Strange. Digging into some history of this forum, I found some very interesting stuff:

RZ923

The top 10 posters at the time of this writing were all joined on 6th February (except for @RZ923/me and @nastya)
Sometimes it doesn’t let you submit photos, for the excuse of ‘Photo entity too large’.
The user @test has 1 reputation, despite making 0 posts.
Some users upvote almost every post. Examples: @debbie, @CoherentMango, @RZ923/me.
Starting from 29th January, there are approximately 17.4 new users per day at the time of writing (12th September)

I’ll put the rest of my points in my reply to @The-Blade-Dancer.

Tylenol

@The-Blade-Dancer The first users are probably bots that were used to test out the website or something, and the profile views are probably just a bug.

I'm just wondering if the new users that have been joining are actual people or also bots.

debbie

I'm so amazed that you went digging this far! You make a lot of interesting observations. Maybe I can shed some light on some of them.

@The-Blade-Dancer said in Strange:

Digging into some history of this forum, I found some very interesting stuff:

The earliest three users were @admin, @debbie, and @po, in order. Not a surprise since they all have admin roles and probably created this forum, although who exactly @admin is I'm not sure, although I do have some guesses. The earliest post ever made was Illusion, created on the seventh of February. Well, as far as I could go.

Speaking of admins, there's approximately 10 users on this forum with mod or admin titles, yet many have barely participated in the chat. My guess, as previously mentioned, is that all these random mods are are either test accounts or just inactive.

Most of these other admins are interns who have come and gone, which is why you don't see many posts from them. Sometimes we make accounts for interns who work on other types of jobs and so don't get involved with the forum.

There are around 3800 users on this forum right now.

About half of accounts at the time of this writing were formed on the day of February 5 of 2020. About 60% of all accounts were created in the month of February.

February 5, 2020 was the date that the forum was set up. On that day, Prof. Loh programmatically imported all of the pre-existing user information from the Daily Challenge database into the forum and made new accounts for all of them.

Weird thing: about 400 of the earliest-created accounts on the forum have over 300 profile views, despite having never created a post. I doubt those views are actual ones, because the amount of users who have ever created a post here doesn't even go over 50. The ratio of users with avatars/ edited usernames to ones without is somewhere like 1 : 100.

Prof. Loh's program, which automatically signs people up for the forum, routinely scans all of the users to see if any new accounts were made, so many of the profile views are his robot program.

I have no idea why there's so many accounts, and there's more created every day, but no activity on them. It might be in anticipation of more newcomers, or each account represents one user of the Daily Challenge, although both seem equally unlikely. The Daily Challenge doesn't seem to have a very large userbase

Anyone who makes an account on the Daily Challenge automatically receives a forum account as well. This applies to people who made an account but never purchased any Modules, and also to those who made account just for the free Mock AMC 8 and Mock MATHCOUNTS exams. Quite a few people make accounts without purchasing anything, and while they don't have access to the Course Discussions, they are able to view the threads in General and Announcements.

It's true that we don't have a large database, yet, but we hope to grow as time goes on! The Daily Challenge is about one year three months old as of now, and has come quite far since its inception. We hope to keep spreading Prof. Loh's unique way of teaching, learning and enjoying math to more and more people around the globe!

Bulba_Bulbasaur

wow very deep.

divinedolphin

@debbie Thanks for the information! I've been wondering about some of these things too, especially about why there are so many accounts, yet barely any active users. Interesting how so many people paid 33¢ (to make an account).

The Blade Dancer

PayPal pulled in a couple hundred bucks on this forum alone

The Blade Dancer

Also I think the scans have either slowed down/ stopped, because if you look I specifically mention just the first 400, not any of the other ones, which have around 1 profile view each (could be because I clicked on it too)

sqwishy

@The-Blade-Dancer woahh thats a lot of information!! I was going to say that everyone who has a Daily Challenge account is automatically registered with a forum account but it looks like @debbie beat me to it! haha

RZ923

@The-Blade-Dancer said in Strange. Digging into some history of this forum, I found some very interesting stuff::

Weird thing: about 400 of the earliest-created accounts on the forum have over 300 profile views, despite having never created a post. I doubt those views are actual ones, because the amount of users who have ever created a post here doesn't even go over 50. The ratio of users with avatars/ edited usernames to ones without is somewhere like 1 : 100.

I actually thought they hacked the forum at first...

RZ923

@The-Blade-Dancer

I did some calculation and found out that PayPal got $1305.48 at the time of writing (12 September)
At the time on writing, @The-Blade-Dancer has the most profile views:

The Blade Dancer

coolio all my "years" of profile editing has paid off

The Blade Dancer

Also user with most followers is most likely @debbie, with 11. Chances are the accounts with no activity won't have them, but I don't have an easy way of checking either.

RZ923

@The-Blade-Dancer
@po is close though.

PS is Prof Loh ever going to participate on the forum? Is it because he is too busy?

debbie

@RZ923 Yes, he's very busy with NOVID right now, writing code and doing a lot of business calls, but it's working, and NOVID will hopefully get to be more well-known and widespread soon.

RZ923

Umm...
I think it is because @alex has no reputations?

Bulba_Bulbasaur

yep, even though he deserves some.

RZ923