Between 10:32 p.m. CST on 8/16 and 1:48 a.m. CST on 8/17, the player counts on the main page stopped updating because of a bug in a script I had written to remove pseudo-population spikes.
I hit Jagex's RS player count endpoint and the OSRS player count banner three times (in ms) to produce an average count every three minutes. This can average out a spike on its own, but spikes can still get through.
In this case, enough bad readings from fluctuations, something I had no control over, had caused the median to drift so far from the actual player count that my scripts had started rejecting good player counts. So, the scraper was down for almost three hours while I slept.
I retained the data and was able to review and restore the valid player counts.
My site was not the only one affected by this issue.
RunePixels recorded the same pseudo-spike of ~57K RuneScape players that I also detected but had rejected.
I likely encounter more of these issues because I collect data every three minutes, whereas PlayerCount.dev and RSPlayerCount.com collect at 15 and 30 minute intervals, respectively.
I saw the same issue during OSRS Leagues in April and May, and I have also found evidence of this happening historically with MisplacedItems.
