Why so many guests?

[JPnyc]

If you don't like a thread, don't read it. Hidden members show as members, but you can't see who they are. The ones that show as guests are unregistered or not logged in, or just search bots.

[jamz]

i havent come here in a while myself & have only posted 5 times or less since '03.. I mainly come here for info & to browse around and see what's up.

[Moira]

Grammatically it's nothing compared to what you come across *all the time* !

It makes sense to me - what I'm saying is "do hidden members not simply show up etc" apologies if it wasn't clear. I'll allow you some slack for English not being your first language

The thread might seem ridiculous to you, but at least one other person was as perplexed by the stats as I was, and I could show you threads which have less purpose ..... you seem to set exacting standards, maybe it's this sort of attitude that puts people off posting and therefore they don't need to register.

[JPnyc]

Yes, members who've chosen to log on invisibly, do show up in the members total, not the guests. You just can't see their names. Anything that shows as a guest is someone not registered/logged in.

[Jonny Lee Miller]

Seems to me like the number of members online dropped significantly since the update

I heard a good year or two before that alot of cool people either quit or felt they where being driven away from the site.

Don't take offense to this
Whats JupM's game-plan for AO right now?

[nihil]

Quitters are "lusers"; people who get banned are "lusers", neither can be considered "cool" except, perhaps in their own egotistical imaginations

People move on................ they discover wimmin, foosball, and even beer................ and they discover that you have to work to pay your way through college?

The statistics from the old site were highly questionable because the relational database was broken................that is why it was such a PITA to upgrade to the current version.

Also, the old system did not refresh every 60 seconds like this one does............. it would show people online long after they had left.

Another thing to remember is that an online "resource" forum like this one accumulates knowledge..............as time passes the probability that the answer is already here increases, so there is no need to post a question.

I can distinctly remember the days when we would get at least a dozen "I have been infected what do I do?" questions every week...............these days you hardly see any. Malware has changed to be more commercial, and people who would actually find this site have become more aware.

[Egaladeist]

We touched upon this in another thread...in brief...the visitors do not reflect actual guests...most are bots...the Google bot normally shows as 1 bot regardless of how many pages it indexes...but the MSN, Yahoo, and other bots shows as a visitor for every page they index...

as a general rule...there are really only about 4 times as many real visitors as there are members online...so...on any given day if there are 12 members on only about 48 of the visitors are real guests...the rest are various bots indexing the site....and not all bots show up as bots.

If you click the ' who's online ' link you'll see what I mean.

Now...having said that...AO is not doing worse than before...in fact there's been no change at all really...well...no significant change...

the reason why the numbers were so high before are economics the change-over affected those numbers in the way they are displayed.

If...for instance...you look at the Alexa stats ( which are reflective of all stats...inotherwords the percentages do not normally vary much from Google, Yahoo, etc...and this has been tested but I forget by who...so...even though it's not a perfect system...it's good enough )...

you will see by this there hasn't been any drastic change in traffic...no significant drop-off...virtually no change at all...

http://www.alexa.com/data/details/tr...antionline.com
Related Info for: antionline.com/

just that the numbers are more reflective of the site.

This means the numbers before the change were abnormally high...the numbers now reflect a truer account...but that account is even high when you take in the bot equation...

in conclusion...

AO has not been affected by the change at all in regard to the numbers.

The numbers...if there was a change...would show a significant drop in an ' off-site analysis ( eg. Alexa or Google or other stats for this site )...and they don't.

There has been no significant change in traffic at all....the only thing that has significantly changed is members...most of the old guard has moved on...and been replaced by new members.

[Moira]

I heard a good year or two before that alot of cool people either quit or felt they where being driven away from the site.

A lot of "cool" people?? In whose eyes were they "cool"?

I read a good link from Slashdot yesterday. It's slightly off-topic for this thread, but it's very true:

http://www.itoughttobesimple.com/essays/idiot1.htm

[nihil]

OK, when I was "in" we had a saying: "no names, no pack drill"................

If I were an unscrupulous person wishing to sell a website, which had highly modified management software............... might I not be tempted to slightly "modify" the site statistics system as well.........................?

Totally inadvertently of course

As for Moira's link:


/jk

There were three people having a meal in a restaurant in the Bahamas........they were on vacation............

One was an IT manager, one was an electrical engineer, and the third was a "lady of negotiable virtue"............

Somehow, the conversation got around to which was the oldest profession on Earth.............

The "lady of negotiable virtue" said: "Well it is mine of course, everybody knows that?"

The electrical engineer said: "No, if you read the Book of Genesis, God said: 'let there be light', so electrical engineering is older"

The IT manager chimed in: "If you read Genesis properly, it says 'in the beginning there was darkness'.............now who do you think gave you that?"



\jk