So I am wondering if our unlogged guest contribute to RRL at all? If so can you guys tell me? I am just thinking that if RRL only allows logged in users to read and write fictions in the site, wouldn't that be better for the site overall?

What Tanaka said above aaand if they read a chapter, that too will be added to the view count. (Unless we are talking about unique IP).
The only downside is that they will never rate and comment, but hey... even people with accounts ignore those things most of the time.

I think you are reversing the causality.

This site is meant for authors to share stories and for readers to search for what they like. It's a platform that connects demand and offer.

Reviews and comments are extremely useful. But causal readers don't care about that. I think most of them just want to read a good story. And that's fine. I think cutting them off because they don't contribute is against the mission of this site.

Plus, I think casual readers do contribute. They generate trafic and ads revenue. I think casual readers make up for the bulk of the audience.

i spend almost 2 years as lurker before i actually got this acc :v and even then, the only purpose it's ever served was to asking for fictions in the 'Recommend' section :v

Well, first off, if you got rid of casual lurkers, how would anyone even be able to sample the site and know it's worth joining?  Reputation?  That would be a really hard sell, methinks.

I mean, think of it this way -- every step you add to the process of reading a story, no matter if it's 'free' step or not, is another way of filtering out people -- and not a calculated way of filtering them out, either.  People think "Oh, hey -- I heard about this site/story before.  I wonder what it's like." and then they get a big honkin' "Sign in"/"Join" page whenever they go to read the story.

For a lot of people, that's going to be it -- question answered.  It's going on the list of "something I don't want to deal with".  They close the tab, and do something else.  It was only a mild curiosity -- they weren't really invested, yet.  You're going to lose that reader, permanently.

And you don't want that.  Everyone who starts out lurking without an account has the potential to comment eventually, just so that they could say to the author that whatever they just did was awesome.  Sure, it won't happen all the time, or for every story, but is it worth it, down the road?  Probably.

And, maybe if the process was able to weed out people who didn't comment ever it would still be worth it, but... well, it can't really do that.  So, instead, it's just wasting people's time and hurting RRL.  Which is a no-go.

So... maybe if there was a way to incentivize commenting and signing in, that could work, but cutting off lurkers entirely is just... not going to work.

I see... that goes huh... in my mind i thought that if they registered and read wouldn't rrl make money since they have many more registered member? Or it does not matter if they are registered or not as long as they visit the site...

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Thanx guys for answering my question. Im new here so i am a bit lost... dang it... i missed the chance to bw invisible. Would be a real star craft personification...

Not really? Websites make money off clicks and ad impressions, doesn't matter if they come from registered users or not. It's not like there is a registration fee.

Forcing registration would just drive traffic away, and thus drive money away.

I checked out Wattpad once, in a stroke of misfortune. I realised they didn't allow people to browse content easily without creating accounts. I do not use Wattpad (for other reasons as well, but that was a definite contributor).

Forcing people to create accounts to use the site just hurts the site. If the lurkers care about the site, they'll eventually make an account. If they don't care, then they wouldn't use the site if they were forced to make one.