When is a community considered large or big?

Does a 100,000+ post forum qualify? Or does it have to be a million+

[SZ|TalonKarrde]

I'd say it's largely a users online issue, not total members or posts.

For example, I have a site with 10ish people online on average, with 40-50 or so unique visitors a day... But it's largely just a group of friends posting. Now, if not for pruning, this forum would have way over the 2-3 million post count. 90% of the members have 10,000+ postcounts, with one person clocking in at 90k+, and several others not far behind. But the board is far from resource (Beyond space) intensive, as so few people are on at a time.

[FlyBoy73]

If you can sleep easy at night not worrying about servers, staff members, advertisers, software code, and page load speeds... You DO NOT have a big board. That or you have a lot of money and have one heck of a team..

I would quantify a big board on total posts, age and especially current online members and/or connections to the server(s). I'd also go with the Big-Boards pre-req. of 500k posts for starters but a site would then need at least 1k new posts a day... And at least 50 new members.. Just my opinion of course..

Oh, and definitely be using a dedicated server(s).

[woodysfj40]

50 new members is a lot, depending on your target audience....

mine currently runs 2500 posts per weekday, 20 new members per day average, tops between 800 and 1000 unique online at one time (guests and registered), and will top 1 million posts total later this month.

Too many variables to pick one to qualify...

some "formula" may work tho....

[Erwin]

I think it rests on how many posts you get a day or a week. My forums now average 200,000 posts/week, which I would consider busy. Everything else is unimportant really.

[Lee]

Originally Posted by Erwin

I think it rests on how many posts you get a day or a week. My forums now average 200,000 posts/week, which I would consider busy. Everything else is unimportant really.

I consider that busy as well.

[FlyBoy73]

Originally Posted by Erwin

I think it rests on how many posts you get a day or a week. My forums now average 200,000 posts/week, which I would consider busy. Everything else is unimportant really.

Doc, just for you info, I consider that busy too.. lol Very.

[Carnage]

we have 500 ish online at any one time and serer loads do occationally get out of hand... I think any board requireing a dedicated or mostly dedicated server is classified as big. I'm wondering if the new boards i've just started up are gunna classify before long thou, we've had an avg of about 750 posts per day since they opened.

[Bulent Tekcan]

I think more popular too...

Currently Active Users: 1213 (597 members and 616 guests) Time-Out for Cookie : 15 min
Most users ever online was 1,523, 14-03-2006 at 15:22.

Threads: 164,850, Posts: 1,861,622, Members: 195,455, Active Members: 16,786 (ın 1 day)

I'll put some statistics from control panel...

Registration Statistics
March 01, 2006 355
March 02, 2006 413
March 03, 2006 420
March 04, 2006 481
March 05, 2006 402
March 06, 2006 376
March 07, 2006 367
March 08, 2006 349
March 09, 2006 424
March 10, 2006 416
March 11, 2006 515
March 12, 2006 485
March 13, 2006 396
March 14, 2006 362

User Activity Statistics
March 01, 2006 14310
March 02, 2006 14337
March 03, 2006 14472
March 04, 2006 14130
March 05, 2006 11567
March 06, 2006 15011
March 07, 2006 15453
March 08, 2006 14103
March 09, 2006 14532
March 10, 2006 14502
March 11, 2006 15796
March 12, 2006 12686
March 13, 2006 15731
March 14, 2006 16400

New Thread Statistics
March 01, 2006 264
March 02, 2006 284
March 03, 2006 293
March 04, 2006 301
March 05, 2006 287
March 06, 2006 307
March 07, 2006 274
March 08, 2006 249
March 09, 2006 293
March 10, 2006 288
March 11, 2006 292
March 12, 2006 334
March 13, 2006 287
March 14, 2006 343

New Post Statistics
March 01, 2006 3147
March 02, 2006 3538
March 03, 2006 3483
March 04, 2006 3045
March 05, 2006 3264
March 06, 2006 3580
March 07, 2006 3186
March 08, 2006 2903
March 09, 2006 3553
March 10, 2006 4035
March 11, 2006 3390
March 12, 2006 3441
March 13, 2006 3297
March 14, 2006 3654

And also my forum closed for many search engine,only accept 2-3 search engine,google,googleadsense and I think alexa.

I don't know my forum busy or normal category but in bigboard many times list in 1st page some category.

[Andreas]

My stats
Posts/Day: approx. 2500-3000
Threads/Day: approx. 100-150
Registrations/Day: approx. 50-80
Users/Day: approx. 2400-2600

Active Users (during daytime hours) average at about 500, Peak so far was 1034.

It's interesting to see I got way less members than for example Bulent Tekcan, but they seem to be more active.

[Darmak]

My forum stats

Posts/Day: 6000/8000
Threads/day: 200/300
User activity: 2500/3000
Registration: 100/200

This is big?