What is an "Active Member?"

[Fear_Itself]

On the SD Main Page, in the section marked “What’s Going On?”, various statistics about the boards and those who post here are listed, among which is “Active Members: 5,914”

What constitutes an active member?

[needscoffee]

Would someone please hurry up and give a serious answer so I can make my Wilt Chamberlain joke?

[Electric_Warrior]

If I’m not mistaken it’s just the number of registered users who are currently online on the board.

[samclem]

There may be an answer in a thread we did earlier this year?

http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?p=12237983&highlight=active+member#post12237983

I haven’t revisited it, but linked it for your viewing pleasure.

[SoulFrost]

According to the vBulletin Admin control panel:

Enter a number of days here that represents a threshold for ‘active’ members. If a user has visited the board within the past number of days you specify, they are considered ‘active’.

Enter ‘0’ to treat all members as ‘active’.

and

A member is considered ‘active’ if they have visited the board within the number of days specified in ‘Active Members Time Cut-Off’.

[Colibri]

@samclem

There may be an answer in a thread we did earlier this year?

http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?p=12237983&highlight=active+member#post12237983

I haven’t revisited it, but linked it for your viewing pleasure.

According to Ed’s posts in that thread, it is the number of users who have logged in within the past 60 days.

Also:

@Ed Zotti

Just to give you a few more data points, according to Google, during the same 60 day period, straightdope.com (exclusive of the SDMB) had 2.2 million unique visitors and the SDMB had 545K. So we’re talking an active to deep lurker ratio of 100:1.

[Colibri]

@Electric_Warrior

If I’m not mistaken it’s just the number of registered users who are currently online on the board.

No, that figure is considerably less than the number of “active members.” That figure is not visible on the front page.

[Siam_Sam]

All I know is my member became much more active when I first moved to Thailand.

[Zeldar]

@samclem

There may be an answer in a thread we did earlier this year?

http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?p=12237983&highlight=active+member#post12237983

I haven’t revisited it, but linked it for your viewing pleasure.

Since I was active in that thread I can say that the findings are that there are “active” member numbers which can be found for every member, active or not, in the “member profile” data. To locate that data click on the member’s name and that will display the profile page.

For reference, yours is Straight Dope Message Board - Your direct line to thousands of the smartest, hippest people on the planet, plus a few total dipsticks.

By substituting other numbers in the URL, replacing the 6323 in yours, for example, you can see the “last activity” date for as many as you want to see. Another earlier thread explores user numbers and pretty well decided that a vast majority of those “active members” have ceased being so.

It would be a raw guess, with nothing more than 100 samples to go on, but the number I would go with is going to be less than 10% of the number on the page you referred to.

Thousands, perhaps, but not tens of thousands. Many “active members” never posted the first time! Lurkers abound, and there’s just no way to count them!

[Colibri]

@Zeldar

Since I was active in that thread I can say that the findings are that there are “active” member numbers which can be found for every member, active or not, in the “member profile” data. To locate that data click on the member’s name and that will display the profile page.

For reference, yours is Straight Dope Message Board - Your direct line to thousands of the smartest, hippest people on the planet, plus a few total dipsticks.

By substituting other numbers in the URL, replacing the 6323 in yours, for example, you can see the “last activity” date for as many as you want to see. Another earlier thread explores user numbers and pretty well decided that a vast majority of those “active members” have ceased being so.

It would be a raw guess, with nothing more than 100 samples to go on, but the number I would go with is going to be less than 10% of the number on the page you referred to.

Thousands, perhaps, but not tens of thousands. Many “active members” never posted the first time! Lurkers abound, and there’s just no way to count them!

From some of these comments, it looks like you may be referring to the “members” total on the front page, which is currently about 90,000, rather than “active members.” This includes everyone who ever registered in the past 11 years, including spammers. As I mentioned above, the “active members” figure is for users who have logged in within the past 60 days, and is generally close to 6,000.

[Zeldar]

@Colibri

From some of these comments, it looks like you may be referring to the “members” total on the front page, which is currently about 90,000, rather than “active members.” This includes everyone who ever registered in the past 11 years, including spammers. As I mentioned above, the “active members” figure is for users who have logged in within the past 60 days, and is generally close to 6,000.

Thanks for clarifying that. It was the “members” total on the front page that I was disputing. I can easily buy the 6,000 as “active” even if they don’t all post.