Fun With Data - BYC "Active Users" - How to get our friends to post!?

Many of you know that I love data and analytics.

Well, every once in a while someone posts about the number of "active" members vs. the total number of registered members. I decided to run some data and see what we have.

I'm using the "last posted" as the proxy for activity. This isn't really accurate since people can be actively reading without actually posting and the "active" members is probably higher than I have below. But since we don't have a way to tell when a member is reading the forum, we'll just use the last posted info.

So, let's get a baseline: Out of 20,387 registered members, 13,650 have posted (this is actually pretty normal for many large forums like BYC).

Out of those 13,650 there have been 11,741 members that have posted at least once during the year of 2008. That's pretty cool!

9,225 have posted in the last 6 months, 6,775 in the past 3 months, and 3,392 in the past 1 month.

1,032 people posted in the past 24 hours... pretty cool considering yesterday and today are relatively slow.

Now, we need to find ways to:

1) Convert all the lurkers who have never registered to become members.

2) Get all the people that never posted to come introduce themselves and join the fun.

3) Get all the members that haven't posted in 6 months to come back and update us on how they are doing!

Anybody have good ideas to accomplish the 3 items above?

Nifty-Chicken, I just wanted to take a moment and thank you and everyone involved with maintaining BYC for hosting such a great site.

I vote bribe them with candy !

King Chicken:
Do you have a mastah listy of all the registered users? can you send us all a wonderful e-mail encouraging involvement, and perhaps offering some gimmicky way to get people to chime in?

Rarest Rooster, Uglist hen (works for dogs...)

Christina

Quote:
No with EGGS!

How about a sticky "Hi my name is" thread that people get when the first join? You know, like FAQ except there will be people introducing themselves? And users already registered would post too.

I like candy. *biiiig puppydog eyes*

An Uncle Sam poster holding a chicken? "We Want YOU" Oh wait, or better yet, a chicken dressed as Uncle Sam!

Quote:
Let's do it!!!!!!

As a new member, I have to admit that posting to this forum is daunting. There is so much information out there that I had to read for over 3 months just to make sure that I wasn't asking a question that had already been asked.

There is soooooooooooo much good information out there already posted that it is hard to come up with a new question and that might keep lurkers or new members from posting questions to the boards.

Maybe having a "basics" series of posts that cover the care of chickens in one location as opposed to the large conversations that are split up into categories. Start with answering some basic questions that most everyone has when they first start thinking about chickens and then expand from there. Make it weekly series that covers a single topic and then changes the next week.

I know it took me a while to find basic information and, I think, that that is a testament to how much good information is out there but sometimes we just want to know what a roost is or what are the differences between hen or a roo.

Now, take all of this with a grain of salt because, as I stated earlier, I am a newbie here and all of this might already be out there

Thanks

Quote:
off topic -

Opa - you're killing me with that avatar! Sam Elliot is dreamy!

on topic - Thanks, Nifty!