Hey there,

I have been wanting to ask this for some time now. And I know this isn't the only site that fudges it's popularity, but..........

I think we all know that there aren't really **3349 artists currently online
**Why inflate the numbers? To me "currently" means right this moment.
"Artist" I would assume are members, not multiple open windows.

Rendo, and any site can do what it wants, but an adnaced piece like bondware must be capable of accuratly knowing who is really currently online. So how many people are actually online and how is that silly large number calculated, and on what time restraints.

I am just curious, because looking at it makes me wonder how many people are really here at the same time.

Cheers.

Sorry for the odd collors. :) The message box kept imposing a background color I couldn't get rid of no matter what I did.

Most other forum-type sites, in graphics and elsewhere, list how many
members are "currently browsing forums", which gives a more believable number.

The WHO is online gives a aprox. 1000  people ..so 2500 fantom people ...

I suppose the phantoms are people who are currently "logged in" but
not actually looking at Rendo ...?

Quote - I suppose the phantoms are people who are currently "logged in" but
not actually looking at Rendo ...?

But they are ONLINE here so they should be in the whos online ... and thats 1000 strong ;}

Well I'm permanently logged in but not always browsing the site so I guess the system will show I'm on-line but I'm not really!!

I wonder if it is a count of people, who auto-log in, who have visited within a few hours, a day, etc? My curiosity is what is causing the number shown to be inflated. And how that number is tracked.

I'll gove a few examples. Ef recently changed the COntent Paradise forums to still list people viewing to the past hour. So the number viewing any forum is actually the number of people over the last hour.

Another example: A year or two ago the Daz forums suffered a sever glitch and listed everyone who has visited the store/forums over around a  week or so. (Side note: three of us spent a day counting names. checking duplicates, etc. The total was around 3,000)

Anyone have any ideas?

 I hope they're not counting me. I'm no artist, I'm an engineer. :unsure:

I've often wondered about the same thing too for years. So I thought... Sponsors wanna see BIG numbers if they visit a site that they've paid good money to advertise on. If that's what Renderosity (and others like it) wanna do, that's O.K. with me. Must be that new math. wink

The line xxxx artists currently online always makes me laugh....... Perhaps some of them are artists, but the majority sure isn't and that includes me :-)

I always thought that number lists lurkers and unregistered people... 
Gallery browsers and image strealers, freebie harvesters, marketplace lookie-loos.
I gatehr that wit some more popular forums there's usuallt two to three lurkers to each active 'poster'. 
Perhaps that may make sense, I know that of the several forums where I'm active, there's just as many sites and forums where I periodically pop in to see what's new, but where I have never posted. I'm not talking about Rendo forums, but other major sites (3D and non-3d related).

Even on Rendo, I've been a registered lurker (at least several times a week) since '03, but have only become active user (gallery, posts etc) in only last couple of years. I lurked for at least another couple of years before registering... I remeber discovering Rendo when I acquired Bryce I think it was Bryce 3.

Even that 1000 probably 2/3'rds of them are on high speed and just have a window open. Unlike us on dial up that have to close our connections often.

Just my assumptions to this theme.

Renderosity is based on WWW pages. A web page is sent when there is a request to send one, there is no ongoing "connection" Renderosity could use. I click on a link, a web page is sent to me.
Renderosity uses cookies to see which user is which. Guests get cookies as well, so Renderosity's numbers most probably will include guests as well.

So, someone who get a Page delivered is online, and will be counted as online until a timeout is reached. If he requests another page, the timeout is reset.

So if the "Who's online" gives 1000 people, the other 2500 will be guests. If they followed a link leading here, they will be counted as "online Artist" until the timeout is reached. If that timeout is 5 minutes, 5 Hours or 5 days, I don't know. But you cannot see who is looking at a web site, not even if the web browser is still open. The only thing sites like Renderosity know is that there was one identifyable user or guest ordering a web site some time ago.

Does that help?

If you look for "Visitor" in the Who's On Line list you'll see a large session, count which is what boosts the number shown.

For some of the actual members logged in you'll see a seesion count of more than 1 due to multiple IE windows (or multiple browsers).

The figures are a lie. I mean, I'm not even here while typing this yet rendo thinks I am!

No seriously, I think it does include the guests as well as the members. It's actually something I have thought about before because there generally seems to be around 2 - 3,500. Surely sometimes this would sink really low & have the occasional high yet the figures seem pretty constant.

Also, I bet there's more than just me who has an idle Rendo page open. I can be away from the site for ages & yet I'll still be logged in.

I am guilty of not always logging out so I appear here all the time.

Quote - Also, I bet there's more than just me who has an idle Rendo page open. I can be away from the site for ages & yet I'll still be logged in.

Yeah, me too. Go to work, and leave Rendo open on a computer or two at home.

I ain't an artiste either, but there's no selection in profile for "non-artist"  :crying:
but anyway, it doesn't harm me if they refer to the other 3299 "forum weasels"* as
"artists".

*descriptive phrase coined by ironbear

I close my web browser without logging out nor clearing the cache nor deleting cookies - so those times would be when I'm still at Renderosity.

Quote - I close my web browser without logging out ...

What they count are sessions which usually have an inactivity timeout (appears to be 25 to 30 mins) so not logging out doesn't matter.

psst! You'll find that if you look at the who's online listings, the vast majority are named "Visitor". ;)

/P

I read once that every browser window you open here counts as a separate visitor, which would make me three artists currently if true.

Does it really matter?  For the record, I'm more or less on-line from Sundays to Fridays.  Saturdays I give it all a rest.
DPH

Quote -
Renderosity is based on WWW pages. A web page is sent when there is a request to send one, there is no ongoing "connection" Renderosity could use.

Rendo doesn't do it, but there is a way to keep a "constant" connection...www.drudgereport.com uses it - you put in a piece of JavaScript to request a page refresh every x seconds. ;)

/P

That would be a reason to leave the site. This generates unessesary traffic, keeps my computer busy and generates even more unaccurate results. When I leave my computer, Renderosity counts me out after 30 minutes. The site you mentioned would keep polling and counting me as online until I close the browser.

Awfull.

Well 24 minutes idle seems to be the longest listed in "Who's Online".  And multiple usernames don't help either.

Perhaps we can have a "Logout Day". Just to see if the numbers vastly drop.

What does it matter how many people there are here at one time anyway... it's not a chat room... I don't need to catch up with anyone here through this site... I browse like any other site I go to... thee could a trillion people on line at one time here... it wouldn't change the way I use the site... what a silly question... I mean... would your use of the site change if you were the only person showing... I think the number is randomly generrated so we can ask silly question like this. The sites popularity is based on it's layout, products for sale, ease of use... not how many people are on line. Leave it, change it or delete it... wouldn't make any difference to me.

It only matters if it is a topic of interest, which should be a given.  You obviously found it interesting enough to come read, and then post.  Is that silly?

That is the beauty of diverisity. Everyone is interested in something different and hopefully free to discuss it.

Free yes... I so love that word! Good point Anton!

It also feeds into the question of how many active Poser users there actually are out there - sometimes it feels like we're a very small bunch for such a cool concept as the Poser proggie and associated 3rd Party products.

Cheers

Quote -
It also feeds into the question of how many active Poser users there actually are out there -

In the end, it boils down to the % of the population actively interested in 3D art, and what remaining amount of that percentage prefers our medium.

Active Online Poser users and at home users are always different; which of course also differs from the amount using free content versus commercial content.

And then there are the warez kitties and torrent users. Daz Studio and Poser mostly share the same user base numbers, being there is so much cross-over.

-Roughly there has always been about 25,000+ people who upgrade to each version of Poser.
I do know Poser 6 pre-order amounts across multiple outlets was massive, outselling previous versions.

-The amount of downloaded or installed copies of various versions top over 100,000, though not necessarily used regularly, etc. Daz has quoted around that amount for Studio downloads, which is comparable to those who have Poser. I think many may have both, though they may use only one.

-Although sites might also tend to inflate online users, not counting clones, abondoned accounts, or those who come back one once every few months, the average Online user count (meaning people who float around weekly to monthly), has consistently stayed around 5,000 for several years; which is quite good actually and never has been anything to be ashamed of. There are more, of course, but some are only occasional online buyers or participants, so the people who make up that amount can rotate at any given time, being new people come as old people go.

Obviously there are those who would disagree, but they usually have never had access to any actual data. It does noone any favors to over-inflate anything; except to ease some need.

Yeah well. :) Hey we all like 3d art then right?

I love tracking this type of stuff; a side hobby following Poserdom.

Here is a good example. Notice that when Daz added their forums, the traffic really harmonized between Rendo and Daz. Over the years, they, like other poser sites go up and down together because it is all the same user base; althought traffic doesn't equal revenue.

Is excalibur for the newsletter? Anyone know?

• renderosity.com - 79%
• market.renderosity.com - 20%
• excalibur.renderosity.com - 1%

Quote -
-Although sites might also tend to inflate online users, not counting clones, abondoned accounts, or those who come back one once every few months, the average Online user count (meaning people who float around weekly to monthly), has consistently stayed around 5,000 for several years; which is quite good actually and never has been anything to be ashamed of. There are more, of course, but some are only occasional online buyers or participants, so the people who make up that amount can rotate at any given time, being new people come as old people go.

There's a solid reason that sites tend to, shall we say... "round up" their hit counts:

Advertising $$$.

Sites like Drudge Report (which actually does get several million actual visitors a day) can charge a metric ton of money for banner ad space/rotation, whereas The Blog of Death (picked at random from page 'way-the-hell-back-there' on Google) couldn't hope to charge any more than what an advertiser is willing to blow on Petty Cash.

The more eyeballs you can credibly claim, the bigger the per-click payday you can expect.

Why else do you think Renderosity bothers to count a couple of thousand folks named "Visitor" as unique sessions? (incidentally, each actual member generates an additional session for every window they have open. For instance, when I show up, I usually have two tabs open for giggles - Free Stuff, and the fora. That counts as two right off the bat, plus any additional tabs opened for specific topics and the like).

Not saying it's good or bad, just saying that it is.

/P

Quote - What does it matter how many people there are here at one time anyway....

Doesn't really matter here, but it can matter in other circumstances. I once attended a meeting of the IT oversight committee where I work. Some tech guy was presenting figures of what people did on their work internet connection. He proudly showed how one user was logged on to the BBC web site for 8 hours, which caused much muttering along the lines of 'something must be done to get him to do some real work rather than surfing the net'.

So I asked how he knew the offender had been on the BBC site that long. Tech guy says, well, he went on it at 9 am and logged off his PC at 5 pm, and didn't change web sites all that time. So I said maybe the chap had looked at the site for 30 seconds then left his PC for the rest of the day and went to do some  work, and did he know what a 'stateless' system was. Because if not all the stats he'd presented were useless. Cue murderous look from tech guy...

sounds like someones bucking for BOFH..;)
For that matter, I've downloaded Apollo at least 3 times; 1 for archive, 1 for use, and 1 when my C drive went kerblooie...;)

I'm hardly an artist...;)

Well you can never have enough copies. :) USB thumb drives are very handy. I highly recommend them.

Quote - He proudly showed how one user was logged on to the BBC web site for 8 hours, which caused much muttering along the lines of 'something must be done to get him to do some real work rather than surfing the net'.

ROTFL... dude was/is a flaming idiot.

The only way you can tell what and where someone goes ("how long" would be at best a rough guesstimate) is to force the company through proxy servers, then grep the access logs for a user's IP addy. Then you start reading what you scraped out of the logs.

I remember having a live tail of the proxy log at the classroom when I taught - it was priceless to see the look on some kid's face during lab time when I reminded him/her (w/o leaving the desk) that surfing a non-curriculum site was a waste of his time. Some would try to bluff their way out of it... until I recited the URL out-loud. ;)

A sysadmin does have some control over knowing what, where, and how... but it takes a bit of scripting, some services in-place, and just a little bit of an eye for knowing what to look for. :)

/P

Antons right - I've been analsying the demographics for some uni stuff and according to EF (when it was EFand before SM) their marketing folks reckoned 300,00 Poser users (1 sale= 1 user) . Daz reckons 70k for studio (it's on their site somewhere).

Do some amazing mathamatical wizardy - you knock a nought off :) It's roughly 30K Poser users and 7-10 for studio.  

The ladies beat us chaps by 55-45%....
And one thing we've all known for years, most of us are a bunch of perverts :) 
Working mainly in soft-core/fantasy and SF. Fan arts is big as well. 

Quote - Well, the attached screenshot is all I see.

That tends to happen when people use the colouring options that the forum editor has.

Here's what the OP said, sans colouring:-

Quote - Hey there,

I have been wanting to ask this for some time now. And I know this isn't the only site that fudges it's popularity, but..........

I think we all know that there aren't really **3349 artists currently online
**Why inflate the numbers? To me "currently" means right this moment.
"Artist" I would assume are members, not multiple open windows.

Rendo, and any site can do what it wants, but an adnaced piece like bondware must be capable of accuratly knowing who is really currently online. So how many people are actually online and how is that silly large number calculated, and on what time restraints.

I am just curious, because looking at it makes me wonder how many people are really here at the same time.

Cheers.

Often you can just highlight the text (as if you were going to cut and paste) and see what's there, if that doesn't work you can always look at the page source.

Quote - And one thing we've all known for years, most of us are a bunch of perverts :)  

lol

I remember Rendo's site update and for about 2-3 weeks the actual number of people online at one time was posted.  During that time most I ever saw online here at one time was 750 people.  mostly it was 300-500 people and you could watch the number live go up and down.

then they fixed some "problems" with the site and suddenly the numbers were back up to 2k-3k online everyday.

Quote -
Often you can just highlight the text (as if you were going to cut and paste) and see what's there, if that doesn't work you can always look at the page source.

Thanks hon,  yes I know to highlight.  I'm just pointing out that creativity belongs in art, not coloring the forum posts.  :)