Reaching 100K Members: PF Celebrates a Major Milestone!

[Ivan Seeking]

100,000 Members!

We should break the 100,000 PF members mark in the next few days - we have been growing at a rate of 150 to 200 members per day but it does vary. As of right now we are at members = 99,565.

I think this is a huge milestone for PF. Congratulations to the Admin and staff, our Science Advisors and Homework Helpers, our gold members who pay to keep PF alive, and the many bright and dedicated members who have helped to further the cause of education and to make PF the best on the web.

If the typical internet forum is an internet community, then I think PF has achieved the status of being an internet city; a city of our best and brightest!

When I think of PF, I think of a commercial... not sure who did it, but it showed a hall full of young academics, I think scientist and engineers, and asked [approximately] the question: What great things can be achieved when 100 of our best and brightest put their minds together? So when I think of PF, I wonder what great things can acheived when 100,000 of the worlds best and brightest put their minds together?

I will add that PF is growing and so is the demand for server power, hence money. If you haven't done so yet and you appreciate the great things done here, please join and help to support the cause. [an unapproved solicitation on my part]

After over five years I am a bigger fan of PF than ever before. We have come a long, long way, and every day we are blazing new trails - helping to define the information sphere, and working to make the world a better place. Onward to 250K!

 

[ehrenfest]

Does PF deactivate memberships that have been inactive for a long time? I'm guessing no because there are definitely not 100,000 active members. Can you give us some stats about the average member i.e. number of posts, last post, etc?

 

[Gokul43201]

Greg does purge the rolls periodically. He may decide to do one now!

Back when we had 70,000 "members", the stats were:

Users who have never posted: 40,520
Users who have posted fewer than 10 times: 62,724
Users who have posted fewer than 20 times: 65,698

Users who have posted more than 500 times: 313
Users who have posted more than 1,000 times: 154
Users who have posted more than 5,000 times: 17

 

[lisab]

I will add that PF is growing and so is the demand for server power, hence money. If you haven't done so yet and you appreciate the great things done here, please join and help to support the cause. [an unapproved solicitation on my part]

I can't think of a better way to spend just a few $$!

 

[Cyrus]

I think honestly PF has around 1k dedicated members.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Re Gokul's post: Greg purged old accounts at least twice, and I think several times since then.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

I think honestly PF has around 1k dedicated members.

Nonetheless, PF has a huge sphere of influence.

 

[Daniel Y.]

Re Gokul's post: Greg purged old accounts at least twice, and I think several times since then.

What kind of purging? Removed all accounts that had never posted?

 

[Cyrus]

Nonetheless, PF has a huge sphere of influence.

Its probably the best site on the net, next to porn of course.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

I don't know the parameters, but I saw at least two drops...I think in the range of 2000 members each time. But the fact that people join just to avoid the advertising speaks to the level of activity.

 

[Gokul43201]

Some of the biggest posters (name/join date/# of posts):

Doc Al         11.05.03 	17,125 	
HallsofIvy     03.25.03 	16,919 	 
ZapperZ        01.20.04 	12,508 	
marcus         03.17.03 	11,688 	 
russ_watters   03.17.03 	10,970 	 
Hurkyl         03.16.03 	10,529

More here: https://www.physicsforums.com/memberlist.php?&order=DESC&sort=posts&pp=30

 

[Gokul43201]

I don't know the parameters, but I saw at least two drops...I think in the range of 2000 members each time.

There was a drop by 8000 late last year.

 

[mattmns]

What kind of purging? Removed all accounts that had never posted?

Sometimes he removes people that have just never posted anything useful.

... ah crap, I hope he doesn't do that this time.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Consider that one recent thread in S&D that debunks the product known as "Kinoki Foot Pads" has over 42,000 hits and rising. That is probably an honest 30,000 hits, plus spiders. So just one thread has the audience of a small newspaper. And most of those hits do not come from members.

I was struck by the primary Dem election results in the State of Maine, IIRC, when I noted that there were fewer Democrats voting in the State than we have members...[edit] or maybe that each of the two candidates had fewer votes than we have PFers, but in any case the point is the magnitude of the numbers.

 

[mcknia07]

Oh that will be awesome, when we reach the big 100k I have told a few of my friends about PF and they love it :)

 

[B. Elliott]

Only 4 times that number voted for Nader in '04.

 

[ehrenfest]

I personally think this large number of members is kind of scary. Ivan Seeking can you extrapolate to 2010, 2020, etc? How does PF plan to deal with this "overpopulation" problem? Are we growing exponentially or is it even worse like \exp (\exp (x))? Is the prospect as glim as it is for the real world?

 

[B. Elliott]

I personally think this large number of members is kind of scary. Ivan Seeking can you extrapolate to 2010, 2020, etc? How does PF plan to deal with this "overpopulation" problem? Are we growing exponentially or is it even worse like \exp (\exp (x))? Is the prospect as glim as it is for the real world?

Physicsforums birth control! The best answer though is always abstinence.

 

[mcknia07]

Physicsforums birth control! The best answer though is always abstinence.

HAHA, are you going to be the one to make it then??

 

[binzing]

Ha, to mention another thread, we'll have to change to distributed computing to have people act as servers.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

I personally think this large number of members is kind of scary. Ivan Seeking can you extrapolate to 2010, 2020, etc? How does PF plan to deal with this "overpopulation" problem? Are we growing exponentially or is it even worse like \exp (\exp (x))? Is the prospect as glim as it is for the real world?

I estimate that in fifteen more years, everyone in the world will be a member of PF.

Just shooting from the hip a bit, but I think the average new members per day rate has gone something like 1.3 x 2^Y, where Y is the number of years that PF has been around, with peak values of about 50% higher, but of course I was joking above. I have no way to know if this extrapolates to any degree or not or is even a close fit. And obviously there is a limit. And it ignores banned members and database purges.

 

[B. Elliott]

HAHA, are you going to be the one to make it then??

I got it... referral only! You can only join if you have been referred by a contributing member. Only the responsible ones can 'procreate'.

j/k of course.

 

[mcknia07]

I got it... referral only! You can only join if you have been referred by a contributing member. Only the responsible ones can 'procreate'.

j/k of course.

LOL, nice, well it's good to know there is "protection" available out there

 

[binzing]

Well, its like, when Ivan posted the post count stats and a lot where under 10 or under 20 it makes you wonder how many were science projects?

 

[mcknia07]

LOL, yeah, there were probably quite a few, but It's good to see that they came here too It can be very helpful

 

[binzing]

Hey, its how I found this place, or wait, maybe that was something else...

 

[B. Elliott]

I can't remember how I came across the site. My join date is July'04. I think I was reading Brian Greens books at the time... The Elegant Universe and Fabric of the Cosmos. Probably got diverted to the Cosmology or Quantum Physics section through a Google search.

Glad that happened!

 

[Ivan Seeking]

I noticed that Cyrus is not gold! Come on Cyrus, you should pay double what everyone else does!

 

[Cyrus]

I noticed that Cyrus is not gold! Come on Cyrus, you should pay double what everyone else does!

It ran out. Then I saw all these damn ads. My god its horrible.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Members: 99,792

 

[_Mayday_]

It's my homepage!

These forums are fully responsible for sparking my passion for physics, and for that I am truly grateful. Thanks to all the Mentors, Homework Helpers and anyone else who is responsible for the well-being of this site.

_Mayday_

 

[jhicks]

Re Gokul's post: Greg purged old accounts at least twice, and I think several times since then.

My old account was purged after I didn't post for about 2 years . I sincerely hope it was not because I was a looney! Hmm this could actually probably get me banned admitting to this, but I hope that I have much more good favor on this name than in the past.

 

[Mk]

I see threads that curious or confused 14 year old kids make, and I think it's great that we have a set of smart people with diversity in age that can help them out.

 

[Redbelly98]

I am seeing that there are currently 41,477 members ... where is this 100,000 number coming from?

https://www.physicsforums.com/memberlist.php?do=getall&pp=30&order=asc&sort=joindate&page=1383

 

[Gokul43201]

I am seeing that there are currently 41,477 members ... where is this 100,000 number coming from?

Main page, right column, "Physics Forums Stats" (about halfway down the page)

The members list page counts only the members that have posted. About half the people that sign up never post!

 

[Redbelly98]

Thanks for the explanation Gokul.

Here's a couple of graphs of how the forum has grown over the years, in terms of members who have actually posted.

 

[Vid]

It ran out. Then I saw all these damn ads. My god its horrible.

Firefox + Adblock Plus?

I've never seen any ads on this site (or most others.)

 

[Greg Bernhardt]

Sometimes he removes people that have just never posted anything useful.

... ah crap, I hope he doesn't do that this time.

Just to make things clear: I purge account usually once every few months. I only delete old accounts that never comfirmed their registration email address. For whatever strange reason only 1 in 3 confirm their email. and... I will purge soon again, we'll see maybe a 2-3k drop. But I'll do it once we are over 100k

 

[Greg Bernhardt]

Firefox + Adblock Plus?

I've never seen any ads on this site (or most others.)

Definately your right to do so, but once we start using impression based ad campaigns, blocking the ads does hurt the site in a way. You'll not only be blocking the ads, but also much needed revenue.

 

[rewebster]

too bad you didn't come up with some contest of who could guess to the nearest second when it did reach 100k

 

[B. Elliott]

Definately your right to do so, but once we start using impression based ad campaigns, blocking the ads does hurt the site in a way. You'll not only be blocking the ads, but also much needed revenue.

So the ad companies tell whether their ad are being received by the user browser or not?

 

[Gokul43201]

Thanks for the explanation Gokul.

Here's a couple of graphs of how the forum has grown over the years, in terms of members who have actually posted.

Very nice Red! How did you make/find those graphs?

Looks like the membership growth over the last 3 years has indeed been close to exponential.

 

[_Mayday_]

Very nice Red! How did you make/find those graphs?

Looks like the membership growth over the last 3 years has indeed been close to exponential.

Hey Gokul,

I found some similar statistics, though I do not know how dated they are!

http://www.big-boards.com/board/1213/"


_Mayday_

 

[_Mayday_]

Number of posts: 1608250
Number of members: 99821
Post per member ratio: 16
Posts last week: 7783

Have a look at my link, at the number of posts in December! What happened then! The place must have gone through the roof!

 

[Gokul43201]

Hey Gokul,

I found some similar statistics, though I do not know how dated they are!

http://www.big-boards.com/board/1213/" _Mayday_

Thanks Mayday. That looks like current (2007-2008) data. It shows that nearly 8000 member purge I mentioned.

Looks like the current sign-up rate is close to 150 per day - within 10% of Ivan's prediction!

 

[Redbelly98]

Very nice Red! How did you make/find those graphs?

You can sort the members list by join date here:
https://www.physicsforums.com/memberlist.php?&order=ASC&sort=joindate&pp=30
Then, you can figure out how many posting members have joined up to any date, using the fact that 30 members are displayed per page. It took maybe an hour to compile the numbers and put them into Excel to make the graphs.

Looks like the membership growth over the last 3 years has indeed been close to exponential.

Yep, at about 50% annual growth.

 

[Redbelly98]

Number of posts: 1608250
Number of members: 99821
Post per member ratio: 16
Posts last week: 7783

Have a look at my link, at the number of posts in December! What happened then! The place must have gone through the roof!

I think not ... the graph shows 1 week with zero posts, followed by a week with about double the normal amount of posts. Looks like the data-loggers just took a week off, and then got caught up when they returned

 

[Math Is Hard]

99,933

 

[lisab]

We should have a ceremony for the 100,000th member!

...well, it might scare them off to see thousands of members running at them waving fish over their heads...

 

[Math Is Hard]

We should have a ceremony for the 100,000th member!

...well, it might scare them off to see thousands of members running at them waving fish over their heads...

That's such a great idea. I was thinking maybe we could have 100,000 fish drop from the ceiling as soon as they confirm registration.