i have what’s called an “administrators page” when i boot up this forum on my browser. i don’t know what pops up on your-all’s browsers. but i thought it noteworthy to report something, because it strikes me as surprising.
back when i was on RST, somebody did a study for a graduate thesis or something, on how many people were reading RST. the figure turned out to be 17,000, and that was a guess, and i believe that was much higher than the true number. but still, the funny thing was, i don’t think more than a couple of hundred people actually posted, whatever the true number of lurkers was, and the consensus was that the lurker number was probably an order of magnitude or two greater than the number of those who posted.
therefore, it occured to me that we’d have probably 75 or 150 people who’d actually register to post on this forum, and everybody else would just lurk. i thought maybe one day we’d hit 200 or even 250. there might be 20,000 people reading, mind you, but just a few who’d post.
as of today, just shy of three months since putting up this new forum, we’ve got just over 1100 who’ve registered to post (you can lurk without registering, of course). i find that a big surprise. i certainly can’t remember 1100 different email addresses or user names. but they’re there just the same.
i don’t know if you get that list of registered posters on your browser or not, but it comes up on my admin screen whenever i log in. this is apropos of nothing, i just found it interesting.
we have a server out here in san diego that’s dedicated to our site. it’s on pacific time. but it’s about 30 minutes off. i’ll get around to having it fixed one of these days.
Yes Dan,
This site has served me very well on some very confusing issues of technique, equipment, etc, etc. The replies to my posts are always well-considered and make me proud to be part of a very cohesive and supportive (though politically diverse) community of triathletes. This site surely enables many of us to communicate, educate, and inspire from all across the globe. Thanks!
Tripoet
I think it has a lot to do with the new “forum”. In the old format, I would check it out periodically, but because it was so difficult for me to read multiple posts, if a thread had more than a few posts on it, I would just ignore it. Now it is so much easier.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. Thanks for the new format.
And by the way, the new format is only out done by the content of the web page in general.
Dan- I’d like to add my praises concerning the forum as well. The archives & search feature are extremely useful for hunting down posts that I’ve read but want to look at again. One suggestion would be to include a “you’re logged in as ___” feature somewhere on the forum page. Admittedly a very minor detail, but my girlfriend and I both read and post on the forum and it is impossible to tell who is logged in. Not a big deal unless I happen to be logged in under her name and post on a thread concerning saddles and nether region numbness…
I only discovered the forum after reading your article about the Forum’s reaction to Alison’s last article, eventhough I had been visting the main Slowtwitch page regularly for a long time. I wonder how many people have not discovered the Forum yet?
Seriously, I don’t know how you have ended up hosting the only message board I would visit. Everyone is so nice on here, and lots of good thoughts get batted about on here. I do wish I could see how many others are on here, and another cool feature would be to identify people while they are on. That would be cool.
Thank you for hosting such a nice haven for all of us internet junkies who happen to like the sport of multisport, as well.
I registered a few months back and lurked before that, I probably read 5 times more post than I reply too. Most times any input, questions, concerns or view points I have about a particular post are already covered in the replies. This is a great site to get some input on tri-topics. Thanks. Like bunnyman I am somewhat hooked.