Intimidating comments

Last month we had 56,080 unique visitors to our forums and of those, 45,463 were newcomers. Those same viewers collectively read parts of (or all of) 371,443 pages. That's a good amount of viewers reading and spending time on a forum about high-end audio. But, here's the thing. Despite all those viewers, only a mere handful took the time to post their thoughts. Out of 56,000 people, fewer than 100 were actively posting and commenting. Over the years, I have asked many of our Hi-Fi Family members why they prefer reading than participating in the conversation, and the universal answer I get is they are intimidated. Intimidated that they will be made fun of, or their question is too stupid, or they will be drawn into a fight, or their opinions aren't of interest to others. I suppose this is normal, yet if there was a way to help the quiet majority think of how much better off we would be. What it takes is for those the regularly post to up the ante for their generosity and kindness to others. The more voices that join the chorus the richer the music.