Qbit
cannabanana
Out of curiosity, I've been keeping notes on the FC member/thread/post count shown at the bottom of the home page. Mind you I've only been recording once every couple of weeks to a month, as the change isn't very interesting over short periods of time.
But I've been doing this for just over 17 months now (my first entry was 21st Sept 2010) and the stats at that time were: 3788 members; 2681 threads; 87080 posts. Now at the time I write this the front page says that there are 7739 members, 5300 threads and 193337 posts.
So that means that FC has been more than obeying Moore's Law, as it has taken less than 18 months to double. Going by the increase in membership, it's a growth rate of 4.2% a month, or 64% per annum.
However it occurred to me that there would be seasonal variations in registration numbers, so I just checked my archive back to around this time last year (21st Feb) when there were 5089 members, making the increase over the last year 51% (or an average of 3.5% per month). But at that rate the membership count still doubles every 20 months. I believe the generally accepted Moore's Law doubling time is 18 to 24 months, so FC qualifies.
Anyway, at this rate, in 5 years FC will have some 62,000 members. In 10 years it will be 495,000. In 20 years, there will be 31 million members. In 30, 2.2 billion.
So by the middle of the century, we can expect every person on the planet to be an FC member. Mwahaha! Power! POWER!
PS yeah I've probably wasted my time noting the forum stats, and I'm sure there's some feature at Google that could mine the historical information and present me with a full-colour graphical representation of the change in the stats over time, but it has only taken me a few seconds once or twice a month, so it's hardly a big deal.
But I've been doing this for just over 17 months now (my first entry was 21st Sept 2010) and the stats at that time were: 3788 members; 2681 threads; 87080 posts. Now at the time I write this the front page says that there are 7739 members, 5300 threads and 193337 posts.
So that means that FC has been more than obeying Moore's Law, as it has taken less than 18 months to double. Going by the increase in membership, it's a growth rate of 4.2% a month, or 64% per annum.
However it occurred to me that there would be seasonal variations in registration numbers, so I just checked my archive back to around this time last year (21st Feb) when there were 5089 members, making the increase over the last year 51% (or an average of 3.5% per month). But at that rate the membership count still doubles every 20 months. I believe the generally accepted Moore's Law doubling time is 18 to 24 months, so FC qualifies.
Anyway, at this rate, in 5 years FC will have some 62,000 members. In 10 years it will be 495,000. In 20 years, there will be 31 million members. In 30, 2.2 billion.
So by the middle of the century, we can expect every person on the planet to be an FC member. Mwahaha! Power! POWER!
PS yeah I've probably wasted my time noting the forum stats, and I'm sure there's some feature at Google that could mine the historical information and present me with a full-colour graphical representation of the change in the stats over time, but it has only taken me a few seconds once or twice a month, so it's hardly a big deal.
