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

[Kelkara]

I run a website for a small club with about 100 active members ... the website gets about 25000 visits per day by various bots ... some, like google, are well behaved, they tell you they are a bot, read the robots.txt file, and then harvest all the data that you let them ... most however show up pretending to be a regular browser and then hit every page with sql injection attacks before moving on. I used to try to count visitors, but it became too much work to filter out all the bots.

[Island Time O25]

Awhile ago IT friend of mine told me that the rough rule of thumb ratio is 1:10, 10 bots for every 1 real live guest visitor. Don't know if that still holds true.

It's easy to attach a flag to each visitor showing a country of his server. Many forums do that. One would be surprised what shows up and how often.

[DMF Sailing]

Here are three rules of thumb that are as old as anonymous internet fora. I'll share them, as one who used to be a quasi-public figure whose posts on Twitter, Facebook, etc. could be used against me and my organization:

Would you, five feet from me and staring into the whites of my eyes, say to my face what you are about to type? No?

Then don't type it, and find the words to say it in a way that you would say to my face.

Would you, standing on the dock with a loudspeaker, broadcast what you're about to type to everyone in the marina? No?

Then don't type it, and instead type what you'd like the world to have heard from you..

Do you, if you're in a public place and some little twerp in a corner is muttering offensive and anti-social things, go over and get in an argument? No?

Then don't respond to trolls.

If everybody adheres to those principles, we end the acrimony, forever.

I'm not holding my breath.

But I love this place. It's the only forum I belong to, the only one I support with money. I attended for three years before joining with an identity that, if someone really wanted to, would allow them to figure out my real identity.

Even accounting for the trolling, occasional misinformation, and repetitive questions, I, as a guy who has sailed for half a century, but am currently between boats, learn something new every day. Just as I do every time I'm on a boat.

I also enjoy the various personalities of the prominent posters. And the advice one gets [even if some of it is condescending in a way you'd never say to my face ... well, maybe some sailors would, sailors being persnickety folk].

There are a lot of people with whom I'd enjoy sharing a beer.

Nitpicks:

The stars and green squares should be reversed, in my opinion.

Star should mean "popular," "authoritative," "oft-thanked," whatever.

Green square = posts a lot.

Right now it's the opposite.

I also support the idea of a "like" button. There are a lot of people whose posts I'd be liking all the time.

[JoeRobertJr]

Originally Posted by DMF Sailing

Would you, five feet from me and staring into the whites of my eyes, say to my face what you are about to type? No?
Then don't type it, and find the words to say it in a way that's more neighborly.

Would you, standing on the dock with a loudspeaker, broadcast what you're about to type to everyone in the marina? No?
Then don't type it, and instead type what you'd like the world to have heard from you..

Do you, if you're in a public place and some little twerp in a corner is muttering offensive and anti-social things, go over and get in an argument? No?
Then don't respond to trolls.

Truth!
Patience and humility go a long way towards civility, also.

[Delancey]

I think the bot thing is interesting.

Do I understand correctly that you guys are saying that most of the online users are bots, and that because of the decline in the number of bots, the site is healthier than ever? Is that what you are saying?

Or are you just saying that the counter has always falsely over-reported the number of active users making it appear as though the forum is more actively used than it really is?

The first one seems insane. The second one seems nefarious. Why would the people who own the site purposely and deceptively misrepresent something like that?

Which one is it?

[ThereAndBack]

Originally Posted by Delancey

I think the bot thing is interesting.

Do I understand correctly that you guys are saying that most of the online users are bots, and that because of the decline in the number of bots, the site is healthier than ever? Is that what you are saying?

Or are you just saying that the counter has always falsely over-reported the number of active users making it appear as though the forum is more actively used than it really is?

The first one seems insane. The second one seems nefarious. Why would the people who own the site purposely and deceptively misrepresent something like that?

Which one is it?

Neither. I'm saying it is meaningless and broken metric that was implemented in vBulletin and has known problems. You can't depend on it for accurate results either way.

[DMF Sailing]

Originally Posted by Delancey

I think the bot thing is interesting.

Do I understand correctly that you guys are saying that most of the online users are bots, and that because of the decline in the number of bots, the site is healthier than ever? Is that what you are saying?

Or are you just saying that the counter has always falsely over-reported the number of active users making it appear as though the forum is more actively used than it really is?

The first one seems insane. The second one seems nefarious. Why would the people who own the site purposely and deceptively misrepresent something like that?

Which one is it?

I can't answer your question, though it might be neither the first or second.

Bots accumulating on a site is just a part of life on the internet, kind of like the way stuff accumulates on tumbleweeds on the prairie.

And they can target a site and deactivate for reasons known only to their creator.

At one point, 1,000 bots started liking my Instagram posts. Then I got a direct message saying that if I pay, I can have thousands of likes. I did not pay, and they disappeared.

Just a possible scenario that has nothing to do with the intentions of the owners of this site, and less to do with its popularity.

[Narfi]

Originally Posted by Delancey

I think the bot thing is interesting.

Do I understand correctly that you guys are saying that most of the online users are bots, and that because of the decline in the number of bots, the site is healthier than ever? Is that what you are saying?

Or are you just saying that the counter has always falsely over-reported the number of active users making it appear as though the forum is more actively used than it really is?

The first one seems insane. The second one seems nefarious. Why would the people who own the site purposely and deceptively misrepresent something like that?

Which one is it?

More the second option, but not nefarious..... it's just a counter, the forum software counts, we interpret the numbers how we want....

Modern Statistics - Numbers taken out of context to falsely strengthen a weak argument

It has been a while since I played around with such things, but I think the typical settings allow you to define what 'currently online' means, rather it's the last 1 min, 5*min, 1hr, 24hr, etc..... as you can imagine, those settings would drastically change the numbers for how many are online, but where do you draw the line? If you have the forum open and go rinse out your coffee cup, are you still online? If you leave a tab open 24/7 but only read it before bed, are you online?

If the question is, "is the forum healthy?", there are as many answers and criteria as there are people considering it.

Owners (are also mods and registered members) probably are concerned that the bills are covered and perhaps even extra, though I doubt that is much for most forums.

Mods (esp volunteer)(are also registered members) are probably concerned that their workload is kept within reason, that there are interesting conversations without a lot of pissed off people crossing the line.

Each registered member wants a different thing, comradery, learning, pride, exercising their brains, advertising, pushing an agenda, etc....

Unregistered users probably want to learn something about a specific topic, they want a long history of helpful posts that are easily searched by google(or competitor) or the forum's own search features.

Bots and crawlers all have their own goals depending on who sent them out

users online is just one tiny piece in the bigger picture, and even that is made up of many little pixels

[DMF Sailing]

Originally Posted by Narfi

More the second option, but not nefarious..... it's just a counter, the forum software counts, we interpret the numbers how we want....

Modern Statistics - Numbers taken out of context to falsely strengthen a weak argument

It has been a while since I played around with such things, but I think the typical settings allow you to define what 'currently online' means, rather it's the last 1 min, 5*min, 1hr, 24hr, etc..... as you can imagine, those settings would drastically change the numbers for how many are online, but where do you draw the line? If you have the forum open and go rinse out your coffee cup, are you still online? If you leave a tab open 24/7 but only read it before bed, are you online?

If the question is, "is the forum healthy?", there are as many answers and criteria as there are people considering it.

Owners (are also mods and registered members) probably are concerned that the bills are covered and perhaps even extra, though I doubt that is much for most forums.

Mods (esp volunteer)(are also registered members) are probably concerned that their workload is kept within reason, that there are interesting conversations without a lot of pissed off people crossing the line.

Each registered member wants a different thing, comradery, learning, pride, exercising their brains, advertising, pushing an agenda, etc....

Unregistered users probably want to learn something about a specific topic, they want a long history of helpful posts that are easily searched by google(or competitor) or the forum's own search features.

Bots and crawlers all have their own goals depending on who sent them out

users online is just one tiny piece in the bigger picture, and even that is made up of many little pixels

One other thing. If I just want to read this and not comment, I don't need to register.

So if you look at an identity that has created an account but never posts, and has no personal information (such as a boat name, or a location, or any pictures, etc), you have a least the possibility that this is a bot.

My guess is that CF is read by many more people than the number of registered accounts, if you go by the amount of times one searches for something on the internet and a CF thread comes up.

So yeah, I agree with those who say the metric is broken. But metrics are made to be broken.

And one should not read too much into them, unless one can really drill down and analyze them beyond such surface data as "how many accounts active right now." Such as, where did they come from to land on this page? How long were they on the page? What did they do next? Does the pattern repeat or is it random? How did they leave? etc etc etc.

[ps: my last few day jobs involved analysis of internet metrics]

[Delancey]

Um, okay so the site prominently features a broken and useless metric for no apparent purpose? And no one ever bothered to fix it in a dozen years? It’s just a feature of the software no one can control?

That just does not make any sense. At the very least having it seems disingenuous.

[Mike OReilly]

I suspect the real metric the owners use is whether this site brings in enough revenue to justify their continued support. On this basis, it would seem CF continues to be a success.

[Delancey]

Originally Posted by Mike OReilly

I suspect the real metric the owners use is whether this site brings in enough revenue to justify their continued support. On this basis, it would seem CF continues to be a success.

By running out of date software that hasn’t been updated since 2017? That is how they support it? Why don’t the fix the broken counter?

[Narfi]

I wouldn't consider it broken, its just raw data that can be interesting, It just doesn't provide as much information as we(users) would like for this thread :P

There is a lot of good information here if you are curious and take the time to dig through it,

[ThereAndBack]

Originally Posted by Delancey

Um, okay so the site prominently features a broken and useless metric for no apparent purpose? And no one ever bothered to fix it in a dozen years? It’s just a feature of the software no one can control?

That just does not make any sense. At the very least having it seems disingenuous.

This site uses a 3rd party software known as vBulletin to operate. The version of that software in use has been END OF LIFE (EOL) for years. This means that it has not been updated or revised. All software has bugs. There are at least 2 major versions newer which means probably thousands of iterations in the software past what this site uses.

Maybe the metric looked cool back in the 2000s. CF is just stuck in the past basically. If the owners wanted to pay for and upgrade to the newest versions, I'm sure they could. They obviously don't.

As a side note, you can search vbulletin's forums for problems with the feature. There are a lot of threads.

[DMF Sailing]

Originally Posted by Narfi

I wouldn't consider it broken, its just raw data that can be interesting, It just doesn't provide as much information as we(users) would like for this thread :P

There is a lot of good information here if you are curious and take the time to dig through it,

Well, Narfi, that's true, in a way.

Perhaps "broken" is not the right word. "A raw number that is not really helpful" is a better one.

Case in point: News organizations used to evaluate the success of an item, or of their site as a whole, by the amount of page views. Until one day, they realized that just because thousands of someones clicked on it, doesn't mean you're making money or growing your audience.

Now they do a lot more of what I was talking about: Does a user click to another item? Do they subscribe? Do they keep coming back?

In a word, "engagement" is a much more useful metric for judging the popularity of a site.