Posters and lurkers

What's the average ratio?

[DannySmith]

On forum or message-board based sites, is there such a thing as a typical ratio of people who regularly read and the few who post? What's your experience?

[camweh]

My phpbb forum is for locals and expatriates with an interest in a small area of Scotland. We have been using this forum system since the start of the year. Previously we used Yahoogroups.

Membership is 145. Posters = 51% Non-posters = 49%

[buksida]

I asked this question about a year ago as I too was curious, especially as my ratio is so high. Its an expat/tourist information forum for a holiday town in Thailand. Posters =20% Lurkers =80% (approx) there are 900 members.

[rogerd]

vBulletin tracks "members" and "guests" online, and I usually see about a 50/50 split, although at times the lurker side may edge toward 60% for short periods of time. External factors, like a link from another site or rise in search engine rankings, can push up the guest/lurker side.

The nature of the forum may make a difference, too - some forums tend to be more informational and less community-oriented, so lots of visitors probably show up, do some searching, read some posts, and leave.

[Automan Empire]

The nature of the forum may make a difference, too

Indeed! I recently set up a hobby forum for gory pictures- you know, faces-of-death type stuff. Incredible numbers of visitors click away in less than 30 seconds. In a month 120 people have registered, but less than ten have made a single post.
This has given me an interesting view of the google "sandbox" too... within days, my site was on the top serps- for completely uncompetitive search terms which shall remain unspecified here. Suffice it to say that this site is not destined to make me the next rfung. ;)
In other ("normal") fora, I'd be surprised to see the 40-60% poster ratio mentioned. My impression is, there tends to be a hyperbolic curve, with less than 5% of members making say 20+% of the posts, with the curve dropping off rapidly to the bottom 50% of members making less than 10-20% of the posts, if any. This goes for boards that don't delete inactive accounts.