Lilia Efimova: “there is a great value of an on-line community as a content provider: it could be a small group generating most of the discussions, but many people can benefit from finding and learning from them. I wonder what lurkers do in a community, how their activities [...] and effects of those activities can be accounted for and what role lurkers play in a community dynamics.”

I mostly lurk in communities, be it the blogging community, newsgroups (I haven't posted there in years, but continue to read sfu.general at least monthly) and IRC. I try not to pretend to have any creative ability or output, and when I do pretend, I try to make it obvious. I'm under no illusions that my weblogs are anything other than redistributive. There's great power in redistribution, though, especially with knowledge, but if I were someone else, I wouldn't be looking here for any great insights.