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There are 887 online users: 110 registered, 777 guest(s)

The number of guests online is hardly believeable.

'This number is during daytime always as high as this.' Hmm.

Interesting, although that second sentence made my head hurt.

Anyway, if you search just about anything 40k related on google you'll eventually end up here, looking at an ancient and dead article. That's probably a lot of it, is people just searching the intersphere and ending up here for a brief while.

There are always a ton of lurkers/guests on various forums. Often times it's people who have only a casual interest, or people who are shy, or people who just haven't had a compelling reason to post something, so why bother to register?

I've been a regular lurker on a number of sites where I wasn't really interested in posting anything, but I was interested in taking a look at what was going on at any particular time.

I lurk a lot because I prefer reading and my browser dosen't log me in automaticly so I only log in when I want to post something.
Lest thats my reason >.>

I've done dozens of web searches on miniature-related topics that led me back here. More so than even Warseer or Bolter and Chainsword.

Also some won't have auto loggin set up, so they don't actually login until they have something to say.

I've mainly lurked here at Dakka for four to five years (as my post count shows) but I still enjoy reading folks views here, even if no one knows who I am due to the low contribution rate I have.

Might find a lot of these guests are just doing the rounds, Dakka, Bols, Warseer, Heresy and some of the race specific sites often turn up the juicy rumours/new pics etc and people are just trying to track them down.



edit - not ignoring Victor, he just posted as I was writing mine.

I am another that only logs in to post (or check to see if I have PMs). As of this moment, Dakka says we have "1,543 guest(s)" with "126 registered" active.

The large number of guests really surprises me.

I remember that two years ago, Dakka had almost no active users. What a boom.

I used to lurk up until I actually had my Grey Knights finished. Shame that my orks get just as much feedback as when I still lurked.... *sigh*

9768 is a good number of registered users; Dakka sure was a different place ten years ago. Nevertheless, I discovered it on one of my first searches for Warhammer related goodness.

Stat regarding most ever logged in at one time is more impressive IMO, though. Over 40% is impressive on any forum.

Party at Yak's place when we hit 10000! At least send the guy a gift!

I realized that at 2005 Dakka was a place that was not very well visited.
This has dramatically changed. What was the reason? Stelek?

I was a lurker for some six months, maybe more. But that there would be almost a thousand others like that here 24/7 is really quite startling.

The number of guests also likely includes any number of bots browsing the page, trying to register accounts, etc. Not to downplay the amount of attention Dakka receives, but the number is probably inflated.

i would also guess that GW has a few dedicated employees who lurk sites to further ensure IP and all that good stuff is followed. I know that the Sons of Corax doesnt see near this much activity... yet (yes, i am shamelessly plugging another small and growing 40k community, this one happens to be players/fans of the Raven Guard )

Danny Internets wrote:The number of guests also likely includes any number of bots browsing the page, trying to register accounts, etc. Not to downplay the amount of attention Dakka receives, but the number is probably inflated.

You are correct. Automated bots and spiders do make up a proportion of the 'guests' but the reality is also that on any larger forum the number of 'guests' dwarfs the number of logged-in users.

Dakka in the past has had an unusually high percentage of guests vs. logged-in users but we've really tried in the last year+ to attempt to bring those lurkers into the forums to post. Part of the reason that disparity exists is because Dakka has had a reputation in the past of being a place that 'jumps on' new users who post something that the veterans don't like.

Some of the things we've done to alleviate this issue was to (obviously) try to crack down on people attacking/insulting others, but also we created the 'introductions' forum (which is common on most forums but was missing here) to give people a 'safe' place to get their first few posts in. We also put advertisements below the first post in every thread for users who are not logged in.

This was actually not done to increase revenue, but is actually a semi-subtle way to get people to log-in, as right below the ad it tells you that if you sign-up the ads will no longer be visible.


We are most definitely making great progress, but the fact is, unregistered guests will always make up the majority of the users on the site because most people are only casually visiting the site, are spiders/bots, or are users who just haven't bothered to log-in.

+1 for lurking

decided to register- shall drop the count a bit

perhaps I might even be a productive member, only time shall tell....