Yes, and the reason it was so low in December 2000 was that the Addventure was completely shut down for 2-3 weeks that month while MarkT worked on cleaning up a massive flamewar.
It was rather heartening that for a long time afterwards the community was self-policing in that regard. Any time an argument started, someone would usually jump in and say "Hey, calm down, you don't want the Addventure to shut down again do you?"