How Big is Too Big?

[Catalyst]

I thought of this idea when I was browsing the "Forums are Dying" thread that I made a while back.

I had mentioned the Gaia Online forum. I've heard it's the largest online community in the world, and I believe it. I used to be really active there - but not like many of the other members who have at least 8 000 posts.

In an active time, you can make a thread and when you refresh your page - it could be at the bottom of the first page, or you could never find it again, that's unless you go into your profile and go from there. But once you find the topic, it could be 5 pages back. When a forum gets that big, that's just insane.

I wish I knew how they got that big. It'd be great to help out a lot of forums that are good forums but are either quiet to having the same members post over and over. Kyuubi and I are part of a forum that it seems as if the staff are the only ones that post regularly.

I'd just like to know what you guys think is too big for an online community. I think half of Gaia is too big.