Ratio between Authors and Non-Authors

[LAHomedog]

??? I don't have separate passwords for the story side and the forum side with the account I use in the forum. Same password, both sides.

I do. I thought it was done that way. Go figure.

 

[Rustyoznail]

I do. I thought it was done that way. Go figure.

That's odd. I have the same username/password combo for both sides. It's a pain having to login to both, but having separate passwords as well? Nuts.

 

[KeithD]

It's a pain having to login to both,

I almost always log in on the story side (to check my ratings), and when I do, I'm automatically logged into the forum side as well.

 

[ElectricBlue]

That's odd. I have the same username/password combo for both sides. It's a pain having to login to both, but having separate passwords as well? Nuts.

That's odder. I log in once, and I'm both story side and forum side, no problems.

 

[PennameWombat]

That's odder. I log in once, and I'm both story side and forum side, no problems.

I log into my dashboard, tap on ‘Explore’, and right-click on ‘Forum’ to ‘open in new window.’ Done.

At the bottom of the main forum page its says there's 2,650,694 'forum members" part of me wonders if that's everyone with a handle on the site, as you need a handle to post on the boards.
<snip>
I see this as two things

One, an unanswerable question

If you go to the Members Hub for the whole site (not the Forum), it says SmallFries172 is the newest member and has number 6196718. If you look at the list of new members on that page, the numbers between them increment by 3.

Also, on the Board when you scroll down “Statistics” to where Lovecraft quotes from above, it confirms (right now):

Threads: 1,075,271, Posts: 60,653,423, Members: 2,651,184
Welcome to our newest member, SmallFries172

490 new members in between these two posts . Assuming no one nuked their account in between, in which case more than that.

6196718 divided by 3 is 2,065,572. Not quite 2,651,184, but possibly not unrelated.

The Tags page says:

Now serving 327,939 tags on 496,749 stories by 90,359 authors

That’s only 5.5 stories average for each author[1]. I have 37, and I know compared to plenty on this thread I’m a mere scribbler. I’d love to know the median number of stories by each author but I’ve no way to calculate that from what I have. So I’m not sure how much to trust those numbers.

But at face value that’s 29 non-author members for every author - 2,651,184 / 90,359.

None of that tells me, or any of us, how many authors versus non-authors read our work. We could do what some have done and walk through our followers list and see how many of them have published stories, but that’s only the followers. I have way more readers who don’t follow me.

Not to mention Anonymous readers.

Two...who the hell cares?

Not sure I care, but I don’t mind the occasional puzzle. I’ve been given some utterly inane advice from people who were supposedly ‘authors,’ as well as quite useful advice. So just because an author might comment or send feedback it still depends on what it is.

[1] I’m not using that number to claim 90,359 different people have posted stories, per that number. I assume that’s how many accounts have published stories, and some folks here have multiple author accounts. It’s also unknown if that includes authors who’ve deleted their accounts and had their stories removed.

 

[SimonDoom]

6196718 divided by 3 is 2,065,572. Not quite 2,651,184, but possibly not unrelated.

The Tags page says:

That’s only 5.5 stories average for each author[1]. I have 37, and I know compared to plenty on this thread I’m a mere scribbler. I’d love to know the median number of stories by each author but I’ve no way to calculate that from what I have. So I’m not sure how much to trust those numbers.

But at face value that’s 29 non-author members for every author - 2,651,184 / 90,359.

.

This is good sleuthing. It shows that locating real data is better than speculating based on tiny pieces of the data.

I have a question, though: doesn't the information above indicate that the 6M+ number refers to total members and the 2M+ number refers to members that have joined the forum at some point? The OP's original question concerned all members, not just forum members. So isn't the total number of members 6 million?

 

[ElectricBlue]

This is good sleuthing. It shows that locating real data is better than speculating based on tiny pieces of the data.

I have a question, though: doesn't the information above indicate that the 6M+ number refers to total members and the 2M+ number refers to members that have joined the forum at some point? The OP's original question concerned all members, not just forum members. So isn't the total number of members 6 million?

When I came on board I set up the one account which was both story side and forum side, IIRC.

My User No. is 2002042 and I joined May 2014 - so far as I know, I've only got the one number.

 

[PennameWombat]

This is good sleuthing. It shows that locating real data is better than speculating based on tiny pieces of the data.

I have a question, though: doesn't the information above indicate that the 6M+ number refers to total members and the 2M+ number refers to members that have joined the forum at some point? The OP's original question concerned all members, not just forum members. So isn't the total number of members 6 million?

When I came on board I set up the one account which was both story side and forum side, IIRC.

My User No. is 2002042 and I joined May 2014 - so far as I know, I've only got the one number.

EB, yup, I only have one number.

Simon, I think it's due to how things are phrased. In my posting I noted that the member numbers - as shown on the Member Hub - increment by three. Thus, SmallFries172 is 6196718 and the next youngest listed member is gladtoseeyouhere who is 6196715. Now, either the Members Hub only displays every third new member or the site's algorithm for assigning them intentionally skips 3.

Having spent much of my professional career designing and programming large-scale distributed systems, assigning a unique ID number is not the hardest thing, but it's not necessarily trivial at scale (yeah, you can serialize it at a single 'authority,' like a relational DB, but that can have scaling issues). So, skipping by three isn't a crazy thing. So that's how I got to my approximately 2 million member accounts makes sense statement. Also, the case that SmallFries172 was listed as the newest member on the Forum page as well as the Members Hub points to them being combined.

But, also, when I went through the new member list, there WERE larger than 3 skips between member numbers. So it's not fixed at 3...

So it 'looks like' the Forum and the Story side are separate, but a single ID/account covers both. My guess is this is a holdover from some early design decision where they may have had separate Story/Forum authentication servers. Right now, they have single-sign-on of a sort active, so as I described, I log into my dashboard then when I open up the Forum it knows I'm already authenticated. But if I came to the Forum directly I'd log into it, although it's the same UID/PW.

I'm extrapolating from what information the site's providing me. Nowhere, other than the Statistics block on the base Forum page can I find a "we have this many members with accounts" statement. And, as a note, it's now at:

Threads: 1,075,305, Posts: 60,656,051, Members: 2,651,556
Welcome to our newest member, Summit40

372 new member accounts created since my earlier posting about 12 hours ago!!!

Note. The Members Hub hasn't yet been updated, it still shows SmallFries172 as the newest member. And, Summit40 can't be found via the Members Hub search.

But Summit40's member number is 6198293, which is larger than SmallFries172's number by 1575. Skipping by threes, that's 525 new members, but the counts say 372.

Whatever.

Unless Manu or Laurel decide to jump into this thread and enlighten us, 2.6 million accounts in total, just over 90,000 authors with current stories, which number just under a half million, are numbers the site does reveal. Only those two can give us an exact answer.

It isn't the number of authors I find odd, it's that it and the number of stories gives us an average of 5.5 stories/author. That has to accord to lots of authors submitting only one or two stories and stopping, since we know there are plenty of prolific authors with over a hundred. And plenty of us here are well into double digits.

And to repeat: This number if "accounts" - accounts who've submitted stories. Not necessarily the number of actual 'authors'. My proviso:
[1] I’m not using that number to claim 90,359 different people have posted stories, per that number. I assume that’s how many accounts have published stories, and some folks here have multiple author accounts. It’s also unknown if that includes authors who’ve deleted their accounts and had their stories removed.

 

[KeithD]

just over 90,000 authors with current stories,

No. 90,000 accounts, not separate authors. There are separate individuals with multiple accounts, each producing stories, and, no, no one's going to be able to figure out how that factors in.

So, the bottom line is that all of this "nice to know" is unknowable.

I've written two stories and submitted three (in more than one account) while you all have been farting around with this pie-in-the-sky empty mathing.

 

[PennameWombat]

No. 90,000 accounts, not separate authors. There are separate individuals with multiple accounts, each producing stories, and, no, no one's going to be able to figure out how that factors in.

Yeah, I covered that proviso in my first posting, didn't bother to repeat it in my followup. So it's 5.5 stories per author account - not necessarily per author. That still means there have to be lots of author accounts with very few stories submitted.

To repeat:
[1] I’m not using that number to claim 90,359 different people have posted stories, per that number. I assume that’s how many accounts have published stories, and some folks here have multiple author accounts. It’s also unknown if that includes authors who’ve deleted their accounts and had their stories removed.

 

[KeithD]

Yeah, I covered that proviso in my first posting, didn't bother to repeat it in my followup. So it's 5.5 stories per author account - not necessarily per author.

To repeat:
[1] I’m not using that number to claim 90,359 different people have posted stories, per that number. I assume that’s how many accounts have published stories, and some folks here have multiple author accounts. It’s also unknown if that includes authors who’ve deleted their accounts and had their stories removed.

OK, what I quoted from your post specified "authors," not "accounts."

I'm one author but I have several separate story-producing accounts. I even have half of one (a coauthor account) that's a producing account.

 

[Bramblethorn]

EB, yup, I only have one number.

Simon, I think it's due to how things are phrased. In my posting I noted that the member numbers - as shown on the Member Hub - increment by three. Thus, SmallFries172 is 6196718 and the next youngest listed member is gladtoseeyouhere who is 6196715. Now, either the Members Hub only displays every third new member or the site's algorithm for assigning them intentionally skips 3.

Huh. I'd noticed there were a lot of ID numbers missing in recent members but hadn't looked closely enough to notice the increments of 3. The others are also missing if you go directly to the relevant member page URL, not just from the hub.

I had thought it might be spam accounts getting blanked soon after creation, but it seems too regular for that. I wonder when that started; there's no skip-three in the early accounts.

It isn't the number of authors I find odd, it's that it and the number of stories gives us an average of 5.5 stories/author. That has to accord to lots of authors submitting only one or two stories and stopping, since we know there are plenty of prolific authors with over a hundred. And plenty of us here are well into double digits.

I can believe that. Remember that the more prolific authors will be more noticeable, so it's easy to miss how many one-shots there are.

 

[PennameWombat]

OK, what I quoted from your post specified "authors," not "accounts."

I'm one author but I have several separate story-producing accounts. I even have half of one (a coauthor account) that's a producing account.

No worries. I was more careful to differentiate in my first posting because I'm well aware of it. But I assume that's how the site advertises it on the tags page:

STORY TAGS
Now serving 328,010 tags on 496,910 stories by 90,376 authors

I have trouble believing that the site is aware of and counting the 'authors' (humans) who have multiple accounts (full and/or partial) versus the number of 'accounts' who've posted stories. So where the quoted item says 'authors' they mean 'accounts.'

And, sure, instead of this I could be submitting stories. No... instead of this I would be doing my day job. Which - for me - makes it harder for me to be in flow to write. I know, I know, 'real' writers can use any moment to write, but guess that means I'm not a 'real' writer.