The graphs here say the number of monthly users is ~4000. If you disqualify the ~half of those who are students, lurkers, drive-by posters, third-worlders, or people who just forgot their wallet . . . that implies ~$1000, per person, per year, to run a web forum. (Contrast the Something Awful forums, which famously sustain themselves with a one-time entry fee of $10-$25 per person (plus some ads shown to the people who only paid $10).)
Oops, sorry, I just realized I am displaying the metrics in the most counterintuitive way. I will update that tonight (I focused on illustrating the trend and so didn’t check the intuitiveness of the exact numbers).
The current metrics show you monthly averages of weekly values, not monthly values directly. The number of active logged in users is more like 10k, and similarly the number of monthly logged-in post views is more like 120k. That is not at all obvious from the graphs, and I will fix it ASAP.
The other big thing to emphasize is of course that the vast majority of engagement with LessWrong happens logged out. LessWrong as a website gets about 2.5 million unique users per year, and more like 230,000 monthly active users which is of course a lot more than 10,000.
Oops, sorry, I just realized I am displaying the metrics in the most counterintuitive way. I will update that tonight (I focused on illustrating the trend and so didn’t check the intuitiveness of the exact numbers).
The current metrics show you monthly averages of weekly values, not monthly values directly. The number of active logged in users is more like 10k, and similarly the number of monthly logged-in post views is more like 120k. That is not at all obvious from the graphs, and I will fix it ASAP.
The other big thing to emphasize is of course that the vast majority of engagement with LessWrong happens logged out. LessWrong as a website gets about 2.5 million unique users per year, and more like 230,000 monthly active users which is of course a lot more than 10,000.
That’s a lot more than I expected!