Some interesting numbers I came up with while fiddling around on the Memberlist.

The top 10 posters are responsible for 40% of the total posts (+40%)
The top 20 posters are responsible for 60% of the total posts (+20%)
The top 40 posters are responsible for 75% of the total posts (+15%)
The top 80 posters are responsible for 90% of the total posts (+15%)

Don't know what that means, if anything, but I found it interesting.

(erases her wisecrack before posting. moving straight into something constructive)

It would be interesting to look at those figures again in three months. There are a lot of new, very active, very engaging people. Give them a little time to catch up and I think you'll see those numbers broaden out a bit.

Laurel

The numbers would only broaden out if the Old Guard stopped posting. Merely having many new active posters is not enough to change the top brackets much.

That said, I don't see any problem here. I've never heard of a tightly-knit online community where the numbers didn't shake out more or less that way. If you want to see a representation of newbie vs. oldbie activity, looking at a rolling sum of the last twelve months might be more useful than an overall history.

That would be interesting.

Clinton is there anyway to do a "Posts in the last 30 days" column?

Also some of the posters here are more involved in all the topics while some, like me, may look around but hardly ever get involved in any of the discussions here except those that really interest them. Or ones they feel they need to add to.

Most of my posts are down in the Little Fears section. But I still wander up here everynow and then.

PeterAmthor
i have nothing left
http://peteramthor.darkgod.net

Valamir wrote: Some interesting numbers I came up with while fiddling around on the Memberlist.

The top 10 posters are responsible for 40% of the total posts (+40%)
The top 20 posters are responsible for 60% of the total posts (+20%)
The top 40 posters are responsible for 75% of the total posts (+15%)
The top 80 posters are responsible for 90% of the total posts (+15%)

Don't know what that means, if anything, but I found it interesting.

At Laurel's suggestion, it being about 3 months later, I figured it might be interesting to take another look at these.

The top 10 posters are responsible for 38% of the total posts (from 40%)
The top 20 posters are responsible for 53% of the total posts (from 60%)
The top 40 posters are responsible for 69% of the total posts (from 75%)
The top 80 posters are responsible for 85% of the total posts (from 90%)

So it looks like from these numbers that we do, in fact, have an infusion of prolific new posters who are posting more in the aggregate than those in the top 10. I'd suspect these numbers over the past 3 months are driven by the number of new members attracted to the Riddle of Steel forum which has generated alot of lively discussion.

Perhaps we'll see a similiar effect when Cartoon Action Hour ramps up and the new Underworld is released.

Ok, slow day at work today and its been about 3 months since the last time I took a look at this, so I figured I revisit it.

The top 10 posters have made 37% of the total posts (down from 40% and 38%)
The top 20 posters have made 50% of the total posts (down from 60% and 53%)
The top 40 posters have made 66% of the total posts (down from 75% and 69%)
The top 80 posters have made 81% of the total posts (down from 90% and 85%)

So the trend seems to be a welcome diversification of our posting base and a gradually decreasing reliance on posts from the most prolific posters.

I also thought it might be interesting to take a look at the progression of posters.

There are 5 members with more than 800 posts
There are 15 members with between 400-800 posts
There are 20 members with between 200-400 posts
There are 34 members with between 100-200 posts
There are 43 members with between 50-100 posts
There are 56 members with between 25-50 posts
There are 91 members with between 10-25 posts
There are 89 members with between 5-10 posts

There are 120 members who've made only a single post
There are 124 members who've never made a single post.

So only about 20% of the total membership have posted at least 25 posts and only about 8% of the total membership have posted at least 100 posts.

38% of all members are mostly or entirely lurkers or non participants (or perhaps duplicate memberships?)

Any ideas on how typical such a distribution is for web forums. I wish there was an easy way to sort on "date of last post". It might be interesting to see how many current poster we have.

Ok, time for the quarterly post analysis once again.

The top 10 posters have made 35% of the total posts (down from 40%, 38% and 37%)
The top 20 posters have made 46% of the total posts (down from 60%, 53% and 50%)
The top 40 posters have made 61% of the total posts (down from 75%, 69% and 66%)
The top 80 posters have made 76% of the total posts (down from 90%, 85% and 81%)

So the trend seems to be continueing towards a wider posting base with fewer of the new posts being dominated by the more prolific posters.


There are now 9 members with more than 800 posts (up from 5, +4)
There are 18 members with between 400-800 posts (up from 15, +3)
There are 28 members with between 200-400 posts (up from 20, +8)
There are 42 members with between 100-200 posts (up from 34, +8)
There are 58 members with between 50-100 posts (up from 43, +15)
There are 72 members with between 25-50 posts (up from 56, +16)
There are 112 members with between 10-25 posts (up from 91, +21)
There are 120 members with between 5-10 posts (up from 89, +31)

There are 150 members who've made only a single post (thats up from 120 but down in % terms from 14% to 13%)
However there are now 312 members who've never made a single post (up from 124 and in % terms up to 28% from 14%).

So we've picked up a whole passel of lurkers.

We remain at about 20% of the total membership haveing more than 25 posts.
We've crept up to about 9% (from 8%) of the total membership haveing at least 100 posts.

The number of lurkers or largely non participating posters (less than 5 posts) has skyrocketed from 38% to 59% of total members.

One could put a positive spin on that and suggest that the larger number of lurkers is consistant with a wider awareness of the Forge and a larger base of people who sign on just to check us out, indicating that more people at least know about us to do so.

Any ideas on how to encourage more participation from the lurkers? Any lurkers reading this who want to chime in?

I admit, I've been a lurker here for the 1 or 2 weeks I've been a member of the Forge. To be honest I've spent almost all the time I've been on (which has been quite a bit) doing searches and reading back threads as well as the newer threads. And buying copies of Sorcerer, Dust Devils, and Soap and reading them as well (looking forward to TROS and Sorcerer Supplments, Inspectres and others, but, well, I do have bills to pay...)

Its gratifying to find a group of people who really think about and discuss rpgs this way. I've been in a state of almost constant revelation since I started reading. I've been waiting for some of the things that now buzz through my skull to settle down. At the same time I've been intimidated. My concern is asking questions that have already been answered, sometimes extensively. My instinctual response to that has been to do a lot of searching, which has yielded some great rewards, but gives me some reluctance to jump in the pool without finding everything I can about what has been said already.

All the same I'm intersted in starting and particpating in discussions here. And I'm not sure what could be added that would have caused me to participate sooner. I hesitate to say to try polling type question threads(although I'm waiting for the 'last three games' post thread to roll around again)

Hmmm....I see I haven't contributed an idea. Well hopefully just some understanding.

regards,

Trevis

I just have a question about the statistics. Is there any way to sort with respect to most recent posts? Someone a while back on this thread made a remark about the "Old Guard," which got me (as a newbie) looking at the memberlist. I notice that a large number of the apparent Old Guard (joined early, lots o' posts) have not posted (that I have seen) much lately. I wonder if that might be a useful statistic for the Forge: the rate of loss, somehow rated in terms of a loss of average posting rate or a period of more than X non-posting or whatever.

Anyway, just a thought.

Hey Trevis, I'm impressed. Kudos to you for your efforts to self educate. While we love to answer questions, you are correct in thinking many have been answered extensively. Of course, truth be told, every time we answer a question we actually learn a little bit more ourselves because such questions force us to be able to distill lofty thoughts into articulate and coherent sentences ;-) Looking forward to your (and any others doing the same) future contributions.

Cle, I asked the same question a while back and the answer is currently no. But perhaps with the new automatic statistics Clinton will be rolling out next week we might.

Clehrich's point about newer versus older posters has been floating around in my head, too.

I noticed a month or so ago that although I was relatively new to the site (August 14, 2002, according to the memberlist), I was already in the top fifty posters. Today I see that I've broken into the top forty. Glancing over the list of those above me, maybe a quarter of them are from 2002, the rest from 2001. Only one joined after I did. Of the top twenty posters, only three are not 2001 registrations; of the top ten, only one (Pale Fire, March 2002, #10) are not registered by July of that first year.

Granted, those top ten are ubiquitous here, there are some names in the next ten that are not so immediately familiar, and at least a couple in the next twenty that I don't recognize.

I use to watch the total posts on game-related forums at Gaming Outpost, as popularity rose and fell on them. The cutoff for the top twenty posters here is now five hundred posts; I'm about 55% of that, despite posting almost every day, usually more than one per day. Catching up with people who have that much of a head start is not a simple matter of them not posting for a few days.

--M. J. Young

The simple fact that we keep track of these things always makes me want to post more. It's that stupid competitive streak - tempered by the fact that I hate posting if I don't have real data to add.

Anyway, an Alternative to dropping out old members, would be to simply limit the time period that you take the samples from. For instance, if you only look at posts over the last year, I'll bet that your numbers for the top folks come out a little different. Note, I don't mean to look at just people who joined in the last year, but to artificially change the "start date" of posts considered to a more recent date. That would eliminate all the "old gaurd" who are no longer active, but still give you a clear picture of who's active today.

Of course, a lot of this is purely academic. There's no brass ring to be won for being the Top Poster.

It does all make me want to be a more active member of the place though, so perhaps it's still a useful measurement. :)

-wade jones
dialectic LLC

Ok, technically we aren't due for another statistics update for a couple of weeks yet, but I had a hankering to see if the recent open invite Birthday Bash had any effect on the numbers so you're getting them early.

I will say that being up to 1420 members from 1114 last time is either very impressive or very scary depending on how one looks at it.

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

Again the trend continues towards a wider posting base with fewer of the new posts being dominated by the more prolific posters.


There are now 10 members with more than 800 posts (up from 9, +1)
There are 23 members with between 400-800 posts (up from 18, +5)
There are 29 members with between 200-400 posts (up from 20, +1)
There are 55 members with between 100-200 posts (up from 42, +13)
There are 60 members with between 50-100 posts (up from 58, +2)
There are 84 members with between 25-50 posts (up from 72, +12)
There are 151 members with between 10-25 posts (up from 112, +39)
There are 147 members with between 5-10 posts (up from 120, +27)

This is an interesting collection of data. What this suggests is that during the last couple of ground swells of new members several folks found the site useful enough to continue posting rather than dropping away. This would account for the swell of posters in the 25-50 range and in the 100-200 range as those groups "move up" in post totals. The relative lack of new members at the very high end (200+) is indicative of the rather vast gulf between the most prolific posters and everyone else who actually has a life ;-)

I'd also note the sizeable swell of member in the 10-25 and 5-10 posts range which suggest to me that some of the lurkers have grown comfortable enough with the site to begin contributing. Hopefully we'll see that swell also move up in the ranks indicating that several of them are sticking around long term and adding a welcome dose of fresh blood to our discussions.


There are 169 members who've made only a single post (thats up from 150 but down in % terms from 13% to 12%)
However there are now 434 members who've never made a single post (up from 312 and in % terms up to 31% from 28%).

These numbers are very close in % terms to what we had last time around which seems to indicate that we're converting new members to at least casual participants almost as quickly as they're signing on. Which is pretty amazing.


We've dropped to 18% (from 20%) of the total membership haveing more than 25 posts, due obviously to the large number of new members we've acquired over the past couple of months. That number should go back up if we can keep enough of the new members interested to at least stick around long enough to post 25 times.

We've dropped back to 8% (from 9%) of the total membership haveing at least 100 posts. This will be a very difficult number to maintain, because it requires at least 1 new 100 level poster for every 12 new members. There are currently 58 members in the 50-100 post range. That means half of them (or double the number that did this time around) will need to hit 100 posts if we have another 300+ surge of membership. Difficult, but an admirable goal. Not that post volume is the only (or even most important) measure of quality, but I think this number is indicative of the number of people willing to committ hours of time to the Forge as an indicator of what a valuable place it is.

The number of lurkers or largely non participating posters (less than 5 posts) has increased to 61% from 59% of total members. Again, that this number did not increase more is indicative of the number of lurkers who have become participants over the last couple of months. Certainly a good thing, and certainly in line with the number of new names I've seen frequenting the forums of late.

One final note that I'll add in this regard, is unlike a few months back where the number of new contributing members could be traced directly back to a single forum (for The Riddle of Steel), this time around I'm seeing alot more new names out in the general forums, and a Ton of new people...perhaps more than I have in nearly a year...jumping into the Indie Design and RPG theory discussions.

In the long run I think this is a Very Good Thing(tm), but it risks a couple of pitfalls:

namely 1) beleagured regulars who've grown weary at covering old ground over again numerous times in quick succession, and 2) great game ideas in the indie design forum that aren't given the attention they deserve because of the volume of game ideas cropping up.

I think the current "batch" (if it isn't too insulting to use that term) of new posters deserves a heaping amount of credit for their willingness to scour through the ever increasing volume of articles on the site. I've been very impressed with their willingness to self educate, their ability to ask specific and sensible questions, and their willingness to accept criticism of game designs graciously and in the spirit of constructivness that they were offered with...(not to mention that several of those game ideas have been pretty cool)

I can't think of a single new poster whose name I've begun to see regularly (with the lone exception of that Outwar spamming guy) who hasn't been (and hopefully will continue to be) an asset to this site.

Ralph, just before you got to the part where you were giving percentages of members I was wondering about percentages of members. It seems to me that it's obvious that the percentage of posting by the top 10 posters is going to decrease as the total number of posters increases; it would be stunning if it did not. But has the percentage of posts from the top 1% of posters changed significantly? 10 members was pretty close to 1% last time (well, almost 0.9%), but it's dropped to 0.7% now.

I realize that tells us something different, but it might also be worth knowing: as the site grows, is there still the same pattern of frequent posters versus infrequent posters? Are we adding people to the top posters group as fast as we're adding people generally?

I could probably figure out some of that from the other numbers, but I thought I'd ask, as you seem to be able to manipulate the data so easily.

--M. J. Young

M. J. Young wrote: Ralph, just before you got to the part where you were giving percentages of members I was wondering about percentages of members. It seems to me that it's obvious that the percentage of posting by the top 10 posters is going to decrease as the total number of posters increases; it would be stunning if it did not.

But has the percentage of posts from the top 1% of posters changed significantly? 10 members was pretty close to 1% last time (well, almost 0.9%), but it's dropped to 0.7% now.

I realize that tells us something different, but it might also be worth knowing: as the site grows, is there still the same pattern of frequent posters versus infrequent posters? Are we adding people to the top posters group as fast as we're adding people generally?

If you really want to equalize for the great lead that older posters seem to have, you could take a look at the pace of posts based on Cohort.

That is to say, if you have this level of access, you can group all the posters into groups based on the month and year that they joined, then look at each groups pace of posting in 30 day increments over the life of the site.

You'd be looking to see if the new posters are posting at the same rate (in terms of posts per member) over their first thrity days, next thirty days, next thrity days and so on as the older memebers.

This is probably, in my experience, the past way to equalize for time spent here, and the quickest way to show equal and fair comparisons of new members to older memebers. It's also a great way to see fatigue in the oder members, as some drop off month to month never to post again, or as their post frequency goes down.

If your interested in doing this sort of thing, have access to the data, but still have questions after all my blather, PM me or email me at deadpanbob@hotmail.com and I can explain further.

Cheers.

All of my data comes direct from the member list. I'm not sure what additional data Clinton may or may not have access to.

The thing that puzzles me is the vast number of people who have registered, but never posted.

Registered and posted once, I can understand, that's a lurker who felt strongly enough about a particular post to jump in and respond.

But register and then never post? Why bother registering if you're only going to lurk and read anyway? Simply because it lets you more easily keep track of what you've read?

Bizarre.

Brian.

Hi Brian,

Well, it's not so bizarre for two reasons.

1. Keeping track of what you've read is pretty useful, and apparently there are plenty of "contented readers-only" out there. How many? Probably not a major fraction of the folks you mention, just to speculate, but probably enough to grunt at.

2. The internet is full of people just cruising and looking for stuff to see and/or download. Registration-sites often carry bennies for registrants; a semi-bored, possibly ADD-afflicted surfer might register at hundreds or dozens of sites in hopes of a kewl thing to get. Maybe there's a secret forum. Maybe there are naked-lady pictures. Maybe there's a free game. Whatever. So they register, realize there's nothing like that here, and move on.

Best,
Ron

Ron,

Fair comment. Do you and Clinton ever do sweeps of old, unused memberships? Actually, I can see you don't, so maybe I'm suggesting that you should. I'm guessing 1000 users is not stressing the phpBB software, but there's little point in maintaining an account that was opened two years ago and has never been accessed since (for example).

Brian.

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), and are now up to 1796 (+376)


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

This trend seems long past the point where there’s any chance of it reversing. Its still fun to track, however, and I suspect that it will bottom out somewhere.


There are now 15 members with more than 800 posts (up from 9, 10, +5)
There are 24 members with between 400-800 posts (up from 18, 23, +1)
There are 42 members with between 200-400 posts (up from 20, 29, +13)
There are 64 members with between 100-200 posts (up from 42, 55, +9)
There are 70 members with between 50-100 posts (up from 58, 60, +10)
There are 100 members with between 25-50 posts (up from 72, 84, +16)
There are 206 members with between 10-25 posts (up from 112, 151, +55)
There are 179 members with between 5-10 posts (up from 120, 147, +27)

A huge spike in the 800+ poster range this time around. Next quarter will likely see little increase in this area as the next batch of posters is in the 600 post range and are generally less prolific than the current batch. With that many posters leaving the second tier the 400-800 range only managed to increase by 1.

In April we had 13 new members in the 100-200 range. It looks like those folks kept on posting and now we have 13 new members in the 200-400 range. The bubble moves higher! But even with that many people moving up to the next tier, the 100-200 range still managed to gain 9 new members. I must believe that many of those were from the 25-50 range (which had 12 new members in April) who also kept on posting.

These numbers are extremely exciting. Not only are we seeing large numbers of new posters from previous quarters stick around and begin posting regularly, but there are even more new posters starting to post this quarter than last. That’s 141 more people with at least 5 posts this quarter than last, which was only 104 higher than the previous.



There are 207 members who've made only a single post (thats up from 150, and 169 but down in % terms from 13% to 12% to 11%)
However there are now 588 members who've never made a single post (up from 312, and 434 and in % terms up to 33% from 31% and 28%).

What this tells me is that while the number of pure lurkers (no posts) is growing as a % of overall membership, the number of people who’ve been interested enough to post just once and never came back to post again is shrinking in relative terms. Meaning, people who find this site useful, are finding it useful enough to continue to post after their first message. A pretty good thing I’d say.


We're holding steady at 18% (from 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 in exact proportion to the number of new members we’re adding. This is also pretty amazing given the volume of new members we’re adding.

We’re also holding steady at 8% of the total membership having at least 100 posts (from 8%, 9%). 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.


As you can probably already guess from the numbers above, the number of lurkers or largely non participating posters (less than 5 posts) has remained unchanged at 61% of total members also (from 61%, 59%). This is probably the most incredible number of all. Gaining participants at the same proportional rate as new members is absolutely phenomenal. Now this is not a direct measure of active participants. There are probably plenty who posted 5 times and that’s it. But every person who posted a few times, found the answers they were looking for and declined to stay, is still a victory. It means people were reached in a manner deeper than a casual skim. Even the people who left after disagreeing with what they found here were at least confronted with the idea of appying critical thought to their roleplaying, and found enough here to be worth commenting on at least a few times.

With so many numbers having remained steady (at least for a quarter) I think we’ll have a good backdrop to see how big a rush of new members GenCon does or doesn’t produce. 1 month won’t be long enough for most current members to change their “tier” status much, nor will it be long enough for new GenCon members to have posted much. We should be able to get a fairly good read on the influx of new members and then quarters down the road whether that batch of new members stuck around like recent batches have (apologies to referring to our new members as “tiers” and “batches”) or not. Should be interesting.

Concerning the observed decline in the percentage of posts made by the top ten, twenty, forty, and eighty posters, Valamir wrote: This trend seems long past the point where there?s any chance of it reversing. Its still fun to track, however, and I suspect that it will bottom out somewhere.

Sorry, Ralph--it's not likely to level out.

Seems to me the numbers are imperfect, because you have members who made accounts and abandoned them. So, you count a guy who has made more than 5 posts as an active member, but that guy made his last post 2 years ago. He's not active any more, so he really shouldn't be counted in current tallies of active posters. Or maybe members made their accounts, never posted, and didn't stay, either. So you have a certain amount of dead wood in the pool. That might be skewing the results. It might be useful to track total number of posts to the site during a given period or some other measure of site traffic to accompany the tracking of members' number of posts, and to calculate the number of posts each group makes during ther given time period. Then, you could say, "Traffic is up this much, the top posters represent this much of the traffic, and other groups this much," etc

It seems to me that as traffic increases, the activity of your top posters will also increase - but only up to a certain point. Beyond that point, the top posters won't have time or energy to keep up with the increase in traffic. Then, their impact will drop significantly. The question is, can you track the posting trends with any real accuracy, and will the site continue to draw a continuously increasing percentage of active members who stay active for the time period in question? It's possible that the rates will level off as Ralph suggests because the number of new people who join and actively post could balance the number of existing members who stop posting. I don't know if it's doing that, but I think it would take a more aggressive evaluation of the available data to really find out.

You'll never have the traffic rpg.net has because you don't have something like Tangency to artificially boost your traffic - And that's a good thing.

Hunter Logan wrote: Seems to me the numbers are imperfect, because you have members who made accounts and abandoned them. So, you count a guy who has made more than 5 posts as an active member, but that guy made his last post 2 years ago. He's not active any more, so he really shouldn't be counted in current tallies of active posters.

Ralph,

You're absolutely right about the utility of a "most recent post date" and in your broad assessment. The "most recent post date" would assist in determining current participation; and you've got a lot more here than 20 cranky, old gamers yelling about minutiae.

I like tracking and graphing statistics and trends as well. I like finding and exploring patterns, it's an occasional hobby for me, so I'd love to have that extra data available to see how the community is evolving and reshaping itself over time.

Any chance you'd be able to provide that "most recent post" data, Clinton?
(or, gods forbid, the statistic geek's holy grail, # posts in a given month per poster?)

brief update. I'm going to wait a full month to crunch the numbers, but I just noticed that we've added 66 new members since I ran them last...11 days ago. At that rate we'd be well over 500 new members for a full quarter...much higher than a typical non GenCon quarter. Should be interesting.

I think when I run the numbers I'm also going to start a "if you heard about as at GenCon, post here" thread, just to see how effective our fairly heavy Forge promotion was.

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.

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.

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! :)

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. :-)

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.

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.

Lxndr wrote: 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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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 wrote: 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

In the 400 to 800 group
2.064631957
1.690140845
1.503340757
1.162250116
1.178861789

In the 200 to 400 group
2.603231598
2.957746479
2.616926503
2.417480242
2.357723577

100 to 200 shows
4.937163375
4.507042254
3.841870824
3.858670386
3.414634146

50 to 100
5.385996409
4.929577465
5.178173719
4.091120409
4.715447154

From 25 to 50
7.540394973
7.042253521
6.570155902
7.205950721
6.585365854

10 to 25 shows
13.55475763
14.50704225
13.53006682
12.45932125
12.80487805

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

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

I just did a little breakdown of the top 30 posters, where columns included among other things:
Total number of posts
Length of membership (in days)
Time since last post (in days)

Then I did a little projection of the last quarter, like this:

(90 days - Time since last post) * (Total number of posts / Length of membership)

In other words, (How many days of last quarter active) * (Posts per day)

I don't know anything about statistics, but I could hand over the raw data if you like.

The numbers seem to me quite interesting. It looks like there is not a whole lot of correlation between the factors Number of posts, Posts per day, and Recent posts. For example, Lxndr comes in sixth if you sort by Posts-per-day or by the 90-day projection, but 24th in total postings. Clinton (Nixon) is 8th in postings, 14th in per-day, and 16th by the projection. And so on.

If I did the calculations right, I think that there is a 15.33% margin of non-correlation between Total and Per-day, and an 18.44% margin between Total and the 90-day projection. [I just took the absolute value of the difference between the two rankings, averaged the list, and divided by 30 (the number of entries).]

As I say, I don't know anything about statistics, but it looks to me like this suggests we have a significant amount of spurt-drift behavior, if you get me; I mean that a lot of heavy posters, at least, seem to post a whole lot in a relatively short period, then post little for a while. Of course, screwing this up are LeJoueur, Jared Sorensen, and Christoffer Lerno, who haven't posted in 300+ days each. And with a sample of only 30, 3 people way off is a problem. If the procedure is correct, or can be corrected, it might be interesting to do similar samples in other ranges of total posting, but now this is starting to sound like you have to know what the hell you're talking about.

Ralph or M.J., since you guys know what you're doing, would you be interested in this raw data? Or can you tell me what stat things to apply to it (it's in a spreadsheet now, so I can pretty much tell it to do things, or upload it as a chart)?

I'm trying to figure out what 90 days minus days since most recent post gets you (now that I think I've figured out how you get that number). What was your thinking about that particular piece of the equation?

Maybe Ralph sees something I missed; I'm pretty much self-taught in statistics. (I'm a generalist, you know--I'm learning less and less about more and more until one day I hope to know nothing about everything.)

--M. J. Young

M. J. Young wrote: I'm trying to figure out what 90 days minus days since most recent post gets you (now that I think I've figured out how you get that number). What was your thinking about that particular piece of the equation?

clehrich wrote: The problem is that there isn't really any way that I know of to determine how many posts someone has actually made in a given span of days, since the total posts listed under someone's name is updated continuously. That is, if your 1000th post was still marked as such, I could just count back 90 days and see that you'd made, let's say, your 1100th post, meaning that you've posted some 369 times in the last 90 days. That would enable us to figure out how often people post during specific periods, such as quarters. Instead, I created this obviously rather dubious projection equation.

How long does that take per user? How much load would it put on the forge's machine to run it for all 3000+?

Lxndr wrote: How long does that take per user? How much load would it put on the forge's machine to run it for all 3000+?

Hey, just got back from a week's vacation where I was out of touch. Its good to see there is still interest in these quarterly updates I've been doing. I'll continue to do them as long as folks see some value in it.

John, that output looks amazing. I don't have any solid thought's on it yet, but I can well imagine there's alot of interesting things one could try to pick from such data...especially if the data output is in a manipulable array format.

...off the top of my head,

it would be possible to track the trend in forum postings to see if there is any discernable cycle in the rate of posting in GNS or RPG theory activity.

to determine which forums the newest members are posting to most frequently as a gauge of what's attracting folks to the site and where their initial interest lies.

to find out how many members we have who predominantly post in a specific game forum rather than participate in the general forums.

To see how many of the top posters not only post in the general theory forums but also down in the game forums in direct support of a featured publisher.

To see how many of the top posters to the RPG or GNS theory forums are also regular posters to the Actual Play forum (as a way of motivating a greater focus in application).

Others could probably come up with a few more uses.

I think all of these could be gleaned from the output format you have now, but it would be rather manually intensive. How manipulable is the data you've pulled, John?

Ralph,
The scanning process John describes could collect all the things you mention in a single pass and/or extract the raw timing data and then do off-line stat with that.

Which makes me wonder whether it'd be possible to run this directly against the database? It'd probably be a single SQL query to get all the timing/user info for the entire site.

As for the stat side of this, I'm seeing interest in trends and periodic behavior. (which is good since you have to de-trend the data to get a decent handle on the periodic part anyway :) However, the stuff is currently being binned by the month. That means you're setting up for the detection of multi-month trends and periods and I think that the strong growth of the Forge pretty much guarantees that at any time the majority of members will not have enough history to be able to say anything useful about them. For example, the data for Chris equally support the hypothesis that he is a steady poster with a single lull and the hypothesis that he is a periodic poster who only posts in the first half of the year.

Of course, trends/periods for the Forge as a whole would work fine at this scale.

The period stuff I know how to do pretty well at various levels of ambition, but it's been a while since I've had to de-trend anything (which would be crucial in this case.)

SR
--

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%), 3266 (+377; +13%) in July, and now have 3603 (+337; +10.3%)

Membership growth continues to decline as a % which I think is a good thing for the continued quality of the site. Interestingly, new members in absolute terms seems to be pretty consistantly between 300 and 400 members per month.

The top 10 posters have made 25% of the total posts (down from 40%, 38%, 37%, 35%, 33%, 31%, 30%, 29%, 28%, and 26%)
The top 20 posters have made 34% of the total posts (down from 60%, 53%, 50%, 46%, 44%, 42%, 40%, 39%, 37%, and 35%)
The top 40 posters have made 46% of the total posts (down from 75%, 69%, 66%, 61%, 59%, 55%, 53%, 52%, 49% and 47%)
The top 80 posters have made 59% of the total posts (down from 90%, 85%, 81%, 76%, 73%, 69%, 67%, 65%, 62%, and 60% )

This curve is really starting to flatten out.


There are now 29 members with more than 800 posts (up from 9, 10, 15, 15, 19, 23, 28 +1)
There are 35 members with between 400-800 posts (up from 18, 23, 24, 27, 25, 29, 31 +4)
There are 71 members with between 200-400 posts (up from 20, 29, 42, 47, 52, 58, 65 +6)
There are 102 members with between 100-200 posts (up from 42, 55, 64, 69, 83, 84, 92 +10)
There are 153 members with between 50-100 posts (up from 58, 60, 70, 93, 88, 116, 146 +7)
There are 196 members with between 25-50 posts (up from 72, 84, 100, 118, 155, 162, 178 +18)
There are 375 members with between 10-25 posts (up from 112, 151, 206, 243, 268, 315, 340 +35)
There are 327 members with between 5-10 posts (up from 120, 147, 179, 202, 223, 265, 295 +32)

In the April quarter 89 new members joined the botton two tiers (at least 5 posts), and in July 51 members climbed to the next tier or higher (at least 25 posts). That’s 57% of fresh new posters sticking around long enough to post at least 25 times. (yes, some of those will be fresh new posters from several months ago but for trend purposes it works)

In the July quarter 55 new members entered the funnel of the bottom two tiers. Now in October 46 members climbed to 25+. That’s 84%. Overall that’s 67%. No doubt the spike in this quarter is a result of some of last quarter’s new members taking longer to process.

In the October quarter we’ve added 67 new members to the bottom two tiers.


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

Curious that this is the exact same number from a year ago. The last three quarters have been in a decided down trend.



There are 405 members who've made only a single post (that’s up from 150, 169, 207, 259, 300, 347, and 375 but down in % terms from 13% to 12% to 11% back to 12%, 12%, and 12% again, dropping back to 11%. And 11% again)

There are now 1387 members who've never made a single post (up from 312, 434, 588, 738 and 866, 1035, and 1221. In % terms that’s up to 38% from 28%, 31%, 33%, 34%, 35%, 36%, and 37%).

This seems to be holding fairly steady. It would be nice to be able to eliminate accounts that have been inactive for more than a year or whose sole post was spam.

We’re maintaining 16% (from 20% 18%, 18%, 17%, 15%, 16%, and 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’ve dropped to 6% of the total membership having at least 100 posts (from 9%, 8%, 8%, 7%, 7%, 7%, and 7%), In order to maintain 7% we’d need 1 new 100+ poster for every 14 new members. With 337 new members we’d need 24 new 100+ posters. We got 21. We’ve been just shy for the last several quarters and rounding was no longer able to prop it up. To maintain 6% we’ll need 1 new 100+ poster for every 16 new members. That’s the ratio we’ve actually been getting the last couple quarters so it seems reasonable to expect to maintain that for a while.



The number of lurkers or largely non participating posters (less than 5 posts) stands at 64%, from (from 59%, 61%, 61%, 62%, 63%, 64%, and 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 Julyl 2)

Of the 337 new members who joined since the last update:
38 have posted 1 time – 11% (15%, 16%, 16%, 13%)
46 have posted between 2 and 5 times – 14% (16%, 21%, 18%, 18%)
28 have posted between 6 and 10 times – 8% (10%, 6%, 7%, 7%)
12 have posted between 11 and 20 times – 4% (5%, 3%, 6%, 3%)
6 have posted between 21 and 30 times – 2% (3%, 2%, 3%, 1%)
6 have posted more than 30 times – 2% (3%, 4%, 5%, 3%)

Just in the last quarter.

This time around the numbers have dropped slightly. Only 40% (from 52%, 52%, 54%, 46%) of the newest members have posted at least once. 29% exactly (from 36%, 36%, 39%, 33%) posted more than once.

This quarter has broken the 1/2 of all new members post at least once, 1/3 post more than once rule.

Of the 6 who posted more than 30 times, 1 posted 81, 1 posted 114 and 1 posted 178. Seems like every quarter sees a couple very active posters.

Its that time again:

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%), 3266 (+377; +13%) in July, 3603 (+337; +10.3%) in October, and 3956 in January 2005 (+353; +9.8%). That’s a 61% increase year over year.

Membership growth continues to decline as a % which I think is a good thing for the continued quality of the site. Interestingly 2004’s increase is almost precisely half of 2003s increase. I continue to be struck by the consistancy in absolute numbers of new members. Its been 300-400 a month pretty steadily for 2 years now.

The top 10 posters have made 25% of the total posts (down from 40%, 38%, 37%, 35%, 33%, 31%, 30%, 29%, 28%, 26% and 25%)
The top 20 posters have made 34% of the total posts (down from 60%, 53%, 50%, 46%, 44%, 42%, 40%, 39%, 37%, 35% and 34%)
The top 40 posters have made 45% of the total posts (down from 75%, 69%, 66%, 61%, 59%, 55%, 53%, 52%, 49%, 47% and 46%)
The top 80 posters have made 58% of the total posts (down from 90%, 85%, 81%, 76%, 73%, 69%, 67%, 65%, 62%, 60% and 59%)

As expected, this curve is really starting to flatten out. I wouldn’t expect to see the needle on these numbers move much from this point on.


There are now 31 members with more than 800 posts (up from 9, 10, 15, 15, 19, 23, 28, 29 +2)
There are 41 members with between 400-800 posts (up from 18, 23, 24, 27, 25, 29, 31, 35 +6)
There are 77 members with between 200-400 posts (up from 20, 29, 42, 47, 52, 58, 65, 71 +6)
There are 109 members with between 100-200 posts (up from 42, 55, 64, 69, 83, 84, 92, 102 +7)
There are 149 members with between 50-100 posts (up from 58, 60, 70, 93, 88, 116, 146, 153 -4)
There are 208 members with between 25-50 posts (up from 72, 84, 100, 118, 155, 162, 178, 196 +12)
There are 413 members with between 10-25 posts (up from 112, 151, 206, 243, 268, 315, 340, 375 +38)
There are 352 members with between 5-10 posts (up from 120, 147, 179, 202, 223, 265, 295, 327 +25)

In the April quarter 89 new members joined the botton two tiers (at least 5 posts). In July, 51 members climbed to the next tier or higher (at least 25 posts). That’s 57% of fresh new posters sticking around long enough to post at least 25 times. (yes, some of those will be fresh new posters from several months ago but for trend purposes it works)

In the July quarter 55 new members entered the funnel of the bottom two tiers. In October, 46 members climbed to 25+. That’s 84%. Overall that’s 67%.

In the October 67 new members joined the bottom two tiers. In January, 29 members climbed to 25+. That’s 43% or about 60% overall of initial posters continuing to post at least 25 times.

Now in January we’ve added 63 new members to the bottom two tiers.


There are 92 more people with at least 5 posts than there were in October. This compares to the 113 increase July to October, 122 increase April to July, 139 increase January to April, 88 increase October to January, and the 113 increase from July to October.

The last 4 quarters, basically the entire year, has been in a decided down trend. Since the number of new members has been fairly consistant throughout the year I think these numbers indicate fewer new members who are actually posting (at least 5 times). This could be a source of some concern if it continues. Last year there was a big spike in the first quarter. Maybe we’ll see that again this year.
There are 463 members who've made only a single post (that’s up from 150, 169, 207, 259, 300, 347, 375 and 405 but down in % terms from 13% to 12% to 11% back to 12%, 12%, and 12% again, dropping back to 11%, staying at 11% and now climbing to 12% again.) Pretty consistant

There are now 1547 members who've never made a single post (up from 312, 434, 588, 738 and 866, 1035, 1221, and 1387. In % terms that’s up to 39% from 28%, 31%, 33%, 34%, 35%, 36%, 37%, and 38%).

While the single posters seems to be holding fairly steady, the no posters has increased by nearly 40% from January 2003. If this number were staying the same it would indicate that the same percentage of new members never post. Since it trending upwards that means that even though we get a consistant number of new members each quarter the % of those new members finding something to post about is declining. This is consistant with my earlier source of concern. Is this simply indicative of casting a wider net due to the increase recognizability of the Forge as a site to check out. Basic marketing teaches us that the less focused your advertising the lower your %age of responses. I would hope that that is the case here.

We’re maintaining 16% (from 20% 18%, 18%, 17%, 15%, 16%, 16%, and 16% again) of the total membership having more than 25 posts. But this is due to rounding up and if the current trend continues will probably drop to 15% next time around.

We’re holding at 6% of the total membership having at least 100 posts (from 9%, 8%, 8%, 7%, 7%, 7%, 7% and 6%), In order to maintain 7% we’d need 1 new 100+ poster for every 14 new members. With 353 new members we’d need 25 new 100+ posters. We got 21. To maintain 6% we’ll need 1 new 100+ poster for every 16 new members.



The number of lurkers or largely non participating posters (less than 5 posts) is now 65%, (from 59%, 61%, 61%, 62%, 63%, 64%, 64%, and 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 but it slipped this quarter along with the others noted above.


Continuing with the new stat I found of looking at the recent members (Joined since October 4)

Of the 353 new members who joined since the last update:
58 have posted 1 time – 16% (15%, 16%, 16%, 13%, 11%)
59 have posted between 2 and 5 times – 17% (16%, 21%, 18%, 18%, 14%)
16 have posted between 6 and 10 times – 5% (10%, 6%, 7%, 7%, 8%)
16 have posted between 11 and 20 times – 5% (5%, 3%, 6%, 3%, 4%)
3 have posted between 21 and 30 times – 1% (3%, 2%, 3%, 1%, 2%)
5 have posted more than 30 times – 1% (3%, 4%, 5%, 3%, 2%)

These numbers continue the trend of reduced posting we’ve seen above. The first 2 lines moved up to the high end of their range (meaning more people with fewer posts) and the rest moved to the lower end of their range, including 2 lines setting new lows (meaning fewer people with more posts).

Consistant with this, 44% (from 52%, 52%, 54%, 46%, 40%) of the newest members have posted at least once. This is up from last quarter. But only 28% (from 36%, 36%, 39%, 33%, 29%) posted more than once which is down from last quarter.

The 1/2 of all new members post at least once, 1/3 post more than once rule seems to be in jeopardy.

Of the 5 who posted more than 30 times, 1 posted 48 times, and 1 posted 61 times. Even this is down from previous quarters where there was typically 1-2 new posters in excess of 100.

I think we may be being overly pessimistic about the "downtrend" and related news. That is, I think that it's not the quality of the "advertisement" or the product not being attractive so much as the possibility that we're reaching a signal horizon. That is, at some point, people have to start to feel that their voice is going to get lost in the ever increasing amount of signal. So the more members we have posting, the fewer people see this as a viable channel.

I bet if you projected this trend, and compared it to, say, RPG.net's ratio of posters to non-posters, you'd see that we're still ahead of the curve with regards to this.

With with more and more posting, every person reads less and less of the total content. This is why I don't read RPG.net. Not because I don't like the content, but because I have this sense that for every post that I read, I miss seven just like it. That everything being said there is being said a million times. Even less than I read there, I post there extrememly little because of this (only a handful of times last year).

So I think this curve may simply be inevitable. Basically there's only so much room in one channel for posters, and the rest are going to start to become, more and more, readers.

Mike

Mike Holmes wrote: I think we may be being overly pessimistic about the "downtrend" and related news. That is, I think that it's not the quality of the "advertisement" or the product not being attractive so much as the possibility that we're reaching a signal horizon. That is, at some point, people have to start to feel that their voice is going to get lost in the ever increasing amount of signal. So the more members we have posting, the fewer people see this as a viable channel.

I also agree that the number of non-posters isn't something to get down about. In some ways it's a good thing.

I keep pretty close track of my own forums, so I know that there are people who have no posts to their name who still log in at least once a week. In fact, you can expect 15 unique people to check back in on an average week and about 5 of those rarely, if ever post.

I take this as an indication that they find the site a useful resource - they're either finding information that answers their questions or see new information that they like reading. With an informative/support site, these active non-posters show that it's fulfilling its purpose.

The Forge's primary function seems to be a resource for indie game designers, and it can do that job marvelously whether they post or not (provided that someone is still posting, and there's no problem there). Only a secondary function of the Forge (refining and inventing theoretical models) really requires that people post and participate.

Knowing just how many non-posters still frequent the forums would be a very useful statistic and I'm sure the raw hit logs would reveal just how many unique visitors the Forge gets every day. I'm sure those numbers would be very encouraging.

Well, just to be clear, the issue is not that people do not post. We expect that some proportion of people are here to read, and not to post. The "problem" is that the proportion of non-posters seems to be increasing. The thought is that this could be indicative of less arrivals here finding the site useful. That is, presumably, of the people who do not post, some of them are the ones who arrive, look around, and decide that the site is not useful. If the proportion of non-posters grows, the argument goes, then it's possible that the proportion of new arrivals who find the site not worth coming back to, is increasing.

Or, at the very least, that of the people who arrive that a smaller proportion of those find the site not worth posting to. Which would be problematic, in theory, because the eventual outcome of that trend would be that we'd have few or no new blood posting. Which even I'd agree would be a bad thing. Basically, we don't want the Forge to be a place that people feel they just can't get into at all in terms of participation. No, that doesn't mean that we make it easy for people to participate, generally, we have a relatively high bar to entry. We just don't want there to be factors other than we consciously have decided to put in to setting that bar to be keeping people from posting. So, for example, it's fine that trolls are discouraged from posting, but not fine if people with something to contribute feel, say, that people here at too closeminded to talk to.

I don't think that the latter or anything like it is happening - my point here is that I think that there are other forces conspiring here to bend the curve the way that it has gone. Again, I think that it's simply an overload of information, that growth at the same proportions is just untennable. But that's just my theory. What's most important is to realize that the statistics could be saying many things. This particular trend might indicate something to worry about, and it might not.

Which means to me that I think it's far from time to panic, but certainly time for people like Green who have theories about any potential problems to put them forward for consideration.

Mike

Its that time again:

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

We had 2889 in April 2004 (+429; +17%), 3266 (+377; +13%) in July 2004, 3603 (+337; +10.3%) in October 2004, and 3956 in January 2005 (+353; +9.8%). That’s a 61% increase year over year.

We have 4401 in April 2005 (+445; +11.2%). Interestingly, there seems to be a pattern of First Quarter surges, with the January to April period posting higher than average membership growth.


The top 10 posters have made 24% of the total posts (down from 40%, 38%, 37%, 35%, 33%, 31%, 30%, 29%, 28%, 26%, 25% and 25%)
The top 20 posters have made 33% of the total posts (down from 60%, 53%, 50%, 46%, 44%, 42%, 40%, 39%, 37%, 35%, 34% and 34%)
The top 40 posters have made 45% of the total posts (down from 75%, 69%, 66%, 61%, 59%, 55%, 53%, 52%, 49%, 47%, 46% and 45%)
The top 80 posters have made 58% of the total posts (down from 90%, 85%, 81%, 76%, 73%, 69%, 67%, 65%, 62%, 60%, 59% and 58%)

As expected, this curve is really starting to flatten out. I wouldn’t expect to see the needle on these numbers move much from this point on.


There are now 34 members with more than 800 posts (up from 9, 10, 15, 15, 19, 23, 28, 29, 31 +3)
There are 40 members with between 400-800 posts (up from 18, 23, 24, 27, 25, 29, 31, 35, 41 -1)
There are 81 members with between 200-400 posts (up from 20, 29, 42, 47, 52, 58, 65, 71, 77 +4)
There are 113 members with between 100-200 posts (up from 42, 55, 64, 69, 83, 84, 92, 102, 109 +4)
There are 161 members with between 50-100 posts (up from 58, 60, 70, 93, 88, 116, 146, 153, 149 +12)
There are 214 members with between 25-50 posts (up from 72, 84, 100, 118, 155, 162, 178, 196, 208 +6)
There are 445 members with between 10-25 posts (up from 112, 151, 206, 243, 268, 315, 340, 375, 413 +32)
There are 367 members with between 5-10 posts (up from 120, 147, 179, 202, 223, 265, 295, 327, 352 +15)

In the April 2004 quarter 89 new members joined the bottom two tiers (at least 5 posts). In July 2004, 51 members climbed to the next tier or higher (at least 25 posts). That’s 57% of fresh new posters sticking around long enough to post at least 25 times.

In the July 2004 quarter 55 new members entered the funnel of the bottom two tiers. In October 2004, 46 members climbed to 25+. That’s 84%. Overall that’s 67%.

In the October 2004 quarter 67 new members joined the bottom two tiers. In January 2005, 29 members climbed to 25+. That’s 43% or about 60% overall of initial posters continuing to post at least 25 times.

In the January 2005 quarter 63 new members joined the bottom two tiers. In April 2005 only 28 members climbed to 25+. That’s 44% or about 56% overall of initial posters continuing to post at least 25 times


There are only 75 more people with at least 5 posts than there were in January. This compares to the 92 increase from October 2004 to January 2005, 113 increase July 2004 to October 2004, 122 increase April 2004 to July 2004, 139 increase January 2004 to April 2004, 88 increase October 2003 to January 2004 , and the 113 increase from July 2003 to October 2003.

The last 4 quarters, basically the entire year, has been in a decided down trend. Since the number of new members has been fairly consistent throughout the year I think these numbers indicate fewer new members who are actually posting (at least 5 times). This could be a source of some concern if it continues. Last year there was a big spike in the first quarter coinciding with a spike in membership. This year we had a first quarter spike in membership but the number of new posting members declined another 18.5% matching last quarter’s decline.



There are 507 members who've made only a single post (that’s up from 150, 169, 207, 259, 300, 347, 375, 405 and 463 but down in % terms from 13% to 12% to 11% back to 12%, 12%, and 12% again, dropping back to 11%, staying at 11%, climbing to 12% again, and remaining at 12%.) Pretty consistent

There are now 1829 members who've never made a single post (up from 312, 434, 588, 738 and 866, 1035, 1221, 1387 and 1547. In % terms that’s up to 42% from 28%, 31%, 33%, 34%, 35%, 36%, 37%, 38% and 39%).

While the number of single posters seems to be holding fairly steady, the non-posters have continue to ratchet up. As Mike mentioned last quarter, concern over this trend might be premature but at the very least it indicates that the bar to entry into Forge conversation has increased substantially over the last year.

As expected the number of total membership having more than 25 posts dropped to 15% this quarter (from 20% 18%, 18%, 17%, 15%, 16%, 16%, 16%, and 16% again). What’s notable is that it almost dropped all the way to 14% (after rounding).

We’re holding at 6% of the total membership having at least 100 posts (from 9%, 8%, 8%, 7%, 7%, 7%, 7%, 6% and 6%), In order to maintain 6% we’d need 1 new 100+ poster for every 16. With 445 new members we’d need 28 new 100+ posters. We got 10. Looks like we’ll probably be slipping to 5% in this category next time around.


The number of lurkers or largely non participating posters (less than 5 posts) is now 67%, (from 59%, 61%, 61%, 62%, 63%, 64%, 64%, 64% and 65%). That’s now 2/3s of our membership having never posted more than 5 times.

Continuing with the new stat I found of looking at the recent members (Joined since October 4)

Of the 445 new members who joined since the last update:
48 have posted 1 time – 11% (15%, 16%, 16%, 13%, 11%, 16%)
54 have posted between 2 and 5 times – 12% (16%, 21%, 18%, 18%, 14%, 17%)
11 have posted between 6 and 10 times – 2% (10%, 6%, 7%, 7%, 8%, 5%)
11 have posted between 11 and 20 times – 2% (5%, 3%, 6%, 3%, 4%, 5%)
1 has posted between 21 and 30 times – 0% (3%, 2%, 3%, 1%, 2%, 1%)
3 have posted more than 30 times – 0% (3%, 4%, 5%, 3%, 2%, 1%)

These numbers highlight the recent trend rather dramatically. Last quarter the first 2 lines moved up to the high end of their range (meaning more people with fewer posts) and the rest moved to the lower end of their range, including 2 lines setting new lows (meaning fewer people with more posts). This quarter all but one line set a new low and that 1 (the first) tied for its low. To put this in perspective, a few quarters ago 5% of all new members had posted more than 30 times in their first quarter of membership. To duplicate that this quarter would have required 22 members. The actual number was 3.

To hammer the difference home, we’d been holding at approximately half of the newest members posting at least once. At one time I’d considered that a rule of thumb. This quarter, however, that number is 29% (from 52%, 52%, 54%, 46%, 40%, and 44%). Similarly about one third of the new members had posted more than once. This quarter, however, that number is 18% (from 36%, 36%, 39%, 33%, 29%, 28%).

The “1/2 of all new members post at least once, 1/3 post more than once” rule seems to now be broken, at least for the short term.

Of the 3 who posted more than 30 times, the highest was 51 times. Even this is down from previous quarters where there were typically 1-2 new posters in excess of 100.


Make of it what you will. I invite discussion.

Valamir wrote: Make of it what you will. I invite discussion.

The last 4 quarters, basically the entire year, has been in a decided down trend. Since the number of new members has been fairly consistent throughout the year I think these numbers indicate fewer new members who are actually posting (at least 5 times).

I'd think a good number of those <5 post accounts are there because people want to follow the discussions going on here, but don't want to jump in all the time. They create an account and log in, so they can see new posts, but that's all they have the account for -- not so they can post themselves. Is there any way to crossreference posts with account activity? If we see a lot of low posters with lots of sign ins, then that's probably the reason. If we see a lot of accounts that haven't been logged into for a while, well...that's probably something else entirely.

For some history, Andrew, the argument goes that there has always been a percentage of people who log in just to follow the discussions as you suggest. Having a percentage like that itself isn't particularly troubling. What Ralph is citing is that the percentage is growing. Which could mean, in theory, that a larger percentage of people who arrive are now feeling like it's hard to post here for whatever reason.

My alternative theory is that with more and more posters overall, it becomes harder and harder to keep up with all of the traffic here - I used to read every post, but gave up on that about eight months ago myself. And now I post less, too, as a result. I think many other people are in the same boat. The point is that what my theory means is that there's just a natural resistance curve that builds with a higher population, that you can't expect the proportion of people who actually post to stay stable.

But it's hard to say for certain. Now, we could ask, as Doug suggests, but that has just one little problem that goes along with it - if the posters who haven't posted, come out of the woodwork to say why, then the stats will be skewed for next time, unless we delete those posts or Ralph manually deducts them. I mean, they can't really be counted as those individuals having overcome their problems with posting, if they're only posting to say why they're not posting. ;-)

Anyhow, given the "Diaspora" statement from the management, I think that this trend might just match the timing there. That is, whatever the reason for the signal problem that's likely being generated here, the solution that's been suggested is for people to split off and do their own thang. That's not saying that the Forge doesn't want more people or anything. Just that individuals might find it more effective to start their own, smaller and more accessible discussions elsewhere.

Mike

Ahh, well, that makes sense. I don't post on rpg.net for just that reason -- I have to sift through tons of threads I don't have any interest in just to find the one that is engaging to me.

Its that time again. This time around in an effort to aid readers since we’re collecting a lot of historical data, I tried to put new comments by me in italics to make them easy to find:

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

We had 2889 in April 2004 (+429; +17%), 3266 (+377; +13%) in July 2004, 3603 (+337; +10.3%) in October 2004, and 3956 in January 2005 (+353; +9.8%). That’s a 61% increase year over year.

We had 4401 in April 2005 (+445; +11.2%), and now in July 2005 have 4980 members (+579; 13%). That’s our biggest single quarter numerical increase ever, but about average as a %age.

The top 10 posters have made 23% of the total posts (down from 40%, 38%, 37%, 35%, 33%, 31%, 30%, 29%, 28%, 26%, 25%, 25% and 24%)
The top 20 posters have made 32% of the total posts (down from 60%, 53%, 50%, 46%, 44%, 42%, 40%, 39%, 37%, 35%, 34%, 34% and 33%)
The top 40 posters have made 44% of the total posts (down from 75%, 69%, 66%, 61%, 59%, 55%, 53%, 52%, 49%, 47%, 46%, 45% and 45%)
The top 80 posters have made 57% of the total posts (down from 90%, 85%, 81%, 76%, 73%, 69%, 67%, 65%, 62%, 60%, 59%, 58% and 58%)

As expected, this curve has really flattened out. I wouldn’t expect to see the needle on these numbers move much from this point on. Interestingly in putting these numbers together I was struck by the number of names in the top 20 posters who are no longer active. I counted 5 names who at one time were active enough to be among the most prolific posters whom I don’t remember having heard from in a good long while.


There are now 39 members with more than 800 posts (up from 9, 10, 15, 15, 19, 23, 28, 29, 31, 34 +5)
There are 42 members with between 400-800 posts (up from 18, 23, 24, 27, 25, 29, 31, 35, 41, 40 +2)
There are 90 members with between 200-400 posts (up from 20, 29, 42, 47, 52, 58, 65, 71, 77, 81 +9)
There are 115 members with between 100-200 posts (up from 42, 55, 64, 69, 83, 84, 92, 102, 109, 113 +2)
There are 166 members with between 50-100 posts (up from 58, 60, 70, 93, 88, 116, 146, 153, 149, 161 +5)
There are 229 members with between 25-50 posts (up from 72, 84, 100, 118, 155, 162, 178, 196, 208, 214 +14)
There are 463 members with between 10-25 posts (up from 112, 151, 206, 243, 268, 315, 340, 375, 413, 445 +18)
There are 397 members with between 5-10 posts (up from 120, 147, 179, 202, 223, 265, 295, 327, 352, 367 +30)

In the April 2004 quarter 89 new members joined the bottom two tiers (at least 5 posts). In July 2004, 51 members climbed to the next tier or higher (at least 25 posts). That’s 57% of fresh new posters sticking around long enough to post at least 25 times.

In the July 2004 quarter 55 new members entered the funnel of the bottom two tiers. In October 2004, 46 members climbed to 25+. That’s 84%. Overall that’s 67%.

In the October 2004 quarter 67 new members joined the bottom two tiers. In January 2005, 29 members climbed to 25+. That’s 43% or about 60% overall of initial posters continuing to post at least 25 times.

In the January 2005 quarter 63 new members joined the bottom two tiers. In April 2005 only 28 members climbed to 25+. That’s 44% or about 56% overall of initial posters continuing to post at least 25 times.

In the April 2005 quarter only 47 new members joined the bottom two tiers. In July 2005 fully 37 members climbed to 25+. That’s 79% or about 60% overall of initial posters continuing to post at least 25 times. This sizeable spike suggests that the dip last quarter may well have been one of timing rather than an actual decline.


There are only 48 more people with at least 5 posts than there were in January. This compares to the 75 increase from January 2005 to April 2005, 92 increase from October 2004 to January 2005, 113 increase July 2004 to October 2004, 122 increase April 2004 to July 2004, 139 increase January 2004 to April 2004, 88 increase October 2003 to January 2004 , and the 113 increase from July 2003 to October 2003.

I commented last time that we’ve been in a decided downtrend. From the 139 increase in 1Q 2004 to the 2Q 2005, each quarter has been lower than the previous one. I noted that this trend indicated that since the raw number of new members was remaining fairly constant quarter to quarter, the decline in the number of new posters meant fewer new members were participating. This quarter that trend is really driven home since we combine the single largest number of new members with a dramatic drop in new posters. The previous two quarters had dropped 18.5% each. This quarter is a 36% drop. Combined that’s a 58% drop in the last 3 quarters and a 61% drop over the last year.


There are 545 members who've made only a single post (that’s up from 150, 169, 207, 259, 300, 347, 375, 405, 463 and 507 but down in % terms from 13% to 12% to 11% back to 12%, 12%, and 12% again, dropping back to 11%, staying at 11%, climbing to 12% again, remaining at 12%, and now back to 11%.) Pretty consistent

There are now 2244 members who've never made a single post (up from 312, 434, 588, 738 and 866, 1035, 1221, 1387, 1547 and 1829. In % terms that’s up to 45% from 28%, 31%, 33%, 34%, 35%, 36%, 37%, 38%, 39% and 42%).

While the number of single posters seems to be holding fairly steady, the non-posters have continue to ratchet up. As Mike mentioned last quarter, concern over this trend might be premature but at the very least it indicates that the bar to entry into Forge conversation has increased substantially over the last year. I’ll note that this increase continues and that the total increase over the last 2 quarters is the same as the increase over the previous 6. So the rate of increase seems to be increasing as well.

As expected the number of total membership having more than 25 posts dropped to 14% this quarter (from 20% 18%, 18%, 17%, 15%, 16%, 16%, 16%, 16%, and 15%). After holding steady for 4 quarters that’s 2 quarters in a row its dropped.

We continue to hold at 6% of the total membership having at least 100 posts (from 9%, 8%, 8%, 7%, 7%, 7%, 7%, 6%, 6% and 6%), In order to maintain 6% we’d need 1 new 100+ poster for every 16. With 579 new members we’d need 36 new 100+ posters. We got 18. We didn’t quite slip to 5% this time due to rounding but probably will next time if the trend continues..


The number of lurkers or largely non participating posters (less than 5 posts) is now 69%, (from 59%, 61%, 61%, 62%, 63%, 64%, 64%, 64%, 65% and 67%). That’s now over 2/3s of our membership having never posted more than 5 times.

Continuing with the new stat I found of looking at the recent members (Joined since October 4)

Of the 579 new members who joined since the last update:
43 have posted 1 time – 7% (15%, 16%, 16%, 13%, 11%, 16%, 11%)
43 have posted between 2 and 5 times – 7% (16%, 21%, 18%, 18%, 14%, 17%, 12%)
26 have posted between 6 and 10 times – 4% (10%, 6%, 7%, 7%, 8%, 5%, 2%)
13 have posted between 11 and 20 times – 2% (5%, 3%, 6%, 3%, 4%, 5%, 2%)
1 has posted between 21 and 30 times – 1% (3%, 2%, 3%, 1%, 2%, 1%, 0%)
4 have posted more than 30 times – 0% (3%, 4%, 5%, 3%, 2%, 1%, 0%, 1%)

These numbers continue to highlight the trend dramatically with the first two rows setting new lows by a large margin and all others remaining in the lower portion of their range. To put this in perspective, a few quarters ago 5% of all new members had posted more than 30 times in their first quarter of membership. To duplicate that this quarter would have required 29 members. The actual number was 4.

To hammer the difference home, we’d been holding at approximately half of the newest members posting at least once. At one time I’d considered that a rule of thumb. Last quarter that number had dropped to 29%. This quarter, it drops further to 22% (from 52%, 52%, 54%, 46%, 40%, and 44%). Similarly about one third of the new members had posted more than once. Last quarter that number had dropped to 18%. This quarter, it drops further to 15% (from 36%, 36%, 39%, 33%, 29%, 28%).

The “1/2 of all new members post at least once, 1/3 post more than once” rule seems to now be broken, at least for the short term.

I will note that of the 4 posters who exceeded 30 posts 1 of them managed to post 202 times which blows away the previous record of 178.

Hi Ralph,

I administer my own boards and, over the past year or so, I've noticed a trend that might affect your numbers here.

Both BW and the Forge get spammed, a lot. The spam consists of dummy accounts which are never posted to, but list a website. Mostly it's porn. But sometimes it's other stuff.

JessyR is a prime example:
http://www.indie-rpgs.com/profile.php?mode=viewprofile&u=3287

You can always tell them because they list a COUNTRY of origin -- USA, for example -- and a weird website in their URL profile.

I don't quite understand the reasoning behind it, but it's a very common phenomenon. I get hit probably once a day, if not more. On my site, it's my policy to delete any account with zero posts with a URL advertising another site. Honestly, I'm worried about spam bots using my site to flood other users or flood the boards.

I've seen spam posts here on the Forge. So these bots do occassionally post. Which means that even the single poster count may be corrupted by this non-user population.

Anyway, I often see the same spam accounts posted here as posted on my boards. It looks like Clinton and Ron don't delete them. (Which I understand, because deletion is a chore.) However, this phenomenon is probably skewing the numbers for 0 posters.

Just thought you should know.

-Luke

abzu wrote: I don't quite understand the reasoning behind [non-posting accounts that refer to a website in their profile], but it's a very common phenomenon.

Well, its been about a year since I did one of these.  I figured after so many consecutive quarters of solid trend that quarterly wasn’t really telling us anything.  In the past year however we’ve seen the death of the Theory and GNS forums, the restructuring of the play forums, and the Great Forge Diaspora.  Interesting to see what effect that has had.

Total Membership:
July 2003: 1796
July 2004: 3266 (+1470; +81.8%)
July 2005: 4980 (+1714; +53.5%)
July 2006: 6513 (+1533; +30.8%)

A pretty clear decline in growth in members, not that that’s a bad thing by definition.

Top Posters:
The top 10 posters have made 21% of the total posts as of July 2006
(down from 38% 2002, 31% 2003, 26% 2004, and 23% 2005 )
     
The top 20 posters have made 29% of the total posts as of July 2006
(down from 53% 2002, 42% 2003, 35% 2004, and 32% 2005)

The top 40 posters have made 40% of the total posts as of July 2006
(down from 69% 2002, 55% 2003, 47% 2004, and 44% 2005)

The top 80 posters have made 53% of the total posts as of July 2006 (down from 85% 2002, 69% 2003, 60% 2004, and 57% 2005)

So that trend continues.

Life Time Posting Tiers:
There are now 48 members with more than 800 posts as of July 2006.
(That’s up 23% from 39 in 2005, which was up 39% from 28 in 2004, which was up 87% from 15 in 2003).

There are 55 members with between 400-800 posts as of July 2006.
(That’s up 31% from 42 in 2005, which was up 32% from 31 in 2004, which was up 23% from 24 in 2003).

There are 100 members with between 200-400 posts as of July 2006.
(That’s up 11% from 90 in 2005, which was up 38% from 65 in 2004, which was up 55% from 42 in 2003).

There are 141 members with between 100-200 posts as of July 2006. 
(That’s up 23% from 115 in 2005, which was up 25% from 92 in 2004, which was up 44% from 64 in 2003).

There are 212 members with between 50-100 posts as of July 2006. 
(That’s up 28% from 166 in 2005, which was up 14% from 146 in 2004, which was up 108% from 70 in 2003).

There are 290 members with between 25-50 posts as of July 2006. 
(That’s up 27% from 229 in 2005, which was up 29% from 178 in 2004, which was up 78% from 100 in 2003).

There are 602 members with between 10-25 posts as of July 2006. 
(That’s up 30% from 463 in 2005, which was up 36% from 340 in 2004, which was up 65% from 206 in 2003).

There are 507 members with between 5-10 posts as of July 2006. 
(That’s up 28% from 397 in 2005, which was up 35% from 295 in 2004, which was up 65% from 179 in 2003).

New to Regular Ratio:
From 7/03 to 7/04 250 new members joined the bottom two tiers (5-25 posts).  The following year, 70 members climbed to at least 100 posts.  That’s 28% of fresh new posters sticking around long enough to become regulars.

From 7/04 to 7/05 225 new members joined the bottom two tiers.  The following year (this past year), 58 members climbed to at least 100 posts.  That’s 26% of new posters sticking around.  Overall 27% of all active new members (minimum of 5 posts) stick around to become regulars (100+ posts), at least for a time. 

That’s a pretty good ratio I think.

Interested Posters
In 2003 there were 700 members with at least 5 posts
In 2004 there were 1175 members with at least 5 posts (a 68% increase)
In 2005 there were 1541 members with at least 5 posts (a 31% increase)
In 2006 there are 1955 members with at least 5 posts (a 27% increase)

Members having more than 25 posts:
In 2003, 17.5%
In 2004, 16.5%
In 2005, 13.7%
In 2006, 13.0%

Members having more than 100 posts:
In 2003, 8.0%
In 2004, 6.6%
In 2005, 5.7%
In 2006, 5.3%

Lurkers:
In 2003 there were 207 members who’d only posted once (11.5% of all members).
In 2004 there were 375 members who’d only posted once (11.5% of all members).
In 2005 there were 545 members who’d only posted once (10.9% of all members)
In 2006 there are 745 members who’ve only posted once (11.4% of all members)

an oddly consistent number.

In 2003 there were 588 members who’d never made a single post (33% of all members)
In 2004 there were 1221 members who’d never made a single post (37% of all members)
In 2005 there were 2244 members who’d never made a single post (45% of all members)
In 2006 there are 2925 members who’ve never made a single post (45% of all members)

I’m surprised to see that trend stall at 45%.  Spun positively it means the Forge is such an interesting site that the number of people we’re able to entice to post out of all those who register has stabilized.  Spun negatively it means that fewer people are bothering to register.

Lurkers having fewer than 5 posts:
In 2003, 61.0%
In 2004, 64.0%
In 2005, 69.1%
In 2006, 70.0%