# The SDMB Census! **URL:** \ **Category:** About This Message Board\ **Created:** [April 14, 2001, 6:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-sdmb-census/61929 "2001-04-14T06:50:46Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 17\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![MagicalSilverKey](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/8797f3/32.png) [@MagicalSilverKey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MagicalSilverKey)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2001, 6:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-sdmb-census/61929/1 "2001-04-14T06:50:46Z")
I was wondering… Out our 10,000+ members: How many have been banned? How many are overtly inactive participants? How many are “regulars”? and so on… Just wondering how many “actual” members we have, excluding the trolls, sockpuppets, and dead usernames, etc. I WAG that it’s not as many as we may think. ---
**Author:** ![Arnold\_Winkelried](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/3d9bf3/32.png) [@Arnold\_Winkelried](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Arnold_Winkelried)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2001, 8:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-sdmb-census/61929/2 "2001-04-14T20:13:02Z")
How would you define an “active” poster? A “regular” poster? An “actual” poster? ---
**Author:** ![MagicalSilverKey](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/8797f3/32.png) [@MagicalSilverKey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MagicalSilverKey)\ **Post date:** [April 15, 2001, 12:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-sdmb-census/61929/3 "2001-04-15T00:38:35Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Arnold Winkelried \* > \*\*How would you define an “active” poster? A “regular” poster? An “actual” poster? \*\* LOL, Good question… I was hoping you could tell _ **me.** _ ---
**Author:** ![PlanMan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/2bfe46/32.png) [@PlanMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PlanMan)\ **Post date:** [April 15, 2001, 12:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-sdmb-census/61929/4 "2001-04-15T00:56:54Z")
Let’s see … An **“actual poster”** would be that Peter Max thing I had on my dorm room wall, A **“regular poster”** would get plenty of fiber, and an **“active poster”** would be … hmmmn … drawing a blank here ---
**Author:** ![callie](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/2acd7d/32.png) [@callie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/callie)\ **Post date:** [April 15, 2001, 3:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-sdmb-census/61929/5 "2001-04-15T03:14:40Z")
**MagicalSilverKey** - This is an interesting question . I think that an “active”, “regular”, and “actual” poster would have one and the same meaning. Which if you agree means our catagories would be: 1. How many banned posters? 2. How many regular posters? 3. How many inactive posters? (maybe members who haven’t posted in over 3 months) Is there another group? ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [April 15, 2001, 9:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-sdmb-census/61929/6 "2001-04-15T09:48:41Z")
…are [here](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?postid=811372#post811372), with explanation of methods in the immediately preceding post. That was back when we had just over 10,000 registered usernames; we’re up around 14,000 now. We can’t really do a census (no matter what our definition of ‘active poster’ is) without access to the member database, and that’s not gonna happen: the SD techs have more essential things to do, and the SD admin (for legit reasons, IMO) isn’t likely to grant access to one of the Teeming Millions that has the time, interest, and ability to query the database for that purpose. But we can get a pretty educated guess by sampling, which is what I did. I’m satisfied that we’ve got over 1000 actives by practically any reasonable definition; possibly close to 2000 if the definition’s looser. ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [April 15, 2001, 9:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-sdmb-census/61929/7 "2001-04-15T09:53:51Z")
One more note: by far the largest group, amongst the registered users here, might be termed the ‘never-actives’ - people who registered, posted just a few times (sometimes not at all), and then left. I didn’t try to count those, but IIRC, that group accounts for a majority of the registered users, all by itself. ---
**Author:** ![Opinionated\_Expert\_14057](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/e68b1a/32.png) [@Opinionated\_Expert\_14057](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Opinionated_Expert_14057)\ **Post date:** [April 15, 2001, 3:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-sdmb-census/61929/8 "2001-04-15T15:05:04Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by RTFirefly \* > \*\*One more note: by far the largest group, amongst the registered users here, might be termed the ‘never-actives’ - people who registered, posted just a few times (sometimes not at all), and then left. I didn’t try to count those, but IIRC, that group accounts for a majority of the registered users, all by itself. \*\* We prefer the term “transients” 😃 ---
**Author:** ![handy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/b5a626/32.png) [@handy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/handy)\ **Post date:** [April 15, 2001, 3:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-sdmb-census/61929/9 "2001-04-15T15:48:27Z")
I bet the site logs could give you some of this information but I don’t think they would let us read them. ---
**Author:** ![bibliophage](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bibliophage/32/7615_2.png) [@bibliophage](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bibliophage)\ **Post date:** [April 15, 2001, 10:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-sdmb-census/61929/10 "2001-04-15T22:31:38Z")
In November, **Anthracite** provided some intersting statistics in [this thread](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=48779). From a sample of 112, one number was “invalid”, and two were banned. The mean number of posts per user was 109, the median number was 3 posts, and the mode was 0 posts. 19 out of 112 had over 100 posts, and 3 of 112 had over 1000 posts. ---
**Author:** ![Cervaise](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cervaise/32/16693_2.png) [@Cervaise](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cervaise)\ **Post date:** [April 16, 2001, 5:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-sdmb-census/61929/11 "2001-04-16T05:45:34Z")
> [@](#): > > and an “active poster” would be … hmmmn … drawing a blank here [list=1][_]Jimi Hendrix concert one-sheet[_]black light[\*]tab of LSD[/list=1]YMMV. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![handy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/b5a626/32.png) [@handy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/handy)\ **Post date:** [April 16, 2001, 4:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-sdmb-census/61929/12 "2001-04-16T16:04:25Z")
People who read but don’t post are ‘lurkers.’ ---
**Author:** ![Coldfire](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a587f6/32.png) [@Coldfire](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Coldfire)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2001, 11:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-sdmb-census/61929/13 "2001-04-17T23:56:21Z")
And what do we call people who don’t read, but post anyway? 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Polycarp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/82dd89/32.png) [@Polycarp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Polycarp)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2001, 12:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-sdmb-census/61929/14 "2001-04-18T00:21:04Z")
If one of us answered that honestly, Coldie, you would (a) move this thread to the pit, and (b) issue whoever it was a warning. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2001, 12:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-sdmb-census/61929/15 "2001-04-18T12:45:37Z")
Dammit, Coldie, now I’m cleaning coffee off my keyboard. Boy howdy, you nailed that one! 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Montfort](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d6d6ee/32.png) [@Montfort](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Montfort)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2001, 2:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-sdmb-census/61929/16 "2001-04-18T14:17:10Z")
I could give an answer offhand, **Coldy**. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![TubaDiva](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tubadiva/32/507_2.png) [@TubaDiva](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TubaDiva)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2001, 2:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-sdmb-census/61929/17 "2001-04-18T14:44:47Z")
This is an interesting thread, but just to be on the safe side, remember in all we do here we do not want to violate anybody’s privacy, so let’s be careful how we handle any sort of information on or about this site, please. your humble TubaDiva Administrator