"Post Your Stats"

You see this message in every forum dedicated to forum administrators, and it's easy to show-off your numbers.  Unfortunately, those numbers are entirely irrelevant because they don't take into account several factors:

• Age of the community
• Audience / niche
• Starting membership
• Fake members
• Banned members
• Activity of the members

Which community is a better community?  A community that has 100,000 members that's been online for 20 years.  Or a community that has "only" 10,000 members but started 1 year ago. 

Even more importantly, which one is a better community?  A community with 100,000 members that has no activity in last year.  Or a community that has "only" 10,000 members but several hundred are online at any time.   

Communities with a million posts are most likely legacy forums, which started fifteen to twenty years ago.  You can't compare their community stats to those of new communities.  What's more telling is the number of online users, or the number of active users in a timeframe.