Post by ptc on May 19, 2020 20:33:04 GMT
One of our members made a recent post to the Poll started by County Joe about OGF member layouts. The question raised dealt with active members. It gave me pause about this subject as it has been mentioned before. It is an excellent question and deserves an answer.
When we launched the OGF last September, our primary goal was to create a community where our members could feel free to engage in a friendly discussion about subjects that are of interest to them and our guests. Since we are 100% member owned, building high membership numbers was never a motivation to us as we are not advertiser driven in order to stay afloat. New members join the OGF because they find us. We don't now or will we ever look at them as dollar signs. Our approach of not to be driven by $$$$$$$ is certainly unique.
We are also unique in as much as we have a Forum Rule that if a member is inactive (no posts) within a twelve month period, they will be purged from the membership rolls. Since profit is NOT our motivation, why should we pay for storage space just to build up a membership count that would only lead to needless expense. That makes no sense whatsoever.
Some on-line forums tout membership counts that range from 20,000 to 30,000 members or even higher. Standing alone, these are impressive numbers. It however does beg the question as what is their criteria for membership within those numbers? How many forums other than the OGF have stringent membership qualifiers in this regard? Numbers, numbers, numbers, so many questions.
A number you might be interested in is our “active members” by our criteria. We have 45.7% that are active, very impressive. Take that number and apply it to say 25,000 members and that would translate to about 11,500 “active members” by our standards. Now that would be impressive. I wonder in reality just how many would equal our 45.7%. Hmmmmm. I think we are doing just fine and my guess is we lead the way in percentages with respect to "real" active members.
When we launched the OGF last September, our primary goal was to create a community where our members could feel free to engage in a friendly discussion about subjects that are of interest to them and our guests. Since we are 100% member owned, building high membership numbers was never a motivation to us as we are not advertiser driven in order to stay afloat. New members join the OGF because they find us. We don't now or will we ever look at them as dollar signs. Our approach of not to be driven by $$$$$$$ is certainly unique.
We are also unique in as much as we have a Forum Rule that if a member is inactive (no posts) within a twelve month period, they will be purged from the membership rolls. Since profit is NOT our motivation, why should we pay for storage space just to build up a membership count that would only lead to needless expense. That makes no sense whatsoever.
Some on-line forums tout membership counts that range from 20,000 to 30,000 members or even higher. Standing alone, these are impressive numbers. It however does beg the question as what is their criteria for membership within those numbers? How many forums other than the OGF have stringent membership qualifiers in this regard? Numbers, numbers, numbers, so many questions.
A number you might be interested in is our “active members” by our criteria. We have 45.7% that are active, very impressive. Take that number and apply it to say 25,000 members and that would translate to about 11,500 “active members” by our standards. Now that would be impressive. I wonder in reality just how many would equal our 45.7%. Hmmmmm. I think we are doing just fine and my guess is we lead the way in percentages with respect to "real" active members.
