Membership Number

[Old Fashioned]

I have noticed for several days a discrepancy in the membership number. At the top of the page after you sign in the membership number is 298. Scroll down to the bottom of the page and the number is 300. Any one know why?

[Dial 1911 for Help]

And not only that but as people sign up, the number doesn't change. Plus the member numbers being assigned are in the 340 range; I don't know if 40 or so have been deleted or if it's purely a site bug. John Caradimas says he'll check into it when he gets back from vacation.

[Old Fashioned]

Dial 1911 for Help, I've seen that happen also. I was logged in when someone from Argentina joined. Both numbers went up then the number at the top dropped back. A little later I checked the member list and that person was not listed. I also noticed that for several days all of the forums were showing a padlock indicating the forums were locked. I responded to the dog story to see if a reply could still be posted.

[Rich-D]

Membership numbers are assigned as folks sign up! In so far as the sign up from Argentina, it was most likely a Spam Poster deleted by Moderator action. So, that member number was assigned to a Banned Member, the next person signing up would receive the next higher number available. The counter does not go back and fill in the deleted member. So, if there are for example 300 active members and the last number issued was 340, it is easy to figure out the number of sign up's that have been deleted.

In so far as the two counters not having the same figure. The counter on the bottom comes standard with vBulletin board. The top counter being an added plug in, I would venture to guess that of the two the bottom counter is the most timely.

Best of Luck!
Rich

[Dial 1911 for Help]

I don't think that's entirely plausible because I've seen a few times that the counter is stuck at some value while the "newest member" name changes several times. Your explanation works for one deletion and the subsequent signup, but it would be extremely unlikely for it to work for a duration of several signups.

First, deletions are presumably much rarer than signups, and second, it would be extremely unlikely for deletions to alternate with signups one-for-one several times in a row (plus, it should be going up and down by one, if you happen to look at it in between times, even if it were).

Right now, the counter seems like it's stuck again.

[Dial 1911 for Help]

Looks like whenever two consecutive new members are deleted (typically after signing up specifically to spam us with ads), the total member count doesn't reflect both deletions and one of them ends up getting counted anyway in the total count. Be interesting to see what would happen with three consecutive deletions; if the resulting error would still be +1 or would it be +2 (n-1 in otherwords).

The actual count of members appearing on the Member List is 267.