They are deleted after a year or so if they do not post - as of today, the member count shown reflects those that are actively participating and accessing the forums.

Inactive members are deleted because the membership list apparently eats up a lot of system resources. Since real estate tends to have a fairly high turnover of agents it is assumed that if someone is inactive they have likely left the business and no longer have an interest in these forums.

Good point and smart move

There is another issue that affects membership numbers - not only here but in all other forums as well.

Spammers have discovered forums - not the type of spammers the post garbage, but another type. These spammers are content to just join and do nothing - except put a link to a website in their profile so search engines will pick it up.

Now, spammers will join as new members dozens of times a day (using a different IP every time) and put a link to a different site in their profile each time - travel, viagra, gambling sites, etc.

It can look great when a forum has thousands of new members every year but they are not real members.

We are aware of this and delete the bogus members - we try to do that daily.

The membership count you see on the front page at AgentsOnline.net for the most part represents members who are active - who visit regularly and read and post real messages.

If you are curious to know how many members have actually signed up - including the inactive ones - then just look at the member number of the newest members - currently in the 17,500 range.

That inflated number would be the number other forums advertise as their membership.