When just starting a new community, do you...?
 

Do you create fake member accounts and create fake conversations in order to fill it up sometimes? Just so that new members don't think "oh man this site is dead screw this!". This is the first time I've done a fake account thing, I made about 100 fake accounts and am filling up the forums with some fake half way decent conversations to get things rolling. Is this unethical? Or is it a good idea to kick start a community?

*Happy Fathers Day*

I don't, but apparently some people do. One or two isn't horrible, but come on, 100?

Heh. well 100 simply because we had so many sections and we need a lot of fake conversations to fill them up. Once our memberbase grows we'll obviously discontinue their use. Heh.

It is good to start off with about 10 or less forums when starting a new community for the fact that all of them dont look dead and people leave. 100 fake accounts?...jeez you must have been bored ;)

Hehe... I know too many forums is bad, that's why we made the fake accounts to fill them up. Then there will be alot for new members to look at, maybe even too much at first so they'll need t come back. I'll try to shorten it a LIL more maybe. :)

The best way to start out a forum is just get 4 or 5 of your friends to help you out by posting a lot until you get some more people to join.

^^^ I agree, the best way to start a forum is with your friends who are interested in the subject.

Yeah I've done that now with my staff as well, good call.

I made 5 different fake names, One for each type of person that would join my site, I use them only to see the different views that they would see, no posting. I think that this is a little shady. I sure wouldn't let members know that you are doing that. Cause if I was a member I would leave if I knew that someone was doing that.

It's definitely a good idea to start off your forum with. But don't go overboard, you just need to establish a point in a thread so that discussion can be created from it. And you don't need 100 different members to do that. ;)