Currenty Active Users

[ebb]

Have a question about this information box.

The box will announce for example "There are currently 28 users online.
1 members and 27 guests"

In this case the one members is me - but often it will be two or three of us.

It is the "guests" I have a question about:

Of the 27 guests, many times over half will be visiting the SAME thread!
Well that's not what's suspicious.
In this case they are all listed as visting the Pearson Ariel Association Forums but it has been other single subject threads.

BUT
the 15 or 16 or more guests have logged on within minutes , sometimes the same minute, as each other.
I've noted this time after time.
In fact the first indication is the double digit number of visitors.
And scrolling down finding the same subject listed over and over.


For a while I fantasized we were being visited by a group assignment refurbishing class
where everybody had to be on the same cockpit grate page - at the same time.
But something else must be going on.

It happens too often. Daily. Hourly so far as I know - and I'm not aboard all the time.
It can be any time in a 24 hour day that I see this group guest thing happening
where they all have arrived literally within seconds of one another.
I guess it is not a THEY but something else. Another kind of info spider?

Whatz going on? Any ideas???

[Bill]

The board is recording all who are scanning the site. This includes "bots," "spiders" and other bugs sent out by the various search engines. That's how they get the info they need to show when someone searches on something like pearson ariel boom vang . . .

[ebb]

Hello Bill!
So you are implying that this 'block guest' phenomena is actually another bot or spider information gathering engine?
In other words these guests are not real people but robots.
Not robots either. BUT a single bot.

Don't you agree that this "guest" chain of visitors is fraudulent?
A search engine that disguises itself as independant human entities is imco a FRAUD.
Spiders and Bots are programs not persons.
GUESTS SHOULD BE GUESTS.
BOTS & SPIDERS SHOULD NOT BE DISQUISED AS HUMANS. Issac Azimov would have a fit!
Imco it is a dangerous because it is deceitful (because for what reason is the deceit perpetrated?),
and in the least, it's unethical.

If we >members< want information as to what Pearson Ariel Association threads are important to PEOPLE
then we/you are getting a very wrong picture of what REAL interest there is in certain subjects -
indeed ANY & ALL subjects on this website!
When I see a bot/spider on a particular thread, I have a different understanding of what is taking place. My reaction is that the pest has its proboscus buried in the text and is indiscriminately sucking away at it.
It's the opposite if it's a person or somebody we meet here in the pub to chat with, so to speak.

You must then already have in place a protection device/program that recognises these ghost visiters
and shunts IT into the trash bin?
Otherwise a very false information base about the PAA is being produced. Perhaps they should be excluded from the Forum's CURRENTLY list of USERS also.
Or highlight them/it - if IT can't be removed - in another type face as not real people/guests but a deception - and deception it is - and therefor discountable.


Maybe these perps could be designated as VISITORS.
And assumed humans retain the term GUEST.
(Oh hell, nobody cares!)
__________________________________________________ __________________________________________________ _____________
As a kind of proof to this anamoly, you will notice on the Forums page where our four fourums are presented, there is always a number for each category of how many visitors are currently on the discussion page.
You'll always find far fewer in total number there than what the Forum is registering as a general total
- more like a third fewer....
So you have to ask what kind of guests is it that is being registered there who are not actually visiting an individual forum? What are they doing? Hovering? Imco it's the ghostly evidence of info-sucking bot! IF this is so, it is deceitful - and we have to ask why this deceptive spying is necessary?
At this moment (Sun 9AM 9/25/11)
30 in number supposedly on site - but only 11 total actually visiting the four forums.:mad:

(Guess it could be another lousey product - a franken-spy-bot composed of imitation human parts - from the far east???)