topic Re: 4000+ users online - really? in Member Support

4000+ users online - really?

AlecTrevelyan — Tue, 07 May 2019 05:21:26 GMT

I keep seeing 3 or 4,000+ users shown as being online in the community. I know there are apparently 23,000+ members, but the number of online users rarely used to top 200 or so. Are we under attack from bots or something?!

Re: 4000+ users online - really?

HTCPCP-TEA — Tue, 07 May 2019 09:41:26 GMT

Over the last year or so, I have rarely seen more than 100 people logged in and active on our community pages, likely due to time zone etc.

I too see a very high increase in such statistics

It is odd. I wonder if there's been a huge recruitment drive, and error with stale sessions being recorded, or indeed something more sinister.

I can promise one thing, it wasn't/isn't me 🙂

Re: 4000+ users online - really?

SamanthaO_isc2 — Tue, 07 May 2019 12:55:30 GMT

Thank you for letting me know about this. I am looking into it to see if it is a true number of online users or something else.

Re: 4000+ users online - really?

Chuxing — Tue, 07 May 2019 13:08:50 GMT

I would guess there is a sampling time window, say, 24hr, for the statistical accumulation. It is probably not a real-time statistics.

Re: 4000+ users online - really?

rslade — Tue, 07 May 2019 16:15:41 GMT

> AlecTrevelyan (Contributor III) posted a new topic in Member Support on

> I keep seeing 3 or 4 thousand users shown as being online in the community. I
> know there are apparently 23 thousand members, but the number of online users
> rarely used to top 200 or so. Are we under attack from bots or something?!

Huh. You're right. Hadn't noticed that.

It's obviously a recent change, and, I suspect, is related to the sign in/SSO
problems, which also appear to have changed recently. Until a couple of months
ago (last time I paid any attention to it) the highest I'd ever seen was 83. As
noted elsewhere, they obviously keep us signed on with a fairly robust cookie, so
maybe the 4,060 (at the moment) is the number of not inactive cookies rather
than active users ...

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Re: 4000+ users online - really?

rslade — Wed, 08 May 2019 01:05:59 GMT

They seem to have either fixed or reset it: we're currently at 95 ...

Re: 4000+ users online - really?

AlecTrevelyan — Thu, 09 May 2019 22:18:05 GMT

Back up to 4,000+ again now I see.

Re: 4000+ users online - really?

rslade — Fri, 10 May 2019 00:18:41 GMT

> AlecTrevelyan (Contributor III) posted a new reply in Member Support on

> Back up to 4,000+ again now I see.

Silly us. We were taking them seriously, thinking that "Users online" actually
meant it was a count of users online.

Obviously, this is actually a random number generator, kindly provided so that we
can seed our crypto modules ...

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rslade@vcn.bc.ca slade@victoria.tc.ca rslade@computercrime.org
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slogan `We Do It All For You.' - Dave Barry
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Re: 4000+ users online - really?

Shannon — Fri, 10 May 2019 11:53:29 GMT

This is interesting. On the 7th, @AlecTrevelyan noticed that it was 4000 +, on the 8th; @rslade found that it had dropped to 95; some 14 hours ago @AlecTrevelyan sees it as back at 4000 +; now I'm getting it at 153.

If the counter was put there primarily to cater to motivation / enthusiasm, we definitely can't bank on it being accurate.

Re: 4000+ users online - really?

SamanthaO_isc2 — Fri, 10 May 2019 17:07:35 GMT

Thank you all for posting about this. I have seen the number varying greatly myself, and I am working with our vendor to help identify what the cause may be so that we can fix it. When I have more information, I will keep you all updated.

Re: 4000+ users online - really?

SamanthaO_isc2 — Wed, 19 Jun 2019 13:00:41 GMT

Just a quick update here - we believe this to be resolved. If you happen to see this happening again, please let me know (screenshots and timestamps are greatly appreciated).

Best,

Re: 4000+ users online - really?

AppDefects — Wed, 25 Mar 2020 01:27:41 GMT

No record today (3/24/2020), but we do have 2,266 users online.

Ps. If you're really online hit the like button so that we can confirm!

Re: 4000+ users online - really?

rslade — Wed, 25 Mar 2020 03:27:16 GMT

I wonder if this is related to the subscriptions bug? I have a vague feeling both happened around the same time last year ...

Re: 4000+ users online - really?

AppDefects — Fri, 27 Mar 2020 21:06:28 GMT

@rslade wrote:
I wonder if this is related to the subscriptions bug? I have a vague feeling both happened around the same time last year ...

@rslade aka bug hunter! you could be right. Today, there is only 56 people online.