As of right now we have 30,000 registered members. So I got curious about some more-or-less meaningless statistics that might be interesting for what little they are worth.
Now, it should be noted that the Members List does not include members that have been deleted (such as spammers) and I'm not sure if post totals include deleted posts or not. But, hopefully, that is relatively small noise in the data (though I have one head scratcher on that score that I'll mention later).
By default, the Members pages are 30 usernames long, meaning that there are now exactly 1000 pages in the members list and that each page represents 0.1% of the registered users.
There are some interesting, though not unusual or surprising, things that I'm sure many people are not aware of when it comes to forum participation (pretty much any forum website). To underscore some of these (that I'll mention later), consider the following (in round numbers, but really close):
The user with the most posts has over 21,000 posts. Anyone that has posted (in round numbers). Anyone that has posted even 10% of that (call it 2000 posts) is on the first page, or in the top 0.1%. Anyone that has posted 4000 is in the top half page (0.05%) and anyone that has posted 8000 is in the top quarter page. Going the other way, anyone that has posted, more than 1000 posts is in the first two pages, or the top 0.2%. If you've posted 500, you are very close to the top 0.3%. Notice how the drop off is a very good approximation to an exponential decay. Beyond this, it tapers off into a shallower tail: 300 posts put you in the top 0.5% and 130 put you in the top 1%. If you have just become a Senior Member (100 posts) you have made it to the top 1.3%. If you've made 14 posts you are in the top 10% and if you have just graduated from New to Junior member (10 posts) you are in the top 14%. In fact, if you have just made three posts you are in the top 44%. Fully 37.5% (3 out of 8) people that have joined AAC have never made a second post.
The point I was referring to is that the membershipf of AAC, like the vast majority of forums, consists of a huge fraction of people that had a passing interest and made only a single or, at most, a few posts. Instead, the forum is dominated by a relatively small number of people that are highly engaged. That list is effectively even smaller than it appears because it includes both people that are no longer active (or have become largely inactive) and people that are relatively new.
So, at any given time, the backbone of the activity rides largely on the participation of a very small number of people. And having that core of people, despite it shifting and changing over time, is important and valuable. When I was looking for a forum to help me with a problem, I didn't even consider joining and posting in forums that had hardly no activity; I simply didn't want to bother with a forum where, from all appearances, it could take weeks before someone even saw my post.
So what other tidbits can be thrown out?
Well, a quick gander shows that we are presently gaining about ten members a day (call it ten to fifteen). The oldest member joined in Sep 2003, so just shy of nine years ago. Call it 3200 days. So, over that time, we have averaged 9.4 new members a day. So it would appear that the rate at which the forum is growing has been pretty consistent. I don't know what, if anything, that says; it's not what I expected, but I can think of some explanations that make it reasonable. I would love to do some data mining and see what the actual patterns look like.
So what about the head scratching stuff?
If you go to the forum homepage and look at the bottom, it claims that there are 170,939 members. That's a HUGE different from the 30,000 in the Members List. Now, I can believe that the big number includes people that have been removed (the spammers and such), but I have a hard time believing that nearly 5 out 6 memberships fall into this category (and, if they do, then we REALLY owe the moderators a debt of gratitude!). I have no explanation for it. I'd love to someone (probably have to be an admin, so I doubt that will happen since something like this is a really low priority) check into where that number is coming from and what it means. Perhaps its a bug in the vBulletin code.
The total threads (63,492) is reasonably close to the total of the thread counts for each forum (61,247). I'm sure there are a few administrative forums that are not publicly viewable and they could easily account for the 3.5% discrepancy, especially if the total includes deleted threads and the individual forum thread counts don't.
Now, it should be noted that the Members List does not include members that have been deleted (such as spammers) and I'm not sure if post totals include deleted posts or not. But, hopefully, that is relatively small noise in the data (though I have one head scratcher on that score that I'll mention later).
By default, the Members pages are 30 usernames long, meaning that there are now exactly 1000 pages in the members list and that each page represents 0.1% of the registered users.
There are some interesting, though not unusual or surprising, things that I'm sure many people are not aware of when it comes to forum participation (pretty much any forum website). To underscore some of these (that I'll mention later), consider the following (in round numbers, but really close):
The user with the most posts has over 21,000 posts. Anyone that has posted (in round numbers). Anyone that has posted even 10% of that (call it 2000 posts) is on the first page, or in the top 0.1%. Anyone that has posted 4000 is in the top half page (0.05%) and anyone that has posted 8000 is in the top quarter page. Going the other way, anyone that has posted, more than 1000 posts is in the first two pages, or the top 0.2%. If you've posted 500, you are very close to the top 0.3%. Notice how the drop off is a very good approximation to an exponential decay. Beyond this, it tapers off into a shallower tail: 300 posts put you in the top 0.5% and 130 put you in the top 1%. If you have just become a Senior Member (100 posts) you have made it to the top 1.3%. If you've made 14 posts you are in the top 10% and if you have just graduated from New to Junior member (10 posts) you are in the top 14%. In fact, if you have just made three posts you are in the top 44%. Fully 37.5% (3 out of 8) people that have joined AAC have never made a second post.
The point I was referring to is that the membershipf of AAC, like the vast majority of forums, consists of a huge fraction of people that had a passing interest and made only a single or, at most, a few posts. Instead, the forum is dominated by a relatively small number of people that are highly engaged. That list is effectively even smaller than it appears because it includes both people that are no longer active (or have become largely inactive) and people that are relatively new.
So, at any given time, the backbone of the activity rides largely on the participation of a very small number of people. And having that core of people, despite it shifting and changing over time, is important and valuable. When I was looking for a forum to help me with a problem, I didn't even consider joining and posting in forums that had hardly no activity; I simply didn't want to bother with a forum where, from all appearances, it could take weeks before someone even saw my post.
So what other tidbits can be thrown out?
Well, a quick gander shows that we are presently gaining about ten members a day (call it ten to fifteen). The oldest member joined in Sep 2003, so just shy of nine years ago. Call it 3200 days. So, over that time, we have averaged 9.4 new members a day. So it would appear that the rate at which the forum is growing has been pretty consistent. I don't know what, if anything, that says; it's not what I expected, but I can think of some explanations that make it reasonable. I would love to do some data mining and see what the actual patterns look like.
So what about the head scratching stuff?
If you go to the forum homepage and look at the bottom, it claims that there are 170,939 members. That's a HUGE different from the 30,000 in the Members List. Now, I can believe that the big number includes people that have been removed (the spammers and such), but I have a hard time believing that nearly 5 out 6 memberships fall into this category (and, if they do, then we REALLY owe the moderators a debt of gratitude!). I have no explanation for it. I'd love to someone (probably have to be an admin, so I doubt that will happen since something like this is a really low priority) check into where that number is coming from and what it means. Perhaps its a bug in the vBulletin code.
The total threads (63,492) is reasonably close to the total of the thread counts for each forum (61,247). I'm sure there are a few administrative forums that are not publicly viewable and they could easily account for the 3.5% discrepancy, especially if the total includes deleted threads and the individual forum thread counts don't.
