Guests out numberregistered users four or five to one

[drz]

I notice that at any given time guests vastly outnumber registered users and am wondering about it. Wegener's Granulomatosis is such a rare disease I can't immagine people come to read about it unless they have some personal involvement or concern about it. If they are dealing with it for themselves or a a family or friend it seems strange to me they don't register and take advantage of more of resources here. I am just wondering about other thoughts on this issue.

[andrew]

Many people get a heap of information just by reading posts and not joining. Eventually some of them do join if they want to contribute/ask a question/whatever.

In addition, this site is visited by many search engine crawlers often multiple times a day. These show up as visitors so it can artificially inflate the figures. Aaaaannnd, due to some issues new members had when writing their stories (the site would time out for some and they'd have to redo it), I increased the timeout limit to an hour I think. What this means is that if you visit the site and then go somewhere else, you'll still be seen as 'online' for up to an hour later, same goes for visitors. When you see the total people online you can probably divide them in half to get a more realistic number.

[Jack]

I gave up on the anonymity thing. If people who know me read my posts, that's OK with me.

[julia]

I only sign in if I am posting or if there is somthng I need to sign in to look at.

[Palmyra]

I think I artificially increase your numbers...I never formerlly log out, so it must look as though I am onsite all the time. Is there a reason to log out?

[JanW]

I don't log out either. But I'm here several times a day, anyway.

[elephant]

I'm obsessive compulsive I must log in/log out!

[Jack]

I never log out and the laptop runs for most of the day so I expect it looks like I'm always active on the Forum.

[DEE]

I never log out i put laptop on when i get up and goes off at bed time dont know what id do without it now DEEx

[Sangye]

Need I say anything? This is my 3,996th post. Ahem. *blushing* but not as much as I probably should be