Avarage Life expectancy of an ATS member?

I'm rather new. I think I joined late summer,actually. I kinda came in with a lot of anger and posted a few "kill this, anarchy that" posts, up until recently when I had a revelation... and now I think it's best that people start getting to know me as the deep thinking philosopher, and not the angry rioter that wants to destroy civilization.

Please forgive a couple of my early posts.

But yeah I still get a little frustrated because nothing ever gets solved on this site. It's all just deadlocked arguments, ya know? Unless a totally bogus hoaxer comes on, or a complete ranting lunatic....then we can come to a consensus.

I think there needs to be more open mindedness on this site. As much as this site is dedicated to off-kilter subjects, it just seems like there are still way too many people on here for the entertainment of seeing "crazy nuts" rant, and very close minded skeptics and debunkers that seem to enjoy this site just because they can flex their texbook science knowledge on a bunch of unsuspecting people... especially excited and clueless newbies, who come on here for the first time to share an incredible experience or revelation they had... and they just get torn apart by these grumpy know-it-alls that push their views upon everyone, just because they can read science books and do small lab experiments....

You know it's funny, I read in this thread that debunkers are too vocal here and we should do something about it while there are other sites who claim that ATS has gone the way of the Wild Eyed True Believer and has discarded any notion of critical thinking or skepticism.

The end result is that means we are doing this PERFECTLY. When both "sides" complain it shows we are secure in our editorial agnosticism.

WRT "brand loyalty" mentioned in the OP, I have to say that the staffers who have responded here have pretty much nailed it.

Advertisers don't care as much about the number of "Members" as they do the number of visits per month. Looking at it from that perspective, the non registered visitors out number the registered members by 8 to 1 on average.

It's all about traffic with the advertisers as well it should be. If the same 5,000 or 50,000 people were all that came to a site there would be little value in advertising on it. ATS has a knack for garnering incredible organic search traffic. "Organic search traffic" is the highest quality traffic to the advertisers because it means the person's interest brought them here rather than a marketing gimmick. In other words, they were interested in a subject enough to do a search on it and landed here because of the search return.

The incredible community we have here is truly supported by the lurking visitors. Without the millions of visits each month from people finding the site via search engines we couldn't afford to operate the site.

The community is the key to the whole kingdom however. It's all about the content. The content, contributed by each and every one of us, is what creates the return in the search engine that some person who is curious about _________ (enter a topic) is using and leads that person here to learn.

I hope that answered, at least in part, what the OP was asking.

Springer...

Originally posted by infinite
I'm 21 now,

I joined when I was 17

Finally! Hello to ya Sir!

Originally posted by Djarums
Well, I can't speak on behalf of the Amigos, however, I can answer two of your questions as a member of approximately 5 years.

Hello to you sir, I've been lurking for ages too! at least 5 years!

reply to post by Springer


Cheers Springer

Thanks for the awesome responses everbody. The mods had pretty much nailed what I was after, but I shall now be ussing the term "Organic search traffic" at every opportunity!

MonKey.

Kosmicjack's stages are great for pigeonholing and I've only been a member for about a month, I'm sort of at Stage 1, 2 and 4 because as Majic said, "ATS does not exist in a vacuum." So while I'm still amazed at this site and boggled by the amount of information/disinformation within, I'm also Stage four-ing because I've come to find through other sites that all the writing in the world isn't going to push processes along any faster.

Two year lurker,finally joined..lost sign in and rejoined again after another year,member now for a while.

I'm getting to the dangerous period now because I noticed that a few people were here for about two years.. before posting a hoax and getting banned.

The "ATS 2YR ITCH" maybe?? We'll see.

Call me sentimental but i miss

Pisky and Masked Avatar. They were incredible characters who were here for years and disappeared overnight.
One was a genius, the other, a master of comedy and i think about them often, unfortunatly, they both seem to have left for good

I hope at least one of them lurks out there once in awhile and makes a stop here to warm my heart.

Originally posted by dgtempe
Call me sentimental but i miss

Pisky and Masked Avatar. They were incredible characters who were here for years and disappeared overnight.

One was a genius, the other, a master of comedy and i think about them often, unfortunatly, they both seem to have left for good

I hope at least one of them lurks out there once in awhile and makes a stop here to warm my heart.

I'm with you dg. It was their humor and insight that attracted me to this place.

Now I feel "simpatico" with a lot of people on this site. Even more so than with flesh and blood people I come in contact with on an almost daily basis.

[edit on 3-12-2007 by whaaa]

And i totally agree with you.

I feel much closer to some folks here than the "real life" ones.

Isnt it ironic!!!

reply to post by dgtempe


That's because I'm behind you..


WOOOOOOO!!!!!

I thought i felt your hot breath on my neck...


W00000000000000!!!!

reply to post by dgtempe


Are you sure it's not snot from my obligitary xmas sniffles

Yukky..

4am and still cant sleeep arggggghhh.. See what years of ATS does to you.No wonder we have an implosion circuit built in when we join.

Originally posted by ChiKeyMonKey
What period of time before you discount a member?

Do banned peoples become removed from site stats?

I would assume that deleting an account would also delete all posts made from that account. Maybe SO or one of our web savy members can shed some light on this a bit more.

Sporty

Hopefully the life expectancy is forever there are so many great threads so many smart people on ATS .

The "Average Life Expectancy" is kind of a misleading term:

Are you talking about the average stick-around time of all visitors?

Or the average time all members, including the ones whom only every posted once then disappeared, stick around before never returning?

Or the average amongst fairly regular returning contributing members?

What about average amongst regular members who visit but do not post?

Should staff be excluded because we throw off the average?

At what point should the cutoff be before a member is considered "gone for good"? Some of our members are strictly seasonal, posting only while at, or off, college.

Overall though, I'd say the average lifespan is indefinite. I disappeared for somewhere around a year or so a couple of years ago before coming back. I guess my answer is that the average life expectancy of a member is probably equal to their interest in the subject matter that ATS discusses.

reply to post by ChiKeyMonKey




your questions sound like the points an accountant interested in constructing actuarial tables would be interested in...

then, patiently listening to all those replies gravitating towards the sociology dynamics of the ATS members...
which was not listed as an inquiry in the OP


nice sublime way of putting your 'business card' on the game table...



[edit on 4-12-2007 by St Udio]

reply to post by St Udio


If you ever read any of my posts, you will find that I'm about as sublime as a hedgehog to the bunghole!

Nice idea you've got there though!

MonKey

reply to post by thelibra


Nice counter questiond there!

All I have to say to all that is "Organic Search traffic" which in effect makes the general membership issues a moot point. From a business side of things.

From a more personal view, the staff should be very much be included. As should the one shot wonders.

OK and for the sake of needed a cut off point for the MIA. How about 18 months sans posting?

MonKey

reply to post by kosmicjack


Just wanted to wake this one back up!!

There have been a lot of people hitting stage 4 over the last few weeks, anything to do with the moon, something in the water... Haha

MonKey