What's more important to you: Members or Posts?

[choccyclaire]

As I browse through more forums in the past year or so I have noticed how different people's stats are.

One forum could have 5 members but over 5000 posts.
And yet another forum could have 5000 members but only 5 posts.

Hypothetically of course.

Do you think it's more important to have a few select users that continue to come back to your site actively posting time and time again?

Or do you like to have many members that just browse?

But also thinking about this some more perhaps some forums have a lot of people register each day but noone bothers to come back!

I noticed the other day a forum that had over 10k members but has less posts than my board which consists of just over 1k members at present.

What are your thoughts? :)

[Floris]

Content is King, basic internet rule.
But you won't get good content without the members.

I would value members over content. And the content will come eventually. But without good content you won't get more good members.

What came first? Chicken or egg?

[Sn2]

Posts attract members who post. Members attract members who don't post.

Who ever joined someone else's site and decided to take it upon themselves to get it going? If there's nothing to join in with most people won't bother hanging around.

It's the frequency of new posts that says whether or not a forum is busy.

[jeffinj]

You would need members for a new forum. I think the posts will come eventually depending on how active and interesting the discussions are. If you are starting a new community, you will have to do a lot of posting yourself and get some close friends who can post quality topics. Also keep it simple for members. No detailed rules or registration page. Reward members who post more with nice badges. Get moderators to join. Just a few tips which worked for me.

[Dream]

I think banner clicks are more important :)

That said, I think both members and good quality posts are important.

Too few members makes the forum unpleasant, same as just chatting.

Actually, chatting forums with more members tend to get more discussions, and are certain to get good discussions some times, getting good Google rankings, and more chances to be ranked by Google and therefore have more visits, and more banner clicks. So if I had to choose, after 8 years running a forum, I'd choose members, and let them chat and not enforce thesis grade posts.

Active members, of course.