Dopeville pop 27,757: how was this measured?

[Lorenzo]

Does this number represent the number who have posted since day one?

If not, then what?

[USCDiver]

The Straight Dope Message Board (http://boards.straightdope.com)

The number of registered posters is listed under the main banner.

[RTFirefly]

Well, Eve 'measured' it by pulling it off the main page where it says (or said, at 3:49pm EST):
Members: 27,805, Threads: 143,861, Posts: 2,607,685
Welcome to our newest member, stefilea2001 (http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/member.php?s=&action=getinfo&userid=27889)

I'm not sure exactly how it's measured, since there's a slight discrepancy between the number of members as of 3:49pm (27,805) and the userid# of the newest member (27,889).

But I know that that's more or less all the users who've ever registered here, even the banned ones.

I know that bannings don't reduce the count of members that the vBulletin software keeps, because I'm sure we've had well over 84 bannings even since we made the switch to vBulletin in early 2000.

There are some userid numbers that aren't in use, for instance, #1 and #30. These may or may not account for the difference between the userid# of the newest member, and the number of members. I don't know how many unused userid#s there are.

[SmileyDeath]

The newest is me!

Hooray.