Who are all the Guests?

[Pancake]

Ever notice how many “guests” are listed at the bottom of the forum? Is there any way to tell which are real people and which are ... I don’t even know the terms, but bots or spammers or accidental search engine hits? Are there stats on how long the guests stay, or how deeply they explore? I remember my blog had some simple analysis of that.

At least one of the guests is often me. I often browse without logging in. I do that more in VVO than I did it SLU, though I’m not sure why. Perhaps the UI just makes it appealing enough that the only reason to log in is to post?

I do feel, based purely on anecdotal observation, that the ratio of logged in user to guest is much higher here than in SLU. Sure we used to get guests, hundreds on them when there was a hot thread or link back, but there always seems to be a lot of guests here in VVO compared to logged in members, 10x as many. Am I just remembering wrong? Or is there something in this software that attracts more “guest” visits?

 

[Essence Lumin]

I don't know the answers to your questions but -

At least one of the guests is often me. I often browse without logging in. I do that more in VVO than I did it SLU, though I’m not sure why. Perhaps the UI just makes it appealing enough that the only reason to log in is to post?

That would make me crazy, because I usually want to view unread posts which is impossible if I'm not logged in.

 

[Pancake]

I don't know the answers to your questions but -



That would make me crazy, because I usually want to view unread posts which is impossible if I'm not logged in.

I would have agreed wholeheartedly in SLU, but for some reason my workflow changed with the new platform. Maybe it’s just because it’s new, or because I hadn’t been very active in SLU for some time before the switch, or because there haven’t been a lot of fast moving multi page topics in VVO yet where I needed to keep track of unread.

I just select “new posts” from the menu to see the most recently updated threads, and when I open them I just jump to last page. Occasionally I might have to back one page, but it hasn’t been too bad.

One advantage is not having the same level of OCD I had about keeping my Unread posts cleaned up. I used to log in and start by opening every topic of interest, then manually marking the rest as read, and putting some sub forums on ignore so they wouldn’t show as unread in my list. I needed to have a fresh “unread” list every log in. I’m odd, I know.

 

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

How Much of the Internet Is Fake?

Fake people with fake cookies and fake social-media accounts, fake-moving their fake cursors, fake-clicking on fake websites — the fraudsters had essentially created a simulacrum of the internet, where the only real things were the ads.

lol

 

[Dakota Tebaldi]

How Much of the Internet Is Fake?

lol

See now and the thing is if these people hadn't done this to enrich themselves, but had like, say, created a new type of browser ad-blocker that redirected ad videos to some empty website or sandbox with virtual engagers, so that to the ad company nothing looked amiss and the hosting website still got paid for the view, but the individual web surfer never had to actually see the ads, these people would be heroes of the internet.

 

[Soen Eber]

I thought it was just Selenium running a test script.

Oh, wait. Did I just hand out information on how the average user could do the same thing and totally devastate the ad based Internet economy, or at least the sleazy ads people really want to diaf?

My bad.

 

[Dakota Tebaldi]

I thought it was just Selenium running a test script.

Oh, wait. Did I just hand out information on how the average user could do the same thing and totally devastate the ad based Internet economy, or at least the sleazy ads people really want to diaf?

Very first line at the very top of the page:

Selenium automates browsers. That's it! What you do with that power is entirely up to you.

Yeah that doesn't sound like a deniability disclaimer at all... ^^

 

[Essence Lumin]

Very first line at the very top of the page:



Yeah that doesn't sound like a deniability disclaimer at all... ^^

I see your point though at one time I wanted to learn Selenium for benign purposes. I never got around to it though.

 

[Free]

Ever notice how many “guests” are listed at the bottom of the forum? Is there any way to tell which are real people and which are ... I don’t even know the terms, but bots or spammers or accidental search engine hits? Are there stats on how long the guests stay, or how deeply they explore? I remember my blog had some simple analysis of that.

In relation to spammers, the number of those who are not logged in would be extremely small, considering you can't spam if you're not logged in.

For the rest, that would all depend on what Cris wants to make public.

 

[Noodles]

How Much of the Internet Is Fake?



lol

This reminds me of a thread I saw ages ago on the tech forum of 4chan. It was basically instructions on how to create a Blogger blog with AdSense, post a link for everyone else to collect, then automate a VM on how to just click around and load up the dummy content stolen from elsewhere, to rake in AdSense money.

 

[Cristiano]

I have no way of discerning who the guests are, but I do know that number is set to filter out robots that identify as such, like the search engine bots that constantly scan sites. The active user count right now is lower on VVO, but it had declined on SLU because of performance and I'm sure a lot of people are still unaware of the new site. The guest numbers are similar to what I saw on SLU, however. Nothing unusual.

 

[Amigo Uriza]

I do feel, based purely on anecdotal observation, that the ratio of logged in user to guest is much higher here than in SLU. Sure we used to get guests, hundreds on them when there was a hot thread or link back, but there always seems to be a lot of guests here in VVO compared to logged in members, 10x as many. Am I just remembering wrong? Or is there something in this software that attracts more “guest” visits?

Xenforo 2.0 is more optimized than old vb3 for SEO. That should bring more traffic to the site.