What would you consider a active forum?

[Empire]

How many users at once? How many activity every minute? second?

 

[R44]

How many users at once? How many activity every minute? second?

I consider AN active -- ~1000 hits a day - sometimes upwards of 3000. I haven't yet hit the conversion rate but sure I will soon.

 

[Adam]

Depends.... Hits or post or other?

I like to measure post and other. Because even dead sites can get many hits.

SU on average has about 150 - 250 post a day, which to me is good. Add in the 'other' factor (blog comments and likes) and it goes higher.

I've not figured out how to reflect that though. And that has always bothered me... I'll sit at my site and think nothing is going on, but at the end of the day 300 new post. I'm hoping Woltlab which goes above normal to point out where things are happening, will better reflect it.

 

[eldritch1969]

I consider a forum active when you need more staff than you already have.

 

[Empire]

Posts. How much posts a month is ok

 

[cheat_master30]

Depends on the niche. For a large one with lots of potential users and interest, then hundreds or thousands of posts a day is a good start, as is hundreds or thousands of people online.

For one with less widespread appeal? Even about 30-50 posts a day and 10 people online can be seen as active.

If you need solid examples... well, a site about general webmaster stuff needs to be absolutely massive to be seen as 'active', as does one about a popular sport (like both kinds of football) or a general gaming site. Then on the other end of the spectrum, a site about a super niche gaming series or console like the CD-i, It's Mr Pants or Kururin would be seen as active if it got more than ten people online on a daily basis. Most sites probably fall somewhere in between.

 

[mattvinyl]

Mine averages 50+ posts a day, it has nearly 1020 members (purged a load recently), with around 20-30 core members and 70-90 online users a day.
The hits though ran into 1,093,317 for August 2014 and March showed 1,273,202. As Adam says, hits don't mean a lot.

It is a professional trade forum but it gets a lot of views from the DIY'ers, me thinks. Plus the many hundreds of blue pill sellers

 

[hjcrichard]

I think "active" should be measured in posts and the numbers of members that do so.

 

[Rootsxrocks]

From these comments it seems my main forum is pretty darn active

 

[Jura]

I'm more of a yes/no with this question.

Is at least one administrator online a day and a few posts here and there? Then yes. That means I consider really small forums to be active.

 

[DCKien]

I can consider a forum to be the active one if it has some new members and posts daily (discussion posts by members, not the spam posts).

 

[Azareal]

As-long as there's a new post everyday, it's active, otherwise.. It's dead.
As far as a forum being "popular" is concerned, I'd say that a hundred posts per day or so is probably a good start.