"Members: 19,139" is misleading/false.

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Hello,

Bringing your attention to, the "Members: 19,139", for the supposed number of members of the Wrong Planet website, is quite misleading.

Please be aware, thousands of these "members" are completely not active, and have not been months or years. Thousands.

Also to be aware, thousands of member-names, yes thousands, are the 2nd, 3rd, or more, member names of the same person.

I've looked at some estimates at what might be the true number of members, and what it means to be a member. Isn't a member someone who uses the website at least weekly, at least, or at least a few times a month? Or is a true member some who uses it daily? Surely a member is not someone who logged-in once last year and never again. Surely a member isn't someone who logged-in once a few months ago and did one post and never logged-in again.

Some have estimated, the # of members, & with at least some minimum activity, is 2,000-3,000.

Owner of this site, Alex Plank, very frequently, see his Wikipedia article, and many other press and other articles, places lots of emphases on this "19,000" member number. I feel this is, one, misleading, and two, actually not quite honest.

Wondering of other's thoughts on this. Thnxs.

The number is misleading yes. There are sockpuppets and the fact members here have created different accounts because they got tired of their name, or they lost their password and couldn't recover it somehow.

My boyfriend has registered here but he never posted or ever visited this site again the day after he registered.

A number HAVE created 2 or more IDs, but I DOUBT that is near 100%! ALSO, MANY have used them to spam, but I doubt that is more than a few hundred. That means about 9000 real members. Some died, and some may not return. Let's say that is 100%. I DOUBT it. That means 4500.

Still, these problems exist EVERYWHERE! BTW some of those non active people DO read and just don't APPEAR to be active.

HECK, I went on one site and didn't do ANYTHING for years. I then went and became a VERY prolific poster. In fact, I am STILL the highest poster. I abandoned it a few years ago but STILL visit.

this happens with a lot of forums, regardless of content. I was going to be 'gadfly' at one of them, when I found out someone had already used it...years before. Hadn't logged on in years, but then there was nothing I could do.

Does it really matter?

Wow. My eyes are now opened. The game is fixed. Who do I trust now?

Wonder if there ought be standards for membership. As it is now, anyone registering is considered a member.

Standards such as--

Roughly, you need to post at least once per month to keep your membername active, otherwise after three months it will be deleted. Unless, you ask for an extension, say to 6mths. Otherwise all you need to do is register for another membername when you're ready to start again.

All membernames monitored for IP address, only one membername per IP address allowed by the wrongplanet administration, others are deleted.

For public computers or shared computers.....a difficult issue, how to prove you have a shared IP address with more than 1 person registering for wrongplanet.

Ref: Activity levels: Today

Number of members who have posted >10 times since joining is 5,040.

Number of members who have posted >100 times is 1,689.

Number of members who have posted >500 times is 532.

Number of members who have posted >1000 times is 325.

I wonder what the passive/reading only activity level of members is.

Depending on when the statistics started being collected/registered, ( we caught a glimpse of them when the info appeared for a while by accident on our profiles), figures for member's logged-in time and number of threads/posts looked at while logged-in are available to the site-organisers. It would be interesting to know how much time members spend logged-in/reading on wp and not just how much they post.

Providing the individual details ( time online by user-name) would be rather an invasion of privacy but general figures would be nice.

Accounts don't get deleted here.

You are so obviously a troll it is astonsishing that everyone is being so polite. This is your second post and you have had time to research this information and feel the need to post it here...really silly stuff.

As to your point....there are many people wh use this sight and never become a member but do get some information.Many are Lurkers for months beofre they decide to be members...I would say it all balances out. Quantity has never been as important as quality and I do think we have many very active members....I have joined many web-sites that I never go back to,so this is done at most sites and hardly reflects any decieving being done by ALex.

Go find a nice bridge.

It's a conspiracies I tell ya.

Out of curiousity, do banned members show up in the membership count?

The "Online Now" number is also misleading. When you close the WP window it doesn't automatically log you out. I come and go here, and once I had been away for several MONTHS and when I went back to the site I found I was still logged in!

I gotta be the one to ask the question: are banned members, a.k.a. trolls, counted in that 19,139?

Yes.