lurker

In Internet culture, a lurker is a person who reads discussions on a message board, newsgroup, chatroom, file sharing or other interactive system, but rarely or never participates actively. Research indicates that "lurkers make up over 90% of online groups" (Nonnecke & Preece 2000). Lack of trust represents one of the reasons explaining lurking behavior (Ridings, Gefen & Arinze 2006).

History

The term dates back to the mid-1980s. Bulletin board systems (BBS) were often accessed by a single phone line (frequently in someone's home), there was an expectation that all who used a bulletin board would contribute to its content by uploading files and posting comments. Lurkers were viewed negatively, and might be barred from access by the sysop, if they did not contribute anything but kept the phone line tied up for extended periods.

By contrast, many modern Internet communities advise newbies to lurk for some time to get a feel for the specific culture and etiquette of the community, lest they make an inappropriate or redundant comment, ask a Frequently Asked Question, or incite a flame war. This leads to the tongue-in-cheek command to "lurk more". The verb to "de-lurk" means to start contributing actively to a community having been a lurker previously. Lurking in terms of a forum makes sense because the forum is there to educate.

There are also some who lurk on a forum habitually, and rarely, if ever, contribute. It is generally difficult to guess how many such lurkers are present, due to their silence. In flame-wars, a participant who is losing an argument will sometimes claim to receive email support from lurkers. This inspired Jo Walton to write a folk song on the subject entitled "The Lurkers Support Me in Email".^[1]

See also

• Leech
• Online participation
• Parasitism (social offense)
• 1% rule (Internet culture)

References

• Garcia, A. C.; Standlee, A. I.; Bechkoff, J.; Cui, Y. (2009), "Ethnographic approaches to the internet and computer-mediated communication", Journal of Contemporary Ethnography 38 (1): 52-84, http://jce.sagepub.com/cgi/content/short/38/1/52 
• Lindemann, K. (2005), "Live(s) online: Narrative performance, presence, and community in LiveJournal.com", Text and Performance Quarterly 25: 354-372 
• Lindlof, T. R., & Taylor, B. C. (2002). Qualitative research and computer-mediated communication. In T. R. Lindlof, & B. C. Taylor (Eds.), Qualitative communication research methods (2nd ed., pp. 247-278). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
• Nonnecke, B.; Preece, J. (2000), Lurker demographics: Counting the silent, Proceedings of CHI 2000. The Hague: ACM 
• Ridings, C.; Gefen, D.; Arinze, B. (2006), "Psychological Barriers: Lurker and Poster Motivation and Behavior in Online Communities", Communications of AIS 18 (16), http://aisel.aisnet.org/cais/vol18/iss1/16/ 
• Sharf, B. F. (1999). Beyond netiquette: The ethics of doing naturalistic discourse research on the Internet. In S. Jones (Ed.), Doing internet research (pp. 243-256). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Further reading

• Blair Nonnecke and Jenny Preece (2003). "Silent participants: Getting to know lurkers better". in D. Fisher and Christopher Lueg. From Usenet to Co Webs: Interacting with social information spaces. Springer. pp. 110–132. ISBN 1852335327. 

External links

• Participation Inequality: Lurkers vs. Contributors in Internet Communities - Article with several examples of the large percentage of users who lurk and guidelines for encouraging more participation.
• Lurkerking Tongue in cheek project tracking lurkers of various forums.
• Lurker is also the name of a Free mail archiving software.
• The Lurkers are a band of people in New Zealand who carry out vile acts at parties such as hiding their faeces in places that will not be discovered for days when the smell becomes unbearable.

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