MySiteGuy
Well-known member
Those numbers do not equate to quality or value of members or content. Member numbers do not equate to activity. How many are fake profiles from bots? How many are actually posting and being active out of the 900 you showed? I suspect if the top 5 posters stopped posting, forum activity would tank. How about you stop posting threads and posts for a bit and let the members pick up that heavy lifting for a bit and see what happens.
Like I have stated previously, I visit a forum with over 50K members from time to time. Any given day you are lucky to see 50 posting. That is abysmal. And most posting are the same ones that frequent the forum and not new members.
Do a prune of members that have not been active in the last 60 days or have had less than 2 posts in that time frame. Then tell us what those numbers are again. I suspect those numbers again would drastically drop.
I know a forum that routinely pruned accounts. Their actual forum growth was significantly slower than it appeared.
And what you see as a 'productive discussion', others may see as just idle chit chat with no meaningful discussion once the original purpose of the thread was met.
So if I make a thread asking who the first president of the United States was, and someone responds with the correct answer of George Washington right away, the rest of that thread no longer serves a purpose other than idle chit chat. Especially if no other question was asked. I would then not hold that thread as a quality thread with valuable content.
If someone makes a thread talking about the latest movie, odds are that thread served it's purpose once it veers off into discussions about anything else and is no longer a quality thread. It's a common things for forums. Including this one and this thread. Thus degrading the actual quality of the thread and content.
Many forums won't prune inactive or fake or duplicate members because they think a bigger number entices people. Makes them think the forum is bigger and more active than it actually is.
So here's a challenge. Prune your forums of people that have been inactive for 60 or 90 days. Show a before and after picture of the results. I suspect your number likely would be cut down to AT LEAST 1/4th of what you showed or what anyone showed. Possibly less if it's just the same handful or even dozen people posting.
For example you showed 900 members with 1,686 threads. That equates to less than 2 threads per member. And my hunch is it's primarily the same group of people making the threads and posts.
Long story short forum owners trying to share numbers many times are just just partaking in useless peeing contests as they are most times just showing a fictional number not based in the reality of their forum. (Doesn't help when there are plug-ins to create fake numbers too.)
The numbers are deceptive to say the least for most forums. Because if all 900 members were actually posting, or even if a quarter of them were, the thread and post counts would be significantly higher. But they aren't. shrugs
It seems your primary purpose of your recent posts is rain on his parade. He's happy with the progress of his forum, and that's what matters.