Oldbies (WAS Re: Posts that get replies (or not))

[abigailnus]

--- In HPFGU-OTChatter at yahoogroups.com, "Cindy C." <cindysphynx at c...> wrote:
> Abigail wrote:
> 
> > Can I have a definition on 'continuous and reasonably active', 
> >Cindy?  
> 
> 
> Uh . . . 
> 
> <scratches head>
> 
> Well, let's see.  "Continuous" would be you, uh, never unsubbed from 
> the list.  And, uh, "reasonably active" means that, erm, you post.  
> Sometimes.  

While we're on the topic of subscribing and posting, does anyone have any idea how 
many of the 7000+ members of HPfGU are actually still involved with the group?  When I 
joined 17 months ago there were only 4000 members, but does that mean that all of the 
3000 people who joined after I did are still lurking?  For that matter, how many members 
actually post to the group, regularly or otherwise?

Let's see, I've posted 79 times since delurking, which comes out to an average of 4.65 
posts per month.  In those 17 months, the average message count was 1542 posts per 
month (according to the monthly message counts on the group home page.  I've counted 
May as it is practically over).  If I'm an average poster that means that there are 330 
active members on the group every month.  That's a pretty rough estimate.  Some people 
post a lot more than I do, and many post less.  I haven't taken into consideration that a 
person's posting habbits change over time - a discussion that would have caught my 
interest a year ago might not interest me today, and I've seen prolific posters scale back 
their presence on the group over time.  If we accept 300 as a ballpark figure, however, 
that still means that less then 10% of the group memebership is actively participating in 
discussions.  That portion gets bigger when you consider that there are members who 
are no longer actively lurking, but by how much?

More importantly, by how much will membership and message counts increase after the 
release of OotP?

Abigail