https://www.reddit.com/r/changelog/comments/yek4r/reddit_change_display_the_number_of_users/
created by alienth on 17/08/2012 at 23:51 UTC*
203 upvotes, 32 top-level comments (showing 25)
As of today, we're displaying a new item in the subreddit infobar that shows the number of "users online". The metric is a count of unique users that have interacted with the subreddit within the past 15 minutes. Interactions include visiting the main subreddit page, voting from a subreddit page, or posting a comment/link to a subreddit. Note that this **does not** include interactions that occur on the front page. For example, voting on a front page item does not add to the active users count for that subreddit.
The number is currently obscured for low values(<100) out of privacy concerns. We may adjust it in the future depending on community feedback.
Note that this did incur some changes to the subreddit CSS. You can find info on how to account for this in your subreddit styles here[1].
1: http://www.reddit.com/r/cssnews/comments/yegpf/css_change_readers_and_online_users/
Comment by Ytoabn at 18/08/2012 at 00:15 UTC
54 upvotes, 4 direct replies
I understand the privacy concerns, but realize that there are many subreddits (including this one) that are so small that this becomes useless. Maybe we can have add a rule.
If Number of Subscribers Less Than 10,000 Then the Low Value limit can go as low as 25 or 10.
Comment by Deimorz at 18/08/2012 at 00:00 UTC*
22 upvotes, 1 direct replies
Just in case anyone is curious how exactly it works, any logged-in user that visits any page inside that subreddit (comments/hot/new/etc.) will get added to the count, then removed from it 15 minutes after the last time they "touch" that subreddit. If a user visits multiple subreddits in quick succession they'll be counted in all of them for 15 minutes each.
Basically, when you first interact with a subreddit, imagine a 15-minute countdown timer starting for that specific subreddit. Whenever you do anything else in the subreddit, it goes back up to 15 minutes. When it expires, you're no longer counted as an "online user" in that subreddit.
Comment by KerrickLong at 18/08/2012 at 00:23 UTC
13 upvotes, 1 direct replies
Is this data available via the API in any way? I think it'd be neat to build a scraper and graph the number of users online in a bunch of big subreddits for a week or two.
Comment by kylegetsspam at 18/08/2012 at 00:50 UTC
12 upvotes, 0 direct replies
Can you add conditional classes? Knowing there's less than 100 people on a small subreddit is useless, so I'm just gonna hide the thing outright. But if I could do `.users-online.over-100 { display: block; }` I would.
Comment by rolmos at 18/08/2012 at 00:51 UTC
7 upvotes, 2 direct replies
SOme people use specific CSS to change "XXXX readers" to something else like "XXXXX traders." like we do at /r/tf2trade.
Old CSS will change the text of these new added elements, but by adding a few classes it can be easily fixed.
div.titlebox **.subscribers** span.word
div.titlebox **.subscribers** span.number:before
div.titlebox **.subscribers** span.number:after
The code usually includes selectors like these. Just add the text that appears in bold.
Comment by ElDiablo666 at 18/08/2012 at 00:10 UTC
5 upvotes, 1 direct replies
I like this but I think having a second view for front page only values would be useful for comparison porpoises.
Comment by redtaboo at 17/08/2012 at 23:55 UTC
12 upvotes, 1 direct replies
This is awesome, thanks alienth. It's fascinating clicking around and seeing the numbers on different subreddits compared to subscribers. You should lower the obscured value to 3 just to show your love of us. :P
(would love to see this on /r/all as well!)
Comment by [deleted] at 18/08/2012 at 00:47 UTC
5 upvotes, 0 direct replies
This is interesting.
I've always wanted to know the number of "active" users on a subreddit, such as the number of subscribed accounts who had viewed it in the last month.
This is sort of like that, or at least gives an idea of the relative vibrancy of a community.
Several large subreddits I belong to, such as /r/linguistics (26,000 subs) and /r/personalfinance (36,000 subs) both report < 100 users, so I think the 100 value is a bit high.
Comment by kinggimped at 18/08/2012 at 03:29 UTC
6 upvotes, 1 direct replies
We have just over 800 subscribers in /r/shanghai, so for us it's essentially useless as it will always read <100. I like the feature but it's pointless for such a small sub.
Is there currently a way to turn it off?
Comment by skarface6 at 18/08/2012 at 02:02 UTC
5 upvotes, 0 direct replies
Why not post it in /r/announcements?
Also, how is it a privacy concern how many are online? I'd like to see a more specific number, personally.
Comment by Buttscicles at 18/08/2012 at 00:19 UTC
3 upvotes, 0 direct replies
Great change!
Are there any plans to make the data available via /about.json?
Comment by lillyjb at 18/08/2012 at 00:50 UTC
3 upvotes, 0 direct replies
This is pretty cool for something that I didn't even know I wanted.
Comment by canipaybycheck at 18/08/2012 at 01:38 UTC
3 upvotes, 0 direct replies
This is pretty awesome, thank you alienth!
It would be also be cool to have some place to rank subs by number of online users.
Comment by [deleted] at 18/08/2012 at 02:38 UTC
3 upvotes, 0 direct replies
I would love to see the number below 100. I have a small subreddit and I would never have more than 100 people on it at any given time. Being able to see the exact number or close to exact number would be great.
Comment by georgelulu at 18/08/2012 at 00:16 UTC*
9 upvotes, 1 direct replies
Might of been better to disable that by default, especially for the small subreddits without css wizards where it just rubs it in even more how small they are( <100....), but here is a tip form /r/theoryofreddit[1] to disable it in your stylesheet:
.users-online{display:none;}
Thanks for your continued efforts on providing new features though.
Changed to listen2's suggestion.
Comment by ramses0 at 18/08/2012 at 03:10 UTC
6 upvotes, 0 direct replies
Why not simply omit the count information when there are less than 100 users in the last 15 minutes? As someone who has unsubscribed from pretty much every default subreddit, all my subreddits say <100 and it really doesn't add value.
I would suggest you pick a random value between 50-100 "every day" per each subreddit and then show the exact value only when it's over that.
Some day's you'll see: "53 people online" ...other days: "75 people online" ...and many days just nothing at all.
It'd be a nice treat for the smaller subreddits that they luckily have enough people and coincidentally the threshold is low enough that day to see how many people are online. It makes statistics "more evil" (but in a good way) for those lower thresholds. You're never sure if there are 51 people or 99 when nothing shows up, and you'll never see anything less than 50 (or whatever the minimum is).
The other idea might be to scale the time frequency between 15 minutes and 1 day based on the number of subscribers.
Realistically 15 minutes is "too realtime" for a subreddit with 1000 subscribers.
May I offer /r/ClassicalGuitar as ~1,500 subscribers. It is (IMHO) very healthy, but might never get up to where we break that 100 users in 15 minutes threshold. But it'd be awesome to see that there were 120 people in an 8 hour span (we generally get ~100 uniques per day).
--Robert
Comment by [deleted] at 18/08/2012 at 00:03 UTC
2 upvotes, 0 direct replies
I was wondering what that was! I assumed it was a new RES feature I somehow missed.
Comment by knomz at 18/08/2012 at 00:20 UTC
2 upvotes, 0 direct replies
Thanks for making this actually happen...it is an awesome feature..I don't know if my posts were what brought about thinking about it or not but again thanks.
Comment by Jomskylark at 18/08/2012 at 02:18 UTC
2 upvotes, 0 direct replies
This is freakishly cool. Thank you.
Comment by [deleted] at 18/08/2012 at 05:53 UTC
2 upvotes, 0 direct replies
Would it be possible to include this data on the subreddit traffic page as well?
Comment by IAmAnAnonymousCoward at 18/08/2012 at 08:26 UTC
2 upvotes, 0 direct replies
Great change. This is so much more informative than number of subscribers.
Comment by reseph at 17/08/2012 at 23:53 UTC*
4 upvotes, 0 direct replies
Very nice. I kept digging over RES thinking it was a RES feature.
Comment by zants at 18/08/2012 at 02:41 UTC*
3 upvotes, 1 direct replies
I noticed when you change the title of the subreddit subscribers, such as...
/*Title of Subscribers*/
div.titlebox span.word {
display: none;
}
div.titlebox span.number:after {
content: " admirers";
}
That this changes the "users online" to that title as well (in this case, "X users online" would become "X admirers"). Is it possible to include "online" at the end of that statement (i.e. "X admirers online") to better allow users to distinguish that it's a ticker for current viewers rather than getting it confused with the overall readers?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
EDIT: Thanks alienth, improved code for those interested (doesn't change the name of the ticker, only the subscribers):
/*Title of Subscribers*/
div.titlebox .subscribers span.word {
display: none;
}
div.titlebox .subscribers span.number:after {
content: "admirers";
}
=====
And if you'd like to edit the title of the "users online," add this:
/*Title of Users Online*/
div.titlebox .users-online span.word {
display: none;
}
div.titlebox .users-online span.number:after {
content: " admirers online";
}
Comment by smallchanger at 18/08/2012 at 09:45 UTC
1 upvotes, 1 direct replies
Does the green circle have a function?
Comment by Antrikshy at 18/08/2012 at 13:27 UTC
1 upvotes, 1 direct replies
One really tiny request that can hopefully be implemented quickly: Mousing over the green light should explain what it is in a tiny pop-up. I was confused when I saw it.