What is the ratio between number of registered users and posts / threads on your forum?

[smallwheels]

I am curious: On my forum I recognized that the ratio between the number of registered users and the number of threads as well as the number of postings has evolved as pretty stable. In my case:

• number of users * 1,5 = ~ number of threads
• number of users * 20 + a little bit = number of postings

I could imagine that with many forums a more or less stable equitation like that has evolved but also, that it may highly vary, depending from the forum topic as well as from the age of the forum and from the character of the forum. My forum is just two years old and there is not much of topic chatter or other noise.

I.e. this forum here has currently 182500 users, 1647000 messages and 208000 threads and it dates back to 2010, so a forum age of 14 years. The numbers are

ratio threads:users = 1,14
ratio posts:users = 9

which seems surprisingly low in comparison to mine - but on the other hand it may be normal, given the age and the topic of the forum. How is this in your forum?

Those who vote will see the results ;-)

 

[tajhay]

Posts ratio is 138 per user. I delete rejected, banned, spam accounts though. Thread ratio just under 1 per user - mods team geberally create the threads rather than users for organisation reasons.

Over 100k posts on forum (had to restart late last year due to a hack). Was over a mill previously.

 

[zappaDPJ]

I have a post ratio of 263.5 per member and a thread ratio of 14.2 per member.

 

[Mendalla]

I use the ratio of active users to posts rather than registered users when I runs stats. Reflects current reality better given I have a huge base of users either no longer with us (some have left the site, some have passed away) or simply banned as spammers. And even that is horribly skewed given I have probably 3-4 users who account for a huge percentage of posts (our top poster is useless as far as content). Should probably consult my wife (retired prof who taught research methods) about which measure of central tendency to actually use. So with those provisos, as of June 30 (I pull stats quarterly) the ratio for this years was around 3.4-3.5, down from last year (and previous years, I believe). If we ever lose those big posters, it will quickly drop into the 1s I imagine.

 

[AjayJunkies]

I agree with @Mendalla , the ratio should be to active users (eg from the past month).

I think the next step is to start partitioning this ratio between your "content areas" versus "social areas". If your goal is to build up a repository of authoritative discussions and content, you would obviously want to push activity into your content areas. On the other hand, a healthy amount of social discussion is important for cultivating a sense of community.

 

[smallwheels]

I agree with @Mendalla , the ratio should be to active users (eg from the past month).

Would also be a valid KPI but a different one and with a different meaning. You are free to use it for your forum - I chose different for mine for the time being.

If I would use the active users KPI the numbers would be different - every month about half my useres or more are active on the forum (obviously caused partly by the fact that it is still relatively new). But only a fraction of those do post, so if I would limit to them it would again be different numbers.

you could also have the ratio total users vs. active users vs. posting users - could also be interesting.

I think the next step is to start partitioning this ratio between your "content areas" versus "social areas".

Why would I? As I wrote in another thread: My forum is just a hobby - no need to optimize for anything as long as the users like it there.