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I feel, as most of you probably would, that the number of members on-line is a good indicator of a forums level of activity. Do you think it might be a helpful strategy to encourage -at least veteran- members not to log out when they walk away from the board, and thus appear online? Or to set the members on-line auto refresh to several hours or more?

Every little bit helps.

B.

I don't think it's good to judge a forum by the no. of people online at a time.
Because, i know a few forums who cheat guests by showing wrong statistics. Well, they, show Users online Since past 15 minutes, but change the coing to make an hour. Some even do that for a day or 2.

So, if you ask your members not to log-out, some may feel cheated.

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Although it sometimes works to my disadvantage, I do feel honesty is the best policy. The reason I posed this question, is that a Mod approached me on one of my boards and suggested this.
Personally I think the use of such tactics as the: ' Fake forum statistics' hack, over at v.org -is a bad strategy; apart from the fact that any idiot can identify its use through its many flaws.

I wonder what the standard for members online auto refresh -in minutes- would be, particularly among the various Admins. of this particular community.


B.

Showing those users online wouldn't do any thing great, sure it will make it look like that quite a few members are online, but without posting that is worthless!

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I agree that posting and content is the the key to create more interest but I think it does help a lot to keep members "online" a bit more, especially on small forums.
I don't think that doing this you cheat anybody. Those members were actually there, even if they were half an houre ago.
95% of my members don't know that if they log out, their username will be disappeared from members on-line list. They just closing their browser's window and they walk away, so I guess I don't have to tell them anything.

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I think setting the whos online refresh to a long time is just decieving. You should focus on generating real activity instead of trying to make your forum look active.

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I set my who's online refresh higher because my members asked for it to be higher. After 15 minutes of inactivity on a default vBulletin board, the threads and posts which you have not read and appear both in your subscribed list and the new posts list are removed and replaced with a 'no updates in this time period' message. A longer refresh rate prevents that from happening and is better for many of our more mature members who may browse the forums whilst at work and may get called away for 15 minutes or more. It allows them to 'not lose there place' if you get my meaning.

My online refresh is set to one hour because of this.

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How long is long time?

What are your settings guys?

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The Pet Birds Portal

My who's online and timeout is vb defualt im almost positive i never changed it

Who's online refresh period: 60 seconds.

What i think you guys are talking about is session timeout, and if you click remember me when logging in, this has no effect AND all new post no matter how old are saved. (this may be another setting to do this though)

Session Timeout : 900 seconds

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AF's "online users" is set to 30 minutes

Increasing that online setting much higher than that is deceiving. Using the hack at vb.org to generate fake statistics is deceiving...and encouraging (or forcing) your members to auto-refresh all day long is deceiving also.

I say no to all of the above...Don't try to make your forums out to be something they are not, instead, focus on generating real activity.

I also want to say that "currently active users" is not a good indicator of activity. Users logged in during the last 24 hours or posts made within the last 24 hours are better indicators of activity

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