# How many posters are how active?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-posters-are-how-active/848080>\
**Category:** About This Message Board\
**Created:** [February 17, 2020, 5:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-posters-are-how-active/848080 "2020-02-17T17:05:25Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 5\
**Page:** 2

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**Author:** ![elmwood](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/elmwood/32/3060_2.png) [@elmwood](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elmwood)\
**Post date:** [February 18, 2020, 6:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-posters-are-how-active/848080/21 "2020-02-18T18:44:12Z")

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> [@elmwood](#):
>
> An active user, according to vB 3, is someone who visited and logged in in the past 30 days. This includes new users and spammers.

Quoting myself, but the “active user” setting can be customized. 30 days is the default. Someone else said it’s 60 days here. If that’s the case, 3,400 active users - 800 new one-and-done/lurker/spam users - 2,600 active users. Apply the Pareto principle, and you get **520 _really_ active users in a two-month period**.

Most vB sites show a count of current visitors, and a list of members that are logged on. The default is 15 minutes. Some boards up the time to an hour, or even a day, so they look MUCH busier.

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**Author:** ![cram4dell](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/5e9695/32.png) [@cram4dell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cram4dell)\
**Post date:** [February 18, 2020, 10:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-posters-are-how-active/848080/22 "2020-02-18T22:19:50Z")

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> [@Velocity](#):
>
> Yeah it would be neat to have a list like, “Top 100 posting Dopers in the past 100 days”, by posts-per-day ratio.

I like that idea.

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**Author:** ![ftg](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ftg/32/2801_2.png) [@ftg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ftg)\
**Post date:** [February 18, 2020, 10:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-posters-are-how-active/848080/23 "2020-02-18T22:24:45Z")

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In Computer Science we use a lot of 80/20 (or 90/10) rules. E.g., 80% of the file accesses are for 20% of the files.

But I think here that it may be more like a 99/1 rule: 99% of the posts are made by 1% of the currently active members.

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**Author:** ![Tripler](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripler/32/21807_2.png) [@Tripler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tripler)\
**Post date:** [February 18, 2020, 11:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-posters-are-how-active/848080/24 "2020-02-18T23:18:23Z")

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I’m not active here, like I am at the gym at 5:AM every morning. Granted, I can power clean 185, but I’m still working the Wendler program to bench press 1/10th of the weight of the fight against ignorance.

Tripler  
I’m not that active if I have less than 8k posts in nearly 20 years.

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**Author:** ![cram4dell](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/5e9695/32.png) [@cram4dell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cram4dell)\
**Post date:** [February 18, 2020, 11:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-posters-are-how-active/848080/25 "2020-02-18T23:44:57Z")

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> [@ftg](#):
>
> In Computer Science we use a lot of 80/20 (or 90/10) rules. E.g., 80% of the file accesses are for 20% of the files.
> 
> But I think here that it may be more like a 99/1 rule: 99% of the posts are made by 1% of the currently active members.

True about the percentages, but that also pertains to most of the internet. Far fewer content creators than consumers. Right?

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