Lots of people who 'lurk' aren't up to anything sinister, it's just that they might think that they don't have anything to contribute by posting. That's absolutely fine! We are more than happy for them to continue to browse the site. The more distinct people who regularly click through and browse the site the better (particularly for our advertisers!!).;)
Since the site launched, almost 3 years ago now, we have had an active core membership of around the size mentioned, 50 to 100 people BUT it's not always been the same 50 to 100 people! That's the nature of the beast; people lose interest and new people join and so it continues . . .
I don't think it's helpful to see the launch of the new forum as an opportunity to narrow the membership of NMS. We already have full access to site traffic information - we know who logs in, how often, when and from where (big brother is indeed watching you, on here, as on every other website that you visit!!) If the need arises people can be denied access to the site.:evil:
Unless we find an ASP/MySQL guru soon we will have no choice other than for all our visitors to re-register. I would encourage everone to do that; even those who may not post very often.:)