Never tbh. Ezra told me about the site and then told me to sign up while registration was open since it was so competitive so I was really lucky to never have waited. I hardly used the account cause Billboard was still my go to place before the comments section got shut down.
I was never a lurker/guest, actually.
I heard about ATRL randomly one morning on Twitter in June 2011 (what a time to be alive ) and signed up for the sake of it/to snatch up my username. I guess I had it lucky in that regard.
Not for long. I knew this was a popular site but I only entered when someone would send me a link for something specific or a leak etc. But I noticed that the registrations are opened yesterday so I tried to make an account.