I thought it was a glitch at first, since yesterday it seemed like it was just our normal numbers +1000. But if it was the case that our actual online numbers were how many the site says are online minus 1000, it would seem to be too low at certain times, since even in the middle of the night in the US, the lowest we ever went before was around 600 online. It could also just be that there was some change to how the online number was counted, but you'd have to get an official mod explanation to figure out what's really happening.
I think the most likely explanation is that we finally got stickied megathreads on the day of the VP debate, which increased engagement from the userbase that was already here, and at the same time people have started posting watermarked posts off site, causing an influx of new users from the old subreddit (I think there were about 200 new accounts just created yesterday).
I thought it was a glitch at first, since yesterday it seemed like it was just our normal numbers +1000. But if it was the case that our actual online numbers were how many the site says are online minus 1000, it would seem to be too low at certain times, since even in the middle of the night in the US, the lowest we ever went before was around 600 online. It could also just be that there was some change to how the online number was counted, but you'd have to get an official mod explanation to figure out what's really happening.
I think the most likely explanation is that we finally got stickied megathreads on the day of the VP debate, which increased engagement from the userbase that was already here, and at the same time people have started posting watermarked posts off site, causing an influx of new users from the old subreddit (I think there were about 200 new accounts just created yesterday).