Actually, it's a rather depressing statistic. Although nearly 500 have registered, we only have around 30-35 actively-posting members. C'mon all you lurkers! Surely you've got something interesting to say?
Come on you raver, you seer of visions, Come on you painter, you piper, you prisoner, and shine!
I have little, in terms of raw numbers, to base this on, but I have the feeling that the *number of active posters is likely to be more of a constant that the ratio.
I'm thinking that the reason for this is merely group dynamics, the perception of dominance by a few -- that sort of thing. Jim, you've experienced a lot of these forums; what's your reading?
Yes, I think tsuwm's right. On very different types of forums such as realbeer.com or OEDILF, where they have a lots of registrants, similarly they don't have more than 30-40 regular posters. It's interesting how that number seems to stay the same.
Jim, you've experienced a lot of these forums; what's your reading?
Yes, most forums have a core group of posters (old hands, the board, what have you), and another middling group of the same size or larger that posts sporadically. Then there is a huge number of folks who ask a question or respond to one or two threads and then disappear. This goes back to the pre-spam days of Usenet and the BBSes before. I'm almost certain that somebody has noticed the phenomenon and written about it.
