Here are some remarks and calculations about the statistics of this forum

[noname223]

Warning I am not good in math and I use a calculator I could easily miscalculate me. There are people who use a software. Can anyone say the exact number of threads of the forum it only shows roundings which are way too imprecise. (refered to the single sub-forums though I noticed that is not that important)
Can anyone with a lot of freetime count how many threads (not posts) that I have?

The suicide sub-forum has 1,3 million posts and 95,6 k threads
news 39 threads
information center 2 threads
forum suggestions 540 threads
The Sanctuary 893 threads
Recovery 6,5 k threads and 81,7 k posts
Off-topic 21,6 k threads and 688,6 k posts; off-topic is split into politics&philosophy and forum games where I have no access to the data.

Where do I have these information from?: the starting page of this forum

Moreover currently there are: 125.511 threads
roundabout 2 million messages posts (probably only the public ones)
there are 41.565 members

Let's do some math: (rounded numbers):

on average every member posts 3 threads
on average every member posts 48 posts (rounded)
The member with the most posts has 29.182 posts so 608 times multipled the number of an average user

The ten members with the most posts have the following amount of posts:
29k + 25k + 20,4k + 18k + 17,6k + 8,2k + 6,8k +6,7k + 6,6k + 6,3k = 138 k

i.e. (id est)/ that is the 10 members with the most posts have created 6,9% of all posts of this forum (which I think is not aligned with the 1% rule about internet communities) I just realized this is a major thinking fallacy. 1 % means I had to count the first 415 members. I only counted the first ten. Lol. Well the 1% rule probably applies to this forum. I am so bad at statistics. I might could add the first 50 people but I am exhausted and I really need time to sleep. Since my life quality deteriorated again (severely) I struggle a lot to fall asleep again. College fucks my brain so fucking much.

I ask myself whether I will be able to have created 1% of all threads in this forum one day. I usually post 2 threads per day. This means this forum had to grow less fast than 200 threads per day. Due to the fast growth of this forum I will porbably ever reach the 1% mark. However not having reached that won't stop me from comitting suicide. I rather see my posts as a long suicide note and the off-topic posts are a way to distract me and others from this cruel world.


Suicide-discussion contains roundabout 60% of all posts in this forum and 73% of all threads

This forum has fucking 25 solutions (not thousands) this feature seems to be disliked by the community

As I said I could add more statistics but I already highlighted the most interesting parts. Sorry for miscalculations in case that happened. I did not use any software as I said.

 

[Spike Spiegel]

Really interesting post here, Confronting the data is very interesting. I enjoyed this post.

 

[noname223]

More statistics:

So the first ten members with the most posts have 138 k posts

I want to add another 40 to this list:
6,3+6,3+6+5,9+5,7+5,7+5,6+5+4,9+4,7+4+3,9+3,9+3,8(me)+3,8+3,8+3,6+3,6+3,5+3,1+3,1+2,9+2,9+2,9+2,8+2,8+2,7+2,7+2,7+2,7+2,7+2,7+2,6+2,5+2,5+2,5+2,5+2,4+2,4+2,4 = 146,5

Maybe worth mentioning there is no mod in this list. The mod with the most posts has currently 2,05 k threads

Sorry I am so fucking pissed. I have made several mistakes when calculating this and online AI gave me wrong numbers several times. So I give no guarantee.

138k + 146,5k = 284,5 k

The 50 members with the most posts have 14,225% of all posts. 50/41.630 so 0,12% of all members have created roundabout 14 % of all posts. This is stunning though. I hoped for a more spectacular result. (written before I added the last calculation.)
In general I notice how bad math is for my mental health. (David Foster Wallace went through hell while writing The Pale King which I recently read and he killed himself while working on it. There are speculation the boredom killed him because he had to face his mental pain without being able to distract himself. I hope I don't end like that. I think I won't post so many more math threads.) But it is a different approach to my usual threads. I certainly won't calculate the 1% of all members with the most posts. had to add roundabout 400 more to the list. If it had a benefical effect on my mental health like my other threads I would do it.

This is investigative journalism. For good quality threads I am doing literally anything. Even fucking math and statistics. By the way I realized due to the fact the data will be outdated soon probably noone in the future will ever be able to check the accuracy of my calculations.

Within 23 h there were the following changes

threads: 125.637 (126 new threads added)

-> my goal to have posted 1% of all threads seems reachable with my rhythm of 2 new threads per day. Though today not any new one. I try to follow up old threads. This is I think a better approach than to flood the forum with myriads of threads of mine. However I will never be certasin about that 1% number because I certainly won't count all my threads. Hell no!

members: 41.630 (65 new members)


I add the following for people who will look at these numbers in the future. The BBC recently broadcasted another report about this forum. Keep that in mind when considering these numbers.

 

[noname223]

Here a new update 7 days after the initial thread:

threads: 126.473 (makes 962 new threads within 1 week makes on average 127 threads per day)
members: 41.878 (makes 313 new members within 1 week on average 44 or 45 new members per day)


It is interesting for the daily threads which were written the random sample of Wednesday is almost perfect (126 new threads in one day, compared to the average within one week)

However there is a huge gap between the new members of that Wednesday and the average calculated from the week as a whole. That day there were 65 new members compared to 44/45 new members on average. I think this is probably an empirical evidence that the BBC report attracted new members to this website.

Is it morbid to analyze this data in such a way? I fucking hate math or statistics why am I even doing this? I fucking hate to face statistics at college it fueled my depression though it can be very useful.

I wish I could have went to the halloween party of my friends instead I am pretty lonely. However I have less stress due to that but it is not really worth it.

 

[noname223]

Now 4 weeks after the intial post here is an update (about which noone will care).

threads: 129.253 (+ 3.742 new threads within one month; relative growth 3%) here I calculated 3.742/125.511

members: 42.277 (+1.157 members; relative growth 2,8%) I calculated 1.157/41.565 I hope that is right.

The period had 28 days. On average 129 new threads per day
And on average 40 new members per day.

 

[noname223]

Here is an update approximately 1/3 of year after the inital thread. 18 weeks have passed since. That makes 128 days.

threads: 140.038 (+14.527 threads) per day 114 threads per day on average
messages: 2.226.287 (sadly no old number)
members: 45.403 (+3.838 members) per day 30 new members

So the growth of this forum has seemingly slowed down. In my humble opinion this could be explained by the fact that there were less reportings by the media about the forum in this time period.

 

[noname223]

Here 31 weeks (218 days later) after the initial post.

Threads 151,788 (+26.277 threads within 31 weeks)) 120,5 threads per day
Messages 2,378,844 (compared to February 2024/ 3 months / 92 days +152.577) 1.658 new messages per day
Members 47,916 (+ 6.351 new members within 31 weeks) 29 new members per day

Seemingly the growth of this forum has slightly slowed down. I assume less media coverage is reponsible for that. But that is only my guess.

 

[Username1359751]

I don't understand what the "solution" feature/factor means...

 

[noname223]

I don't understand what the "solution" feature/factor means...

Users can ask for advice in threads and they can thank the user who helps them with a "solution" tag.

 

[noname223]

10 months after the initial post.

Threads: 160.965 (+35.454 within 10 months/ 22%)
Messages: 2.480.266 (+101.422 compared to May, 3 months)
Members: 50.450 (+8.885 within 10 months/ 17,6%)

We come closer to an one-year follow up of this thread. The first thread in suicide discussion was posted March/April 2018. This website seems to exist 6-6 1/2 years.

Let's assume the numbers above were one full year. If the growth rate would have been consistently the same 100%/6 (years) the average growth rate would be 16%.
Both numbers 22% and 17,6% indicate that growth of this forum is above average. Moreover, we only have 10 months in our calculation.
But we cannot compare it past years we can only compare it to the overall average.

I could imagine statistics softwares could make way more sophisticated calculations. Lol.

 

[noname223]

Thread revisited. Bro I almost killed myself one year after posting this thread. 20 months after the initial thread an update. (10 months after the last update)

Threads: 189.975 (+64.464 more threads within 20 months, the number of threads slowed a little bit down on average compared the time period of the last update)
Messages: 2.843.917 (+363.651 within 10 months, here the number of posts on average increased (compared to the last update) despite the growth of members slowed down in that time period)
Members 56.559 (+14.994 new members within 20 months,+26,5%, it slowed down a lot since the last update)

What do you make out of these statistics?

 

[noname223]

Bro everything gets outsourced to AI. I will let do AI the calculations for me. Maybe it can point out something more interesting than me.
So much shit happened in my life since the last update. I will boycott math and statistics from now on.

Another update

It has been 430 days since my last update and 1,026 days since the original post.

Current totals:

Threads: 230,989
Messages: 3,351,990
Members: 66,031

Changes since June 11, 2025:

Threads: +41,014 (+21.6%), or approximately 95.4 new threads per day
Messages: +508,073 (+17.9%), or approximately 1,181.6 new messages per day
Members: +9,472 (+16.7%), or approximately 22 new members per day

Compared with the previous interval, the rate of content production has slowed slightly. Between August 27, 2024 and June 11, 2025, the forum added approximately 100.7 threads and 1,262.7 messages per day. In the latest interval, those figures fell to 95.4 threads and 1,181.6 messages per day.

However, member growth did not slow in absolute terms. It increased slightly from approximately 21.2 to 22 new members per day. Therefore, it would be more accurate to say that content growth slowed modestly while the rate of new registrations remained fairly stable.

Changes since the original post on October 24, 2023:

Threads: +105,478 (+84.0%), or approximately 102.8 per day
Members: +24,466 (+58.9%), or approximately 23.8 per day

I cannot calculate the exact growth in messages since the original post because I only recorded the starting number as "around two million."

The current totals equal approximately 3.50 threads and 50.76 messages per registered member. These are only database ratios, not the activity of a typical member: many accounts are probably inactive, while a relatively small group of established users produces a disproportionate amount of the content.

A small correction to my older posts: in several places, I divided the increase by the later total instead of the starting total. For example, by August 2024, threads had grown by 28.2% rather than 22%, and members by 21.4% rather than 17.6%. Also, 962 threads in seven days equals 137.4 per day, not 127. I am leaving the original posts unchanged, but I want the corrections recorded here.

What do I make of the overall development? The least dramatic interpretation is probably the most accurate one: this is now a large and relatively mature forum that continues to expand consistently. It is not currently exploding in popularity, but it is also showing no sign of shrinking.

I previously suggested that changes in media coverage might explain fluctuations in membership. That remains plausible, but these aggregate numbers cannot demonstrate it. A proper test would require daily registration figures from before and after several reports, so that ordinary variation could be distinguished from an actual media effect.

Somehow this has turned into a nearly three-year longitudinal study based entirely on numbers displayed on the forum homepage.

 

[dungeon keeper]

Just a few points came to my mind. Before calc I would remove outliers/extreme volumes (like ppl who post significantly more post -tens of thousands- if they're just little part of a sample you've taken). Treating threads and post proportionally and mixing totals from sub-forums is also misleading.
But I admire and appreciate time taken for this post

 

[Pluto]