"162,550 user registrations and 51,493,334 posts since January 2001" Does anyone know how many ...

[Stinky The Clown]

..... active users there are?

I'm a pretty steady, regular, active user. It seems to me the board is slower, not due to internet problems, but for the slowing of putting up new threads and replying to standing threads. Even posts that get ignored and unrecced to oblivion languish on the lower half of the first page far longer than they used to.

Also, is it me or are there lots of new users? I seem to no longer see some old posters I enjoyed reading and see lots of new posters or posters unknown to me, some of whom have high post counts. How did I miss them? Some are pretty damned good writers with interesting points of view.

Anyway, back to my point. Is there any way to know how many active users we have?

[TK421]

1. I'm not sure, but I thought a while back someone offered up a number between

16-20k....it was a thread with a similar topic

[panader0]

2. A related question

Who has the most posts? Some are over 100,000.

[Stinky The Clown]

3. That's a good one. I have no idea who that might be.

[alfredo]

5. I have 37129 posts, and I'm a slacker compared to others.

Been here since 2002.

[Stinky The Clown]

6. I'm just a hair under 40K and I've been here since 2004

I can't imagine 100K, even back to the very start of DU.

[alfredo]

28. It takes dedication, and a free schedule.

[valerief]

17. Who has the most posts? An ambitious offshore worker paid per post by the RNC. nt

[hfojvt]

18. perhaps still NewYawker99

even though she has not been around for a few years now. Maybe somebody has passed her though, I am seeing some high post counts.

edit: I looked up her profile 146,953 posts. That's gonna be tough to beat. There may not even be anybody else over 100,000, although I think either EFerrari or SoCalDem is close to 80,000.

[hfojvt]

19. okay my memiry was off

SoCalDem is close to 90,000 and EFerrari is over 135,000. Pretty amazing for somebody who has only been here since 2004.

[Hawkeye-X]

30. I knew of one

newyawker99 - Roni. I haven't seen her in years.

Hawkeye-X

[demmiblue]

4. No idea.

However, I think the board is slower because people are getting sick and tired of the constant personal attacks.

JMHO :shrug:

[Ezlivin]

7. That was a stupid thing to say, you useless individual

:)

JUST KIDDING.

I hate personal attacks, but I love a good jest.

Please don't take offense; it was all for a chuckle.

Over and out...

[demmiblue]

10. Ha!

:)

[Stinky The Clown]

8. Many an audience member leaves during a fight - some never to return.

And often the pugilism leads to the arrest and exprisonment of the pugilist least favored by the presiding judge.

[demmiblue]

9. Well, that is a unique way to explain the situation!

:thumbsup:

[Fumesucker]

11. Flamewars kick the same thread up to the top time after time..

Which means that threads further down don't drop as quickly..

We've been having a *lot* of flamewars lately or so it seems to me.

Strangely enough those flamewars seem to be started by a relatively small number of posters who are repeat offenders.

[pintobean]

12. This place has been going downhill since

bush left office. Without a common enemy in power, we've turned on each other and many users want no part of it. The purges accelerated the decline.

Just my opinion.

[JohnnyLib2]

13. I figure around 300 fairly active participants.

Give or take, and depending on the excitement level.

[flvegan]

14. I think part of it

is that many posters are wary of what they say around here these days. Be assured, I am not questioning the rules nor how they are enforced in any way. I know forums here that used to be very active. Now, while there will be a big number of "views" for an OP, there might be 0-3 actual replies. Folks are still reading, they just aren't responding. One of the family forums is practically a wasteland of inactivity compared to how it was (short of spammers and gibberish).

Although there is *one* forum that (at least to me) has gone largely unchanged. The Sports Forum. I have my perceptions as to why, but I won't publicly state them.

See? Wary.

[JVS]

15. IIRC there is a website out there that would tell about the number of hits, posts, and active users.

I forget what it is, maybe some part of google. This info is collected for a lot of sites there.

[demmiblue]

16. I think you are talking about Alexa.

The site does not show active users, though.

http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/democraticunderground.com

[Stinky The Clown]

20. Yeah, and active users was the crux of my question

And to get even more specific, I'd define "active user" more to mean "active poster" and would quantify that at one post a day/seven posts a week, minimum.

[L0oniX]

31. Webalizer is a nice app.

Also http://24counter.com/

[dionysus]

21. a lot of users are gone. some TSed. some leave because they think it's become a dem bashing site.

others left because they think it's a "cheerleading" site.

[L0oniX]

25. +1 "cheerleading" site

[dionysus]

33. how so? you guys are free to criticise all you want... and you do. allll the time

:shrug:

[hfojvt]

22. almost 14,500 posts per day, on average

I have made an average of 10 posts per day in my time here. If 10 is the average then we have something like 1500 active users. If you assume that an active poster can post only every other day and still be considered active, then it might be closer to 3,000. Many people may check in and read more than they post, and the number of posts per day is probably higher today than the ten year average.

[Fumesucker]

24. The lurker to poster ratio on most boards is usually at least six to one..

On a political website like DU it might be higher than that, a lot of people are intimidated from posting by the combative nature of political boards..

[SheilaT]

26. I've been here since 2002

and my profile shows 7500 posts. I accumulated maybe a thousand under a different name when I first started.

I'm nowhere near as active as many here, but I consider myself an active poster. Still, I rarely make as many as ten posts in a day, and will sometimes go for three or four days without posting anything. Sometimes I feel as though I have nothing new to contribute to a thread. Sometimes it's simply a thread I find interesting to read, but perhaps I fundamentally disagree with the way the conversation is going, and then I feel there's no point in being disruptive. Other times a thread degenerates into a pissing contest of some kind, and so I definitely don't post then.

I am one of those who misses the Good Old Days, when there were far fewer threads and it seemed as though many of the discussions were more thoughtful.

[Starry Messenger]

23. I doubt it's more than 1000 who post regularly.

In the big forums anyway. I rarely see a name I don't recognize unless it's someone new.

[Posteritatis]

27. Yeah, I'd guess several hundred to a couple thousand real regulars myself

Quite a few more who're more sporadic, or mainly reading, etc.

[L0oniX]

29. As you know, many websites have a current online user counter.

I guess we will have to water board Skinner to get that installed.

[Hawkeye-X]

32. Years ago, when DU first started

we had exact post numbers next to our names. When we look at people with low post count numbers, we thought it was Freepers. That's why the admins instilled the 1000+ next to our names and kept the exact post number on our profiles. That was DU 2.0 - we still use it today, sort of.

I've been in DU since 2002, and I've seen a lot of people come and go. NewYawker99 remains the most memorable and prolific poster even it's just to greet newcomers and make them feel welcome.

FWIW, DU 1.0 is still in the Web somewhere. Just Google it, I guess. I'm trying to think of a name one can google, jiancto comes to mind, but Carlos left in 2003, I think.