I don’t know if that’s the best way to phrase it, but you get the idea, don’t you? I raised the question at our gathering at the Chieftain last night – the conversation quickly moved on to something more interesting. The Horror of Blimps was mentioned…it must be in the running I suppose. Tthere must be a definitive answer–does anyone know, or is anyone bored enough to figure it out?
I’ll put in a vote for If LOTR was written by someone else. Now, I never set foot in that thread, I’m just guessing based on being a very long thread.
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Let’s move this to About This Message Board.
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Thanks for the bump ‘n’ move. There has to be an answer, but I have no idea how to find it…
If you click on the number in the ‘Replies’ column of a forum’s thread list, you’ll get a list of all the unique posters in that thread. Count the items in that list and you’ll have your number. It would still be a considerable effort to calculate this number for all the long threads (more effort than I’d be willing to put in), but if anyone is bored enough, that’s one way to figure it out.
The problem is that your only going to find the threads that are in the database, so it’s possible that the result won’t really be the thread with the mostest.
Go to the “User CP” > “Edit Options” > scroll down to “Thread Display Options” > “Default Thread Age Cut Off” and set it to “Show all threads”.
Go to each forum, example GQ it now shows 2256 pages of threads, click on “Replies” this brings the “Are scalar weapons for real?” thread to the top.
Click on the number under “Replies” next to the thread, scalar has 1,017, that gives you the list of posters to the thread, count!
CMC fnord!
My completely unscientific method, I went and listed by replies in all the forums, and clicked on replies, to get the list up. Then I looked to see what looked the longest. I think the winner might be this thread . It has 5,337 replies over all, and a lot of people only replied 1-10 times. It was also the longest thread I could find on the board.
One very interesting thing I found out. our Diablo II Thread is longer then the If LoTR was written by someone else thread, with 2,814 to 2,041 posts.
Yes, but by comparison to the [thread=158752]a[/thread] thread (5337 replies), it pales significantly. 
As far as I know, we’ve never had a Straight Dope roll call.
There have been a few threads that tried to get folks to speak up and be counted. Most of them have fizzled out in just a few pages. I’d suspect that the “Lurkers Anonymous” and “Non-USA Dopers” threads have had better success than many.
Yes, but the LOTR thread was locked. Who knows how long it could have gotten to…
New thread: “What if the LOTR thread had been on another board?”
I bet someone could come up with quite a nice Stormfront version, probably mentioning how all the black hobbits had been long-ago driven out of the Shire.
This topic has roughly 500 plus replies that are all of different people (save for one or two single members (myself being one of them) who have, maybe, two or three other posts in it).
While I know compared to topics like “a” and other large topics, it still pales, but maybe it’s the largest topic around that has a very, very low “repeat poster” count.
True, but was so the Diablo II thread. It was locked because a sock started the thread. We ended up creating a new one here that got up to 148 replies.
However, it was mostly the same people posting to both threads, so it wouldn’t be a contender to the highest unique posts anyhow. I just thought it was interesting that the Diablo II thread got that long.
If by that you mean a thread where everyone is asked to post in a thread as a way of getting a rough idea of the number of members active, that was done a couple of years back (about the time paid subscriptions started, I think).
I’m doubtful any of the super-long threads would be in the running. From what I’ve seen, the long threads tend to devolve to just three or four posters (shouting past each other, in the case of GD threads).
The thread Idle Thoughts links to in post 13 is the one I was thinking about.
After reading the final post in that thread, I take it that another one, just to get a more current assessment, would be frowned upon?
You can count on it! In point of fact, one I started this month was zapped as “a bad idea” within just a few posts.
The excuse for closing it had to do with the searches I had suggested people use to see which of their own threads (ones they had participated in) had had the most replies. I was looking for a different piece of trivia, but the search function ties up the board to the point that a large number of searches going on at once would be a potential disruption.
I won’t even link to the thread in question, out of respect to the Mod who closed the thread, and out of sympathy for the concerns raised.
As it stands, I suggest the post #13 from Idle Thoughts is the one to beat. And that sort of detail can be sought without extensive “vanity searches.” Clicking on the “number of replies” number shows a list of contributors and the number of their posts.
As a side note, twickster had a game thread recently where at least 10 Dopers had over 20 posts each and a good number had over 30, with a few upwards of 40. Even with the onesy-twosy crowd, there were as many multiple-post players as I can recall seeing in a thread. I meant to hijack the thread long enough to comment on the statistics but decided to wait for a more opportune moment. This must have been that moment. 
blushes becomingly
And well-deservedly, too. Congrats! (The game was fun, too. I see it stopped just as the high-poster was about to hit 100 replies!)
FWIW, the successful game threads I have played in before this one were usually just a few players with oodles of replies each, so they’re not in the running for this criterion’s biggies.