fourteenbucks

I was just thinking about the percent of cyclists who use forums for advice. I would venture to say < 5%.

StephenH

It's hard to say, but probably lower than 5%. One indication I've seen is posts on the charity rides. For example, there was a "Who's Riding Tour Dallas" thread. I think maybe 6 or 8 different people posted on it. But actual ridership was something like 2,000.

One thing I find too, is if I start googling about something I'm interested in, bicycle related, I'll invariably get hits from my own posts on this site. So some of these posts stay around for years and get fetched up later; it's not just the immediate respondees that read this stuff.

fourteenbucks

I can see your reasoning. I guess it's nice to see people are still finding out the answers in person with their LBS and other riders.

GTALuigi

i use both

forum is convenient, when you don't have time, to drop by your LBS.

Chris L

Is it this forum, or message boards generally? There are so many of them around these days that someone could find a dozen answers to their question before they even found this place.

FWIW, most of the "advice" I've had has been the experience of riding 150,000km+

Rowan

Probably 0.001 percent of the riding population. There are people who ride bikes everyday to and from work who are not fiscally empowered to own computers. There are people who ride bikes who are aged in their 50s and 60 and 70s and beyond, and have never bothered to learn how to use a computer, and don't want to. There are kids under the age of 14 who are not eligible to be members of these forums.

The membership of BFs is only approx 130,000, drawn from an audience all around the world. The active membership is less than 20,000 - that is, only 13% are actively involved in discussing bike topics (yes, I know there is always a rolling list of guests, but they can't discuss advice).

Forums like this generally are the domain of the middle-class, white-collar IT-savvy up to the age of 40. The numbers even then would be skewed by the free access that college and university students have to computers.

seagullplayer

I am one that looks for advise here. On vacation last week I told the guy I went camping with about it, I don't know if he registered, but he reads it now.

Word of mouth...

Hobartlemagne 

Who knows?

BTW- nice avatar