phantom members?
 

I'm always in awe of the indicated number of members shown as having visited this website on any particular day.

Usernames fascinate me so I've clicked on various ones that caught my eye, hoping to find something interesting about them. When I did I was sometimes told I didn't have the necessary permissions to view - a default message when there's a search error I expect.

So then I started searching manually for those usernames, the ones earlier searches didn't find. Often the new search would find the username but clicking on it then indicated no such member. I didn't check all such entries but I was somewhat surprised that a member shown as visiting the website actually had no entry in the listing of members anyway. :confused:

Additionally I found some members registered for a couple of years or more who showed no postings in that whole time but had apparently visited today. That's understandable, though, because some members never post and they visit just to read.

The site's membership statistics indicate over 203 thousand members with perhaps 12% being 'active'. (no indication what 'active' means) The first figure is likely to be the total number of registrations ever made, many of which may have never become active members, however defined. The nearly 2,800 members is still an impressive total but how many might the site be misidentifying as 'active', I wonder?

I love figures. :biggrin:

Hello

Sadly there are "Spammers" that get into that part of the site but do not have an open account. I have a filter in Admin that stops them that far.

Lynn

bobjob,

you seem to have a very good analytical mind.
I have noticed some oddities such as you mentioned and then there are some who are spammers as Lynn mentioned.

I am glad to see others mention this abnormalities......

When I read "phantom members" I thought you're referring to what amputees experience, and to Kirlian photography ...

thanks :smile:

Someone recently had a pop at me, asking me whether I 'over-analyse'. I said I don't think I do but sometimes I notice 'stuff' that looks odd.

I don't know how or why the website's counters log a visit along against a username when the member database includes no such member. :confused:

I don't allow spammers on my site.

I see why.... That's an interesting subject. :smile:

An unscientific, quick look this morning - 00:00 PST, UK 8 o'clock breakfast.

I counted 9 'phantom' visits recorded out of 27 usernames on the first two lines; a total of 150 visits had been recorded 'today'. (I don't know if today began at midnight UK - probably as it's a Brit-located server.)

So - expressing it differently - a third of the entries on the first couple of lines of visitors were 'voids'. Visits logged against usernames presumably (I didn't check today) not in the member database.

I expect there's a sound reason but the picture looks odd.

I have seen numerous bogus names that look almost the same. For example:
Victorrwr
Victorgvc
Victorjfj

It's not a surprise there are such similar names but I don't understand how visits are attributed to them if they're not in the member database.

Maybe it's just that the website software counts all visits, even those from names no longer recorded in the member database?

I have no idea!!!!