Oldflame,
that is exactly my point. there are people like Richie Rich that participate but choose to protect their anonymity. Richie Rich can hardly complain about being "reported" to the Elders since he alone was responsible for providing so much information on a public forum and practically begged for exposure. Most JWs know that their is a so-called "duty" of JWs to report "wrong-doing" to the Elders. If one is concerned about that then they should protect themselves or fight the policy in other ways.
Further, people are naive if they think that what they do on the Internet remains private in some way if they haven't exercised their own good judgment and actually taken steps to maintain confidentiality or privacy. These days everyone from employers to potential dates are Googling and checking the Web for info about the person.
Regarding spying: Look at the post with the definitions of spy or spies. It all pertains to secret or confidential information. Anything posted on this forum is by its nature neither secret nor confidential, hence there is no such thing as a "spy" as it relates to a user of this forum.
Only one who has administrative rights or one who might hack the system if that were possible and who was reading private pms or who accessed the IP log data could potentially fit the definition.
As for lurkers these come in every type I imagine, but most doubters and eventual leavers of the Org begin as lurkers, so I don't think it is a great policy to exclude them or to push them away. The more active JW lurkers the better.
the bottom line is people need to be responsible for their own actions and stop whining when they get the foreseeable consequences of their actions. If one disagrees with those consequences in the first place then I suggest you enlist in the Revolution and find ways to help change things.
-Eduardo
