How many registered members are on ScubaBoard?

[CommunityResearcher]

Hi everyone. This is a really active community!

I have always been interested in diving, but have no experience in it as of yet. The reason I am here is because I am researching the dive community for graduate school based on the research paper called "Diving" into Communities of Practice: Examining Learning as Legitimate Peripheral Participation in an Everyday Setting. written by Edouard Lagache

I have looked around, but can not seem to find a specific number for my data. I need to indicate the actual number of registered users belonging to this site . The advertisement says over 100,000... but does anyone know exactly how many members there are?

I'm happy to answer any questions about my work and will share the data display when it is complete. Not sure who would find it interesting... but just in case.

Thanks for your help, Melissa

 

[herman]

Welcome to the board. Click on the "forums" tab at the top of the page and scroll to the bottom, I think you will find a lot of what you want there....182,091 members with 2000+ (members and guest) on line as I type.

 

[CommunityResearcher]

Thanks!

 

[mselenaous]

At the time I started this post:

What's Going On? Currently Active Users: 1988 (530 members and 1458 guests) ScubaBoard Statistics

Threads: 354,227, Posts: 5,322,167, Members: 182,094, Social Groups: 160


This info is constantly changing and growing. Scubaboard is 11 years old and it the largest by far of the dive forums (many of which spun off from Scubaboard or Scubaboardians). Welcome to the tribe.

 

[CommunityResearcher]

I have just learned that attempts to get people on this site to share their experiences outside of Scubaboard has been deleted regardless of the conversations occurring in the threads about this research project or the fact that nothing was being solicited. No warning as to as issue, just the information GONE. I came to check my numbers for the final count of participation data and it is all deleted. I'm not sure why anyone would take offense to the request to share your diving experiences for me to write a graduate school paper, but obviously it was a problem.

 

[DiveNav]

Did you contact Pete (NetDoc) directly? He is the CEO of SB.

Alberto (aka eDiver)

 

[JahJahwarrior]

I sent you a pm. I can probably help you get acquainted here and to get the data you need. Research on a forum can be tough. I'm sure netdoc has seen this and if not, I'll give him a ring once I get a reply to my pm.

 

[CommunityResearcher]

Thanks for the feedback, I really appreciate it. Just in case anyone else wants the scoop - here it is:

I am in the MA for Instructional Technology program at the University of Texas at San Antonio. My class is Learning Cultures and Technology. My professor has some fantastic ideas, but they aren't always traditionally attainable.

The assignment for our final project was to 'create a tool for a community of practice/interest or passionate affinity group' and then write a research paper on how the community uses the tool. (We had several others this semester including Reddit, Twitter, and video games.)

I had read a research article on scuba diving and communities of practice and since there is a large online presence I thought maybe I could get faster responses and with any luck a slightly larger amount of data. There was also a few classmates who wanted to work together so I offered to host there topics and make the site a collection of communities with a central 'share your experiences' theme.

I designed the site to be simplistic and not have advertisements, but users can post links in their comments to anything they want to share. I geared my scuba page toward divers of any experience level and used the map because I noticed a reoccuring theme in the discussion forums is 'where have you dived?' and I wanted to be able to reference the places on a map.

Due to the low participation (completely expected), but high traffic I was planning on defending a thesis of "Online traffic does not indicate community strength" and then use the data that hundreds of people had viewed my posts on Scubaboard and multiple dive/travel people started following me on Twitter, but only x% actually posted to my website. Then this morning my threads and posts were gone and I didn't get to count the results. :-/

Thanks for reading, Melissa