SUGGESTION: Get The Bottom User List Back

[3005 332]

Several months ago, a mod called "Members Online in Past 24 Hours" was featured at the bottom of the page, and featured the amount of members who had logged in in the past 24 hours (self-explanatory, right?). This feature was withdrawn for reasons unknown to the general public, and I don't know if anyone else would like this back, but I know I sure do.

 

I felt it really summed up the community and symbolized the strength and activity of the site. It was like a group picture, where everyone's names are at the bottom. More than that, the enormous number is showed at the top (it was between 500-600 users daily, but I'm told it's now in the 800s) also is something to smile at. It's an easy way for users themselves to keep up with MLPF's growth, and I really think it needs to be brought back.

[Marcato 2,143]

It makes sense that they would get rid of it really. By this point that's a whole ton of members from all over the place. Imagine how much space that would take up on the webpage.

It was a neat little feature for a while but I doubt it's really worth the page space. Maybe it could be something standardly disabled, but can be turned on by anyone who wants it within the user settings. That way it's not constantly there taking up half the page unless you really want it to.

[Flicker Sweet 3,391]

Pro tip:

If you go to the home page for the forums, there is a huge list of everyone that is currently logged on, regardless of what they're doing. the only reason it wouldn't show someone down there is because they are either not logged on or they logged in anonymously....

[AegisReflector 886]

Yeah, don't do this. I mean, I know this forum is active. I'm constantly posting in one topic that it gets 3 replies everytime I try to reply myself.

[Dave247 568]

I don't think I was around to see this but I can't see it as being needed these days as the amount of users that come on each day is a lot and it would just fill up the whole bottom of the screen. What we have on the homepage does the job fine.

[Zoop 8,384]

I think I vaguely recall that it was removed due to the fact that the ever-growing user list was starting to look a bit messy down at the bottom of the page. Once you start throwing that many names into a massive list it starts to look a bit cluttered.

[3005 332]

There was a handy-dandy "Collapse" (minimize) button next to it for those who didn't want to see it... ;P

[Twilight Sparkle ✨ 8,529]

At the moment, this is how the list looks:

 

 

In all honesty, I think 800+ names simply looks messy and cluttered. There are enough items on the board index already vying for a visitor's attention, and some people may find the presence of two "active members" lists disorienting. Beyond satisfying a minority's curiousity, I can't see it being all that beneficial at this point at MLP Forums' life.

 

Some fun technical facts: with our current activity, the list of users online in the past 24 hours is ~240 KB in size. The entire page is around 450 KB including the list (so roughly 210 KB without it). Simply enabling the hook may as much as double the length of time it takes for the front page to load each time you access it, assuming your browser has already cached all of MLPF's images and CSS.

[3005 332]

At the moment, this is how the list looks:

 

 

In all honesty, I think 800+ names simply looks messy and cluttered. There are enough items on the board index already vying for a visitor's attention, and some people may find the presence of two "active members" lists disorienting. Beyond satisfying a minority's curiousity, I can't see it being all that beneficial at this point at MLP Forums' life.

 

Some fun technical facts: with our current activity, the list of users online in the past 24 hours is ~240 KB in size. The entire page is around 450 KB including the list (so roughly 210 KB without it). Simply enabling the hook may as much as double the length of time it takes for the front page to load each time you access it, assuming your browser has already cached all of MLPF's images and CSS.

 

Oh my God, that's much larger a list than when it was actually there. I understand, I wasn't quite expecting something that long (or the toll it might take on loading times).