I mean public forum as in, a space that people meet to talk about. Not necessarily a government-designated forum where rules are subject to strict constitutional limitations. Nevertheless I think the rules here should turn on content, not viewpoint, which is in line with the Constitutional public forums.
Anyways, you and I can agree to disagree about this. I’m curious as to how much it costs to run the board though, I’m sure the vBulletin license is long since paid for and some 33 million text-only posts would definitely fit on a mid-range dedi, and you can get those for under $2k/mo.
But I’m thinking a major source of funding comes from advertising on the archives, which is quite popular as far as websites go (that’s how I found this place!). It’s not reddit but it’s probably in the top 1% of websites by traffic.
Hmm, it seems that you are right. I was going by the thread:
Looks like my 2011 number was inaccurate.
[…]
But the Wayback machine itself says the number for 5/23/11 is 11,167.
~Max