techiehenry

I’ve been onto different kinds of bulletin boards/forums — some with discussions that are mainly technical, some social, some political, and some with a mix of everything under the sun. In these type of sites, I could generalize people who join in into 6 distinct types:

Gurus/Contributors - These are the type of people who are all over the forums. In almost every topic, you could see them contributing a post or two that makes a lot of sense for everyone involved in a particular thread. Gives the impression of a know-it-all type of person.

Lurkers - These are the type who join in, but never post a single message in any of the forums. They’re there, but they remain hidden in the shadows.

Trolls - Not necessarily the troublemakers, but they sometimes create havoc within a thread. They go in and post a message to a thread that gets the ire of everyone else, leading to flame wars.

Police - These are the type who keeps on reminding other people to RTFM, STFW, read the sticky, stop typing in ALL CAPS, stick to the forum topic, etc. Some of these types end up as forum moderators, and may even be board adminstrators themselves.

Rabbits - These, like the Guru/Contributor types, are all over the forum. The only difference is that Rabbits post not to contribute, but to increase the number of posts under their user box. More often than not, the contents of the posts by these types would contain a smiley, a “Yeah, you’re right” or “No, that’s wrong” message. The worst type of Rabbit pretends to be a Guru, and posts messages that are either already mentioned in a previous post or outright out of context to the topic.

Niche Posters - These are similar to the Guru/Contributor. They are very much visible at a certain forum, and nowhere else.

Now, which one are you?