You're probably aware of the count at the bottom of the board index/info center as to the number of 'online users' on the site and in particular the peak number online per day.
I'm wondering what people would say about removing that. You're probably thinking it's a big deal, but hear me out before you shout me down in flames, I think removing it would have some merit.
1. The figure is inaccurate. It's counting the 'number of unique visitors at a time'. Except multiple search bots bump that figure up, since Google, Bing and Baidu all send multiple bots at a time visiting the site.
2. If you do care about the statistics, odds are you'll be using Google Analytics or similar anyway, which will give you quite different figures.
3. The number of signed in users at once can always be obtained with relative accuracy but the number of guests, not so much.
4. Making the requirement for sessions on guests go away solves the bulk of the EU Cookie Law problem, as well as all of the PHPSESSID problems for search engines.
5. It would also make things quite a bit leaner on the DB side, with a lot of stuff just not having to be done dealing with sessions etc.
On the other hand, we are talking about a stat that people do rely on for gauging activity, and one that people frequently attempt to lie about on their forums to make them appear busier than they actually are. (Something I will strongly discourage in any event, it's unnecessary and you will be found out in the end)
Nao has suggested using IP addresses to identify users, and while I'm against the idea on several grounds (notably concerning privacy and technical accuracy), the odds are it would give you as meaningful a number as the current number is.
Add to that, that you can tweak the boundaries of 'what's online being based on' (e.g. number of users in the last 10 minutes vs number of users in the last 30, is obviously going to skew things) and people then proceed to lie about that. Seems to me that by cutting all that out and being done with it, you actually gain more than you lose, since really you're just losing a number that means basically squat in the real world.
There is a side concern: those of you who regularly watch Who's Online to see what people are doing, you'd be restricted to signed-in users only. I realise that some of you will have concerns over this, like those who sit and watch Who's Online for those trying to register, only to go look up on SFS or similar... I'm not convinced that's a particularly useful pastime anyway, but that would be cut out.
So, all that considered, you lose the ability to watch guests, watch what they're looking at 'right now' (though of course you can review the server logs if you're that bothered, and of course other stats are still maintained like topic view count), and you'd lose this vague stat, but you'd gain speed, some SEO boosts of sorts and you'd be far closer to compliance with the EU cookie laws that are coming in.
Let me know what you think, and we'll go from there.
I'm wondering what people would say about removing that. You're probably thinking it's a big deal, but hear me out before you shout me down in flames, I think removing it would have some merit.
1. The figure is inaccurate. It's counting the 'number of unique visitors at a time'. Except multiple search bots bump that figure up, since Google, Bing and Baidu all send multiple bots at a time visiting the site.
2. If you do care about the statistics, odds are you'll be using Google Analytics or similar anyway, which will give you quite different figures.
3. The number of signed in users at once can always be obtained with relative accuracy but the number of guests, not so much.
4. Making the requirement for sessions on guests go away solves the bulk of the EU Cookie Law problem, as well as all of the PHPSESSID problems for search engines.
5. It would also make things quite a bit leaner on the DB side, with a lot of stuff just not having to be done dealing with sessions etc.
On the other hand, we are talking about a stat that people do rely on for gauging activity, and one that people frequently attempt to lie about on their forums to make them appear busier than they actually are. (Something I will strongly discourage in any event, it's unnecessary and you will be found out in the end)
Nao has suggested using IP addresses to identify users, and while I'm against the idea on several grounds (notably concerning privacy and technical accuracy), the odds are it would give you as meaningful a number as the current number is.
Add to that, that you can tweak the boundaries of 'what's online being based on' (e.g. number of users in the last 10 minutes vs number of users in the last 30, is obviously going to skew things) and people then proceed to lie about that. Seems to me that by cutting all that out and being done with it, you actually gain more than you lose, since really you're just losing a number that means basically squat in the real world.
There is a side concern: those of you who regularly watch Who's Online to see what people are doing, you'd be restricted to signed-in users only. I realise that some of you will have concerns over this, like those who sit and watch Who's Online for those trying to register, only to go look up on SFS or similar... I'm not convinced that's a particularly useful pastime anyway, but that would be cut out.
So, all that considered, you lose the ability to watch guests, watch what they're looking at 'right now' (though of course you can review the server logs if you're that bothered, and of course other stats are still maintained like topic view count), and you'd lose this vague stat, but you'd gain speed, some SEO boosts of sorts and you'd be far closer to compliance with the EU cookie laws that are coming in.
Let me know what you think, and we'll go from there.
