- Joined
- Feb 28, 2003
- Messages
- 51,144
- Reaction score
- 8,053
- Location
- Huntsville
- First Name
- Scott
- Last Name
- Friday
In the process of getting ready to move the forum to a new server and new software platform, I have been doing a lot of house cleaning with regard to nuking threads, nuking users, removing moderators that are no longer active, etc,... Just on a lark, I did a few conditional searches of the active member list.
We currently have 21408 user accounts
109 users are currently active forum supporters
23 accounts are set as inactive due to death or member request
465 accounts are members of the Deadmail Usergroup (their emails bounce back).
We have 5 admins and 2 moderators, not including moderators like Trail Boss, Shadman, and Patrick, which are TWT Sponsors and are thus moderators of their subforums.
There are 18316 users with 25 or fewer posts, 3101 with more than 25
There are 19256 users with 50 or fewer posts, 2161 with more than 50
There are 19661 users with 75 or fewer posts, 1757 with more than 75
There are 19921 users with 100 or fewer posts, 1497 with more than 100
There are only 1157 users with 150 or more posts, which is 5.4% of all the users we've ever had.
Before I started nuking threads, we had about 1.5 million posts. We now have about 1.15 million posts.
As of January 1, 2018, only 679 of the 1157 have had any activity, which includes just logging into their account.
As of January 1, 2018, there have been 2865 users with any activity
As of June 1, 2018, there have been 2182 users with any activity
As of October 1, 2018, there have been 1391 users with any activity
March 2003 was the first full month after TWT started, there were 490 new posts that month.
March 2004 - 1360
March 2005 - 4832
March 2006 - 7936
March 2007 - 11095
March 2008 - 16549
August 2008 - 20083 The highest ever
March 2009 - 18384
March 2010 - 10441
March 2011 - 11526
March 2012 - 12869
March 2013 - 11955
March 2014 - 10170
March 2015 - 7120
March 2016 - 8336
March 2017 - 5804
March 2018 - 4252
October 2018 - 4453
New user registrations are a VERY different story. Up through Dec 2016, we were averaging around 200 new registrations per month, about 5-10 real new users per day with the occasional spammers that got nuked. The total registrations only includes accounts that get past the first step of registration and then wait for final approval by an admin. Most spammers fail to get past that first step and are bulk deleted. It was pretty rare for a spammer to get past that first step.
Starting Jan 1st 2017, things changed radically!! Just in that first month, there were over 1500 new registrations, but actual real users dropped to maybe 1-2 per day. Every now and then I might see 4-5 real new users in a day. The rest were ALL spammers that had figured out how to get past that first step of the registration process. So figure maybe 50 new real users per month instead of 200, and 1500 spammers instead of a small handful. By Jan of 2018, total monthly registrations had climbed to 4750. Feb, Mar, & Apr were all right around 6K new registrations. May and June both hit over 7500 new registrations. After June, it suddenly dropped back down under 3500 per month where it has been holding steady. In all that time, the rate at which real new users were joining the site stayed down around 1-2 per day. It was not unusual for me to delete 300-400 spammers per day that were being counted toward new registrations. It has slowed down a bit, but the number of real new users has not started coming back up again. It did not help that in the process of trying to keep out the waves of spammers the occasional legit user got nuked as well. I would occasionally get people contacting me wanting to know why their account got rejected and I'd have to ask them to try again so that I could watch for their account to make sure it got through the second time.
When I visit support forums where forum admins go to get help for their various forum software packages, there is a common theme, "Facebook is killing us!" Some also blame sites like Twitter, Instagram, etc,... This even came up in a recent ride report thread with regard to the Whatsapp site. Some even wonder if forums have a real future anymore. I am not quite so pessimistic even though the numbers clearly show a decline from the heydays of the 2008 period.
We are starting to see a lot of backlash for sites like Facebook, with their massive data mining of personal user information, shutting down of long time users based on political agendas, and just the seeming endless hostility and trash talking that takes place. I still think forums have a place in terms of generating a more real community, where people can actually get to know each other better than they can on drive by type social media sites. Yes, it takes a bit more time to interact with the community of forum users than on places like FB, Twitter, etc,... but let's face it, quality relationships ALWAYS require more time and intentional effort to make them better. There is simply no getting around that. In that vein, I still think forums offer a way for people to come together, share, learn, and plan face to face events where we can get to know each other even better.
I would love to see our user base continue to grow. Growth always presents challenges in terms of maintaining a positive community feel, but that is where the users themselves are the greatest contributors. I was recently reading a thread on one of those admin support forums and the other admins were talking about lessons learned, good and bad, and how hard it was for them to keep their users under control. It seems many of them are dealing with the same hostility and lack of civility that so many other internet locations are dealing with and it is killing their forums. I have been fortunate that early on TWT users took to heart my desire for TWT NOT to be like that and they have worked with me to keep that from happening. Unlike most of those other admins, I and the other admins/mods here on TWT really don't have to spend that much time and effort trying to keep our users under control. Sure, there have been and continue to be the occasional flare up, but they are usually short lived and rarely result in users holding grudges and or permanently leaving the site.
Changing technology has also had an impact on forum. When I first started TWT back in Feb of 2003, the vast majority of our users were accessing the site via desktop and laptop computers. Mobile phones and pads had not yet taken over the internet. Now, I think perhaps most of our users are accessing the site with phones, tablets, and other mobile devices. The vBulletin software I have been running for many years now just doesn't handle these new devices well. This is what gave rise to apps like Forum Runner and TapaTalk. The new software we will be using has built in mobile device support without the need for anything special to be done by the users. You can even see what it will look like if you are sitting at a desktop browser and just start shrinking down the browser window. It resizes on the fly, maintaining a nice clean presentation of the content.
Another thing that has changed is the way people distribute their media. No longer do most people sit at a computer and upload images from their hard drives. Some of us still do, but most now want to be able to upload images and video directly from their mobile devices. They don't want to have to edit/resize images on their desktop computers first so they can upload them to the site. Once I get the new software setup, users will be able to upload images of any size and if they are too large, they will be resized on the fly to meet the max display size of the forum. Users will be able to easily attach images to their posts directly from their mobile devices.
It is my hope that the upcoming transition to a new server system and a new forum software platform will position TWT to continue serving the riding community in Texas, and beyond, for years to come. It will provide plenty of growth room in terms of the hardware and ideally make it much easier for people to interact with the site in ways they are used to interacting with other social media sites.
We currently have 21408 user accounts
109 users are currently active forum supporters
23 accounts are set as inactive due to death or member request
465 accounts are members of the Deadmail Usergroup (their emails bounce back).
We have 5 admins and 2 moderators, not including moderators like Trail Boss, Shadman, and Patrick, which are TWT Sponsors and are thus moderators of their subforums.
There are 18316 users with 25 or fewer posts, 3101 with more than 25
There are 19256 users with 50 or fewer posts, 2161 with more than 50
There are 19661 users with 75 or fewer posts, 1757 with more than 75
There are 19921 users with 100 or fewer posts, 1497 with more than 100
There are only 1157 users with 150 or more posts, which is 5.4% of all the users we've ever had.
Before I started nuking threads, we had about 1.5 million posts. We now have about 1.15 million posts.
As of January 1, 2018, only 679 of the 1157 have had any activity, which includes just logging into their account.
As of January 1, 2018, there have been 2865 users with any activity
As of June 1, 2018, there have been 2182 users with any activity
As of October 1, 2018, there have been 1391 users with any activity
March 2003 was the first full month after TWT started, there were 490 new posts that month.
March 2004 - 1360
March 2005 - 4832
March 2006 - 7936
March 2007 - 11095
March 2008 - 16549
August 2008 - 20083 The highest ever
March 2009 - 18384
March 2010 - 10441
March 2011 - 11526
March 2012 - 12869
March 2013 - 11955
March 2014 - 10170
March 2015 - 7120
March 2016 - 8336
March 2017 - 5804
March 2018 - 4252
October 2018 - 4453
New user registrations are a VERY different story. Up through Dec 2016, we were averaging around 200 new registrations per month, about 5-10 real new users per day with the occasional spammers that got nuked. The total registrations only includes accounts that get past the first step of registration and then wait for final approval by an admin. Most spammers fail to get past that first step and are bulk deleted. It was pretty rare for a spammer to get past that first step.
Starting Jan 1st 2017, things changed radically!! Just in that first month, there were over 1500 new registrations, but actual real users dropped to maybe 1-2 per day. Every now and then I might see 4-5 real new users in a day. The rest were ALL spammers that had figured out how to get past that first step of the registration process. So figure maybe 50 new real users per month instead of 200, and 1500 spammers instead of a small handful. By Jan of 2018, total monthly registrations had climbed to 4750. Feb, Mar, & Apr were all right around 6K new registrations. May and June both hit over 7500 new registrations. After June, it suddenly dropped back down under 3500 per month where it has been holding steady. In all that time, the rate at which real new users were joining the site stayed down around 1-2 per day. It was not unusual for me to delete 300-400 spammers per day that were being counted toward new registrations. It has slowed down a bit, but the number of real new users has not started coming back up again. It did not help that in the process of trying to keep out the waves of spammers the occasional legit user got nuked as well. I would occasionally get people contacting me wanting to know why their account got rejected and I'd have to ask them to try again so that I could watch for their account to make sure it got through the second time.
When I visit support forums where forum admins go to get help for their various forum software packages, there is a common theme, "Facebook is killing us!" Some also blame sites like Twitter, Instagram, etc,... This even came up in a recent ride report thread with regard to the Whatsapp site. Some even wonder if forums have a real future anymore. I am not quite so pessimistic even though the numbers clearly show a decline from the heydays of the 2008 period.
We are starting to see a lot of backlash for sites like Facebook, with their massive data mining of personal user information, shutting down of long time users based on political agendas, and just the seeming endless hostility and trash talking that takes place. I still think forums have a place in terms of generating a more real community, where people can actually get to know each other better than they can on drive by type social media sites. Yes, it takes a bit more time to interact with the community of forum users than on places like FB, Twitter, etc,... but let's face it, quality relationships ALWAYS require more time and intentional effort to make them better. There is simply no getting around that. In that vein, I still think forums offer a way for people to come together, share, learn, and plan face to face events where we can get to know each other even better.
I would love to see our user base continue to grow. Growth always presents challenges in terms of maintaining a positive community feel, but that is where the users themselves are the greatest contributors. I was recently reading a thread on one of those admin support forums and the other admins were talking about lessons learned, good and bad, and how hard it was for them to keep their users under control. It seems many of them are dealing with the same hostility and lack of civility that so many other internet locations are dealing with and it is killing their forums. I have been fortunate that early on TWT users took to heart my desire for TWT NOT to be like that and they have worked with me to keep that from happening. Unlike most of those other admins, I and the other admins/mods here on TWT really don't have to spend that much time and effort trying to keep our users under control. Sure, there have been and continue to be the occasional flare up, but they are usually short lived and rarely result in users holding grudges and or permanently leaving the site.
Changing technology has also had an impact on forum. When I first started TWT back in Feb of 2003, the vast majority of our users were accessing the site via desktop and laptop computers. Mobile phones and pads had not yet taken over the internet. Now, I think perhaps most of our users are accessing the site with phones, tablets, and other mobile devices. The vBulletin software I have been running for many years now just doesn't handle these new devices well. This is what gave rise to apps like Forum Runner and TapaTalk. The new software we will be using has built in mobile device support without the need for anything special to be done by the users. You can even see what it will look like if you are sitting at a desktop browser and just start shrinking down the browser window. It resizes on the fly, maintaining a nice clean presentation of the content.
Another thing that has changed is the way people distribute their media. No longer do most people sit at a computer and upload images from their hard drives. Some of us still do, but most now want to be able to upload images and video directly from their mobile devices. They don't want to have to edit/resize images on their desktop computers first so they can upload them to the site. Once I get the new software setup, users will be able to upload images of any size and if they are too large, they will be resized on the fly to meet the max display size of the forum. Users will be able to easily attach images to their posts directly from their mobile devices.
It is my hope that the upcoming transition to a new server system and a new forum software platform will position TWT to continue serving the riding community in Texas, and beyond, for years to come. It will provide plenty of growth room in terms of the hardware and ideally make it much easier for people to interact with the site in ways they are used to interacting with other social media sites.