Uhh… doesn’t being a Frank o’fobe mean something yer skeerd of?
Crap! Forgot to say WELCOME to one and all. Glad to see ya here.
Ya know, I thought that number was kind of low, but it appeared on my Google search…I probably wasn’t looking correctly and it was 61,000 accordion players in Vancouver or somethin’…
Or, perhaps those 539,000 all snuck into Alaska. (We really need to build a wall/barbed wire fence between Canada and Alaska to stop that flood of illegal immigrants from our southern neighbor…).
Oh, and congrats to our new members - your surprise free gift should be arriving by truck any day now. (Hint: Soon you can make home-made Feta cheese!)
I’m so excited!
Latest additions:
Ivan Drago
Rigadoon
PaulEdwardWagemann
LITTLER
juliesfavorite
flagstaff
oracleprophet
Caretaker
GAMMAPUNJABI
fraglimit
Roger Duprat
esAT7aF6a?uxa6
lizziebug
justqwerty
inventedscrap
Tru_Davies
allisonhennigan
Welcome! Hmmm, I wonder if any of these newcomers will ever find this thread via vanity search…
Yes, we sneak into Alaska because it’s warmer there in the winter than in Regina… 
You guys might think he’s kidding…
So, I got a number? How would I find this number?
Welcome to the Dope, all you nOObs. Participate, enjoy yourselves, have fun. But watch out for the squid.
Click on your user name, and select “view public profile”. Your userid is at the end of the URL.
Heh. I finally hassled Naughty Handkerchief Origami to register. Maybe he’ll even pay!
Mwahahahahaha!!
Firstly, a big welcome to the recent arrivals! Hope you like it here and decide to subscribe!
I too have been wondering recently how many “active members” there currently are on the SDMB, partly in relation to the non-USA-based Doper thread started by Zeldar a few weeks ago (and updated later by me at his request). Although the last posted number of active non-USA-based Dopers in that thread was 331, I’m nearly up to 400 in the list that I’m keeping, and plan to post an update when the number passes 400. Note that this isn’t an “exhaustive list”; many Dopers contributed names to that thread, and I’ve been noting other “Location” tags in threads that I’ve come across since then, but it hasn’t involved data-mining the SDMB database.
As for the total number of “active members”, the Wikipedia entry on the SDMB claims 3500 paid subscribers as of August 2005, but gives no cite for that (!). This thread from March / April 2004 (i.e. the time of transition to paid subscriptions) shows the number going to 2850 and still climbing. [alterego’s method of determining the number of currently subscribed members no longer seems to work, at least for me.]
I’m not surprised that you’d find a 1 in 6 retention rate for “early adopters” (such as 99ers), scotandrsn, but I don’t see that extrapolating to later sign-ups. From a pseudo-random sample of Dopers who registered after the SDMB went Pay-to-Post. I’m finding about 6% (approx 1 in 16) are currently listed as Members.
I suspect that the true number of subscribed Dopers is of the order of 4000-5000. Note that this doesn’t mean that they all post with any regularity, but they do keep their subscriptions paid up and are thus good citizens of Dopeville. They – together with the smattering of mods, admins, and SDSABers, plus the few hundred Guests who are in their one-month trial period, have the ability to post, even if many of them may not exercise it often.
My recollection of previous post-2004 threads that attempted to find an estimate of subscribed Dopers, is that the Chicago Reader does not consider that to be information that they want to release. I may be wrong on that, however!
Hmm, that means I’m user #250 
Looking through the early users (ie, lower numbers than mine) it does look like most of them have the status of “Guest.”
Ed Zotti is user #6. Lynn Bodoni is user #2. There doesn’t seem to be a user #1.
Ed Zotti: Who are you?
Lynn Bodoni: I am Number 2.
Ed Zotti: Who is number 1?
Lynn Bodoni: You are Number 6.
Ed Zotti: I am not a number, I am a free man!
Lynn Bodoni: (Laughs Maniacally)
I can shorten that step by two. Just hover over your name at any of your posts and the ID is at the end of the URL. No need to click or select, at least in my browser/computer using IE6.0.
I’m #10,463! Woohoo!
Um, I don’t actually know why I’m excited by that.
We’re # 80! Woohoo!
There are 79 boards more popular than this one? Hunh. Probably all pr0n sites.
So, slashdot effect, eh? Not just tired hamsters. Who knew?
Actually, according to the current big-boards.com rankings we’re at #94. You can see who’s above us, though, and an interesting page of SDMB statistics is here.
It looks as though there are about a dozen or so new Guests per day on average. Of course, this does not show what proportion of these new Guests end up subscribing, nor what the attrition rate is of non-renewing Members.
I pored over the Big-Board ratings about a year ago, and found that while we ranked somewhat low on the list at that time, we were the highest ranked general discussion board on the list (all others specialized in specific topics, such as sports or Diablo II). the only one higher at the time was FuckedCompany, and I would have to say that their designation as general discussion stems mostly from the fact that moderation there is nil, leaving threads to stray far afield from their stated purpose of providing inside information on corporations in trouble.
I find this interesting, especially since some old-timers decided that “seven years is enough” and announced their departure in the last coupla months.
:Points at registration date: I’m such an old fart!
Welcome to all the new members!
I can’t access these websites. I wonder why.
And I am # 47265!
I don’t have my list in front of me now, but IIRC, our of the first 500 usernames, only about 80 or 90 are still listed as Members or Charter Members, and have had activity on their account withint the past year.
(My benchmark is User #31, who is reputed to be a high-ranking active member within the SD organization but has not shown any activity in a while.) 