# Charter Members: Who and how many are left? **URL:** \ **Category:** About This Message Board\ **Created:** [August 1, 2015, 6:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/charter-members-who-and-how-many-are-left/726708 "2015-08-01T06:07:22Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 9
**Author:** ![Kent\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kent_clark/32/105_2.png) [@Kent\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kent_Clark)\ **Post date:** [August 20, 2015, 9:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/charter-members-who-and-how-many-are-left/726708/161 "2015-08-20T21:48:07Z")
If I’m looking at\*\* spinky’s\*\* numbers correctly, 70% of charter members have been active in the last 30 days, the most active subset he tracked. In fact, it’s a far higher participation rates than those johnny-come-latelys who pay more and get only half a coveted title. ---
**Author:** ![Tabby\_Cat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/6a8cbe/32.png) [@Tabby\_Cat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tabby_Cat)\ **Post date:** [August 20, 2015, 11:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/charter-members-who-and-how-many-are-left/726708/162 "2015-08-20T23:02:43Z")
Makes sense tho. If they were inactive for any length of time they would lose their charter membership… ---
**Author:** ![spinky](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/59ef9b/32.png) [@spinky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/spinky)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2015, 1:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/charter-members-who-and-how-many-are-left/726708/163 "2015-08-21T01:00:39Z")
I got curious about the high level of activity of the charter members so I added a column for how many people had been active in the past 1 day. Well, it turned out the answer was a very small number, which led me to realize I had a bug in my code: the “last activity” field usually has a date, but displays “Today” instead of today’s date. I had accounted for this in my code, but I hadn’t accounted for the fact that it says “Yesterday” instead of yesterday’s date as well. So I was missing counting a bunch of people and the numbers got a bit better: ```auto active in past... title count 180d 30d 1d ----- ------ ----- ----- ----- guest 111880 users 6600 3163 1645 banned 29600 users 1288 251 14 registered user 29130 users 1125 165 18 member 972 users 251 218 170 charter member 493 users 436 384 310 sdsab 13 users 5 5 4 suspended 9 users 2 0 0 moderator 2 users 1 1 0 2209 users active in last 1d 4244 users active in last 30d 9767 users active in last 180d ``` I also fudged the definition of “past 1 day” because the date resolution is so coarse, the snapshot ran in the middle of the day and took hours, etc. So “past 1 day” means today’s date or yesterday’s date, which actually covers more than 24 hours. Also, these calculations are all relative to the date I ran the script, not actually today. ---
**Author:** ![Fear\_Itself](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fear_itself/32/19637_2.png) [@Fear\_Itself](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fear_Itself)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2015, 1:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/charter-members-who-and-how-many-are-left/726708/164 "2015-08-21T01:06:38Z")
It looks like it is undercounting the number of moderators, unless I am missing something. ---
**Author:** ![spinky](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/59ef9b/32.png) [@spinky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/spinky)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2015, 4:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/charter-members-who-and-how-many-are-left/726708/165 "2015-08-21T16:45:59Z")
Oh, I just forgot to trim those out. I mentioned before that I had left them out because they were undercounted due to most of them having silly titles. ---
**Author:** ![Shagnasty](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9dc877/32.png) [@Shagnasty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shagnasty)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2015, 11:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/charter-members-who-and-how-many-are-left/726708/166 "2015-08-21T23:32:45Z")
Another Charter Member here paid up through 2017. ---
**Author:** ![Fear\_Itself](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fear_itself/32/19637_2.png) [@Fear\_Itself](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fear_Itself)\ **Post date:** [August 22, 2015, 1:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/charter-members-who-and-how-many-are-left/726708/167 "2015-08-22T01:06:40Z")
> [@spinky](#): > > Oh, I just forgot to trim those out. I mentioned before that I had left them out because they were undercounted due to most of them having silly titles. ^^^How about Charter Members with silly titles? ---
**Author:** ![spinky](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/59ef9b/32.png) [@spinky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/spinky)\ **Post date:** [August 22, 2015, 8:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/charter-members-who-and-how-many-are-left/726708/168 "2015-08-22T08:20:01Z")
^^^^ that was also mentioned!!! ---
**Author:** ![NineToTheSky](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/b5a626/32.png) [@NineToTheSky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NineToTheSky)\ **Post date:** [August 22, 2015, 8:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/charter-members-who-and-how-many-are-left/726708/169 "2015-08-22T08:42:07Z")
> [@Tabby\_Cat](#): > > Makes sense tho. If they were inactive for any length of time they would lose their charter membership… Not really. As long as they pay, they remain charter members. They don’t have to post at all. ---
**Author:** ![Arjuna34](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/eb8c5e/32.png) [@Arjuna34](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Arjuna34)\ **Post date:** [August 22, 2015, 12:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/charter-members-who-and-how-many-are-left/726708/170 "2015-08-22T12:45:45Z")
Charter member check … yep! Mostly a lurker though. ---
**Author:** ![Stoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/stoid/32/272_2.png) [@Stoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stoid)\ **Post date:** [August 22, 2015, 4:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/charter-members-who-and-how-many-are-left/726708/171 "2015-08-22T16:37:49Z")
> [@silenus](#): > > Here and paid up through May of 2017 in fact. Ditto. And I think I lost it at one point relatively soon after the designation was implemented, and got it back, but the details escape me. I like my charter status for reasons I cannot explain. It’s cheap to keep, I intend to. It blow my mind that we’ve been at this for so long. I have to say it would be very disorienting if the SDMB were to fold for whatever reason. I can’t imagine what I would use to replace it, if anything… ---
**Author:** ![AHunter3](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ahunter3/32/368_2.png) [@AHunter3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AHunter3)\ **Post date:** [August 22, 2015, 6:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/charter-members-who-and-how-many-are-left/726708/172 "2015-08-22T18:21:25Z")
How many charter members remember the switchover from the pre-threaded AOL message board to the newfangled AOL “push pins” threaded message board? ---
**Author:** ![bluecanary](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bluecanary/32/3614_2.png) [@bluecanary](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bluecanary)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2015, 4:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/charter-members-who-and-how-many-are-left/726708/173 "2015-08-23T16:43:56Z")
Still here, not really active much lately but I’ve held on to my charter member status. ---
**Author:** ![Find\_Friends](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/c37758/32.png) [@Find\_Friends](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Find_Friends)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2015, 2:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/charter-members-who-and-how-many-are-left/726708/174 "2015-08-27T14:25:04Z")
After considerable tweaking, with the indulgence \* of admin Ed Zotti, my new handle is: _Find Friends_ (as you can see) Formerly: _FUTBOL!_ Before that: _Trans Fat 0g_ Originally (and pre-SDMB days): _True Blue Jack_ (I joined 8-13-2002.) * * * My original request was hampered by the inability of the server to handle a double-space, for which I substituted three periods. That look uglier than I had imagined, so I took it in a fairly different direction, but still using the same basic concept. I promised Ed that \*Find Friends \*was my final choice, with no further tweaking, and he agreed to treat it as a single name change request, rather than three. Thank you, Ed. ---
**Author:** ![Cicero](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cicero/32/3594_2.png) [@Cicero](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cicero)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2015, 10:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/charter-members-who-and-how-many-are-left/726708/175 "2015-08-28T10:58:14Z")
Spink, can your magic work out the number of current charter members who haven’t posted in the last year? ---
**Author:** ![digs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/digs/32/14889_2.png) [@digs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/digs)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2015, 12:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/charter-members-who-and-how-many-are-left/726708/176 "2015-08-28T12:52:01Z")
Are there any bragging rights for “Lurking Since '99”? ---
**Author:** ![Boyo\_Jim](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/87869e/32.png) [@Boyo\_Jim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Boyo_Jim)\ **Post date:** [August 31, 2015, 9:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/charter-members-who-and-how-many-are-left/726708/177 "2015-08-31T21:56:04Z")
Another lapsed Charter Member here. ---
**Author:** ![zev\_steinhardt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/97f17d/32.png) [@zev\_steinhardt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/zev_steinhardt)\ **Post date:** [August 31, 2015, 11:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/charter-members-who-and-how-many-are-left/726708/178 "2015-08-31T23:50:22Z")
Joined just 25 days too late to be a '99er. Still a charter member, even though I don’t post nearly as much as I used to back in the day. User# 4214 Zev Steinhardt ---
**Author:** ![spinky](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/59ef9b/32.png) [@spinky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/spinky)\ **Post date:** [September 1, 2015, 12:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/charter-members-who-and-how-many-are-left/726708/179 "2015-09-01T00:22:17Z")
> [@Cicero](#): > > Spink, can your magic work out the number of current charter members who haven’t posted in the last year? 447 out of 493 charter members have been active in the past year, so only 46 haven’t been “active” in that time. There’s no “last post date” so I can’t calculate whether they’ve actually _posted_ in the past year without doing a search, which would totally kill the hamsters. To answer the original question of who’s still around, [here](http://sdmbexample.nfshost.com/charter-inactivity.txt) is a list of all charter members, ordered by how many days they’ve been inactive, most recently active at the top. ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [September 1, 2015, 1:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/charter-members-who-and-how-many-are-left/726708/180 "2015-09-01T01:36:50Z")
> [@spinky](#): > > To answer the original question of who’s still around, [here](http://sdmbexample.nfshost.com/charter-inactivity.txt) is a list of all charter members, ordered by how many days they’ve been inactive, most recently active at the top. Interesting. Of 28 Charter Members who have been inactive for more than a year, at least 13 are former staff (who retain Charter Member status permanently in view their service), while at least 5 are deceased. ltokheim has no posts, while sphelan has three test posts. Larasaurus and McCaff have one post each. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/charter-members-who-and-how-many-are-left/726708.md?page=8) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/charter-members-who-and-how-many-are-left/726708.md?page=10)