How many active users are there?

[Hennessy]

Is it possible to find that out? I don’t know a setup to go by, maybe 5 posts a month for at least the last 6 months…

The reason why I’m asking is because the Market Place isn’t really moving. I have been through a lot of forums, most if not all being substantially smaller then this one yet they have a banging for sale/trade forum. The only argument I think I could accept is this is a forum for conversation about everything as most other forums are dedicated to something particular ( types of cars, cars, computers, diy, etc… ).

When I first seen The Market Place, I assumed it would be as popular as General Questions with all types of diverse items for sale. It is too bad it isn’t…

I know craigslist and even Ebay makes selling things a lot easier than any forum could but… True Dopers should sell their stuff here… I hope it isn’t an issue of trust, 1999 and going, there should be plenty of trust circulating here…

Note: I won’t sell things over a forum myself :smack: but I wouldn’t mind buying things.

Out of place question: Is it possible for an Admin at a forum to view IP addresses of each user (actively)?

[BigT]

Last time I saw the option turned on, we had just over 6,000 active users per month.

EDIT: And that was within the last 6 months, at least.

[Martini_Enfield]

@BigT

Last time I saw the option turned on, we had just over 6,000 active users per month.

EDIT: And that was within the last 6 months, at least.

That seems extremely high to me, I must say.

[BigT]

@Martini_Enfield

That seems extremely high to me, I must say.

It did to me, too, but that’s why I remember it. I found a post confirming (although it’s active within the past 2 months, not one.)

@Ed_Zotti

If you look at the bottom of the forum display page, you’ll see a listing for Active Members, which means registered users who have logged on in the last 60 days. As of right now it says 6,323.

[Martini_Enfield]

@BigT

It did to me, too, but that’s why I remember it. I found a post confirming (although it’s active within the past 2 months, not one.)

I imagine that if you take the spammers, one-shot posters wandering in from the internet, and lurkers-who-signed-up-but-never-post out of the equation it’s going to come down to a lot less; I’d guess around 2,500 members who actually participate in the boards, with many of them only posting in game threads or the like.

[Lynn_Bodoni]

It’s going to depend on what you consider an active user. I think that if you consider an active user to be someone who has registered and then activated the account, yeah, we have a lot. However, there are a lot of people, and a lot of bots, who sign up but never click on the confirming email. Sometimes it’s because they give an obviously fake email address. But sometimes it’s because they are clearly bots. And sometimes…I just don’t know why they don’t activate the account.

Of those that DO activate the account, there are a great many who never post even once. I wouldn’t count them as active users. Then there are people who only have one posting session.

I probably wouldn’t consider someone to be an active member unless s/he actually made several posts, in several sessions.

Maybe there’s a way to find this out from the admin control panel, but I’ve never been curious enough to try to find out. Some functions are pretty intuitive, while others are not.

[Thudlow_Boink]

I’m guessing we have a few sedentary users…

[Claverhouse]

@Hennessy

Out of place question: Is it possible for an Admin at a forum to view IP addresses of each user (actively)?

Yes, on each post there is a monitor icon which hovered over shows the IP to a madmin. Or on forums with a Who’s Online page this too includes the IP of every member online.

Useful for blocking IP sets in addition to banning a poster.

[Exapno_Mapcase]

@Hennessy

When I first seen The Market Place, I assumed it would be as popular as General Questions with all types of diverse items for sale. It is too bad it isn’t…

Maybe this is the problem. When I first saw The Market Place I assumed it would as popular as Straight Dope Chicago.

[Colibri]

@BigT

Last time I saw the option turned on, we had just over 6,000 active users per month.

EDIT: And that was within the last 6 months, at least.

The present count, visible in the lower left corner of the main forum page, is 11,690. This indicates the number of users who have logged in within the past 60 days. It was around 6,000 last March, and held at that level until around December of last year, when it began to climb rapidly. Our number of active users has nearly doubled in the last six months. I don’t know what exactly has been the cause, especially since the number of posts per month has not increased appreciably.

[Surbey]

see, this is a hard figure to tell because THANKFULLY this board has alot of lurkers. I mean, I’ve made 9 posts this year? Only 1 last month. But I get on here almost every day.

Now to be fair, I stick to very specific areas unless something catches my eye. CS is my home, GD is something catches my eye, same with the Pit. I check the About occasionally to see any new bans and to laugh at the bi-monthly “This board ain’t what it used to be” post.

Maybe we could view how many members logged in?

[Surbey]

disregard my last comment. I failed the first step of being a lurker. Read everything before you post. UGH!

[Digital_is_the_new_Analog]

@Thudlow_Boink

I’m guessing we have a few sedentary users…

I’m Igneous myself…

-D/a

[Martini_Enfield]

@Colibri

The present count, visible in the lower left corner of the main forum page, is 11,690. This indicates the number of users who have logged in within the past 60 days. It was around 6,000 last March, and held at that level until around December of last year, when it began to climb rapidly. Our number of active users has nearly doubled in the last six months. I don’t know what exactly has been the cause, especially since the number of posts per month has not increased appreciably.

I think you (or the board software) is using a different meaning of “Active User” than what most people would understand it to mean. People who log on once to resurrect an eight year old thread they found on a google search and disappear are not “active users” by most people’s definition of the term, after all.

[BigT]

@Colibri

The present count, visible in the lower left corner of the main forum page, is 11,690. This indicates the number of users who have logged in within the past 60 days. It was around 6,000 last March, and held at that level until around December of last year, when it began to climb rapidly. Our number of active users has nearly doubled in the last six months. I don’t know what exactly has been the cause, especially since the number of posts per month has not increased appreciably.

Huh. I looked and looked for that, couldn’t find it, and assumed Ed had turned it back off. I don’t know how I missed it.

[Colibri]

@Martini_Enfield

I think you (or the board software) is using a different meaning of “Active User” than what most people would understand it to mean. People who log on once to resurrect an eight year old thread they found on a google search and disappear are not “active users” by most people’s definition of the term, after all.

True. However, although we do have a lot of such users, I don’t know why they would have increased by such an enormous amount since last December.

[BigT]

Well, with guests it can be because of web spiders.

[Musicat]

@Colibri

True. However, although we do have a lot of such users, I don’t know why they would have increased by such an enormous amount since last December.

As BigT suggests, it might be better, quicker indexing by search engines, particularly Google. I think Google spots new posts within 5 minutes or less now; maybe they improved this function around that time, or maybe they give us a higher ranking now?