Stop right there - this "1-2" you're seeing there is NOT "thousands of players"!
Rather, it's the numbering of "light/standard/heavy/veryheavy full" (1-5), which only means that your server is somewhere between light and full, with slightly above standard in prime time.
Population data from the SWTOR servers is available only to BW, all these "server population" sties are "measuring" is the spread over the five "categories":
1 == Light
2 == Standard
3 == Heavy
4 == Very Heavy
5 == Full
Note that "Standard" might mean 25, 123, 1,000, 4,000 or 450,000 concurrent players for all we know. It may change over the time (and rprobably arlready has), so the these charts mean even less.
Also, the progression does not have to be linear (and, again, probably isn't). So, "Standard" might mean 4000 players, "Heavy" 6000 players, "Very Heavy" 7000 players and Full "8000" players. This makes charts even more wrong /guesswork then they already are.
So, neither we, nor "server population" sites know what the real population is, not even the ballpark of it.