The profecy is true

[thrall]

As I've said that membership count will surpass 6000 in less that 2 months of it getting 5000.So the profecy is TRUE;).
Comments...............................

[PHAID]

There may be 6,000 but how many contribute and post?

[kingspaz]

thrall, you are obviously jesus.

[Hang-Man]

There may be 6,000 but how many contribute and post?
I'd say it is well under 6000, as low as 150 even. You have to sign in and out everytime you come, so it shouldn't be to hard to get a list of daily/weekly etc members. (Could allways make a 'roll-call' thread...)

[PHAID]

I know i am in and out alot and what few posts i have made may not be of much help but overall i make the attempt to contribute what i do know.

It does seem that most posts are made by only a few people.

[streety]

It's always the case that there are fewer regular posters in any forum than there are members to the forum but 6000 is still impressive.

Also, if I remember correctly, the least active members are deleted from time to time which just makes the total more impressive.

Also, you don't need to sign in and out everytime, I know that I don't.

[blindreeper]

There is a setting in your user CP ( I think its there) about setting cookies which means you don't have to log out. I don't think I have logged out since sepember, unless you count the forum being down last month.

[Anath]

Some of us are more active in the IRC channel as well, where irrelevant banter is welcomed ;)

Every time I go to post something to the Forum I think "Is this a useful comment, and is it adding anything worthwhile to the Forum".. Not much makes it through that filter. I usually just dump my ideas into a textfile for later review and consolidating into (hopefully) interesting posts of some length, rather than one line "me too" type crap. Quality over quantity, folks..

[irish]

It would be interesting to see how many active members there are and how many lurk without posting. I look at the forum two or three times a day as a minimum but often don't post on a thred for the same reason as Anath.

[thrall]

Well, what I was conserned then and now is that "Forum" IS growing exponentially and so as the chanses of attracting piggies attention and some other possible follow up that may result in a threat to the very existance of the Forum.
As far as non posting members are concerned I'd like to say that most of them should be like me. I've downloaded some books from net,WRM,NBK2000 and other books that I'm reading,but before that I didn't know iota of the the things around here. I think it is GOOD that ignorant people are not posting,probably they read the rules.Anyway the goal of Forum is dissemination of free "information" and not trading so lurking "info leeches" should not be considered problem IMHO.
@kingspaz:If somebody pious person made that comment I'd have taken it as appriciation but here it is just too obvious sercasm.But why?the profecy IS true:( .(this is just a joke)

[Jacks Complete]

I suspect most of them are too scared to post, as they don't want HED! However, having been away for a while, it was a suprize to see that only two threads had no new messages, the Nitric one, and the HED dungeon.

The problem is that newbies don't appreciate what this forum is, and post crap and get banned, or they do appreciate it, and don't dare post, just in case!

[megalomania]

Well I happen to have the stats, and if you want to know over 50% of our member total are active, although most are lurkers.

As for number of posts, no there is no correlating increase in posts vs the increase in new members. Average posts per month have clearly increased over the past year, but not nearly at the rate member totals have. I have some theories on this and I would like to share them to help explain why there will be more and more lurkers, but fewer posters.

As our general level of knowledge increases we cover the basics more thoroughly. As we cover the basics this excludes the vast majority of members from contributing because they can't add anything new. This coverage of general material is incidentally what attracts the majority of our members. It's all about the law of averages, most people attracted to the site will have little in the way of practical knowledge and come to The Forum to learn.

In the next step we have the people who are knowledgable, very knowledgable. Prolific types like myself and nbk. We are rare, but we are attracted to a place like to Forum because of the vast level of general knowledge. For people like us there are always new areas to explore, but of course there are far fewer people. Such posters increase membership even more because of the rarity of the information.

Ultimately it is a system of diminishing returns. Our level of knowledge will grow and grow to encompass so much information that fewer and fewer people will have any knowledge to contribute that has not already. Is this a bad thing? Not really since the vast majority of people will get exactly what they want, tons of practical information, and the advanced poster will get access to resources he may have been seeking.

This system will manefest itself as what we are seeing, more members, fewer posts, but posts of increasing quality.

I truly believe that each and every member has some sort of information they can bring to the table, some large some small. Within the near future we (meaning The Forum) will offer increasingly more for the members in the form of scanned books, FTP sites, other software, and quite possibly additional sections. New sections will mean a fresh infusion of ideas and information added to The Forum, new member interests, and greater value to all involved.

The Forum is an evolving being, as it reaches a higher state of existence it takes longer and longer to manefest new plataus of consciousness. I envision a Forum in as little as 5 years with tens of thousands of members, hundreds of thousands of posts, a half dozen new sections, hundreds of online books completly searchable, our own database of hundreds of archived websites completly searchable, thousands of links to top quality scientific resources, and our own brand of Forum merchandise.

[thrall]

Mega! your vision is right obviously but it is based on an assumption that may vanish in time. Assumption is that "if everything goes on like this".Which it might not. Till now "Forum" hasn't got media attention,and thats only better. But what will happen when membership will be 10,000 plus. Some kewl/kewls killing himself or others and blames the Forum. BBC and CNN cries about "terrorist" information on the net. Then,then friends! "the system" will start making it's move. "The system" is far more more powerful and resouseful then entire forum community.

The scenario I'm givin is not far from reality,only closer to it. But lets see, and enjoy the freedom while we can.

[megalomania]

TOTSE has over 100,000 members does it not? And are not they purvayers of foul information on a grand scale? Certainly they are far more dangerous than we could ever be. As long as they are around leading the charge as it were they will be the first to fall. As for us if push comes to shove we can always move to a foreign host. That's the wonder of the Internet, one mans illegality is anothers basic right in some other country of the world.

[streety]

That's a nice vision mega, the idea of forum merchandise is certainly interesting. I know it was mentioned in the topic discussing your story a few weeks back but I didn't think it was a serious idea.

50% of the members being active is great but I'm wondering how activity is defined?

[blindreeper]

About the merchendise, I have been making some T's with those iron on things. I printed em off and I have had this "The*Ataris" shirt for somthing like 3 months and the thing hasn't cracked or peeled. I think that we should just have an image and you download it print it off and your set! We just need the image :rolleyes:

[Hang-Man]

il make it in photoshop, if someone has an idea.

[blindreeper]

I know this is absolutly shit house, but I was thinking somthing suttle like this. Would be asy to iron on and no complex colours. I think if someone was in graphic design or was good with design they could make it look heaps better.

http://img4.photobucket.com/albums/v29/blindreeper/the_forum.jpg