Statistics

[Valamir]

Ok, my last quarterly update was July 21st just before GenCon.  The next one isn’t really due until October, but I wanted to do a “1 month later” analysis to see if there was any unusual impact to our numbers that could be attributed to our Forge promotion at the con.  I won’t include these numbers in future summaries, but I wanted to capture a snapshot.

On July 21st there were 1796 members.  Today there are 1941 (+145) that’s about 28% higher than our recent monthly growth rate, so it would seem that we’ve had a pretty significant boost in GenCon related membership.  Having collected a number of names and emails of purchasers at the booth, I can confirm having seen a good number (at least a dozen from memory) new members names that I recognize from GenCon.  


There are still 15 members with more than 800 posts (+0)
There are still 24 members with between 400-800 posts (+0)
There are 47 members with between 200-400 posts (+5)
There are 66 members with between 100-200 posts (+2)
There are 79 members with between 50-100 posts (+9)
There are 114 members with between 25-50 posts (+14)
There are 217 members with between 10-25 posts (+11)
There are 189 members with between 5-10 posts (+10)

Not much movement at the very top (as expected), but there are 51 new members with at least 5 posts in the last month.  That’s 35% of the total new members added.  Given that the new members added was inflated by a heavy promotion, I’d expect to see a fair number of people just logging on to check us out, but it would seem that a significant number of them have managed to find some things to say after just a month with us.  I’m pretty impressed by that number actually.


There are 225 (+18) members who've made only a single post. (12%)
However there are now 657 (+69) members who've never made a single post (34%)

As expected, these numbers have crept up slightly as a result of the GenCon push, but not as much as I’d expected.  These numbers would have been 2-3% higher instead of ½%-1% higher if most of the new members had just remained lurkers.

We're still holding at 18% of the total membership haveing more than 25 posts.

Amazingly, we’re also still holding at 8% of the total membership having at least 100 posts.

I did find an interesting new stat to look at.  By pulling up a list of members by Joined Date in decending order one can find the most recent new members.

Of the 145 new member who joined since the last update:
21 have posted 1 time
26 have posted between 2 and 5 times
7 have posted between 6 and 10 times

but what’s more interesting is that:
4 have posted between 11 and 20 times
4 have posted between 21 and 30 times and
4 have posted more than 30 times

Just in the last month.

[Valamir]

Ok, not counting the interrim Gen Con update, the last quarterly statistics update was back in July, making it just about time to do another one.

Ok, its time for another quarterly Statistics update. I waited until just before GenCon to do this one, because my thought is to do an interrim update about a month after GenCon to try and see if our GenCon exposure had any immediate kick in membership.

We had 1114 members in January, 1420 in April (+306; +28%), 1796 in July (+376; +27%), and are now at 2151 (+355; +20%).

Interestingly, despite a large post Gen Con surge, the total number of new members for the quarter is well within (and even slightly lower) than the trend from previous quarters.  It will be interesting to see if this signals a decline in the growth rate of members going forward.


The top 10 posters have made 30% of the total posts (down from 40%, 38%, 37%, 35%, 33% and 31%)
The top 20 posters have made 40% of the total posts (down from 60%, 53%, 50%, 46%, 44% and 42%)
The top 40 posters have made 53% of the total posts (down from 75%, 69%, 66%, 61%, 59% and 55%)
The top 80 posters have made 67% of the total posts (down from 90%, 85%, 81%, 76%, 73%, and 69% )

I'll continue to track these numbers (because its fun) but there isn't really anything new to be gleaned from them.  One item of note, is that there are currently 2 newly inactive posters in the top 10 who will be gradually dropping lower.

There are still 15 members with more than 800 posts (up from 9, 10, 15, +0)
There are 27 members with between 400-800 posts (up from 18, 23, 24, +3)
There are 47 members with between 200-400 posts (up from 20, 29, 42, +5)
There are 69 members with between 100-200 posts (up from 42, 55, 64, +5)
There are 93 members with between 50-100 posts (up from 58, 60, 70, +23)
There are 118 members with between 25-50 posts (up from 72, 84, 100, +18)
There are 243 members with between 10-25 posts (up from 112, 151, 206, +37)
There are 202 members with between 5-10 posts (up from 120, 147, 179, +23)

Last quarter (July) had a big spike in the 800+ poster range.  As expected there was little (actually no) activity in this tier.  However, there are a good number of folks who'll probably cross that threshold by next quarter.

The bubble that we noticed moving up in April and July has stabilized out (as would be expected since the upper tiers are much larger).  The large group of 10-25s and 5-10s from July continue to move up and inflate the 50-100 and 25-50 tiers, while a new group of posters move into the bell of the funnel.

There are 113 more people with at least 5 posts than there was in July.  


There are 259 members who've made only a single post (thats up from 150, 169, and 207 but down in % terms from 13% to 12% to 11% and now back to 12%)

There are now 738 members who've never made a single post (up from 312, 434 and 588 in % terms up to 34% from 33%, 31% and 28%).

This seems to be holding fairly steady.



We've dipped to 17% (from 18%, 18%, 20%) of the total membership haveing more than 25 posts. This means that the number of people finding the site useful enough to post with some relative frequency (25+ posts), are increasing nearly as fast (in proportion) to the number of new members we're adding. I think that's quite an accomplishment.

We've also dipped to 7% of the total membership having at least 100 posts (from 8%, 8%, 9%).  In order to have maintained at 8%, we'd need 1 new 100+ poster for ever 12 new members.  With 355 new members we'd need 30 new 100+ posters.  We only got 13 this time around, but it looks like a fresh batch I said last quarter this will be a difficult number to maintain as we'd need 12 new 100+ posters for every 12 new members. Well, with 376 new members we'd need 31 new 100+ posters. We actually got 28, which is pretty darn close.

The number of lurkers or largely non participating posters (less than 5 posts) stands at 62%, up slightly (from 61%, 61%, and 59%). We continue to gain active participants (at least briefly active) at the same proportional rate as we gain new members.  

Continueing with the new stat I found of looking at the recent members (Joined since July 21)


Of the 355 new members who joined since the last update:
54 have posted 1 time (15%)
57 have posted between 2 and 5 times (16%)
35 have posted between 6 and 10 times (10%)
18 have posted between 11 and 20 times (5%)
9 have posted between 21 and 30 times (3%)
11 have posted more than 30 times (3%)

Just in the last quarter.

That means over ½ (52%) of the newest members have posted at least once and over 1/3 (36%) more than once.

[Daniel Solis]

I just wanted to drop a note (and my 200th post, whee!) to thank Ralph for maintaining what, to my tiny brainmeats, would be a mind-boggling task of mathematical fortitude. Keep it up! :)

[Valamir]

Heh, its more sorting and counting than any mind boggling match, but thanks for the props.  By the time I do the next one you'll be one of the statistics moving up a tier. :-)

[Valamir]

Ok, last update was early October, its time for another one.

We had 1114 members in January, 1420 in April (+306; +28%), 1796 in July (+376; +27%), 2151 (+355; +20%) in October, and are now at 2460 (+309; +14%).

The rate of growth seems to be slowing but a 120% year over year increase is pretty impressive.  


The top 10 posters have made 29% of the total posts (down from 40%, 38%, 37%, 35%, 33%, 31% and 30%)
The top 20 posters have made 39% of the total posts (down from 60%, 53%, 50%, 46%, 44%, 42%, and 40%)
The top 40 posters have made 52% of the total posts (down from 75%, 69%, 66%, 61%, 59%, 55%, and 53%)
The top 80 posters have made 65% of the total posts (down from 90%, 85%, 81%, 76%, 73%, 69%, and 67% )

Looks like the trend is bottoming out declining only about 1% from last quarter's figures.  For the sake of completeness I'll continue to keep track though the trend seems firmly established.  

There are now 19 members with more than 800 posts (up from 9, 10, 15, 15 +4)
There are 25 members with between 400-800 posts (up from 18, 23, 24, 27 -2)
There are 52 members with between 200-400 posts (up from 20, 29, 42, 47 +5)
There are 83 members with between 100-200 posts (up from 42, 55, 64, 69 +14)
There are 88 members with between 50-100 posts (up from 58, 60, 70, 93 -5)
There are 144 members with between 25-50 posts (up from 72, 84, 100, 118 +26)
There are 268 members with between 10-25 posts (up from 112, 151, 206, 243 +25)
There are 223 members with between 5-10 posts (up from 120, 147, 179, 202 +21)

I noted in October that there were several people on the cusp of crossing the 800 posts threshold.  As can be seen, several did so.  There may be a couple more reaching that point by next quarter.  

Interestingly there are now 2 tiers which shrank this last quarter.  This indicates more people moving up out of the tier than moved into the tier.  I don't think this signifies anything other than a coincidence of timing.  If it were the lowest tiers experiencing shrinking while the uppers continued to grow, that would indicate continued posting by existing members but a dearth of new active posters and may be a cause for some concern.  But that isn't what happened here.  In fact, given the number of new posters in the lowest 3 tiers, I'd say there are plenty of new active posters to continue funneling upwards.

There are 88 more people with at least 5 posts than there was in October.  Less than the 113 increase from July to October but consistent with the slower rate of new members.


There are 300 members who've made only a single post (that's up from 150, 169, 207, and 259 but down in % terms from 13% to 12% to 11% back to 12% and now remaining at 12%)

There are now 866 members who've never made a single post (up from 312, 434, 588, and 738.  In % terms that's up to 35% from 28%, 31%, 33% and 34%).

This seems to be holding fairly steady.  It is creeping upwards but I don't know how much credence to put to the number.  I think it would be more accurate a statistic if there were a way to track last log on date, so regular lurkers could be segregated from those who haven't been back in over a year.


We've dropped to 15% (from 20% 18%, 18%, 17%) of the total membership having more than 25 posts. This means that the number of people finding the site useful enough to post with some relative frequency (25+ posts), has slowed relative  to the number of raw new members we're adding. I think that's still quite an accomplishment if it can be held steady, but continued dropping in this number indicates a lower proportion of people who find us stay long enough to participate.

This is perhaps is to be expected as awareness of the site grows to a broader base of gamerdom rather than being primarily limited to a fairly insular set.  I wish there was a way to identify accounts that haven't logged on for a year so we could discount those and concentrate more on true new members vs. active members.


We are holding firm at 7% of the total membership having at least 100 posts (from 9%, 8%, 8%, 7%). In order to maintained this ratio we'll need 1 new 100+ poster for every 14 new members. With 309 new members we'd need 22 new 100+ posters.  We got 21.

The number of lurkers or largely non participating posters (less than 5 posts) stands at 63%, up slightly (from 59%, 61%, 61%, and 62%). We continue to gain active participants (at least briefly active) at the same proportional rate as we gain new members.   This is a promising number


Continuing with the new stat I found of looking at the recent members (Joined since October 14)

Of the 309 new members who joined since the last update:
50 have posted 1 time – 16% (15%)
64 have posted between 2 and 5 times  -- 21 % (16%)
19 have posted between 6 and 10 times – 6% (10%)
10 have posted between 11 and 20 times -- 3% (5%)
5 have posted between 21 and 30 times – 2% (3%)
13 have posted more than 30 times – 4% (3%)

Just in the last quarter.

That means once again over ½ -- 52% (52%) of the newest members have posted at least once and over 1/3 – 36% (36%) more than once.

I find it particularly interesting that these % (52% and 36% are exactly the same as last quarter).  If this ratio holds it would make for a convenient rule of thumb...1/2 of all new members post at least once, 1/3 post more than once.  Time will tell if this is a trend or statistical coincidence.

It should be noted that of the 13 who posted more than 30 times.  Two posted well over 100 times (146 and 147 respectively).  Talk about jumping tiers.

[Lxndr]

Yay!  I've been waiting for one of these (what can I say?  I like numbers!).

But Ralph, I think you forgot to change some verbiage on your shortlist of tiers.  You copied the verbiage of your previous update, and so you are saying "there are still 19" when I think what you mean to say is "there are now 19".

Similarly, if there are 25 members with between 400-800 posts, and it went down by two, why "up from"?  Shouldn't it be "down from" at this point?  Or is it still up from the very first #?

In terms of percentage of people who've never posted, there's no reason to expect it not to creep steadily, if slowly, upwards.  A lot of people on a lot of sites register, only to decide not to post - or only post once (or even worse, forget what name they used and create another).  On the other side of the coin, you find people like Falconis who have significant posts (27) without contributing much at all.

Especially with the continuing confusion on the Forge particularly with respect to the meaning of "roleplaying games" vs. "those computer games who have co-opted our term," there's a reasonable expectation for posters who register and never post, or who register and discover this place is about "those OTHER roleplaying games."

The 52/36% number looks like the start of a trend, let's hope it continues that way.

Things I wish you could track:

1.  # of posts relative to a particular timeframe (so you could track how many people posted how many times in X time-frame).  Even better if you could narrow it down to just those who logged in during that timeframe.

2.  Statistics that take advantage of that "posts per day" number that appears in the individual profiles but not in the memberlist.

[Valamir]

Yay!  I've been waiting for one of these (what can I say?  I like numbers!).

But Ralph, I think you forgot to change some verbiage on your shortlist of tiers.  You copied the verbiage of your previous update, and so you are saying "there are still 19" when I think what you mean to say is "there are now 19".

Good catch.  I even mentally planned to change that.  

Similarly, if there are 25 members with between 400-800 posts, and it went down by two, why "up from"?  Shouldn't it be "down from" at this point?  Or is it still up from the very first #?

Mostly just an attempt to keep it brief.  I could have said "down from 27, but up from..." but its already starting to wrap, so I figured I'd just leave it.

In terms of percentage of people who've never posted, there's no reason to expect it not to creep steadily, if slowly, upwards.  A lot of people on a lot of sites register, only to decide not to post - or only post once (or even worse, forget what name they used and create another).  On the other side of the coin, you find people like Falconis who have significant posts (27) without contributing much at all.

Yeah, that's why I wish there was a way to drop out those names that haven't logged on for a year (or even for 6 months).  The more accumulated "dead" members we get over time, the less accurate the numbers are going to be.

1.  # of posts relative to a particular timeframe (so you could track how many people posted how many times in X time-frame).  Even better if you could narrow it down to just those who logged in during that timeframe.

2.  Statistics that take advantage of that "posts per day" number that appears in the individual profiles but not in the memberlist.

I'd love to be able to graph a total posts per day for the site as a whole.  But the only way I know to do that would be to remember to manually record the number at the bottom of the page every day at a set time.  Not real practical.

[Jason Lee]

I can't help but wonder how many of the 1 post users were spam.

[Mike Holmes]

Are they deleting spam now? I think they still don't. As such, it's my observation that we only get a few spammers each quarter. Count em on one hand.

Mike

[Jason Lee]

So, at most (5, taking you literally), that's 10% of the new 1 post users.  Which is less than 2% of the total new users.  Not much.

[Valamir]

Ok, last update was early January, time for another one.  I was planning on holding off until next week, but I figured I'd slip it in before the Birthday Bash to avoid any last minute skewing.  

We had 1114 members in January 2003, 1420 in April (+306; +28%), 1796 in July (+376; +27%), 2151 (+355; +20%) in October, and 2460 in January 2004 (+309; +14%).  That's a 121% increase year over year.

We now have 2889 in April (+429; +17%)

The rate of growth had been slowing but spiked back up in this last quarter.  I'm not aware of any unusual event that caused this.  Maybe its an anomaly, or maybe it's a large number of lurkers who started lurking after GenCon finally deciding to get an account.  


The top 10 posters have made 28% of the total posts (down from 40%, 38%, 37%, 35%, 33%, 31%, 30%, and 29%)
The top 20 posters have made 37% of the total posts (down from 60%, 53%, 50%, 46%, 44%, 42%, 40%, and 39%)
The top 40 posters have made 49% of the total posts (down from 75%, 69%, 66%, 61%, 59%, 55%, 53%, and 52%)
The top 80 posters have made 62% of the total posts (down from 90%, 85%, 81%, 76%, 73%, 69%, 67% and 65% )

As I've said, I'll continue to track this for completeness.  But I did want to draw attention to one amazing fact.  8 quarters ago...2 years when I started doing this (damn...been doing this for 2 years?  Yup, April 5, 2002.  What a geek!)...anyway, 2 years ago our top 80 posters were responsible for 90% of all posts at the Forge; today only 62%.  

If that isn't a huge endorsement of the Forge as a community, I don't know what is.


There are now 23 members with more than 800 posts (up from 9, 10, 15, 15, 19 +4)
There are 29 members with between 400-800 posts (up from 18, 23, 24, 27, 25 +4)
There are 58 members with between 200-400 posts (up from 20, 29, 42, 47, 52 +6)
There are 84 members with between 100-200 posts (up from 42, 55, 64, 69, 83 +1)
There are 116 members with between 50-100 posts (up from 58, 60, 70, 93, 88 +28)
There are 162 members with between 25-50 posts (up from 72, 84, 100, 118, 155 +7)
There are 315 members with between 10-25 posts (up from 112, 151, 206, 243, 268 +47)
There are 265 members with between 5-10 posts (up from 120, 147, 179, 202, 223 +42)

Last quarter 14 people joined the ranks of the 100-200 tier.  Interesting, that's exactly how many joined the ranks of the next 3 higher tiers this quarter, leaving only 1 net gain in the 100-200 position.  Seems like there's a group of fairly aggressive posters that been around awhile now and is climbing the ranks.

Last quarter the 50-100 tier lost 5 members to that same class who climbed up and weren't fully replaced, but a new class of some 26 members had entered the 25-50 tier.  This quarter the 50-100 tier gains 28 new members.  So it looks like several of those new members continue to be active.

Amazingly 89 new members joined the bottom two tiers (at least 5 posts).  This is the highest total entering the bell end of the funnel since I've been keeping track.  Lets hope they find the place interesting enough to keep posting.






There are 139 more people with at least 5 posts than there were in January.  This is more than both the 88 increase from October to January and the 113 increase from July to October.



There are 347 300 members who've made only a single post (that's up from 150, 169, 207, 259 and 300 but down in % terms from 13% to 12% to 11% back to 12%, 12% again and now remaining at 12%)

There are now 1035 members who've never made a single post (up from 312, 434, 588, 738 and 866. In % terms that's up to 36% from 28%, 31%, 33%, 34% and 35%).

This seems to be holding fairly steady. It is creeping upwards but I don't know how much credence to put to the number. I think it would be more accurate a statistic if there were a way to track last log on date, so regular lurkers could be segregated from those who haven't been back in over a year.


We've climbed back to 16% (from 20% 18%, 18%, 17%, 15%) of the total membership having more than 25 posts. This means that the number of people finding the site useful enough to post with some relative frequency (25+ posts), has stabilized.  If the status quo continues, I'd expect to see this number fluctuate between 15-17%.  I think that's quite an accomplishment and hopefully will continue to hold true.  

As the Forge continues to grow in awareness as an RPG site, we're going to attract the attention of a broader range of gamer dom.  Keeping this number steady means we're converting the curious into participating members (at least briefly) at roughly the same rate we have been.  A sudden drop in this number would mean either a sudden exposure to a group whose curious enough to check us out but too far out of our demographic to remain interested, or, the more worrisome possibility, that the quality of discussion is no longer high enough to get them to stay.   Currently there doesn't seem to be any danger of that, especially given the recent crop of really good discussions we've been having.

I continue to wish there was a way to identify accounts that haven't logged on for a year so we could discount those and concentrate more on true new members vs. active members.


We managed to hold the line at 7% of the total membership having at least 100 posts (from 9%, 8%, 8%, 7%, 7%), but just barely. In order to maintained this ratio we'll need 1 new 100+ poster for every 14 new members. With 429 new members we'd need 30 new 100+ posters. We got 15.  Thanks to rounding that keeps us at 7% for now.

I'm not overly concerned by this.  There are plenty of new active posters who will likely climb into that category soon.  However it may be a sign of a shift in the Forge's user base.  Instead of a place with long term permanent residents (i.e. sticking around long enough to rack up 100 posts) perhaps we're evolving more towards a transitional community.  People hear about us and the help we provide to design and actual play, stick around and engage in conversation long enough to get the help they were looking for and then depart.  Perhaps returning again in the future, but not necessarily sticking around continuously.

Just speculation at this point, but it might be an interesting topic to discuss in a thread.



The number of lurkers or largely non participating posters (less than 5 posts) stands at 64%, up slightly (from 59%, 61%, 61%, 62% and 63%). We continue to gain active participants (at least briefly active) at roughly the same proportional rate as we gain new members. This is a promising number


Continuing with the new stat I found of looking at the recent members (Joined since January 8)

Of the 429 new members who joined since the last update:
64 have posted 1 time – 16% (15%, 16%, 15%)
79 have posted between 2 and 5 times – 18% (16%, 21%)
28 have posted between 6 and 10 times – 7% (10%, 6%)
24 have posted between 11 and 20 times – 6% (5%, 3%)
14 have posted between 21 and 30 times – 3% (3%, 2%)
23 have posted more than 30 times – 5% (3%, 4%)

Just in the last quarter.

That means once again over ½ -- 54% (52%, 52%) of the newest members have posted at least once and over 1/3 – 39% (36%, 36%) more than once.

So the ratio's fluctuating, but it seems to be a roughly accurate gauge thus far.
1/2 of all new members post at least once, 1/3 post more than once. Time will tell if this is a trend or statistical coincidence.

It should be noted that of the 23 who posted more than 30 times, once again two posted well over 100 times (178 and 123 respectively). Several more were over 50.

[M. J. Young]

Thanks for the numbers, Ralph.

Within the past quarter, I noticed that Calithena became Sean (if I've got the right connection) not by applying for a user name change but by starting a new account; I seem to recall someone else at some point announcing that they had started a new account because they couldn't remember the old one. That causes me to wonder how many accounts represent duplicates, members who have changed identities at some point. (I have seen a board on which several members maintain multiple identities so that they can set up their own gags, but that's hardly the sort of thing people would do here. It's more in the context of abandoning an account and starting another that I suspect it.)

I too would like to have a way of knowing who's not posting. Jared is still in the top ten posters (although we're closing on him), but I don't think he's posted anything for a while.

I also wish there were an easy way to see the statistic that isn't here--the percent of posters by percentile rather than straight count. The more people post, the smaller percentage the top ten get, but it might be that through all the growth the top ten percent of posters are carrying the site. Lxndr is an extremely active poster who has vaulted into the top thirty since June, approaching the 800 mark rapidly, but with all the additional posters that have appeared, what does he represent?

I suppose the stat that would do that would be to track the percentage of total registered members in each category, and see to what degree that changes. That's the reverse of the way I'd do it, but it's probably easier.

Looking at the last five reports (which you've conveniently copied above) the percentage of members in the 800+ category has run
0.897666068
1.056338028
0.83518931
0.883310088
0.93495935
--fluctuating around one percent fairly consistently, it seems, and right now on the rise but below the peak of a year ago.

In the 400 to 800 group
2.064631957
1.690140845
1.503340757
1.162250116
1.178861789
--slippage; apart from this quarter it has fallen slightly each quarter from a two percent starting point.

In the 200 to 400 group
2.603231598
2.957746479
2.616926503
2.417480242
2.357723577
--it rose a year ago, but has been falling since, although the rate of decay is dropping.

100 to 200 shows
4.937163375
4.507042254
3.841870824
3.858670386
3.414634146
--decline in larger steps than the other groups, although one quarter held very close.

50 to 100
5.385996409
4.929577465
5.178173719
4.091120409
4.715447154
--very eratic, no pattern visible here, but probably could be taken as suggesting some stability in this level, neither rising nor falling overall.

From 25 to 50
7.540394973
7.042253521
6.570155902
7.205950721
6.585365854
--hard to say; it's definately dropped from where it was, but keeps bouncing up and down.

10 to 25 shows
13.55475763
14.50704225
13.53006682
12.45932125
12.80487805
--I'm inclined to read this as fairly consistent, as the changes are relatively small relative to the totals, although it is lower than it was.

Finally, in the 5 to 10 post group
13.1956912
12.6056338
11.24721604
10.36727104
10.77235772
--this is mostly sliding slowly, with a ripple this month.

Adding all that together and subracting from a hundred, the percentage of registered members with fewer than five posts seems to be growing:
49.82046679
50.70422535
54.67706013
57.55462576
57.23577236

(The decimals are not me being anal-retentive; they reflect the fact that I copied this directly from an Excel spreadsheet.)

That means that we're keeping a smaller and smaller percentage of those who register, and that a smaller portion of them are continuing to post at the same levels as the core group.

Is this a bad thing? I'm not certain I can say it is. There is a level of dialogue here that is higher than a lot of other sites. As membership grows, knowledge of our presence expands--we've picked up some very valuable members recently from the Scandinavian area as just one example. Knowledge of the site is likely to spread more quickly as more people know about it, and this means we attract more people. A larger number of people will register before really examining what's here, and then drift away if they aren't interested. Even as the core group grows, with several of the top thirty members by post totals having joined last year, the amount of chaff that falls away before becoming seriously involved outstrips it, not merely in numbers but in ratio (there are fewer contributing new members per hundred).

Maybe it's like mining: the longer you do it, the more dross you get per unit gold. The gold is still worth as much, but it's a smaller portion of the total.

I'm rambling. Thanks again for the stats, Ralph. Maybe you can see something in these percentages that I missed.

--M. J. Young

[Valamir]

Great post MJ.  I hadn't thought to parse the numbers out like this, that's a very useful snap shot.  I noticed the same thing, and I think my conclusion is the same as yours at this point.

[Valamir]

Ok, time for another quarterly update.

We had 1114 members in January 2003, 1420 in April (+306; +28%), 1796 in July (+376; +27%), 2151 (+355; +20%) in October, and 2460 in January 2004 (+309; +14%). That's a 121% increase year over year.

We had 2889 in April (+429; +17%), and now have 3266 (+377; +13%)

Looks like the trend for a declining growth rate (%age terms) has reestablished.  I find it curious how consistant the absolute number of new members each month has been.  376 last July, 377 this July.  

The top 10 posters have made 26% of the total posts (down from 40%, 38%, 37%, 35%, 33%, 31%, 30%, 29%, and 28%)
The top 20 posters have made 35% of the total posts (down from 60%, 53%, 50%, 46%, 44%, 42%, 40%, 39%, and 37%)
The top 40 posters have made 47% of the total posts (down from 75%, 69%, 66%, 61%, 59%, 55%, 53%, 52%, and 49%)
The top 80 posters have made 60% of the total posts (down from 90%, 85%, 81%, 76%, 73%, 69%, 67%, 65% and 62% )

No particular new commentary on this.


There are now 28 members with more than 800 posts (up from 9, 10, 15, 15, 19, 23 +5)
There are 31 members with between 400-800 posts (up from 18, 23, 24, 27, 25, 29 +2)
There are 65 members with between 200-400 posts (up from 20, 29, 42, 47, 52, 58 +7)
There are 92 members with between 100-200 posts (up from 42, 55, 64, 69, 83, 84 +7)
There are 146 members with between 50-100 posts (up from 58, 60, 70, 93, 88, 116 +30)
There are 178 members with between 25-50 posts (up from 72, 84, 100, 118, 155, 162 +16)
There are 340 members with between 10-25 posts (up from 112, 151, 206, 243, 268, 315 +25)
There are 295 members with between 5-10 posts (up from 120, 147, 179, 202, 223, 265 +30)

Last quarter 89 new members joined the botton two tiers (at least 5 posts), but this quarter only 51 members climbed to the next tier or higher (at least 25 posts).  I'm not really sure that's unexpected, but from an idealistic standpoint it is a little disappointing.  I would have much rather seen evidence that a larger majority had become very active posters.

This quarter another 55 new members enter the funnel.  We'll see how this compares next time around.

There are 122 more people with at least 5 posts than there were in April.  This compares to the 139 increase January to April, 88 increase October to January, and the 113 increase from July to October.



There are 375 members who've made only a single post (that's up from 150, 169, 207, 259, 300, and 347 but down in % terms from 13% to 12% to 11% back to 12%, 12%, and 12% again and now dropping back to 11%)

There are now 1221 members who've never made a single post (up from 312, 434, 588, 738 and 866, and 1035. In % terms that's up to 37% from 28%, 31%, 33%, 34%, 35% and 36%).

This seems to be holding fairly steady.  Although again I wish there was a way to purge the really old accounts from the data.  

We're maintaining 16% (from 20% 18%, 18%, 17%, 15%, 16%) of the total membership having more than 25 posts. This means that the number of people finding the site useful enough to post with some relative frequency (25+ posts), has stabilized.  I wonder how this compares to other sites and what the usual decay over time for discussion forums like ours would be.


We again managed to hold the line at 7% of the total membership having at least 100 posts (from 9%, 8%, 8%, 7%, 7%, 7%),  In order to maintained this ratio we'll need 1 new 100+ poster for every 14 new members. With 377 new members we'd need 27 new 100+ posters. We got 21. Thanks to rounding that keeps us at 7% for now.



The number of lurkers or largely non participating posters (less than 5 posts) stands at 64%, from (from 59%, 61%, 61%, 62%, 63%, 64%). We continue to gain active participants (at least briefly active) at roughly the same proportional rate as we gain new members. This is a promising number


Continuing with the new stat I found of looking at the recent members (Joined since April 2)

Of the 377 new members who joined since the last update:
48 have posted 1 time – 13% (15%, 16%, 16%)
69 have posted between 2 and 5 times – 18% (16%, 21%, 18%)
26 have posted between 6 and 10 times – 7% (10%, 6%, 7%)
12 have posted between 11 and 20 times – 3% (5%, 3%, 6%)
5 have posted between 21 and 30 times – 1% (3%, 2%, 3%)
13 have posted more than 30 times – 3% (3%, 4%, 5%)

Just in the last quarter.

This time around the numbers have dropped slightly.  Only 46% (from 52%, 52%, 54%) of the newest members have posted at least once.  1/3 exactly (from 36%, 36%, 39%) posted more than once.

It seems like the 1/2 of all new members post at least once, 1/3 post more than once is solidifying up into a good rule of thumb.

Of the 13 who posted more than 30 times, 1 posted 80 and 1 posted 79.  Pretty active for a single quarter, but nowhere near the 178 and 123 posts by last quarters over achievers :-)

[M. J. Young]

Looking at the last five reports (which you've conveniently copied above) the percentage of members in the 800+ category has run
0.897666068
1.056338028
0.83518931
0.883310088
0.93495935

The new number is 0.85731782, a bit lower but still within the range within which it fluctuates.

In the 400 to 800 group
2.064631957
1.690140845
1.503340757
1.162250116
1.178861789

And now 0.949173301, continuing to slip.

In the 200 to 400 group
2.603231598
2.957746479
2.616926503
2.417480242
2.357723577

Now 1.990202082, a greater fall.

100 to 200 shows
4.937163375
4.507042254
3.841870824
3.858670386
3.414634146

Dropping precipitously to 2.816901408 this time.

50 to 100
5.385996409
4.929577465
5.178173719
4.091120409
4.715447154

Rose slightly to 4.470300061, although generally lower than a year ago.

From 25 to 50
7.540394973
7.042253521
6.570155902
7.205950721
6.585365854

Shows a considerable drop this time to 5.450091855, but this has always been an erratic category and this might be an outlier.

10 to 25 shows
13.55475763
14.50704225
13.53006682
12.45932125
12.80487805

May be the most significant drop to date, at 10.41028781, lowest in this group yet.

Finally, in the 5 to 10 post group
13.1956912
12.6056338
11.24721604
10.36727104
10.77235772

Continues to slide, now at 9.032455603.

Adding all that together and subracting from a hundred, the percentage of registered members with fewer than five posts seems to be growing:
49.82046679
50.70422535
54.67706013
57.55462576
57.23577236

And that trend continues at 64.02327006; this clearly accounts for the drop in most categories.

I now find myself wondering what the relative percentage in each category is if those who post below five times are discounted; that leaves 1175 people this time, but I'm afraid I don't have the time to set up the sheet for that. By category, these are the percentages against that number:
2.382978723
2.638297872
5.531914894
7.829787234
12.42553191
15.14893617
28.93617021
25.10638298

Just doing a quick sketch of last quarter, there were 1052 posters with at least five posts, and by category (that is, 800+, 400, 200, 100, 50, 25, 10, 5) that broke down to:
2.186311787 (increased)
2.756653992 (decreased)
5.513307985 (increased)
7.984790875 (decreased)
11.02661597 (increased)
15.39923954 (decreased)
29.94296578 (decreased)
25.19011407 (decreased)


--M. J. Young