Is it just me or are there a lot of new members on the SDMB these past few days? If so, why? Just a gradual increase in popularity, or did some really popular website link to us?
By the way, most of the newbies I’ve seen are pretty good about following rules and spelling things correctly. I’m not dissing n00bs, just making a neutral observation.
So, anyone else noticed this?
We got a lot of new posters coming onto the board this time last year, too. It tends to increase in the lead up to close to Christmas.
I hadn’t even noticed an increase in newbies!
Membership may be akin to observing the water on the beach.
Sometimes it’s little wavelets, sometimes it’s huge crashing waves.
There’s times we can attribute it to something, such as a cite elsewhere online or in some magazine (both things that have happened to us in the past); sometimes, it just happens.
your humble TubaDiva
Administrator
Based on the information I’ve been able to gleen, there doesn’t seem to be any strong pattern of new registrations. Some natural variance of course. And as TubaDiva mentions, a third party cite can cause a blip. But on average, every month or so we add another 1000 registrations.
There was a greater than usual influx between mid-December 2002 and the first week of 2003. The data for the 2001 to 2002 transition is screwed up due to The Winter Of Our Missed Content, so I can’t corroborate a trend. We’ll see what happens this year.
On a broader basis, the rate* at which new members register continues to steadily increase. Well, except for 2001 that is.
1999 = 11.8 new registrations per day**.
2000 = 22.7 new registrations per day.
2001 = 22.3 new registrations per day.
2002 = 27.3 new registrations per day.
2002 = 42.0 new registrations per day.
*taking the slope of the linear best fit trendline for each year, plotting the date at which a membership milestone was reached (every 1000). One can obtain the same data by knowing how many registrations there were at the end of each year and just dividing by 365. Given our 42,000 registrations it requires only 42 userid# lookups over the course of 3 years. I’ve done them as we hit the milestone itself, so in case anyone is worried, I haven’t been stressing the hamsters.
**this 1999 number might be low. I assumed a full year, but the transistion from AOL to vBulletin might have been partway through the year.
It was. June of 1999, I do believe. If memory serves, though often it lies through its teeth.
your humble TubaDiva
Administrator
The fact that a tread like this can be started by someone with a few hundred posts under their belt, shows how blurry the definition of newbie is around here. I am not knocking this fact, simply commenting on it. To me it shows that if you are a good member it doesn’t matter how many posts you’ve made. 
Heh. Good point. I’ve actually been a member almost four years, but I’ve posted more and less actively over the years. I don’t think of myself as a newbie, but as far as post count goes, I guess I am. It’s good to put things in perspective. And to remember that post count both matters and doesn’t matter. I hope that last sentence made sense.
I still feel like a newbie and I’ve spent quite a bit of time here since I registered. Hopefully it has been mutually beneficial. I know I have enjoyed and learned much from y’all.
Just wanted to say that. Thanks…and Happy Holidays. 
Another perspective. At this time, with SharkEater presently being the newest member, 162 new member registrations have occurred since this thread was started.