Member List

[Westernskies]

Question on Members List

I was perusing the members list (been kinda slow on the Forums lately) and noticed that we have hundreds of members who either:

A. Joined and never came back
B. Have never posted
C. Posted once and never returned
D. Have not visited the Forum in several years.
E. A and B
F. C and D
G B and D
H. Have voluntarily left the forum
I. have involuntarily left the forum (Don't get excited, this is not a sentence )

Is there a reason why we have so many members who clearly aren't participating? Is ad revenue based on number of members, like those expired magazine subscriptions I can't seem to cancel? The membership rolls seem bloated; would it be in our best interests to clean them up?- would make it easier to find someone specific without having to scroll thru page after page of folks who have clearly left the forum.

[REWahoo]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Westernskies Is there a reason why we have so many members who clearly aren't participating?

One of the mysteries of internet forums is why some only lurk and some post...and post..and post. (Who, me?).

Quote:

Originally Posted by Westernskies Is ad revenue based on number of members, like those expired magazine subscriptions I can't seem to cancel?

I'll defer this one to Andy or Janet. I don't have a clue.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Westernskies The membership rolls seem bloated; would it be in our best interests to clean them up?- would make it easier to find someone specific without having to scroll thru page after page of folks who have clearly left the forum.

Andy does this periodically. I know that earlier this month he deleted several hundred "dead" accounts.

[Andy R]

No, the ad revenue is not based on those metrics.

How about we change the settings for the member list so it hides everyone who has not posted? That should make the list much smaller.

[Rambler]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Andy R No, the ad revenue is not based on those metrics. How about we change the settings for the member list so it hides everyone who has not posted? That should make the list much smaller.

Can we go one step further and hide everyone who has not posted for a certain period of time...say a year or two?

R

[Andy R]

Sorry, out-of-the-box the software does not have an option like that.

[Nords]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Andy R How about we change the settings for the member list so it hides everyone who has not posted? That should make the list much smaller.

I know several members who've joined the board to be added as members of a social group or to correspond by PM.

I know a couple other members who've joined (for the "Member since 2004" byline) but who are easily identified IRL and won't decloak until they leave deworkplace.

So I'd rather be able to find a member regardless of whether or not they've posted.

Does vBulletin have tools to allow users to further search/filter the memberlist? Personally I find it quite annoying to not be able to find the banned members. Some of their posts are worth re-reading or even quoting but I can't remember all the usernames, let alone all their idiosyncratic spellings. We had one member of the E-R.org Hall of Shame resurface on another board and it was a real pain to work with this board's memberlist to figure it out.

[Westernskies]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nords Some of their posts are worth re-reading or even quoting but I can't remember all the usernames, let alone all their idiosyncratic spellings.

bigwonderfulwyoming?

[NW-Bound]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nords Personally I find it quite annoying to not be able to find the banned members.

Coming here late, I miss out on all the feuds, though have seen some obviously milder ones that did not result in any expulsion. Anyway, it would be nice to read old postings like that on rainy days. Oops, rainy days are quite rare here.

[Midpack]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Westernskies Is there a reason why we have so many members who clearly aren't participating?

I'd venture one.

Not much has changed for the SIRE crowd, but I'd bet a good chunk of the active FIRE members had the net worth they felt necessary to retire in the fall of 2007, so they were actively planning to retire early - including posting here frequently. Since then, that group may no longer have the net worth and/or the confidence in the future to retire, and their target date has been considerably postponed. Their focus has now turned back to work or other interests, they don't want to read/hear about folks who are still planning to retire soon or those who have already. My 2¢...

[Andy R]

Midpack, I agree.

Forums, for the most part, have 1% highly active posters, 9% post up to around 10 times and 90% who just lurk.

[W2R]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Andy R Forums, for the most part, have 1% highly active posters, 9% post up to around 10 times and 90% who just lurk.

Andy, you are so right. Other forums that I belong to have just as big a percentage of lurkers as this one. There are no surprises here.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nords I know a couple other members who've joined (for the "Member since 2004" byline) but who are easily identified IRL and won't decloak until they leave deworkplace.

Lurkers who have not joined also have to wade through the initial ad that non-members see, which takes a while to load on some computers. That is another reason to join even if one only intends to lurk.

My heart goes out to those whose ER dreams have collapsed along with the economy. You will recover those dreams, in time.

[Westernskies]

Has the members list disappeared from the site?
And our top poster now has only 84 posts?

The conspiracy theorists among us want to know what is up with that...

[CuppaJoe]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Westernskies Has the members list disappeared from the site? ....

Members list can be found in a pull-down menu under "Community."

[CuppaJoe]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Westernskies .... And our top poster now has only 84 posts? The conspiracy theorists among us want to know what is up with that...

Looks like the 84 post count is for the last seven days only. I also remember much higher numbers.

[Notmuchlonger]

Quote:

Originally Posted by CuppaJoe Looks like the 84 post count is for the last seven days only. I also remember much higher numbers.

wow I dont even make the list. I feel a bit empty right now.

[Bestwifeever]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Westernskies Has the members list disappeared from the site? And our top poster now has only 84 posts? The conspiracy theorists among us want to know what is up with that...

Just because you're a paranoid psychotic doesn't mean there's not a conspiracy against you, you know.

[freebird5825]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Notmuchlonger wow I dont even make the list. I feel a bit empty right now.

My horse was in "Show" position with 69 posts. Good number.

[Westernskies]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bestwifeever Just because you're a paranoid psychotic doesn't mean there's not a conspiracy against you, you know.

I believe the members list was taken away by the guys in the black helicopters under a secret UN program to put us all back to work ....
but, hey that's just me.

[Sarah in SC]

Whatever, "they" already knew where you were from the secret embedded GPS enhancements to your Facebook photos.

[Andy R]

Quote:

Originally Posted by CuppaJoe Looks like the 84 post count is for the last seven days only. I also remember much higher numbers.

You are correct. The Top 10 stats used to show all time numbers. On another site we were setting up the same thing and they requested numbers from the last 7 days. It's much better IMO as you can see the threads that have recently been hot and not the same old threads that are now not active. Same thing goes for the active members, it was sort of boring to see the same list all the time and more interesting to see who currently active. The reason 7 days was selected is because the query is fairly intensive since it has to go through the database and figure things out. So if I set it to the last 30 days it would have to search through 4.2 times as much data before it calculates the values.

Do you like the fresher stats?