So I was curious to see what the distribution of forum activity was since the site was rebuilt back on January 31st, 2004...up until today. I ran some database queries and pulled out the total topics and posts created each day and put them into a Google Sheets view and charted it like a stock chart. And this is the result.
Unfortunately I don't have the activity showing when the site first started in 2003 - since that's pretty much where we're at with this version. When the chart starts, we already had around 75 members visiting on some level of frequency - unlike today's half-dozen who are basically starting the site from scratch again. It would be interesting to see that missing year.
For some reason there are some weird spots at the end of 2005 and in 2006 where there is literally nothing for a month or two. I don't remember what happened there...but I feel like there was a forced site rebuild or something at each of those times, and I had to shut everything down and rebuild it.
I also made a chart showing the Forum Growth - to see how things ramped up...and subsequently tapered off over the years...with a little bump from the last couple months.