14 years, but I signed up waaaaaaaay before there was even a forum on this site. Never knew until about 4 or 5 years ago there was even a forum here. When I went to create an account for the forum it told me there was already a user by that name. So I put in my password and, voila. Here is what the site looked like back in 2003.

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It will be 12 years in November (joined in Nov of 2005). The forums hadn't really taken off yet, but I submitted a couple of articles, and I liked the format of the Top 100. RGP was still the go to forum, but it was deteriorating fast.

Hey Mike...just look to the right of their name.

Been a member for roughly a week, but been playing pinball in some form for most all my life though.

17.07% < 1 year
14.17% 1-2 years
14.87% 2-3 years
14.92% 3-4 years
14.98% 4-5 years
10.51% 5-6 years
3.60% 6-7 years
1.74% 7-8 years
1.68% 8-9 years
0.87% 9-10 years
5.63% > 10 years

For active users (logged on in the last 90 days):

30% < 1 year
13% 1-2 years
12% 2-3 years
12% 3-4 years
14% 4-5 years
12% 5-6 years
3% 6-7 years
1% 7-8 years
1% 8-9 years
.3% 9-10 years
1.2% > 10 years

RGP was my go-to for years. I entered the hobby with my first machine in the summer of 2003 after bringing home a yard sale pinball machine. RGB and Clay's guides were all I knew at the time. And after Clay removed the guides, it was like the dark ages for me, and RGP was getting weirder. If I recall, Google announced that they weren't going to support groups anymore, but then changed their mind? I just know that around 2009, I lost significant interest, and throughout college, I lost interest entirely. My small collection of games collected dust.

Then after I graduated and got a full time job, it was like the floodgates opened. I went to the York show for the first time in years, threw caution to the wind, and bought an Earthshaker. I actually had to call my friend to borrow my mom's van and drive all the way from South Jersey to York because I A) didn't expect to buy a game and B) Wouldn't have been able to fit it in a Honda Accord. I still owe him lunch.

I lurked around these parts for a while, but didn't sign up until about 2 years ago. As much as people may like to complain about these forums, they've completely renewed my interest in pinball.

Where's the poll option for too many years?

Man, Pinside was ugly back in the day.

Not as bad as 99.99% of all the Myspace websites at the time, Tom

I signed up just over 5 years ago. It's interesting to see a swell of new users in the poll during that same time.

I've definitely noticed that the long time members don't post as often as they used to. There's a lot of big posters from a few years ago who are rarely even seen here anymore. Wonder why?

Same thing with me, just remember looking at the top 100 list.

How do you go back in time like that?

This is a great start to collate some data. Next we need to cross reference the years on Pinside with "Do you like that hunk of shit SF2." That should give us the numbers logical people already know.

was a lurker since 2011 member for like 3

Wow...time flies!

https://archive.org/web/

Type in the website. Select the year and then the day.

I have been here long enopugh that I remember when moderators used to post boobs

Yep and some mods, actually just one was a serious mess.

Hotel Pinside.

You can check out anytime you like, but you can never leave.

LTG : )

60be1-screenshot2013-05-23at9-44-23am (resized).png

Yay Bob!

superthumb (resized).jpg

Im reporting your comment for abuse!

I've been here a while.

I thought this thread was about longevity, not prolific posting.

My posts are mostly help.

Quit breaking things and my count will go down.

LTG : )

13 years for me, I came here to rate stuff to keep track of what I liked and what I didn't, but I found at the time that IPDB kept track of that better, so I used that until I just ran out of time. I last kept up my IPDB ratings seven years ago, but I did a bunch of stuff that more for myself than anyone else. My top games list is very weird here, and I can't figure out what happened, but for instance I apparently have Xenon rated better than Jurassic Park, which is just... no. I don't like Xenon at all.

At least it correctly noted that I really don't like JPLW and X Files.

To me, ratings were really important for me when games came up at decent prices to be able to look back and think about what I thought of the game when I played it. In 2006, IPDB updated it's ranking dates so they are all different now, but I believe I was writing reviews there in the late 90s.

Honestly, and this is coming from a few different people who I know, it's because you get to a point where you can only talk about the same stuff so much before it's hard to care / follow. I used to check in with RGP a lot more because it was VERY technical, and so I was always learning stuff, but here it seems there is a never-ending debate over if dimples are a thing or not, what the market is about to do or has done recently, what the market is going to do about dimples next, if some pin some dude owns is worth as much as it "should" be, why some pin some dude owns isn't worth as much as he thinks it "should" be, if some pin some dude owns got dimples how much "should" that lower it, should we bash Stern because of code or dimples, and a bunch of new mod information.

I've looked at all those threads enough in my life already and I don't need to continue to have people debate them. I know a lot of other long timers that feel the same way. I still check in sometimes because some interesting stuff goes on, but definitely not as much as I did even five years ago when it was less about "investing" and more about playing.

Thanks. I do enjoy pinside in moderate daily doses and I don't do Facebook. I used to really love RGP and thought Pinside would never catch up in terms of technical support, but it has. The reason I eventually bailed from RGP was the trolls and one uber troll in particular. I tried kill filtering them, but others couldn't help but respond and even quote the trolls. Feeding the trolls turned the conversation to everything that I didn't want to be exposed to. Pinside has some trolls but they aren't able to get away with what they do on RGP, plus the ignore function on Pinside is much better because even quotes are deleted. My biggest problem with pinside is all of the senseless bashing and fan boyism. I try not to get sucked into that but I do sometimes. That is when I try to take a step back. It is really tough though when some loudmouth is spewing something that is completely wrong!

duty_calls (resized).png

I wonder how much this poll correlates with the actual growth of pinball.

There's a definite surge some years ago and then steady drop. Still growing, just not as much.

Hard to say. I know many of my customers look at Pinside and see all the threads that get out of hand, and say, "why bother".

LTG : )

lol. Don't tempt me

Member for less than a year....lurking for much longer than that...lol

Very cool! Where did you find this data?

Been on Since December of 03. Pushing 14 years. My how time does fly!

Over 13 years. Lurked for 10+ of those, but now starting to participate.

Is pinball actually growing, or is it just the size of most pinballers and pinsiders that is growing.

I would say the size of pinsiders on average is getting smaller by all the newer blood in the hobby.

It took a few minutes, but I scrolled through the list of members to find the first member that joined a year ago, two years ago, etc. With 25 members per page, you can get a pretty accurate percentage.

That is Kimberly Conrad. She actually married Hef and had 2 kids with him.

Anyway, I recently passed my one year mark on Pinside. I think it seems really wonderful and I have purchased many games on here over the past year. Is there a way to find out who has the highest and lowest frequency of posts?

So you built those numbers yourself off the site's raw data. Impressive!

I believe I was in my 30's and 40lb lighter lol...its been a long time.