How many active SDMB members?

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1

I’ve heard estimates that range from as few as a thousand to as many as 25-30K active members that visit the boards. Since we don’t have a counter that shows who or how many Dopers are currently participating. Is there a way to know how many members are still with us.

Could it be possible for the SDMB to have an active counter to keep up with how many people are on-line? If I opened the Dope and saw a large number of members currently active it would allow me to moderate my own participation.

Plus as an added incentive, we could get an idea of our strength as a group. Think about a few thousand Dopers with a cause. It could make a difference if WE decided to use this “team of millions” for a common goal.

So how about it? Just how many of us are there?

Lurkers count too. Although it’d be nice to speak just once in awhile to let us know you’re there. I think the silent majority here is probably HUGE. :eek:

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Previous threads:

active vs. inactive posters

How many still active?

The numbers vary, I’d say, t-keela.

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I can say with some certainty what numbers were like a year or two ago. I had scanned the board and posted a list of the highest posters, which was a big hit until it was realized it could potentially be a big drain:

Registered users who had never posted: 40%
No posts in 6 months: 35%
Had posted in the past 6 months: 25%

Total Posts:

0: 40%
1: 14%
2: 7%
less than 10 posts: 70%
greater than 10 posts: 30%

These numbers don’t include overlap (i.e. posters who posted greater than 10 posts, but haven’t posted in six months). Also, it doesn’t include lurkers.

Also, the above numbers don’t include banned users (who may have posted, but wouldn’t be doin so no more). Aprox. 0.7% of all registered users had been banned.

So, I’d estimate there are 10,000 active posters.

Good luck on the “common goal” concept.

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T-keela, vB has a function that displays the names of users and how many guests are looking at a particular forum and individual threads, which is pretty much what you are asking, right? The mods have chosen to turn this off. I suspect it is partly for privacy, partly since the list might be too long to be practical, partly to reduce the server load, although I doubt it has much effect on the hamsters.

Personally, I’m happy with the way it is now. I feel a trifle “exposed” on other forums when my name appears at the bottom of a page.

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I’m sitting still right now…

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I did some more analysis with the numbers from a year plus ago.

Registered users that had posted over 100 times: 10%
Registered users that had posted over 100 times, and they had posted in the last six months: 8%

So, I dramatically revise my assessment of “active posters” down to 3,300 active posters.

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I dunno. I’m constantly seeing a post from someone who registered in, say, 1999 and has a grand total of 10 posts. My sense is that there are a number of “active” members who just don’t feel the need to post that much.

I also wonder what the proportion of “active” lurkers to posters is, let alone the number of “drive-by” lurkers who dropped in just to take a look at that bloody LOTR thread or the blimps thing.

It would be great if a mod could chime in with an estimate of how many unique visitors the board gets in a month.

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The Administrators have functions that are easy to use in the Control Panel that will tell them this, and much other info. However, using these functions requires some hefty Searches on the database, which, given the current struggling state of the SDMB server, might not be best to do.

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:confused:

Is this really necessary? Doesn’t the reader analyze its log files as a matter of course?

I’d be surprised if Ed wasn’t getting a weekly report with precisely this information. Maybe the Reader needs to keep this info confidential for some reason?

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You’re mixing two different issues here: http logs and vBulletin statisitics. vBulletin statistics are generated from the Admin control panel, and include such things as posts/day over any time range of the Board, new Members/day, new threads/day, and advanced user statistics - you can ask it “how many unique users visited between May 3, 2002 at 12:34:56 and June 7, 2003, 1:23:45” and so forth. To generate any of these logs, since the data is 1) dynamic and 2) stored in the database, a database query must be run from the panel.

The http logs contain only the raw information - which IP did what to who at what times. It contains different information, but less valuable from a Board standpoint. It can tell number of unique IP’s visiting, but not the number of unique members visiting, for example. Oh, one could write an analysis tool to go through and try to track logins and cross-reference those with IPs, but that would be a Herculean effort that would be impossible on something the size of the SDMB. I stopped being able to do it when my Board broke 50 posts a day. One thing the http logs is useful for is telling the referrer, or where SDMB threads may have been linked from or linked on other sites.

From what I know I sincerely doubt that Ed gets any such ongoing report information delivered to him. And I don’t know why he would care, and I don’t know who would have the time to run log analyzers every week on the logs. Running the vBulletin reports once a quarter might be interesting, and would take about 15-30 minutes to do, but otherwise microanalyzing the data isn’t likely to get you anything.

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What Una said.

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I really don’t care about who is online (the button lower left does that) I was more interested in simply how many users are signed on.

Does it take a few hundred to cause a jam on the board? or a thousand, or five. ? For all I know, there may only be a few dozen folks here right now, maybe less.

I don’t know about y’all but I read the boards for over a year before I ever signed on. I doubt there’s anyway of knowing the total number of people that frequent this board. I can’t prove it but I believe many of the banned members still read the boards. I imagine that several are back with us.

Just because a person has a low or no post count doesn’t mean they aren’t still reading this message board.

What effect does simply lurking have on the board’s efficiency, if any?

In my mind, the SDMB is a lot like PBS. There are thousands or perhaps millions of people who simply enjoy the show. They don’t want to be a part of the cast. It’s entertaining and educational and free.

In addition to however many registered active members, whether they post or not, what might be a fair guess as to how many people worldwide read the SDMB w/out ever registering. I know I did for a year.

As far as a common goal is concerned.

There’s always going to be those who just like to stir shit up. The pessimists in life who have to condemn any and all efforts or ideas that aren’t their own. They serve themselves and their own egos. They attempt to elevate their pathetic lives by exposing the flaws of others, real or imagined, without offering proof or solution. They revel in their imagined superiority. To hell with them. They are weak. Bullies looking for opportunity. Candy thieves.

Sorry folks, kinda hijacked my own thread. :smack: Oh well, I’m not gonna delete it now.

Real simple OP…how many folks read the SDMB regularly? In other words how many lives does this board touch, say on a monthly basis. If it were a newspaper, I guess I’d ask what is it’s distribution?

and Musicat I have no desire to invade anyone’s privacy. Just a simple, single counter that says how many total guests and/or members are currently present at this site.

Well, Dex got anything I can use here? I’m trying to be cool. :slight_smile:

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Una Persson and C K

Assuming most posters do accept cookies: Does VB log something like “cookies read” anywhere? Is there any way of adding such a function to the DocumentRoot (knowing PHP, probably $SERVER_ROOT/sdmb/index.php), so that it creates a log file entry each time it receives a cookie? Maybe even put it in a an .inc file function that is included on every page!

Then, offload the log nightly to a different server, and you have a whole boat-load of statistics (owner of cookie with “bbuserid” field 12345 did X, Y, Z and W yesterday).

Nearly all the data of a DB search (if the “current page” gets logged as well), at the price of a textual log file.

Dan Abarbanel

If it were so easy, someone else would have thought of it - where am I wrong? :frowning:

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Well, in effect. It does track when you log in or visit, if you have cookies. That’s what is alrady available via the Control Panel search I mentioned. But I don’t know how to make work what you are saying - the http logs I see don’t have any information in them that’s easy to tie to a use if they use cookies. Now session information maybe, but that would be really onerous. Plus, most of the SD Staff, if not all, don’t actually have file access to the log files due to their security. It was mentioned before that only jdavis or people at the reader have that, and thus they would need to get involved.

I estimate that at my board perhaps 1/3 of the users are cookieless too, and you’ld have to track session IDs.

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Well, at the gruesome technical level, a cookie is just another HTTP header - so it should be possible to tweak the Web Server configuration to print it out as part of the HTTP log, although that is not normally the case. No need to touch the vB application code.

So a job can be set up to have the HTTP logs exported to an environment from which mods are allowed to FTP stuff out (Assuming such an env. exists). Or make sure the files are “read-only” for moderators. Or give them FTP “get” privileges only, or …

Does vB allow members to log in without, at least, a session cookie? If not - session cookies can be seen, too. If so - at least we’d have a conservative estimate.

Dan Abarbanel

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While I think some of the things you say are technically feasible, I still think they come down to being infeasible as far as the Reader is concerned from the standpoint of the manpower and security issues. I think you might have to focus on what the actual benefit would be to the Reader to have this sort of information - what would they get from it? How would it help them? Would this information be an overload?

Even I, who sometimes obsess over statistics, don’t review my logs without a reason to do so anymore - Dr Theopolus wrote me a neat tool that allows me, for example, to scan the 100+ MB log and track the activities of a certain IP - such as “this IP logged on at this time, went to this thread, sat for 10 minutes, did a Search on this, posted here, then timed out”. It’s useful for tracking the people who are accessing my Board in violation of our written orders to them. But other than that, I’m not going to spend any effort myself.