To Prune or Not To Prune, that is the Question.

[Edrondol]

I was looking at the CrazyEngineers forum post and something really struck me.

They have:

• 116,853 Members
• 41,654 Discussions
• 179,813 Messages

That's .36 threads per member and 4.32 posts per thread.
Mine is:

• 1,300 Members
• 11,722 Discussions
• 449,766 Messages

That's 9.02 threads per member and 38.37 posts per thread! The big difference is the following:
CrazyEngineers - 1.54 posts per member
Halforums - 345.97 posts per member!!
I looked at the big board list and took the top 12 boards and the averages are:

• 7.10 threads per member
• 125.46 posts per member
• 17.18 posts per thread

What these numbers say to me is that either: My users post crap and a lot of it (probable) or some of the big boards do periodic pruning that skews the numbers.
So Admins of the world! Do you prune your boards? If so, what's your pruning criteria? I was once on a board that wiped all messages about once a month. That was a real pain to the posters! If you do prune, how do you go about doing it?
Inquiring minds want to know. Or are at least mildly curious.
Okay, nobody cares but me.

 

[CTXMedia]

Nope, no pruning for me.

 

[Edrondol]

Nope, no pruning for me.

Your number, by the way, are:

• 4.87 threads per member
• 89.97 posts per member
• 18.49 posts per thread

Yours was another one I looked at, but they weren't figured in to the average I posted above.
I know that as a general forum we get a lot more fluff than other places, but putting it into hard, cold numbers makes it more readily apparent.

 

[TheBigK]

There are several things to consider. We're an English forum in a non-English speaking country. We set out to be a global forum for engineers; but over a period of time the site gathered a large number of Indian members. Because of the language problems; it's not easy for members to create content and post often; as you'd see on any other forum with users contributing in their own language.

What's happened with us is people visit us and 'love the site'. They register but they're limited by their ability to post content. We've always had lager number of 'guests' than logged in members . Right now we have : Online now: 1,489 (members: 32, guests: 1,457)