The user numbers in Lemmy communities don't add up
The user numbers in Lemmy communities don't add up
2 days ago (see 2) I posted something into the [email protected] community which got almost 1000 upvotes (see 1) while the user numbers for the last week are at 131 (see 3), this doesn't add up. How can 131 users upvote almost 1000 times?
That's because, currently, the community stats that you see in the sidebar are only from your instance -- community stats are currently not federated. Afaik, federated community stats are going to be implemented in 0.19.
But I'm on a one person instance, so that would only show one user but doesn't.
users/day and users/week is from all instances. Only subscribers are from your own instance (so the other two comments are wrong)
The reason is cause that only counts users who have either posted or commented and not those who have upvoted only
Ah that would make sense actually! That would also show that 90% are lurkers.
... Waiting in the shadows for the perfect time to strike! Lol with a dumb comment
Do voters count as active users? I am somewhat confident that the user count is just related to people who posted or commented on the community.
The weekly & subscribed user count is only users on that specific instance. Also someone doesn’t have to view a community to upvote a post.
But I'm on a one person instance, so that would only show one user but doesn't.
The number is displayed on the instance the post is on, so it doesn't matter which instance you view it from (or if you're not logged in at all), the number is calculated from the active users who are members of the instance you're viewing.
It's definitely from other instances voting on it. For example. I'm on the @kbin.social instance but I'm commenting on your post from @jeemy.jeena.net
Also, this doesn't really have to do with your point but it's interesting none-the-less, it's really hard to keep view count numbers accurate when you've got multiple servers involved. The view count is accurate and every view is being counted, but any time you look at it, it's not exactly correct. If you think about how each server might get a view count update from the server at different times, and then add the views that only it sees to the view count, and then when it goes to add it's view counts to the central count and get a new updated number there may have been dozens of other server that have updated the view count at various times between then and now.
It all gets very complicated but I think it's kind of neat that a view count number can be accurately kept track of and yet every time you look at it, it's not exactly correct.
The upvote logic is so complicated on Lemmy, that idgaf anymore. It's not like it really was important in the reddit days, just funny somehow...
The first versions of Sync for Lemmy's still had the added upvote count on my profile page - a Sync for Reddit leftover, but vanished quickly.
This post obfuscated the Lemmy upvote system to a almost opaque level for me lol
Subscriber count is only counting users from your instance. That's it.
Disclaimer: I have not looked at how Lemmy calculates those numbers.
I suspect this is a combination of multiple factors:
- The stats could be averages over the last several days/weeks.
- The stats could be estimates, not exact numbers.
- The stats probably only account for people who look at the community directly.
- People do not need to look at the community to upvote a post, people can upvote from the site-wide feed.