The heck is up with SMWC's user stats?

So the site is always reported to be relatively active, even if it's in the regards to people who just lurk and don't post.

I was curious why the actual amount of active users at any given time is seldom above 30. The amount of guests is fairly high which I can understand, as why bother to create an account if you merely consume and prefer not to interact.
But holy crap...171 bots? Out of all time, or just active? I'm only aware of ModBot and I am like...taken aback by the number. Impressed, but still!

And weird one is number of bots are changing like every minute What the heck is going on

Unsure, man. I'm 30 and joined SMWC in April 2018. Then was inactive for four years and came back. I have not a clue why SMWC is that way.

They are interacting, just not on the site. The activity is more in the discord server. You need an account to be on the discord; likewise it is just entirely possible that a majority of these accounts might be older accounts and just don't have much a desire to post. Like, my account is 15 years old and I'm almost at 5k posts, which is a number most people achieve within 5 years. You don't have to post regularly to be an active member of the site.

And the bots are more than likely search engine hits, though that one take with a grain of salt because I know nothing about bots.

I feel like the tiny ratio of those that decide to register versus the hundreds of guests who don't is too wide. Maybe we [SMWC] increase incentive for it being beneficial. Like being able to bookmark favorites within the site. Dumb example idea, disregard. You get my point.
I used to love World of Goo and watched Goofans (like here but for wog) slowly decay into nothing because of the few keeping the content going retire or leave, with the guests not taking the place and just decaying

I know nothing about the hit stats to this domain so it might be in very good shape for all I know

The actual active user count on SMWC has fluctuated over the years. I have seen it hover around 100 at times.



This is pretty much the way it has always been. Before Discord, when the site had separate interactions (Skype for voice and IRC for chat), this was pretty much the same situation. A user once told me that the "life blood" of the site was on IRC (which I assume now translates to Discord), and that he rarely ever did any actual posting.

During events like C3, the active user count will spike. I have also seen instances of very reuptable site accomplishments (such as the release of SMWCP or the return of a very old user) lead to activity spikes, as well as spikes caused by non-site events (releasing of mainline Mario games by Nintendo). I myself temporarily returned to being active when Super Mario Maker came out in 2015.

It would be interesting to see a historiographical breakdown of user activity over time. Since this site has now accumulated almost 20 years of data, it would be interesting to see how activity has changed over literal generations of SMW hacking.