Most users ever online was 6,588, 27-12-2019 at 09:52.

[Shrew]

Originally Posted by Island Time O25

although I do personally believe that to totally exclude politics is unreasonable as they are intertwined with actual policies which affect boaters/cruisers in a myriad of ways.

I completely agree. As a moderator of two other boating forums, I can assure you that isn't how it works.

Like sneaking into a hotel pool after hours. It's fine until one of your rowdy friends starts screaming "Cannonball!", and starts jumping in from the table by the deep end. In others you could fly under the radar without much notice as long as you're not acting like an idiot. Unfortunately, when this occurs everyone gets kicked out.

Same with a thread. 15 people are having a civilized discussion and one or two extremist starts virtually ranting and screaming at everyone. It's like a variation of Godwins law. These threads ALL go downhill. ALWAYS.

When there's enough bleeding the thread gets locked. Then everyone is angry.

Those that don't want to suffer the ranting are annoyed that the thread wasn't closed sooner.

Those that want to spout their ridiculous political and conspiracy theories (typically the offender that got the thread closed) rail about how their being oppressed and that their freedom of speech rights are being violated.

[SeanPatrick]

Originally Posted by GordMay

Even though we have over two hundred thousand members [ 208,017], I’m always surprised that the number of guests always outnumbers [± 20:1] the number of members [90 members and 2053 guests], currently active on CF.

Don't forget about the "spiders", otherwise known as "web crawlers". Search engines like Google use these automated "bots" to browse and index content on the internet.

Many of the "guests" who appear to be online may, in fact, not be people at all. And this may affect the impressions we get of just how active a particular website is.

As for the subject of moderation: I am a member of some forums which are far more strict than CF, and some that are far less strict. TBH, I am sometimes surprised at just how much OT content is allowed here. But it generally seems to work well enough. (I've said before that this is one of the most OT forums I've ever been on, and that is still [sometimes hilariously] true.) And I think the mods do a fine job of reining things in when they go too far off the rails or things get personal. But most members here seem to be civil enough that this is a relatively rare occurrence, at least from my limited point of view.

Anyway, this whole thread reminded me of a similar discussion a while back in which I posted this essay about online discussion groups. I did not write it, but many people seemed to find it interesting or at least a little humorous.

Hope everyone has a fantastic new year! Cheers!

[glanrock]

Forums are like tides.

I don't post here much, 99% of the time simply reading. I think that many of the other accounts here do much the same.

There can be a veritable trove of information found on these sites however, and sifting through to find it can be helpful solving problems.

Now days though, I think the times have changed. Instead of coming here to ask a question requiring explanation its so much easier to hit YouTube and find a video that not just answers the question but also might provide visual guidance on 'how to' as well.

[Jammer]

Originally Posted by MicHughV

Started in 1978. At this time, building your own boat was quite the thing to do.[...]
You simply don't see that today. I launched my boat in 1980. Since that time, building your own boat has fizzled out. I have not come across but a random few, that still do this.

It's about costs. DIY boatbuilding made sense financially in 1980. It no longer does for a wide variety of reasons: buyer's market for used boats, dramatically lower production costs for new fiberglass hulls as manufacturing techniques have improved, price increases on basic raw materials used by the DIY builder, like marine-quality wood.

I left to go cruising with only the most rudimentary of gear and handful of dollars and never thought anything about it. These days, most "sailor's" won't leave the dock without 1,000's of $$ of navigational gear, solar panels, a/c, etc, etc,[....]. Marina dockage rates are absurd these days. Add in boat payments, insurance and maintenance, and only the very rich can afford it. Ironically, most of these boats are dock queens and never go anywhere.

Marina rates have never been cheap and I'm not convinced that the cost of ownership overall has ever been materially lower than it is now. Sure some stuff is more expensive. On the other hand we have cheap LED lighting, portable fridges for $300, and electronic charts for many areas for free or nearly so.


There is a broad trend away from outdoor adventures that involve overnight stays and towards day trips, that has affected boating just as it has other activities.

[goboatingnow]

Now days though, I think the times have changed. Instead of coming here to ask a question requiring explanation its so much easier to hit YouTube and find a video that not just answers the question but also might provide visual guidance on 'how to' as well

I just watch the cute girl covered in fibreglass dust myself

[Don C L]

Originally Posted by Shrew

Same with a thread. 15 people are having a civilized discussion and one or two extremist starts virtually ranting and screaming at everyone. It's like a variation of Godwins law. These threads ALL go downhill. ALWAYS.

When there's enough bleeding the thread gets locked. Then everyone is angry.

Those that don't want to suffer the ranting are annoyed that the thread wasn't closed sooner.

Those that want to spout their ridiculous political and conspiracy theories (typically the offender that got the thread closed) rail about how their being oppressed and that their freedom of speech rights are being violated.

May I just interject here that if folks flagged the offending posts for us mods, and then used Herculean restraint by NOT responding in kind to offenders, more threads would probably stay open... maybe

[CaptTom]

Originally Posted by glanrock

Now days though, I think the times have changed. Instead of coming here to ask a question requiring explanation its so much easier to hit YouTube and find a video that not just answers the question but also might provide visual guidance on 'how to' as well.

You may be right. But I know I'm not alone in finding YouTube videos generally much less helpful than simply reading written instructions and/or looking at photos on line.

YouTube videos have a number of drawbacks. First you're hit with ads. Then you have to wait or jump through a long, boring introduction and the background story leading up to the area of interest. Often the critical step you're trying to learn about is either glossed over or skipped entirely. Even just finding a video of interest requires sifting through page after page of unhelpful, click-bait videos.

[Mike OReilly]

Originally Posted by Don C L

May I just interject here that if folks flagged the offending posts for us mods, and then used Herculean restraint by NOT responding in kind to offenders, more threads would probably stay open... maybe

I follow the second part of your advice as best I can Don, which is to say, I often fail ... but I do try and ignore known provocateurs. I've never reported someone just for being a troll or a jerk, or for posting something I find offensive. The only posts I've ever flagged are overt spam.

Blame my parents, or perhaps my upbringing, but I'm just not a tattletale. And I'd rather deal with offensive people myself, rather than always run to the authorities or the parents. Mostly, after a bit of back-and-forth, I just ignore them.

I realize this is not what CF wants. And I acknowledge this may not always be the most effective way to deal with these people. But I suspect I'm not alone in my approach. Which is perhaps why your advice is not followed as widely as some Mods would like.

[glanrock]

Originally Posted by CaptTom

You may be right. But I know I'm not alone in finding YouTube videos generally much less helpful than simply reading written instructions and/or looking at photos on line.

YouTube videos have a number of drawbacks. First you're hit with ads. Then you have to wait or jump through a long, boring introduction and the background story leading up to the area of interest. Often the critical step you're trying to learn about is either glossed over or skipped entirely. Even just finding a video of interest requires sifting through page after page of unhelpful, click-bait videos.

This can be very true the ads and searching for the 'right' video. I am the 'read the instructions' guy, and perhaps the over-planner too. The admiral balances me out by picking up tools and starting while I'm on page 3...

The sad truth is that sometimes you ask a question on a forum and get straight helpful replies, and sometimes you get pages of folks arguing, thread drift, etc. So they sort of both have their good and bad sides.

[GordMay]

Originally Posted by SeanPatrick

Don't forget about the "spiders", otherwise known as "web crawlers". Search engines like Google use these automated "bots" to browse and index content on the internet.

Many of the "guests" who appear to be online may, in fact, not be people at all. And this may affect the impressions we get of just how active a particular website is...

How many web crawlers do you think there are?
How often do you think they "visit" the CruisersForum?

I suspect that spiders would represent an infinitesimal proportion of CF's guest visits.

[CaptTom]

Originally Posted by GordMay

How many web crawlers do you think there are?
How often do you think they "visit" the CruisersForum?

Far more, and more often than you might think. In a similar category are hackers' bot nets.

Any site that's indexed on a search engine is going to get hundreds or thousands of attempts to hack in every day. Especially a site which runs something like forum software or WordPress. As vulnerabilities in these systems become known, hackers set up bots to just keep trying every site which use these systems, over and over again, hoping to get lucky.

There are lists out there of "known" passwords. It's pretty easy to set up a machine to just try every one, on every web site that uses a logon.

Of course the forum software might exclude known patterns of non-human behavior when counting users. I don't know the details. Raw numbers don't really mean much until you know what's being counted.

[GordMay]

Originally Posted by CaptTom

Far more, and more often than you might think...
... Of course the forum software might exclude known patterns of non-human behavior when counting users. I don't know the details. Raw numbers don't really mean much until you know what's being counted.

So, you don't know, either.

[ThereAndBack]

Number of crawlers is unknowable.

Time between crawls varies but it is fairly regular for purposes of indexing and SEO.

DDOS or having a reddit/fark link posted will boost a forum as well.

There are many posts to the vbulletin forums about problems with the most users online feature, even in v.5 and this site is on a version that has long been EOL and not getting updates.

So you're right, we don't know. That is what makes the statistic dubious.

[glanrock]

The stats are available to whomever has the keys to the kingdom. They can differentiate between 'normal' traffic, scans for open ports, repeated logon fails, and other analytics. We wouldn't have access to it but its out there on the servers hosting the CF site infrastructure. They have hits per day, total number of logins per day, number of unique users per day, number of sessions per day by user, where everyone is logging on from (by IP), and much more data.

[GordMay]

Originally Posted by glanrock

The stats are available to whomever has the keys to the kingdom. They can differentiate between 'normal' traffic, scans for open ports, repeated logon fails, and other analytics. We wouldn't have access to it but its out there on the servers hosting the CF site infrastructure. They have hits per day, total number of logins per day, number of unique users per day, number of sessions per day by user, where everyone is logging on from (by IP), and much more data.

? ➥ https://www.keycdn.com/blog/web-crawlers
What is a robots.txt file? ➥ https://www.keycdn.com/support/what-...obots-txt-file