What explains the number of new forum members

[panini]

This is a curiosity question. It appears that for quite some time, the forum gains about 2500 new members each month. Doing the math, that suggests that some new members are spurious, for example the result of spam-bots trying to use the site to launch spam. Or, there is a very surprising pent-up but highly passive demand for knowledge of linguistics. Is there a known explanation or is this just one of life's mysteries?

[Daniel]

Yes, the statistics are misleading. The way this forum software works, it's easier to prevent spam messages than it is to prevent spam registrations, because they could just register again. (There's actually an entire industry behind exploiting forum software to post spam, and it's incredibly annoying.) I'm hesitant to post any specific details about spam management here (as a security risk, because the spammers would take advantage of any information), but I will say that we get at least dozens to hundreds of spam messages every day, but you rarely actually see them because they're caught before being made available. So the measures in place (rarely flagging a legitimate post and delaying its posting, or the misrepresentative stats, etc.) are there to keep the forum spam free

Of course there are some (though it's hard to say how many) quiet visitors here who are just interested in Linguistics as you say!

[Rock100]

> Or, there is a very surprising pent-up but highly passive demand for knowledge
> of linguistics. Is there a known explanation or is this just one of life's mysteries?
I believe they have adult only sections where only advanced members are allowed.