GRcade

If you'd like to read about the health of the forum from a "numbers" perspective, or if you've ever wondered "Is GRcade dying?", you should check out http://grcade.co.uk/stats.

Please let me know if you found this data interesting!

Very interesting. Am I reading that right and 89 members recently stopped posting??

This is very interesting.

Really interesting stuff, thanks Karl!

As you say the fact that the forum has stabilised and even shown growth in the last year is impressive in the wider context of the how much has changed over its lifetime.

Brer knows.

I've always been slightly miffed at the number of topics created here, and the variety of threads we potentially miss out.

Some news gets "covered" by rllmuk bit doesn't make a trace here, and niche content doesn't often find much of a home here.

I'm as guilty of anyone of reading and not posting (and indeed of not making topics) but I do wish sometimes stuff was made into a new topic rather than absorbed elsewhere. If all the active members sort of made a silent pledge to comment a bit more when stuff interested them, instead of just reading and going to another thread straight after, we would probably seem way more active. There are few threads where I keep meaning to reply (Grcade's Top 50 games, for example) and never get around to doing it.

Case in point is stuff like the Marvel thread. We should have individual threads for movies when they are released.

Sad to see that list of departed members too. Some I hadn't realised were missing for so long. If you go back to the first few years of the forum's life, you see what a lot of Games Radar regulars that just sort of faded away soon after we started up. A shame.

Arise, Data Dectective Karl .

I guess the stats could be interpreted as supporting feelings that many of us have; yes, numbers are down compared to ten years ago but a solid core of active members remain and, post and viewing-wise, we're in decent health.

The point about mega threads and new topics has made me think. I'm conscious that new topics are encouraged and stand as a measure in assessing the vitality of the forum. Personally I do enjoy the big "chat" threads; examples such as the Wii U and Switch threads have been pretty lively and I like the interaction and variety of them. However, I can appreciate that it can also be good to introduce fresh topics to drive talking points, so I will try and create new threads where I have the time.

My personal preferences are for smaller, more intimate forums - such as this one! - than the giant platforms such as Era where the number of participents often make some me feel as if I'm trying to be heard in a stadium. Hopefully our current "busy pub" vibe will live long!

I like a smaller forum where you can get to know everyone. The danger is that smaller forums can die quite easily when/if people start drifting away.

We’ve made it through 10 years and still have a decent sized group of regulars, so hopefully we can survive another 10 years. Although I’ll be pushing 50 in 10 years so I don’t want to think about that.

Jesus, Moggy, why did you bring our own ages into it?

Just makes me realise it isn't only the forum that is slowly dying.

Parksey wrote:Jesus, Moggy, why did bring our own ages into it.

Just makes me realise it isn't only the forum that is slowly dying.

If it makes you feel better, just imagine how old Cal and Jawa will be in 10 years time.

Moggy wrote:...I’ll be pushing 50 in 10 years... just imagine how old Cal and Jawa will be in 10 years time.

I believe that there are a reasonable number of GRcadians who are in the same balllpark but remain more... circumspect about revealing their age.

Plot twist: Karl is 22, Moggy is 40 and everyone else is 45+ .

jawafour wrote:

Moggy wrote:...I’ll be pushing 50 in 10 years... just imagine how old Cal and Jawa will be in 10 years time.

I believe that there are a reasonable number of GRcadians who are in the same balllpark but remain more... circumspect about revealing their age.

Plot twist: Karl is 22, Moggy is 40 and everyone else is 45+ .

I’m not 40.

It’s getting closer and closer though.

Ad7 wrote:Very interesting. Am I reading that right and 89 members recently stopped posting??

So that graph just shows when all the members last logged in. If someone last logged in two years ago, they're probably gone, and that's what the left and middle of the graph represent. But you have to be careful about the right hand side in how you interpret it. It represents people who last logged in a week or a month or so ago. The vast majority of them won't be gone for good! They might be on holiday like OrangeRakoon currently is, or might be occasional loggers-in like Steve. Hope that's helpful in interpreting the last graph & table.

250-300 active members is pretty decent really. Like Brer said, it's more of a community. We more or less all know everyone who posts.

I miss bear and it's sad that a combination of mods and a football thread poster lead to him leaving.

I reckon the vast majority of forumites will be plus or minus two years of my age - 28(for the next month...), with a few outliers on either end. Karl obviously at the 12 year old end of the spectrum.

All jokes aside, I think a lot of us - even Karl - have grown up together here, and I’d be very interested to see a forum census.

On a serious note, that’s a belter of a stat pack Karl, I’ve thoroughly enjoyed reading it this morning and I’d agree that it makes for an encouraging view of the forum’s health.

Lookin' good.
I'd say there's a community spirit here, and while the numbers look varied over the last year it definitely looks like it's hit an average sweet spot that's remained roughly the same from last year. I'd say there's enough activity here that the place can certainly carry on for another ten years.

Amazing work Karl. The point about thread creation is very interesting - certainly the case that outside of Stuff, thread quality is usually intidatingly high, with a well created and curated first post containing videos and info. Perhaps our standards are just too high?

Great to see some feedback on this stats and I'm glad people have found it fun and/or useful to see them. I agree that the new threads part is pretty interesting -- I think it boils down to posts getting absorbed in megathreads (like Parksey said) and us having as a community quite high standards for what a thread OP should be (like Clarkman said). I would like to work towards changing that, making people feel more free to create threads for content that interests them.

Number of good Karl posts: 0

wow very insightful!