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September 5, 2016 9:16 AM

Ask Metafilter, the internet's go-to source for sane, competent advice and information, reached its 300,000th question this week. (Previously, 200,000 and 100,000.)
posted by Horace Rumpole to MetaFilter-Related at 9:16 AM (21 comments total)

When you're a mod, you see the sequential id numbers show up all day every day in the flag queue and so on, and, man, I've been itching to watch the odometer roll over for weeks now. Woo 300K!
posted by cortex (staff) at 9:18 AM on September 5, 2016 [9 favorites]

And it's just a little over a month since the 5000th post on Projects.
posted by bjrn at 9:29 AM on September 5, 2016 [1 favorite]

And we still don't know that we need to lawyer up, get a therapist, DTMFA, or not eat that damn thing!

Basically, we're knowledgeable and incorrigible.
posted by GenjiandProust at 10:13 AM on September 5, 2016 [9 favorites]

I asked question 250,000 and Jessamyn left this:

¸.ø¤°ˇ°·.¸ˇ°·.¸·=+♥ AskMe Post 250,000 ♥+=·¸.·°ˇ¸.·°ˇ°¤ø.¸

Yay!

(I finally bought an APS-C interchangeable lens mirrorless camera)
posted by morganw at 10:53 AM on September 5, 2016 [4 favorites]

1st Post: 08 December 2003
100K Post: 24 August 2008
200K Post: 03 November 2011
300K Post: 02 September 2016

So:
Took approx. 4y 8m to go from 1 - 100K
Took approx. 3y 3m to go from 100K - 200K
Took approx. 4y 10m to go from 200K - 300K

If you - like me - were wondering how that compared to site growth, I did a bit of poking around to see if I could figure out user registrations (and the assigned user number) that corresponded to these dates, recognizing that it's not a fully accurate measure of member growth:

In December 2003, we were around 17,400
In August 2008, we were around 79,000 (+61,600)
In November 2011, we were around 144,000 (+65,000)
In September 2016, we're around 246,500 (+102,500)

Interesting to see that even as our membership has grown substantially, it still took us about the same amount of time to post the first 100K questions as it took us to post the most recent 100K questions.
posted by NotMyselfRightNow at 11:07 AM on September 5, 2016 [2 favorites]

Raw account numbers are a bit elusive there, though, since even started-but-not-finished signups will increment the userid value; my off-the-cuff impression is we've seen a higher rate of started-but-didn't-finish in the last few years than previously, for whatever reason, so actual user growth doesn't plot linearly against that. A rainy day project to look into more some time, for sure.
posted by cortex (staff) at 11:10 AM on September 5, 2016 [1 favorite]

Yeah, completely understand, and it's why I qualified my use of it - but, it's the closest proxy of actual growth I could think of.
posted by NotMyselfRightNow at 11:14 AM on September 5, 2016

Is there a way to see how many different members posted those 300,000 questions? How many questions were deleted during the same time spans? What user has asked the most questions?
posted by AugustWest at 6:47 PM on September 5, 2016

What user has asked the most questions?

Some chump named Anonymous. What a weirdo!
posted by zamboni at 6:56 PM on September 5, 2016 [7 favorites]

Infodumpster can help with some of that. Anonymous has asked by far the most questions (over 20,000!).

As for non-anons, I know this can be a touchy subject for folks, so gonna ask that we maybe not throw a spotlight on any individual's question history here. But about 200 members have asked 100 or more questions.
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 6:57 PM on September 5, 2016

And we still don't know that we need to lawyer up, get a therapist, DTMFA, or not eat that damn thing!

Wait, I thought we were supposed to eat that thing...
posted by John Cohen at 7:05 PM on September 5, 2016 [1 favorite]

Some chump named Anonymous. What a weirdo!

I can see why the mods allow Anonymous so many additional questions, he/she can't keep a job for more than a couple days, is in a poly-relationship with hundreds of dysfunctional people, has every medical ailment imaginable, and is in constant legal trouble. I hope they're able to get the help they need from Ask.
posted by FallowKing at 7:25 PM on September 5, 2016 [19 favorites]

Only 200 of us have asked more than 100 questions? Wow. Didn't realize I was an overachiever in that regard.
posted by ocherdraco at 8:32 PM on September 5, 2016

Totally random, but awhile back Spathe Cadet informed me via MeMail that I made 6,666,666th comment on the blue. So you know, I'll have to put that on my tombstone. :)
posted by Fizz at 10:13 PM on September 5, 2016 [6 favorites]

Apologies for asking. Not looking to put a spotlight or a value judgement on someone's asking history.
posted by AugustWest at 10:19 PM on September 5, 2016

Sure, no, it's fine to ask! No problem at all. Times are groovy.

And sorry I didn't answer about deleted questions, I'm not sure how to get that info. cortex may have some idea when next he appears, but I believe tonight he's eating grilled meat to represent his solidarity with the workers of the world.
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 10:26 PM on September 5, 2016 [1 favorite]

Similar number-nerdery, I've been waiting for the FPP post numbers to catch up with my user ID for a few months and now they have. It seems my MeFi Star Sign is the Octopus. Might stick that in my profile.
posted by comealongpole at 3:24 AM on September 6, 2016 [1 favorite]

Picking a random user number completely at random and also randomly, I REALLY wonder what happened to rachbeth.
posted by Celsius1414 at 4:46 PM on September 6, 2016

>And we still don't know that we need to lawyer up, get a therapist, DTMFA, or not eat that damn thing!

Nah, the answer is almost always "eat it, you'll be fine".
posted by pompomtom at 9:44 PM on September 6, 2016

I'm always amazed when I see these numbers at how much more popular the Green is than the Blue. I usually only wander over to Ask once or twice a week but I see people on there who have commented on questions hundreds of times but seldom or even never on the main part of the site.
posted by octothorpe at 4:35 PM on September 7, 2016

Fizz, I wanted to Favorite your comment but it's got six favorites right now and I don't want to spoil it
posted by gt2 at 2:09 AM on September 8, 2016 [1 favorite]