I cant imagine how random members numbers compute to representation of collectors, When were these 24261 members last online?, Are some really collectors or are they here for another reason (IE: screenprinting information for example).... In fact I myself came here for a marketplace ad that never panned out, and really have little interest in the rest.... Please delete my account.

That's disapointing, I really enjoy the site. Sorry your experience hasn't taken you to a new level. Having said that, goodbye.

Sad to hear. I have found the site most informative and a large majority of the members i have interacted with have been extremely helpful and enthusiastic. I have discovered many mods/options/hints for my machines that i was not previously aware of. When i've had a technical issue with my machines there has been a wealth of knowledge in this forum to draw from. It's NOT perfect in here, no forums are, you are dealing with people from the complete spectrum of humanity, from complete trolling arseholes to people that will go out of their way to help you. It is what it is !!!

The best part of pinside is its international demographic. It gives a great insight into the "world" of pinball, rather than other forums which seem determined to have much more limited horizons. There is no real entrenched groupthink style hierarchy on the forum and I have found it to be very egalitarian in nature.

Plus the moderators here don't incite mob mentality against individuals or otherwise abuse their position of "authority".

Two aspects that are crucial to a truly representative pinball forum.

I have met some great pinsiders in person from North America and Europe after attending pinball shows in the US after having struck up a dialogue with them on pinside.

With the way it is currently managed, I can predict pinside's membership trajectory continuing to go onward and upward.

That's pretty harsh. Just because someone doesn't agree with you they are a troll? You have the right to judge them? Posts like yours scare away more newbies than they encourage.

Not sad at all... just... whatever. NEXT!

don't let the door hit you in the a$$ on the way out!

i'm more interested in the #'s and less the drama

I haven't been to Rec.games.pinball in a long time. This is the pinball page to be on. What else is there?

I would love to see a figure of Pinsiders online trend for the past 5 years.

I would love to see a unique visitor per day count figure for the past 5 years.

I posted this thread two years and nine months ago. Pinside has exploded since then....

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/140-members-on-line

EDIT: FYI - there are 470 members on-line right now. That's about a 3x increase.

bump

Sorry for my slow response. I'm happy to share some data with you.

At the end of November, there are 24,208 "real "Pinside accounts. That's the number of activated, non-blocked/banned/frozen/dupe accounts.

Of those 24,208:
...13,330 Pinsiders logged on in the past 365 days
...5,977 Pinsiders logged on in the past 30 days (of those, 3,440 have made at least one post on the forum.)
...4,456 Pinsiders logged on in the past week (of those, 1,984 have made at least one post on the forum.)

This year we have had between 7 and 35 new signups per day (depending on the day).

"Current Pinsiders online" count data was never stored anywhere, sorry.

I've included some analytics data graphs for the time period Nov 7, 2009 and Nov 30, 2014.
some_analytics.png
Note: the area marked "oops" was an analytics blackout due to an error on my end. We have no visitor stats for that time period.

As for new signups, this is the table:
2001: 1 Pinsider signed up
2002: 8 Pinsiders signed up
2003: 572 Pinsiders signed up
2004: 677 Pinsiders signed up
2005: 379 Pinsiders signed up
2006: 228 Pinsiders signed up
2007: 214 Pinsiders signed up
2008: 380 Pinsiders signed up
2009: 883 Pinsiders signed up
2010: 650 Pinsiders signed up
2011: 2164 Pinsiders signed up
2012: 5411 Pinsiders signed up
2013: 6449 Pinsiders signed up
2014: 6473 Pinsiders signed up (and counting!)

very cool data. Thanks for sharing Robin.

I am one of those 6449 from 2013. Looks like membership has exploded in the last three years, far more than '01-'11 combined. Pinside has played a role in the rejuvenated interest in pinball. Good for Pinside and good for the hobby. Thanks for the stats, awesome website and keep up the good work!

What's with the membership drop from 2005-2007? Were a bunch of accounts deleted?

One can only guess why. Nothing was done that I know of.

Keep in mind, back then there was no forum yet. The only reason to sign up was if you wanted to add/edit the archive, do ratings, write stories. I can imagine there's a much bigger reason to sign up for the forum then there was for only rating games. (?)

Yes. To complain and police for sale prices.

Now that you've compiled all this wonderful data, Robin, I'd like you to come up with some sort of graph that shows how the karma points are spread out. I.e.: how much each member actually uses the forum. For instance, are there only 1% of members with more than 10,000,000 karma points? And what percentage has less than 200,000?

Of course, I don't really expect you to do anything of the sort. Still planning a trip to the Netherlands next year, so watch out!

Only 10 away from 25,000 pinsiders.

2003 here. One of the first batch before the big explosion of the last 4 years.

Don't let the door hit you on the way out....!

Those are the number of new accounts added each year, not total membership count.

I joined right after the forum was added. At the time, I didn't know I was a fledgling member on the 'cutting edge'.