[cgk]

Our old dotcom was there, too. Black background and all. Isn't nostalgia great? Especially when it makes you queasy.

And, that's an excellent question Abe... Anyone else have any ideas about membership growth? I'd be curious to see it.

Mrs Kus

[Jim Robinson]

The number of members is a difficult number to arrive at. We do not have membership dues, so do not have an actual membership list. All we have is our registration file. Since we do not mail to or query our registered posters, there is no way we can know how many of the people who have registered over the years are still members. Many people sign up and make only one or a few posts and never come back. Many sign up and never post at all. Some get banned or leave for other reasons, some have died, and some are duplicate accounts for the same user (this practice is frowned upon, by the way). There are also tens of thousands of people who are regular readers, but have never signed up as posting members. The only practical number that we have available is the number of sign-ups, and this number could probably be divided by half to get an approximate number of members. We started our forum with just a few dozen posters early in 1997 and by the end of that year had over a thousand. By the end of 1998 we had over 15,000 signed up. The number was close to 30,000 by the end of 1999, over 50,000 by December 31, 2001 and over 70,000 now.