Currently Active Users

How Many?

[000Eric000]

Why doesn't WebmasterWorld have a Currently Active Users section at the bottom of webmasterworld.com/home.htm? Another very popular forum has this (as most do) and there are often nearly 1000 active users sometimes. I bet WebmasterWorld has even more than that at any given time.

[lazerzubb]

privacy.

[DaveN]

who cares how many people are active?, WebmasterWorld is about helping people find solutions to their problems not how many people I need to help today or hoe many peoplE can help me.

IT'S JUST A WASTE OF BANDWIDTH

Dave

[DaveN]

oops ...And welcome to WebmasterWorld

Dave

[chris_f]

Most forums only have this to show off. WebmasterWorld doesn't need to :).

In short, what Lazerzubb said. I wouldn't want people to know when I'm online. Also, I the mods were included then people could find a time when there were no mods and spam the hell out of the forum.

Chris

[incywincy]

on the other hand why care about google's size of index? they don't have to show off their figures, they know they're number 1 so why publish its size? perhaps because users/webmasters are interested, just as eric is about WebmasterWorld

anyhow what are the privacy concerns? if there are 200 participants of WebmasterWorld at the moment who knows their identities?

if there are a lot of participants in a forum the better the chance of getting a QUICK reply so a count of current participants could be a pointer to potential response times.

i think you're being a bit unkind to eric!

[DaveN]

I did post a welcome message and my post most probaly did not come over the correct way, WebmasterWorld is about the community not the size of the community that just the wat I feel.

I don't care if google has 3 billion or 3 million pages as long my sites are still in there. "GG don't be offend" ;)

Dave

[lazerzubb]

It's funny the site who is just over WebmasterWorld in alexa ranking reports that they currectly have 20000 users online (Not visitors, loged in users), maybe brett should report the names of all the WebmasterWorld users online, how about a 1 gig html file with all the users online :)

>> Also, I the mods were included then people could find a time when there were no mods and spam the hell out of the forum.

Don't worry Chris there is ALWAYS MODS AND ADMINS ONLINE!

[dvduval]

I think bandwidth and CPU usage is a good answer. Historically, these forums would get slow or unresponsive when a Google update was taking place. Brett has also removed post counts. I think it's all about displaying what is pertinent to the topic at hand and very little else.

[ShawnR]

Hi Eric, and welcome to WebmasterWorld!

Like all of the people who posted above me, I don't knoe the answer, and anything I give would just be conjecture.

I thought I'd share the following with you, though:

Whenever you ask a question starting with "Why don't ...?" people have an instinctive reaction to become defensive. i.e. They start thinking in terms of answering the question. i.e. "Because...". They don't start thinking "Hmmm, let me think about that as an idea" because they are too busy trying to help you - i.e. they are trying as hard as they can to answer your question.

It is a bit of psychological phenomenon, and works that way for 2 reasons: Firstly because you are asking a question, so people are instinctively trying to answer you. Secondly "Why don't ..." or "Why didn't ..." invokes people to justify their past action, so for no good reason they may become defensive and try to invent reasons which they have no way of knowing the truth of.

Another way of posing a suggestion is "How about..."

Hey, but that is just my take on things... :)

[000Eric000]

Thanks for all the replies. Before asking the question, I assumed WebmasterWorld just didn't want to show off or perhaps didn't want users logged in just so that their nick (and thus their profile with URL) would be in "lights".

Great insight Shaun, your right!

Alexa determines its ranking soley from those who have installed their toolbar if I'm not mistaken. It's useful information none the less, unfortunately there's nothing else like it that I'm aware of.

Post counts no longer being displayed should probably be rethought. Although not necessarily a measure of credibility, I liked it and I bet most others do too.

[ShawnR]

"...Post counts no longer being displayed should probably be rethought..."

Press your ear against the door, and we can listen in on the discussion here: [webmasterworld.com...]

[Birdman]

Ala GoogleGuy: "More than hundreds...less than millions" :)