I have heard that people would create fake members on their forum only to create the impression that the forum has a large membership.

I suppose that creator would register a large number of E-mail addresses which are free from various sites like Yahoo, Gmail and Hotmail, because on most forums, this one included, you can not create a new member without a new E-mail address.

At the end of the day, this practice would be futile as new fake members do not produce activity, and I do not understand why people would go through all that effort.

All the effort of creating and registering E-mail addresses and registering each on your forum, only to boost the forum? I have got much better things to do, and I can declare, as I hereby do, that I have never done this.

Unfortunately, our newly banned member posted on a public forum that this is what I am doing to stimulate this forum, and proceeded with his "defamation of character" by referring to me as unethical and making myself guilty of misrepresentation, without any proof.

He based his allegation on the fact that according to the statistics of this forum, 42 members joined on the same day, and found me guilty without giving me an opportunity to explain why.

Just to put the record straight, various prospective members had difficulty in activating their accounts which was part of the registration process as all the members prior to November probably know. After I received numerous complaints that people have difficulties, I changed the setting on the forum and discarded the additional requirement to activate a new account. The moment I did that in November last year, 42 applications for membership were activated on the same day. I then mailed all 42 members to tell them that the activation has been done. Various of this 42 members at that time then already registered under a different name(and is still members as can be seen from the list he gave as being according to him false), alternatively purely visited as guests, although it appears from the record that they never visited the site. They did, but under a newly created name or as guest.

A forum is in anyway not about the amount of members, but more about the number of visits and activity and quality of inputs by members. This you can not manipulate, especially in view of the fact that this site is monitored by and statistics created by Google itself, and this stats confirm the stats by forumotion, the service provider of this forum.

There is in fact a koi forum in South Africa with large membership but very little activity which makes me think that this practice actually do exist.

If a person wanted to manipulate the membership, he would be really stupid to create 42 false members as alleged in one day. Yahoo, Hotmail or Gmail will also not allow so many new addressed in one day anyway.

To this banned member, I suggest that you consult an attorney, as you clearly do not know the boundaries of defamation of character, which I base on your deleted posts on this forum and posts on other forums.