I guess we need to consider it from another angle. HC largely rely upon ads for their income. All these members are a large, highly specific/targetted, audience. By marketing that audience HC are able to provide us this forum for free.
Having said that, however, wouldnt it be great to see a wider diversity of opinion/comment/tips/garbage/discussion/humour/etc that all these wallflowers could contribute?
I remember way back that the old management of HC quoted figures of around 50,000 members. I always took this with a large grain of salt - many people would have registered and dropped away and Alex probably accounts for 500. If however at one point yesterday there were 600+ "readers" and bearing in mind that HC only shows those that freshly logged on in the last X (2?) hours (I was not on the list when that count was done) then there must several thousand, at least, regular readers of HC - many who seem to have stuck with it for several years.
