I did not have enough karma to vote and so I gave up. Apparently the community does not even consider me fit to vote, so I won't do it.

Thank you all who are contributing to this site, lurking here and knowing one is not alone is such a pleasure!

"Hi" seems inadequate. Salutations from a wanna-be prolix pedant? No?

Hi!

Greetings from Knaresborough, North Yorkshire, UK.

Hi!

Delurking from Russia here. I’ve been reading LessWrong (and, consequently, OB, since it is often linked to on here) for about 3 months. I have to confess to falling in love with this website for the mind-stretching articles and comments in the threads. However, like many other lurkers have already said, I feel I cannot contribute anything due to lack of linguistic proficiency on my part and due to the fact that someone would already post something I would want to say. I decided to de-lurk and say ‘hi’ because you created the impression of talking to each lurker (including myself) personally. I couldn’t but overcome my usual reluctance to engage in commenting.

Thank you for such an excellent source of thoughts, by the way!

Hi.

Hi. I've made a few posts here and there, but have mostly been lurking lately.

Hello everyone,

have only been reading LW for a couple of months, might start contributing in a few more.

Greetings from Munich!

Hi

I lurked til a few weeks back when I read something I really disagreed with.

I lurked until I read something I really disagreed with.

Hi!

Hi

Lurker for about a year. Made my only previous comment to this one a few months ago.

I almost never feel I have anything to contribute here. Even when I do, someone else has already expressed my thoughts in a comment more clear and thorough than anything I would have written. But this is a good thing!

Hello, I lurked for a long time. I've started dipping my toes in the water.

HI.

Hi.