for how long did you lurk b4 joining?

i think the earliest i lurked this site was 2013.

about 8 months.

 I don't remember when exactly. First time I "lurked" was in early 2000s, but that was like for a few times. Skip right ahead to 2010s for another few times and then some more in 2018. So It's more like a shadow peeking through the window than lurking in my position.

I first got online in early 2000 using one of those free dial-up services that had a browser advertisement bar... At the time I heard of some Doom 3 rumors and PC Gamer or something was calling the game 'the new Doom' or somesuch. So doing a search for the 'New Doom' made me find Newdoom first. The site was very new and there was two guys on there, King Ralph and Zack, so I decided to join them and came up with  'Doom_Dude' not thinking I was going to be using it for so long. I had no idea that Doomworld existed until a month or two (really not sure how long it was) later when a guy we know as King REoL started bitching about Doomworld for whatever reason. Sometime in 2000 I decided to take a peek at Doomworld and signed up. I don't remember doing any lurking. I think what happened was, I noticed my nickname wasn't in use and decided to make sure I got it registered. Then a bunch of time flew by and here we are...

Since around 2005 or so, and quite frequently at that.

5 minutes.

I've had an account here since 2001. That's more than half my life. Between 2006 and 2019 I took a 13-year hiatus from posting.

I lurked more and more often from 2006 onward until finally joining in ‘08, and then it was still 3 or 4 months before actually posting.

I lurked for something like 3 years from '99 until I registered my first account around '02. Lost my uni e-mail account due to dropping out and didn't re-register with a new account until '04. That said, I haven't exactly been spamming the forums during my 20-year stay on this site. :P (edit: approximately 21 posts per year the last 15 years, heh)

Since site inception to my joining in 2005, made stuff since ~1996.

I've been a massive Doom fan for as long as I can remember; I typically used Doomworld as a resource to learn how to use GZDoom Builder, and Slade; But I never bothered with making an account until I saw this topic. Yeah, bizarre "first post"- I know. :/

A week at most, just to see if it's a toxic place, and after I noticed it wasn't, I joined.

I don't think I lurked for long. I'm one of those members who kept finding this place when looking for Doom Builder assistance.

Probably only a couple months before I joined around 2016 which was probably due to the Dooms announcement which got me all excited.

I think I lurked for maybe a month, then joined in 2001 and boy what a mess I've made.

Just now, Doom, Coffee, & Doughnuts said:

...But I never bothered with making an account until I saw this topic. Yeah, bizarre "first post"- I know. :/

nice, welcome to the board :D

About three years or so.

About a year before joining.

I've been visiting occasionally through random Google searches once or twice every year since... who knows... the 200X's? Found myself wandering the hallways several times a month one time, and decided to join.

I think I found this place back in '98 or '99. I remember reading the 5 Years of Doom article. That was before there were forums. I joined up about a year after the forums went live, but I think I only lurked for maybe a few days before posting. That might explain how much of a noob I was back then. That and the fact I was a teenager at the time.

About 8 seconds, give or take

A year and a half, I know I started lurking around mid January 2018

About 2 years. In that time I anonymously posted comments on wad pages at IDgames.

I've been lurking for a few years, playing wads and seeing some pretty fruitless arguments form over petty disagreements.  

I would have first found Doomworld in August 2004, but wouldn't start heavily lurking until August 2005 through early 2008. Then I occasionally visited until early 2012 when I frequently lurked again until joining.

i started browsing around 2008 and joined in 2012

I snuck around looking at DoomWadStation and then eventually Doomworld on the school computers at lunch for a few, that would be like 2010 2009 kinda time probably, I was mad about this shit as a kid and finally got access to the internet , joined when I finally got my own little craptop young and dumb in 2012...

I don't look fondly back at my first attempt to integrate.

About a day really.

I registered in 2014, so about 14 or 15 years.

I knew of the site early on through internet searches, but when I went to register I was denied by some automated protocol, I forget the exact details. I put it off for a long time until eventually I e-mailed one of the admins directly to request access.

couple of years, finally joined only to completely lose my account info then rejoined in 2007 (so 9 years total before I joined properly).   Was another 5 years or so before I posted anything.