What constitutes an active member?

Looking at coth stats, 90601 members are claimed. Under 5k are active. What does that mean?

Guessing, but maybe based on Posting activity?
Someone joins as a member, but then lurks, never posting, so not “Active”?

Or members that have logged in within a certain time frame. Day, week, month? Year? Since the move to the new platform?

Yes. I would agree. “Active” is usually defined as posting within a certain time frame. You’d have to contact COTH for their definition of “active”.

Many users will open an “alter account” to post a sensitive question and then the account will go dormant. Some users, like me have an old account that cannot be accessed because the e-mail address is defunct or the password has been forgotten.

Nothing nefarious. But common to a lot of social media sites. Heck. FB got blasted this week b/c they claim they had XX accounts in a certain age range in the US. And that number exceeded the population of that age range by a large margin. People open multiple accounts. It happens.

I’m guessing all the spam bots that create accounts also get counted, there’s been plenty of those; plus remember those members are counted since COTHs creation so many have come and gone for any number of reasons.

Spammers get their accounts deleted, so those probably don’t count.

well actually pretty easy to find how to do it if you go to the software vendors site (vBulletin)… the value (X days) is whatever CoTH choose

• [B]Active Members Time Cut-Off[/B] Enter a number of days here that represents a threshold for 'active' members. If a user has visited the board within the past number of days you specify, they are considered 'active'.

  Enter '0' to treat all members as 'active'.
  

• [B]Active Members Options[/B] Using the boxes here, you can choose to show only birthdays for those members considered 'active', and to show or hide the total number of 'active' members.

  A member is considered 'active' if they have visited the board within the number of days specified in 'Active Members Time Cut-Off'.
  

https://www.vbulletin.com/docs/onepage/?manualversion=30811500#item30

@clanter Thanks for posting. Those definitions are correct, though they’ve changed the admin control panel and I can’t actually find the new home of the settings! The default is 30 days since a registered user has visited the site. I’m pretty sure we use the default setting, but I can’t verify at the moment.

That number does not include the number of unregistered guests who visit the site.

it has been over thirty days since the closing Off Topic…at the closing the active members count was about 4,750… thirty-two days afterwards … today is is up two hundred to 4,951 (a little over 4% growth)

also I have notice since the closing of Off Topic apparently the Ignore function works as I have not seen any posts by all I on Ignore

Nah, it’s still broken. I think your ignored posters have just left

Do you think that may be because of the ongoing WEG?
Poster’s some times contentious “energy”, reflecting our current mildly combative, negative public life, seems to have gone there.
Will see where the numbers settle after that is over.

Interesting on the ignore function.
Never having needed or used it, I would not know.

well yes that was my thought but the result was the same

30 days ago the WEG was not open It did not open until the 10th of Sept

The WEG thread has been up for longer than that.

Was just one more guess anyway.