rogerd - 2:23 pm on Oct 28, 2004 (gmt 0)

Deliberately provocative posts can bring lurkers out of hiding. If you advance an outrageous premise, say, "The Internet will be dead by 2008, here are 15 reasons why" you'll get your regulars piling in to refute the post and, more importantly, perhaps draw in some stirred-up first-timers. Just pick a theme relevant to your topic, and post under an different nick so your members don't think you have gone crazy. Or, if you want to do it under your own name, express it in terms of what you heard someone else say; perhaps you can find a controversial article to quote.