Or do you think a smaller memberbase builds a stronger community feel or are the numbers irrelevant and the community feel is brought about by how the owner/staff group has steered the site itself?
I think the bigger the community the bigger the problems. You can't know every single user on a big forum and you can't make all people happy. In a smaller community you know the most/all people and you are thinking about the opinions of all of them and not only of some of them. But a very good staff is required too because if the staff is wrong the users feel that (false behaviour of team member, flames, etc) and are unhappy.
My experience is that numbers are completely irrelevant. It's down to the owner/administrators and to some extent the nature of the forum as to whether or not a board has a strong sense of community.
The larger is grows, the harder it is to know most of your members on a personal level, making it to the point where people will begin to act out and create their own cliques. That's when the trouble starts and begins to divide the community. As an admin, you have to recognize it and possibly modify rules or even crack down on the rules much harder to nip it in the bud.
I think the only reason I'm into memberbase is because it energizes me to see lots of people milling about on the forum or logging in. Seeing that the members are there, signed in, and reading and posting, makes me feel that good about coming to "work" every day, making posts, and getting new content for the games. gogo
I think if you have a small community, with active members who know what they are doing and a small staff team who know what they're doing, it is much more valuable than a large community with 13 year old kids and a ton of spammers.
Like a city or township, only a certain number of people really want to get involved in the community... its the same with message forums, there are those certain....groups of people who will make the community. Some just join to advertise, or ask a question or be active a few posts and then forget (pending your niche) while others join just to lurk and then you got the people who are actually active and make the community what it is... worrying about if its large enough member base wise is a mistake... One community I have gets an avg. of 100 to 200 posts a day and 15 to 30 new topics a day... it has about 238 members that is a small member base compared to others in my niche yet I am surpassing the others with WAY MORE posts and topics per day So there really is no need to worry about the member size getting larger, instead make with what you got and let the forum grow on its own
Large member bases mean nothing unless they are managed effectively, I generally look for a blend of moderators of which half are like my self personality wise, pretty layed back, up for a laugh and generally people that members would most likely goto first if they had to choose which moderator to go to , the other half more serious type of person. Ive been blending these types of people for 6 years now and it makes a great team , very diverse opinions and generally decisions get made by them all discussing it and the outcome is normally how i would expect it. In my opinion a community is only as strong as its Moderation team, if they are the type that dont post and are more or a silent moderation style then the personal touch is not there and the "community" feel is over ruled by being a "forum". Generally i feel most big boards loose touch with their community and as they grow it becomes harder to retain a balance.
They are good numbers, My MASSIVE concern for you would be a similar situation which i faced some years ago with a forum , which is that your community as it matures and the members become used to talking to each other it could very easily turn into a clique of which often prevents new members from getting involved properly. Obviously i havent seen your community but another thing that would concern me is whether most of the posts are not one liners which is also a trend which you need to deal with sooner than later ( trust me im dealing with it currently with big indian problems lol )
Stats don't make forums. I am visiting tens of admin / promotion / webmaster forums on a daily basis, not to mention other niches I am interested in. Some forums have HUGE numbers, both in member base and post count. And some of them barely have 3 replies/day. That's not a big forum, that's a big ghost town So I don't care about this, the reason I am not going crazy 'investing' in buying out small forums in my niche. I could afford few of them, but it's a worthless investment anyway. I like to build my sites from the ground up and prove we're here to stay, not just brag about the stats. I am not active here for the stats, I am active here for the excellent content, just as it happens in many other forums I grace with my presence
