Users Active - what constitutes "active?"

[Steve Freides]

I was just looking at the Users Active statistic in the ACP -> Tools -> Statistics. What defines active? Page views, posts, number of distinct users, etc.? Just trying to understand the meaning of this statistic.

Thanks in advance.

-S-

 

[James]

I think it's merely a user that has logged in within a certain period (eg past 6 months). Not entirely sure of the cutoff.

 

[Steve Freides]

Thank you, @James.

But it's a daily or weekly or other time period kind of statistic. What if a user logs in and stays logged in, e.g., they checked off "keep me logged in?" Does that count again on each new day?

 

[James]

No because staying logged in doesn't leave the user logged in permanent. They still have the online status timeout. Staying logged in just validates them without username and password.

The statistic works by querying the database to say "if last logged in time < cutoff then +1 to active user" essentially. It's a rolling thing.

 

[Steve Freides]

OK, but I can now assume that "active" means logged in for less than the cutoff time amount, and doesn't necessarily mean they posted, or read an unread message, or anything like that - is that right? IMHO, knowing how many people have actually done something would be a more useful statistic, although I supposed they'd be close in number since it's unlikely someone would bother to login and then not bother to do something.

-S-

 

[James]

I'm not convinced that the particular statistic in question here relates to actual posting activity and merely a login statistic. That being said I could be wrong.

 

[StarArmy]

I tried to guess the criteria myself, comparing against searches of my users based on their last activity date:

• Active Users listed in ACP: 336
• Users with last login activity since September 6, 2015 (1 year): 345
• Users with last login activity since March 6, 2015 (6 months): 233
• Users who made at least 1 post: 1120

Based on this, I think it may be users who visited in the last year, minus banned (deleted?) people, but I'm not positive.

 

[James]

https://xenforo.com/community/threads/exactly-what-does-users-active-in-the-stats-mean.33084/

Is this the stat?

 

[Steve Freides]

Yes. That thread says it's user logins per day.

This still isn't completely clear to me, I confess. The numbers I'm seeing seem much too high for my forum.

-S-

 

[Jeremy P]

It's users who visited per day, but it's cumulative in the week and month views. It's kind of silly, but I guess it was easier to do that way. So if a user visits once per day for 30 days, they will count for 30 active users in the month view.

 

[Steve Freides]

@Jeremy P, thank you and thanks to @James again.

It would be nice to be able to configure exactly _what_ this is so that each of us could tweak it to show something we think is useful.

E.g., for me, each member counting _once_, regardless of time period, would be a more useful statistic because, hey, that's what I'm trying to figure out: of 1000 members, do I have 10 or 100 regular contributors, and do I have 10 or 100 regular readers?

Those two things would be of interest to me. Anyone else agree, either in general with making this configurable and/or with my two choices of statistic?

-S-

 

[Jeremy P]

I'm not sure it should be configurable (you can add your own statistics/records already using add-ons if you like), but I do think it should be changed to stop counting duplicate users in the week and month views.

I suspect right now it only really records the number each day, and then just adds them up for the other views. It would have to be modified to record which users are active each day, and remove the duplicates over the longer periods of time.

 

[Steve Freides]

Can anyone point me to an add-on that would allow me to do this?

Thanks.

-S-