Interesting findings Entropy! Thanks for taking the time, interesting to see the breakdown of the most active MI users you looked at.
For those generalizing the MI community based on Entropy's findings, keep in mind that Entropy only looked at 78 users. MacInsiders currently has over 14,500 registered users and there are thousands of users that visit on a 'regular' basis reading the forums but may not be posting as frequent and not be as 'well known' as the ones Entropy listed.
Just to give you some more accurate bigger picture data to think about, here are some stats from just this past month. 35,838
unique visitors (guests and registered users) visited our site over 130,000 times.
The Forum Posters
2172 were regular logged-in users that have posted at least once in the forums in the past few months (active forum users). Of these regularly active members, 49% were first years, 28% were second, 17% were third years, and 6% fourth. Faculty-wise, it appears that Science students are the most vocal in the forums with a whopping 42%, 19% were Engineers, 10% Art Sci, 9% Humanities, and the rest pretty evenly split.
The Readers
2710 users logged in (active users) and read the discussions in the forums and/or the news on the homepage but didn't post or participate. 63% of these were first-year or 'prospective' students, followed by 25% second year. So it would appear that there are a lot of prospective and first year students who are reading but not posting. We need to encourage those members to feel comfortable posting and asking questions, participating in the discussion.
Prospective Students
In just the past 3 months over
215 prospective students have signed up, these are students who have indicated they are not yet first years, so a big welcome to all of you and we hope you choose McMaster University!