There’s your answer, guys! There are 0 active members on the SDMB!!! :eek:
OK: I admit it. I’m completely sedentary. What excuse have the rest of you got?
If this is inactivity, it sure gets you tired!
I’m typing this while on a treadmill-quick, check it now!
It says you’re airborne.
Obviously.
The software calculates the number of Active Members periodically. I’m not sure exactly how often it is but it’s like three times a day or so. All you had to do was leave it on for a while and you would have gotten your answer.
Fair enough. I don’t know what that does either but one has nothing to do with the other.
BTW, why do you feel that the number of Charter Members is some sort of big secret? Last time I asked you that, you just gave a smart ass answer. “A passel” isn’t an answer at all.
hajario already answered the first part: active member statistics are updated when the “Daily Statistics Log” scheduled task is run – the default is to run once a day at midnight. This is the same job that gathers statistics on the front page like New Users, New Threads, New Posts, etc. so it’s already running daily, and calculating one extra value should have a negligible impact on performance.
Running a top statistics search, on the other hand, is an active and likely intensive database operation – I’m not surprised it caused a performance hit. So, yeah, I wouldn’t do that. 
Well, I’ll tell you what, we’ll try it. I’m interested to know myself, and perhaps it will head off frightening schemes.
I was originally user #1 – the file became corrupted in the system and the registration was unusable.
That’s why I’m now user #32.
We do not recycle screen names or user ID numbers so the count merely increments.
We’ve also occasionally – rarely – deleted user IDs, most of the time due to duplicate registrations/merges.
There’s a couple of other corrupt user files in there as well, it’s a rare thing but it has happened.
You became corrupted? Surely not!
It was the bourbon and chocolate. It would corrupt anyone.
OK, I’m seeing 5,836 active members. Happy?
Very. But to clarify: what time period does this cover?
No. I want 6,000 or I’m leaving! :mad:
Yes. Thanks for sharing.
WE, Ed said earlier that that was for 60 days. That means that 5,836 user accounts logged in at least one time in the last 60 days.
Just to give you a few more data points, according to Google, during the same 60 day period, straightdope.com (exclusive of the SDMB) had 2.2 million unique visitors and the SDMB had 545K. So we’re talking an active to deep lurker ratio of 100:1.
I’m happy to see it too, but I wasn’t the one that asked, I just made a silly joke above.
I think it was me that **hajario **was responding to.
Thank you, Ed: I’m very happy to know my potential audience. I’d hate to be pissing in the wind when I excrete my pearls of wisdom. 545,000 deep lurkers sounds good to me. 
Let me add my thanks as well. Good to have a sense of how things really are as far as active users are concerned.
Maybe the Lurkers need a new place to speak out. Anybody?
Lurkers Anonymous: Roll Call
08-02-2005, 05:23 PM
Zeldar
Lurkers Anonymous: Roll Call Part II
05-15-2008, 10:12 PM
Hirka T’Bawa
My excuse?
There’s nothing on the SDMB that makes my member active, that’s what the rest of the internet is for ….
CMC fnord!
Obvious joke is obvious.