over four thousand members....

[MagUser4Life]

and all we have had on at one time is 154? seems kinda low.

[shartley]

Yes, AO has over 4000 members…… and touts that fact as a status thing, but only has a small portion that actually POSTS. I think it is wonderful to have so many members, but unless they participate, it doesn’t really mean much.

I would be interested in hearing ideas that might increase actual participation. I am not talking about Prizes, because we all know folks come out of the woodwork when you give stuff away… that does not mean anything. What I am interested in hearing is how people think we can we get folks to not only register, participate for prizes, and for special events, but to keep posting as an active member.

Until all members (or the MAJORITY of them) are active members, shouldn’t there be two classifications? XXX Active members and XXXX Inactive Members.

[gmag]

I would be interested in aquiring the percentage of members that actively post(over 50 posts) versus the percentage of members that do not post.

Shartley, I would love it if a larger portion of our members posted more, but I do not think it will happen. Although I, also, am interested in ideas to increase member participation.

~Brett

[Shaft]

Hah! Rule of 15. 15% do all the work, participation etc. It's the same for most fraternities, lodges, or any member based organization.

In the case of AO, it matters not to me. Most the regulars are pretty cool and I don't find the forum to be lacking.

Enjoy!

[Monkertrol]

4000 is a lot, we need to find all the non poster and make em start

[Nitroduck]

Try submitting AO to p8ntballer.com's top 100 sites....It works wonders for hits.

[shartley]

Nitroduck
I don’t think AO has a “hit” problem. I was talking about actual participation… that is quite different.

Shaft
LOL So true… but AO does not even come CLOSE to the 15 Rule. 15% of 4000 is 600. I think I would be fairly safe saying that AO does not have an active membership anywhere close to that.

I agree that those who DO post do quite well (in general), but if a site is going to constantly boast about the “ARMY of AO Members” and toss around the 4000+ every chance they get… a bit of honesty would be fitting as well. LOL AO’s active members are QUITE active, but they are nowhere near the numbers “the numbers” make them seem like.

This is what I would like to see change. It is like saying you have $4000, but you can only touch $150 of it… EVER! What good is telling folks you have $4000? It is empty hype, and means nothing in actual terms.

Now, again….. does anyone have any ideas how we could get a larger active member base? ;)

[AGD]

Now who is the guy with the data? That would be me....

Actually we get about 500 different MEMBERS checking in and reading the posts ever day. In a week we will get 8-900 different members checking in. With that it is safe to say we have almost 1000 active participants even though they don't post.

On top of that we get about 20% non-members reading the boards.

It is no longer unusual for us to get 1000 posts a day across the whole board. For tracking purposes I don't count the ones in the classifieds which is about 40% so that brings our active member post count down to about 600 day.

In comparison the Angel and WGP forums on PBN each average less than about 200 a day. In comparison to most other gun forums we are really big and still growing. We now are routinely getting 10-20 new members a day.

Congrats to all, when your hot your hot!!

AGD

[shartley]

Thanks for the hard numbers Tom.

Now we need to get the lurkers to post! :D
(Although I must admit I was a lurker for a LONG time before I posted.. LOL)

[MantisMag]

that's a LOT of people reading.
http://www.stopstart.fsnet.co.uk/smilie/Lurking.gif

600 posts a day and 500 members. i see some people are doing a lot of posting. hehe. i think things already move pretty fast here on AO. i can't imagine what it would be like if we got all the lurkers posting.

[Cardinal_Biggles]

myself, I find the reason I sometimes don't post is because I have nothing new or beneficial to add to the conversation, and I know people hate to hear the same thing said by ten different people.
I've been a member of AO since i think November of 2000, and have a considerably lower post count than most people, but I get on here nearly every day to read the posts. This forum is an excellent source of info and daily soapdish:p .
There really isn't much you could do to make more people post consistantly without considerably decreasing the quality of threads to the level of Jerry Springer (People seem to like that stuff). If you increase the quality of threads to that of Deep blue, people tend to become intimidated and post less. A happy medium has been found between these two extremes, leaving people feeling free to post when they feel like it, about just about anything paintball.
-And AGD saw the people mingling peaceably under His name, and He said "Let there be AO" and He saw that it was good...:D