Actually, I've totally missed the plot of the great taxonomic discussion about lurkers and so on, but reading an article about online focus group I've revealed the following passage: "The existence of ‘lurkers’ may lead to group fading, as some active participants may be disheartened to continue with the discussion when they fail to get any feedback, verbal or non-verbal, from others." (Cher Ping, Lim and Seng Chee, Tan Online discussion boards for focus group interviews: an exploratory study. Journal of Educational Enquiry, Vol. 2, No. 1, 2001). Actually this part devoted only to online focus groups, but, however... Before that (I mean listserv's discussion and article) I had nothing against lurkers, as I'm usually one of them. But now, I remembered why different online communities "die" and I think, that one of the reasons is a lack of feedback from potential audience. Especially at "start up" period. For example, I used to prepare electronic versions of texts for seminars in LJ community of my group,posted useful links, tried to start some discussions and so on. But without decent response (an even simple "thanks!")I ceased my attempts. Not every person can fuel his activity with a pure enthusiasm after all. So, my point is that "lurking" indeed has negative effects especially in the "new born" communities. In old, established virtual communities with thousands of participants, local "centralities" and celebrities and so on lurkers are quite normal, usual and absolutely not dangerous or irritating part of "audience". Sorry, I really don't have time to read through all the discussion about lurkers, so, I'm pretty sure, that someone have already told smth like this. Best wishes, Alexander Semenov.