The Mighty 50k

[Hapori Tohu]

It took us long enough but BZPower now finally boasts over 50,000 registered members - and at the right time, too, with BIONICLE having returned now. Of course not all of the 50k are active but I feel it's still a fairly impressive number for an online community of its kind and it's great to see BZPower still going so strong in its fourteenth year. Here is to many more members and years to come!

 

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[gannoMoL3]

this is about time!

[Rooster Nui]

Interesting. Hopefully we can reach 60K soon, seeing as Bionicle has officially returned.

[Gatanui]

Interesting. Hopefully we can reach 60K soon, seeing as Bionicle has officially returned.

Considering the step from 40k to 50k took almost seven years I doubt it's happening anytime soon.

[Sir Kohran]

 

Interesting. Hopefully we can reach 60K soon, seeing as Bionicle has officially returned.

Considering the step from 40k to 50k took almost seven years I doubt it's happening anytime soon.

 

That slowdown was surely due to Bionicle being absent for most of those years.

[Munty]

How many active members are there? I think that would be a more interesting figure (and certainly far more relevant!)

[Pohatu: Uniter of Stone]

I'd say less than 1,000.

[Sir Kohran]

How many active members are there? I think that would be a more interesting figure (and certainly far more relevant!)

 

I don't know the overall figure, but of the twenty three members on today's birthday list, just one has been active since the start of last month.

Edited January 5, 2015 by Sir Kohran

[Munty]

Maybe time for a purge then? Not that that would ever happen. Probably be a very good idea though. Make the numbers actually mean something again rather than the statistic it seems to have become judging by this topic! 

[Jobber]

That's an amazing feat! But like that guy before me said, how many members are active, though? Most of 'em are still 'new members' back from 2004 and such.

[Vorahk1Panrahk2]

I vote that we celebrate this milestone with cake. Because who doesn't love cake?

 

Seriously, though, 50,000 is pretty cool. Hopefully that number will increase at a slightly faster rate with BIONICLE returning, and here's hoping that the newer members will remain active on the site.

[Bambi]

Honestly it'd probably be better to get more active members than just registered users.

That said, 50k is still pretty nice!

[Irrie]

Since I've been on BZPower in the past few months (coincidentally, me joining was not because of Bionicle's return, I learned of that after doing so), I've seen the same fifty or so people that I interact with on a daily basis. 

So, out of the 50,000, there are about 50-80 that are active. 

[Mr. Cup of Fail]

This is great, but it would be fantastic if all (or most) of those members was active, but it would be unlikely

[Voltex]

It'd be nice if we knew that most of those members were active. Unfortunately, they aren't. 

 

I'd be interested to know who the lucky member #50, 000 is though.

[Munty]

So we have an active core of about 1% ofthe total roster? That's not really something to be proud of is it? :s

[bohrokman]

It'd be nice if we knew that most of those members were active. Unfortunately, they aren't. 

 

I'd be interested to know who the lucky member #50, 000 is though.

same here congrats bzpower!

[Sir Kohran]

I'd be interested to know who the lucky member #50, 000 is though.

 

This member, if I've counted right.

[Valendale]

When I read the title of this news story, I thought of and made this:

 

[CHTrilogy]

Oh!? I honestly thought we had twice as many members.

[Meiko]

Out of curiosity, how many of those are spam accounts? I've never run a forum so I'm not familiar with how prone to spam bots they are, but I know blogs and wikis are very prone to them which is why I'm curious. Either way, it's a great achievement.

[believe victims]

I don't mind that only a fraction of a percentage of them are active. Can you imagine 50,000 users active on the same forum at the same time? it'd be chaos.

[Sumiki]

Maybe time for a purge then? Not that that would ever happen. Probably be a very good idea though. Make the numbers actually mean something again rather than the statistic it seems to have become judging by this topic! 

In my 8+ years on BZPower, I can't even count the times that long-inactive members suddenly return. GSR comes to mind—he was inactive for an incredibly long period of time, and now he's a Forum Leader.

 

Plus, how would one conduct a purge? Regardless of whether or not it's a good idea, it's impractical.

[Dorek]

Congrats BZP! Fantastic accomplishment.

[Toa Smoke Monster]

I don't mind that only a fraction of a percentage of them are active. Can you imagine 50,000 users active on the same forum at the same time? it'd be chaos.

Not to mention that the forum would repeatly crash from all that activity.

 

But still, I think its great that BZP has reached this milestone. I never would've thought that there was that many accounts on here, but that's probably because a lot of them aren't active. 

 

Here's hoping we reach 60,000 accounts in the future!

[Sir Kohran]

 

Maybe time for a purge then? Not that that would ever happen. Probably be a very good idea though. Make the numbers actually mean something again rather than the statistic it seems to have become judging by this topic! 

In my 8+ years on BZPower, I can't even count the times that long-inactive members suddenly return. GSR comes to mind—he was inactive for an incredibly long period of time, and now he's a Forum Leader.

 

Plus, how would one conduct a purge? Regardless of whether or not it's a good idea, it's impractical.

 

 

I don't know exactly what a 'purge' would entail, but it sounds rather brutal.

 

My solution would be to divide the 'members' group into active and inactive sections. All members are in the active section when they join and for as long as they continue to log in, but if a member hasn't logged in for more than six months or a year, they join the inactive one. All it would take to rejoin the active section is to log in again.

[Aanchir]

I don't mind that only a fraction of a percentage of them are active. Can you imagine 50,000 users active on the same forum at the same time? it'd be chaos.

Agreed, honestly. Back when this site was more active it could be utterly exhausting to try and keep up with certain discussions! And I never got to know individual users nearly as well as I have in today's more tight-knit BZPower community.

[Israeli Toa]

Congrats BZP!!!    (I remember the big celebration when we hit 3K members...back in the day!)

 

And to speak to the current topic - I'd probably be counted as an "inactive" member, yet I do sign in from time to time!  Not all of us have as much time as we once did, alas.  I think this is most definitely my first post in quite a few months!!  Just don't delete my account, thanks guys.  

 

-IT

[Hitoshura]

It's so disappointing when you find out that we reached a milestone but really only a small percentage of users have been on in the recent 2-3 years.

[Black Six]

For those curious, since December 2014, over 1700 members have logged into their BZPower account.

Out of curiosity, how many of those are spam accounts? I've never run a forum so I'm not familiar with how prone to spam bots they are, but I know blogs and wikis are very prone to them which is why I'm curious. Either way, it's a great achievement.

How we've handled spam bots over the years has varied. If they are able to get access to the forums and post something, the account is usually banned. After they became prolific in the mid-2000s, however, we got pretty good at catching them and deleting them before they could even post (the New Member policy helped a lot with this for a time). So there are certainly spam account on BZP, I wouldn't say it's a large number.

[Noxryn]

Maybe time for a purge then? Not that that would ever happen. Probably be a very good idea though. Make the numbers actually mean something again rather than the statistic it seems to have become judging by this topic! 

 

Why purge accounts when people do come back? We've had a lot of members late last year who returned after 3+ years with their accounts because of the line receiving a reboot, it would be a little rude to do that to the other accounts who have people who may return at some point in the name of statistical accuracy. Granted, they wouldn't be able to find their friends if any stayed active as easily due to their friends list being gone; they would lose any archived messages, PM's, that might've held some sort of importance; they'd lose any topics they posted provided they posted on the new boards; they'd lose their title; their active years and member group if they were a Premier Member or a OBZPC.

 

I don't care if 50k people are logging in on average or the 1700 users who logged in through December 2014, it's more of a "cool we hit this milestone" than a "yep we have 50k active users actively posting and actively making topics."

Edited January 5, 2015 by Kitania

[fishers64]

1700? *whistles* Hey, at least we're up to 4.70%.

 

But honestly, that's true of any social media. For any given thing at any given time, there is a few members (a small part of a group) who are super-invested. Then you have the casual drive-by posters who join, post a bunch of stuff, leave, come back perhaps, post a bunch of stuff again - that group is considerably larger. Then you have the people who join and never post. They are the largest group, and the least involved. It's an inverse power curve, with a narrow top and a considerably large bottom.

 

Therefore, when Bionicle died, the invested people didn't leave - they stayed invested. It's the casual drive-bys and the join-and-leavers that disappeared - the bottom of the curve dropped off. That's not saying that more people can't become invested - people who have the potential to be still probably exist out there - or that invested people can't leave because of just not having time - but that either eventuality is less likely than an increase or decrease in the less invested portions of the member base. 

[Ballom Nom Nom]

Wow, that's quite the enormous milestone! Hopefully many more members will continue to join in the future!

 

~B~

[Takuta-Nui]

Glad I was here to see this happen!

 

There's certainly a difference between saying 50,000 people have touched the keyboard enough to become registered, and the number who have continued touching the keyboard afterward to contribute. But we should not discourage the former group from registering at all. The very fact that they register is a signal to us that we are doing something right - we're presenting a community that they want more of. They want to put their thumbprint in there and say, "I'm part of this," however small that part is.

 

I wouldn't support any kind of separation into active and inactive because I don't see how it would actually improve how BZPower runs. The server activity would be the same and maybe actually increase since the software would start checking regularly for people who have tipped over that inactive line.

 

50,000 is great. So is 1000. Let's celebrate both.

[Munty]

Member purges are usually fairly easy in my experience (though probably a bit different with 50k accounts!) I'm actually admin elsewhere on the interweb so I've been involved with this sort of discussion before, though funnily enough I'm far more active here than there thesedays! 

 

Anyway, having 45k inactive members isn't really a problem until you start celebrating the fact that you have 50k members. But once it's being praised as an achievement that figure essentially becomes a lie. We don't have 50k members really, we have 50k accounts. Many of those are spam while many more have never posted at all. There are even some members who have made multiple accounts over the years for whatever reason. None of these should be counted as members and I'm pretty confident that AT LEAST 50% of the accounts here at BZP will fit into those categories. At least...

 

I'm not suggesting people who have made one or two posts in the last ten years need culling (though they quite safely could be) but those who have NEVER posted didn't really need to make an account in the first place did they.

 

Something else to note is that the 1700 members who have logged in since December aren't necessarily contributing anything to the forums either. In fact, every time I check the new content button it defaults to members and displays a list of 5-10 new members every few hours. With that many new accounts being created (most of which NEVER contribute anything) it's not hard to reach 1700. Especially when you consider there are at least several hundred of us (at a guess) logging in daily. 

 

Congrats anyway but it really isn't much of an achievement I'm afraid. No matter how you look at it, it's just an inevitable milestone.

[Nidhiki of the Shadows]

50k is a huge number! Pretty big accomplishment.  

 

-NotS

[Munty]

Have been curious about this so did a quick member search.

 

First off I'm a little confused as according to an all member search we have roughly 49,320 members which can't be the case or this topic wouldn't be here! The search form clearly displays 20 names per page and shows 2,466 pages of members which works out to a maximum of 49,320 members (assuming the final page is full) Not sure why it's showing this but obviously if this number is off then others could be slightly inaccurate too.

 

A slight inaccuracy doesn't change the fact that 1,330 pages of those members have ZERO posts though! That works out at about 26,600, more than half the total members.

 

A grand total of 35,240 members have fewer than 10 posts while roughly 6,800 have surpassed the 100 post mark.

 

I did another quick check out of interest and it seems there are around 1,540 members who have broken the 1,00 post mark! That's kind of impressive. As post count increases we go down to around 600 members with more than 2,000, 200 with more than 5,000 and just 33 with over 10,000 posts! 

 

Current top posters are Purple God with 21,219 posts, bonesiii with 19,518 posts and Nidhiki of the Shadows with 18,510 posts! 

 

According to recent activity around 800 members have logged in so far this year (since Jan 1st) going up to 1,420 from December 1st. 

 

According to the search tool, 3,480 members have been online in the last year (Jan 1st 2014) In that space of time, approximately 2,160 members posted to the forums at least once. That means roughly 7% of BZP members have logged in in the last year and 4% are actively posting. 

 

So there's the breakdown! Not much to celebrate really but the good thing to take away from all those numbers is that every time you post on the forums you secure your place in the top 5% for another year

[fishers64]

Yeah, most of that's kind of old news. I did a spreadsheet schematic a few years back - we have about a 43% join-to-post conversion on new members. By the way, that's better than a lot of businesses who have a 10% conversion on new business.

[Emzee]

I've been watching the numbers the last few months and was astonished to see how quickly the member count was rising. This is quite an achievement, and clearly shows that the forums aren't stagnant.