Why might "guest" appear in a Hosted Private Forum

C.K Dexter Haven

Considering its private, why should I see x members (including offline mode) but then, "Y" guests.

I thought "guests" on boards.ie meant offline viewers?

Should it be always zero for "guests" in a private forum?

Gordon

Invisible mode users.

C.K Dexter Haven

Gordon wrote: »

Invisible mode users.

Currently, the active users in this forum is 10 (4 members and 6 guests)

3 names are listed only (mine and two others). Presumably the 4th is using invisible mode. So are the guests in offline mode, I.e. Not logged in.?

If so, why should guests appear in a Hosted Private forum? Or is my understanding of "guests" incorrect?

Gordon

In this forum it'll maybe take bots into account as well as invisible users, or something else, not sure. But in private fora the guests should only comprise of people with access that are invisible.

C.K Dexter Haven

Gordon wrote: »

In this forum it'll maybe take bots into account as well as invisible users, or something else, not sure. But in private fora the guests should only comprise of people with access that are invisible.

Well, it doesn't in my experience. What I'm used to seeing in private forums is Active users x, and either the number of names listed also x, or else x- 1 or more, which indicates 1 or more users are using invisible mode. But "guest" has always been 0, until this evening. Hence my query.

So if it said 5 members and 0 guests, and only 4 names were listed, the you assume 1 name/user was logged in, but using invisible mode- but no offline users are viewing.



Hope that makes sense.

PS. I don't know what a "bot" is.

Gordon

Ah ok, there's a discussion elsewhere about this that brought up a post from an ex developer here. It's due to registered users that tried to access the forum id but couldn't so were directed to a 'access not allowed' type page.

A bot is a spider, like google crawler for example. Bots may not actually show up at all, I'm not sure.

C.K Dexter Haven

Ah, that explains it. Thanks for taking the time Gordon.:)

Rucking_Fetard

Gordon wrote: »

A bot is a spider, like google crawler for example. Bots may not actually show up at all, I'm not sure.

Mentioned one time that Bots can't access Private Forums. Think it was a Thunderdome discussion Thread.

Gordon

Yeah, but they could access the blocked page, however I don't think they show like that.