That’s actually part of another study that I plan to publish (soon, I hope, but don’t hold your breath). Anyway, as a preview, I have two charts showing membership numbers, both on a monthly basis and as a cumulative sum, through the end of May. You’ll see that after the rush to sign up in March and April, both registrations and subscriptions pretty much dried up in May (registrations did pick up a bit towards the end of the month, but I don’t know if that’s because of schools letting out for summer or not).
As far as numbers go, the SDMB homepage now shows 46,493 members, and the Forum Leaders page shows 3,896 subscribers.
This may be an artifact of the fact that you’re looking at the last post in a thread. With all the traffic the board gets, to have the last post in threads in multiple forums, I think it’s likely (without knowing the statistics, as you do), that some of the following may apply:
[ul][li]A user is using the “show new posts”, or looking at their subscribed threads, so that they are looking at threads across all forums[/li][li]They are posting at some of the least busy times of day for this board, and specifically[/li][li]They did this recently before you pulled your stats[/li][li]And possibly, they tend to kill threads[/li][/ul]
The reason I’m making those guesses (and I won’t pretend they’re anything but), is that I think that many users, even if they posted in a lot of threads in all the forums, wouldn’t end up with the last post in threads across multiple forums, because:
[ul][li]During high traffic times, after making a post in one forum it would be unlikely they would manage to participate in threads in the other 6 forums before a reply is made in the first thread[/li][li]If you browse the forums one at a time, and look at or reply to several threads in one forum before going on, it’s even more likely that someone has replied to them before you get several forums down.[/li][/ul]
I like reading all of your statistics. What I’m saying here, however, is I don’t think that either first posts (thread starters) or last posts (thread killers) will give you an accurate representation of how many forums a user posts in.
True, and that’s been bugging me in the back of my mind. I’ll have to figure out some way to sample the population without wading through all 1.4 million posts. Perhaps something along the lines of the “mark-recapture” method mentioned in this thread would work.
I’m not one for sigs, but “7th Most Effective Thread Killer on the SDMB” would have a certain class.
In the light of the various hypotheses that people are kicking around, I’ll note that I’ve posted in all forums within the last year. But only two of those posts were in the Pit (and one of those threads actually then got moved out of the Pit). In the entire time I’ve been here, I suspect I’ve been the last poster in a GD thread once and perhaps a few time in CS. Probably a few more in Comments. Think there was a belated comment in an IMHO thread that nobody picked up on recently, but that might well be it for both that and MPSIMS. So I really wouldn’t be picked up on as a cross-forum thread killer.
Rather like Chronos, I rarely start threads. In fact, I’ve only ever started two: one in GQ and one in GD.
As someone posting from the UK who doesn’t post from work, I’ve tended in the past to be hit by the 1700-2300 GMT slowdown (this has been noticably lighter the last few months) and so I’ve got into the habit of posting late here, after that hump. Like now. It is plausible that I may be catching the end of threads that have gone through their main flurry, but I doubt the average “lifetime” of a thread is less than 24 hours anyway.
I hope the reason I’m ranking 7th is because I’m mainly doing useful posts in GQ. At least in GQ I tend to believe that most - though certainly not all - posts should aspire to either being the definitive answer to the question or something that can potentially round out a thread. The perfect GQ threads are those where someone nails the answer with the first reply - which Q.E.D. is notably good at. Bastard.
Apparently, I’m also good at killing threads. I’ve killed more threads than any other member last year, according to Earthling’s data. I’m not sure if that’s a Good Thing™.
I’m not too surprised to be on the list, since I participate in all forums (though I don’t often start threads). I’m just very surprised that there are not more members who have done the same. (Though I suppose there are relatively few that participate as much in ATMB, CCC, and CSR as I do.)
Yeesh, I didn’t know there was such competition for the honors of being a threadkiller. “Hey look, I killed the most threads last year!” “Pah! But I’m the most effective one!” “Ya losers, I’ve killed them in all forums, so nyah!”
Had handy kept up his post rate and not been banned, my estimations show that he would’ve killed between 525 and 546* threads over the last 12 months, giving him a hefty margin ahead of even the mods. He participated (or at least killed threads) in 5 forums: ATMB, GQ, CS, IMHO, and MPSIMS.
The first number is the result of extrapolating only the kill quantity out to a full year, whereas the second number comes from calculating the kill rate as a function of the post rate, and extrapolating that to a full year.
Of the 69,117 active threads last year, 8,865 were started and ended by the same user (this does not include the 2,954 threads with no replies mentioned in my OP). This works out to be a 13% thread-suicide rate.
These 8,865 threads were started (and ended) by 2,853 different usernames, meaning that out of 7,513 thread starters, 38% killed their own threads.
So who killed the greatest number of their own threads?
Earthling I kinda hate to resurrect this thread but it’s not that old. Besides I was not around much at the time and missed it.
I saw where you listed who had posted in all the forums but (unless I missed it) you didn’t say who, if anyone, actually killed a thread in every forum. Is there a non-staff doper that can claim this for themselves.
“I’ve killed threads in every forum.”
It’s up in Post #15. It’s easy to miss, though, buried amongst all the other stats, and I actually didn’t come out and say, “ladies and gentlemen, I present to you, the Pan-Forumic Threadkillers,” which is Colibri’s later coinage.
As it happens, you’re one of them. Be proud (I guess).
I saw that but I guess I misread what you said. I was thinking that the stat indicated that only five people participated in every forum. Which maybe the case. I didn’t catch the part where you said the members were listed at the end of the thread. Which would obviously mean they killed it or completed it.
I was checking out some of my old threads earlier and ran across this one, via a vanity search. I was almost certain that I had started threads in all forums but perhaps not. I’m for sure that I’ve ended threads in all of them. Not bad considering my diminutive post count compared to some of the others.
Thanks for all your trouble.
Be proud (I guess).
