The thing that always struck me as odd, was that the main forum page shows there are always a crapload of people visiting the forums (the main forum page now states there are 1337 visitors: 82 members and 1255 guests) and yet the number of views for threads is terribly low. In fact, after I see people post a new thread, 24 hours later the page view is less than 10.

So I did a simple test.

15 minutes ago, the "Linux - Software" section showed there were 208 people viewing that section. I noted all the page views of the first 50 threads. Considering there where over 200 people viewing that sections, those pageviews should go up quickly. So after 15 minutes, I compared the pageviews with the earlier noted pageviews. The difference? 3. Of all 50 threads, the pageview increased of only 3.

With over 1300 people on the site at this time and over 200 people visiting that section alone, that's very, very unlikely.

So the only conclusion I can make is that those visitor numbers and "viewing" numbers are either bogus, or the pageviews are broken. Since I tested the pageviews (clicked on a few threads myself and the view counter went up) I suspect it's the first.

So my question is, why? Why the bogus numbers?

Not that I mind - I mean, heck, people can do with their site whatever they want - I'm just wondering why.

First, welcome to LQ!!

I don't find those stats very surprising. There are LOTS of people (and robots) who stumble into web sites, but never click on anything. I do it all the time.

I think a more significant observation is the number of people who sign up here, but only make 1 or 2 posts. (A significant number never post at all.)

<<edit>>
To randomly look at member statistics, use this URL (the user ID is mine--change it to see some other random member.)
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...r.php?u=221260

You viewed only the most recent threads and used the difference in the views of those threads as your marker.

Consider the huge number of threads being viewed after having been found through web searches. People viewing old threads contribute to the total number of people on the site (or in a particular subforum), but have no impact on the difference in the number of views each of those 50 threads has received.

remember also that a high percentage of the population are "looky-loos". This is veering off-topic a bit, but I think we have an increasing number of people in the world that don't interact with much of anything---they just exist.

I appreciate the fact people are viewing threads through search engines other than the most 50 most recent threads. But seriously, Almost 1500 members active on the forums, over 200 on that particular section alone and only three hits on any of the 50 most recent threads in 15 minutes time?

I own and operate a (non-linux) forum myself, and at any given time, there are about 200 people active on the entire forum. There are about a half million topics with millions and millions of messages (in total). And even though the number of active visitors is only a fraction of the number of visitors here, the page views of the threads on the first page of any of the sections increases with a few each second.

I just find it hard to believe that on a forum that claims to have thousands of active visitors at any given time, there are still many, many threads which are less than 2 days old, that have less than 20 page views. In fact, most of the threads on the first page have less than 100 page views.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying somebody is deliberately messing with those numbers, it just strikes me as odd.

We don't inflate any numbers (it would have no benefit to us for one, but we're extremely transparent with everything anyway). Keep a couple things in mind. That is the number of current sessions open for the main LQ site. That includes the tutorials, blogs, bookmarks, etc. Anything that authenticates against the main LQ db opens a session (so items like the LQ Wiki, LQ Radio and LQ ISO do not). Additionally, we cache thread views to increase the benefit of the MySQL query cache, which will artificially deflate counts for very new threads. Lastly, a search bot will open a valid session but will not increment the view total.

--jeremy

Keep in mind, you also have people like me- I visit LQ frequently, but quite often I walk away to deal with real-life issues and leave my PC running, sometimes for hours. And sometimes, I'll leave it run all day or all night while logged into LQ. At that time, I'm counted as 'actively viewing', but I'm not changing view counts on anything.

Cheers

AND another thing.... A good many people come here only to post a question - they don't search or otherwise look around, so if you remove all the people that do that you may find the count more agreeable

dragonslayer48dx, that does not impact the number in any way - your session automatically ends after 900 seconds.

--jeremy

I didn't know that... My name was always still there.

Cheers

Interesting to note the distinction between "real-life" and participating on LQ.....

As soon as you visit again your session is restarted. If you were to wait 901 seconds from your last activity and then view the online list from a machine you weren't logged in from, your username would not be there.

--jeremy

ROFL... Thanks, I needed that!

Cheers

I assumed that might be the case from your last post... Thanks for the clarification.

BTW- you can still consider how many people do that, at least for the first 15 minutes they're away from their computer...

Cheers

Inflated counts or inflated users (with trapped wind or a lot of hot air)???