Current Online Users !! WTF !!!

Gizzz !!

This is incredible !

go to www.secondlife.com (ensure that you have been logged on already).

You will see the count of current online users now...

Ok, try to refresh 30 in 30 seconds !

The counts changes aparently in a radom number !! at least to me !

from 47000 to 59000 online users.

It's worked that way for a long time, the stats are cached to pages that get updated at slightly different times. But recently the concurrency numbers have been updated a _lot_ more slowly, so the differences are out there to wave hi notice me!

Natural fluctuation plus an army of bots logging in and out?



Or borkiness


Yes, or just the effects of trying to spread the load on the website

I made another test...

Instead refresh my browser...

I started secondlife client to see the Current Online Users.The I closed and opened so many times !

The result: The same: Randon numbers bw 49000 to 59000 !!

And no, this is not natural.

When I said 30 seconds to refresh the browser..was just a suggestion..try to do it 5 in 5 seconds.Impossible floats up to 5000 users for each 5 seconds.

It's really random to me

Yes, it's natural, and the numbers aren't random, just snapshots from different times. The concurrency on the web pages has been cached for years like that, the big difference is that the three minute refresh has stretched out to much longer than that. It's apparently some load reduction thing that yields ugly results.

Nah..I cannot accept this...

"Current Online Users" cannot be snapshots...Don't make any sense.

Current is Current.It's present.Must be real time or at least near by Real time.

Why this is happen now ?

Here is the back end page, if you refresh it you will see the different time stamps because the snapshots are not made synchronously.

http://secondlife.com/xmlhttp/homepage.php

They're using ferret time!

I see

the InWord tag always display a different number for each refresh.However the numbers usually is the same

Henry is right. It's different this time, and it was different yesterday too. Normally, the spread of numbers isn't as wide as it has been yesterday and today. Not only that, but yesterday it didn't reach 60k. As someone already suggested - it's borked.

It's only updating one or two of the caches each round, there are several. And those updates only happen once an hour, so the spread is several hours. With that infrequent a sample you're going to miss a lot and get ugly results. But that seems to be what they want, this is what it has been doing for weeks now.

No it hasn't Viktoria. Yesterday and today have been very different to normal. I've had the front page open for over 3 weeks except when I sleep - since the bots policy came into effect, and I know it returns several numbers, but the numbers are normally within a relatively small range, and I'm used to the sort of spread that's returned. I assure you that yesterday and today it's been borked. Either that, or a hell of a lot fewer avs logged in - up to 20k fewer - and that doesn't seem reasonable.

Yes it has Phil, I have been tracking this for weeks. And I have been looking at the back end, not just the results that filter through to the front page.

I'm only talking about the front page, and the numbers returned on the front page yesterday and today have been *very* much different to what they've normally been over the last 3 weeks and more - up to 20k lower than normal, and a much wider spread. I'm sorry, but it's true.

If you have the numbers for the last few weeks, would you post a list of the peak for each day please, because it's normally been reaching 79k, but yesterday it didn't reach 60k, and today is very much like yesterday.

I think we may be experiencing a minor effect of a time loop occurring most likly on a distant
planet. This effect is most likely being caused by an improper use of a stargate. Hey at least we
are not experiencing the whole day over and over...or are we?

I feel uniquely qualified to suggest this as I just watched an episode on this subject.

I dunno about this spread stuff but 20k less bots doesn't seem entirely unreasonable. Some of the more lightweight camping farms have shut down although I pointed a few of my more direct cometitors (top of "rent land" on places) to the blog entry and they all told me to screw off.

The idea did occur to me that the very low peaks of yesterday and today are the result of Jack's camping blog, but I can't see that it would cause a 20 thousand reduction. I suppose it could though. We'll see in a few days - whether there's something that they'll fix or not.

I don't see the sudden reduction being due to bots though. There was already a reduction between 5k and 10k (ish), and I don't see any reason why another 20k should suddenly occur yesterday - unless they suddenly hit a load of smaller bot users, whilst leaving the bigger users alone.

Yeah, I've gotta admit it seems more likely to be a bug than some sort of fantastic bot banning sweep.

Oh don't tell me that I've got to open up Map and drag it around to count all the green dots ---- AGAIN!!!!

You don't have time to do that. You have to keep your eye on the Camping blog, in case there's anything you can chip in with

Don't know if this means anything significant, but I signed on twice yesterday about 12 hours apart, and both times it stated the current online users as 55,555

This is all very explainable.

The higher, more intelligent, dangerous bots are exterminating the older, more loyal bots.

Once that situation is resolved, they will lead us all into a far more efficient, future.

I, for one, welcome our new bot overlords.

It does mean something - it's borked

All today, it's been flipping between the same few numbers, the spread being 47k - 59k.

If you see it at 66,666 ............

Oh, bloody hell. Just as I'd posted that, we have a new number - 70,828. I suspect they've just fixed it, because that number is realistic for this time of day/evening/night wherever you are.