What does "viewing" mean?

robatwork

eg:

In my home (includes DIY) MoneySaving (738 Viewing)

What's the timeout value on this figure? For example does this mean "738 different IP addresses have viewed a post on this forum in the last 10 minutes"?

Or "738 different usernames have listed or seen a post on this forum in the last 30 minutes"?

etc

thanks

grumbler

I don't think that there is no any 'timeout'.
Most likely it's based on the most recent activities of all connected users.

robatwork

But there must be a timeout. If I looked at a thread 7 days ago and then closed MSE, would that still count as an active viewer?

fermi

If you navigate away without visiting any other forum page outside that board then I believe the timeout is the default session timeout set for the forum. 40mins I think.

grumbler

robatwork wrote: »

But there must be a timeout. If I looked at a thread 7 days ago and then closed MSE, would that still count as an active viewer?

If you closed MSE then you aren't connected anymore.

fermi

grumbler wrote: »

If you closed MSE then you aren't connected anymore.

The forum doesn't know that you've closed the webpage/site though.

All it knows is where and when the last page you loaded was. On closing the site without logging out that is where the forum will have your location and activity until the session timeout is reached.

fermi2

For example, I closed my browser I was logged in with. The forum does not know I did that. It still sees me as doing that last thing I did before that at 8:59pm



if I don't come back it will remain showing me as that until the 40min session timeout is reached, at which point it switches to just saying when my last activity was and showing as not logged in.

grumbler

Are you sure?
Can it not know that you logged off and show your last recorded activity at the same time?

That said, I am not sure that logged in members only are counted as 'viewers', not all visitors as well.

fermi

Yes, as the vBulletin variables that record where you are and what activity are only valid for your profile while you have an active or non timed out login session.

grumbler

Well, at list one variable seems to be for guests:

Currently Active Users: 9006 (1160 members and 7846 guests)

Out of interest I summed up all 'Viewing' (not very meticulously), and it is ~8500 - whatever this means.

It is possible that ~7K users navigated away within the last 40 minutes and vBulletin still counts them as 'viewing', but this doesn't make much sense to me.

fermi

Sorry, at cross purposes I think. I was referring to the activity shown against a user in their profile. Think I phrased it badly.

Guests are tracked and included in those figures, not just users who have logged out.

Same in the how many are viewing this forum stats against each sub-board, although I think there is a bit of a lag in those stats here. MSE techies tell me the main forum index is "heavily cached" whatever that means.