When is a community considered large or big?

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

[Yorixz]

I'd say it's rather mattering how many hits per day you get, I mean, even a low populated forum can get that many posts - just takes some more time

[lazytown]

I think a good indication is "user activity" per day, but it depends what you mean by Big Board. I have a few forums, one with about 1.2M posts and 12K users (this is after pruning). But you could have the same forum and have half the activity depending on how long the forum has been up, so it really doesn't mean much.

For some things the number of posts/users matters most when you have a mod that scans the entire post/user table (as some do). So since we are here talking about big boards as they relate to mods, I guess number of posts and users is most important, depending on what the mod does.

Another way of looking at it is if you have a dedicated server that doesn't have a ton of free processing power based on your forum usage, you have a "big board" for your server.

-vissa

[Paul M]

Is this new, I don't remember ever seeing this forum ?

Nevermind, I've just found the post that says it is.

Some definition of BIG needs to be agreed upon.

[alexanderpas]

yes, this is new, read the announcement
https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthrea...609#post920609

[Trigunflame]

I would say something along the lines of satisfying one or all of these criteria:

1. Average a users online of 500 or more, members/guest included.
2. More than 500,000 Posts
3. More than 50k Members

This of course being a lower limit. I personally wouldn't consider these "big", but for the sake of having something within reason for the growing forum.

[COBRAws]

How is BIG being defined?
Maybe we should use some equation such as

Active Posters + Posts per Day / Forum Age = big Board Value (??)

Now that I think about this... A board that is 8 years old and 3 million posts, can be considered as big as another one created in mid 2005 with 500k posts.

My last project is a board with 200k posts, and 6k active members, around 800 msgs everyday. That is not big considered to me, but as it is a thematic board reaching only music, it can be big.

[Trigunflame]

I dont think the forum should be about how much activity in terms of new forums ie. an equation because that can fluctuate Especially for newer forums.

Maybe im perceiving this forum wrong by Brad; but Im pretty sure this forum is aimed at Large Forums for the sake of discussions relating to problems large forum owners face.

This being server load problems, failovers, mass moderation, particular code tweaks etc..

[Xenon]

a forum like this was requested on vbulletin.com especially from a technical point of view, but as it involves coding we have opened it here.

it's about large forums which need optimizing.

for example vbulletin.org everytime i do an upgrade some of the steps (especially the attachment parts) do timeout

those forums qualify here

[Xenon]

both things