Number of users online

[SEmert]

I've noticed recently that there is always an extraordinarily high number of unregistered users online on the forums. As in, one registered user (me) and 35 unregistered users (one me, before signing in + 34 others) in the last 15 minutes. I'm guessing that may be all the bots or spammers that are going to the forums and trying to log in to post the spam sales posts like we were getting before Clayton had to lock down registrations to manual approval again. Good guess, or bad?

[clayton]

If you have permission You can follow the WHO IS ONLINE link at the bottom of the page. It lists registered users then the guest users. Currently as I just checked most of the bots are from SemRushBot and ahrefsbot and a few other crawlers. These are what the browsers are claiming they could be misrepresenting and be malicious.

[FF2Rydia]

Web crawler bots was my guess.

[Deane Clark]

At first glance, I currently see just me and 1 guest at the bottom of the page. But when I click WHO IS ONLINE, then Display Guests, I see like 44 guests, half of which it claims are on the user control panel. Perhaps attempting to log in or register?

[FF2Rydia]

When I look from the forum index page, it shows me and 84 guests. Looking at who is online, there's me, one guest looking at the Radio Astronomy SIG, and the rest looking at either the index page or the user control panel.

[SEmert]

Yeah, when I looked early this morning there were none besides myself, but when I checked again mid day there were a bunch, with a similar profile. So, more likely actual people rather than bots, perhaps, and it is suspicious that so many are looking at the user control panel. Trying to hack passwords, perhaps?

[Deane Clark]

Note that when I looked, it was 1:43 am and there were still 44 guests. Those aren’t real people.

[SEmert]

Those aren’t real people.

But are we really "real"? What is "real"? Do we really exist physically, or is it all a simulation? Does the world exist outside our minds? Does the present exist, or are we all living a few milliseconds in the past as we process our sensory input? Does anybody know what time it is? Does anybody really care? Maybe it's 25... or 6 to 4! Is 42 actually the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything?

Anyway, enough of this nonsense! Happy Holidays, all!

[Deane Clark]

Maybe the better question is “what is “online””. They could be stale entries for guests who haven’t been on the site for hours for all I know.