Here is an excerpt from a post I recently added to our forum pages...
I have really enjoyed the forum recently - there has been a series of very interesting posts. There are many, many readers of the forum who do not post and I have heard from many of them - they enjoy it too. There area so many interesting things going on around the world these days and it is great to learn about them right here. This forum is only as good as the people who post and I think our users are the best around. Here are some interesting stats for you:
We have had over 42,000 topics and over 411,000 posts just in the General Topics Section of the site. Most users ever online was 124 on Sunday, October 23, 2011 8:09 PM. We typically have 75-100 people viewing the forum at one time (there are 84 people online as I write this). We have over 11,000 registered forum members. Our board started on 8/8/2002 making it over 10 years old already! The average number of posts per day is 110 and the average number of topics added per day is 11.89 (not sure where that .89 topic is, I have looked for it). The forum database takes up over 523 MB of disk space.
I am fascinated by the number of people who frequent the forum but never participate. I have talked to hundreds of people over the past few years who have mentioned to me that they love the idea and that they watch the forum religiously but never participate. I can understand many not wanting to post because they don't feel they have anything to add and/or are afraid of the repercussions from some forum members who are not too nice. But, in my opinion, everyone has something to add, even if it just an opinion. If you want to be heard, don't be afraid to post!
Just my 2 cents....
Chuck
