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Get rid of (Times Read) in Title Bar

Started by Garrett, March 29, 2012, 10:49:18 PM

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Kindred

personally, I like the information.

I do agree that it really doesn't belong with the title, though....

although I am uncertain where else to put it
Слaва
Украинi

Please do not PM, IM or Email me with support questions.  You will get better and faster responses in the support boards.  Thank you.

"Loki is not evil, although he is certainly not a force for good. Loki is... complicated."

Arantor

Even though it's chronically inaccurate?

Kindred

well it's not inaccurate so much as misleading, since it increments every time I refresh the page...

but it does give a good IDEA of the number of reads.....
Слaва
Украинi

Please do not PM, IM or Email me with support questions.  You will get better and faster responses in the support boards.  Thank you.

"Loki is not evil, although he is certainly not a force for good. Loki is... complicated."

Arantor

There are topics on this site that have shot up to tens of thousands of views in under an hour of being posted.

Not to mention that, over time, there is a correlation between age of a topic and views, based on search engines viewing a topic, then waning as they realise it isn't being updated.

Hristo

Arantor, no doubt your right, but is there a better alternative? There are cases when topic views are good to have:
Private boards - no bots
Some topics attract much attention, but only a few knowledgeable people participate in them, like on science related boards. In such cases number of views tells you what kind of topics attract user's attention.
And of course the locked topics where we can not judge their popularity by the number of replies.

Views per day/week/month will be even better, but I only can imagine how big of a performance hit this would be.

Arantor

On private boards where there are no bots, I can see the logic. But on private boards, I'd doubt most people would actually care.

I have a private board, we don't care about the topic views at all. It's just something that is irrelevant.

QuoteSome topics attract much attention, but only a few knowledgeable people participate in them, like on science related boards. In such cases number of views tells you what kind of topics attract user's attention.

That's just it, the net effect is diluted by search engines.

The best example I have is http://www.simplemachines.org/community/index.php?topic=499748.0 actually.

It's a topic that's 9 months old here with only a few replies but has a thousand times the views of topics even a year older than that.

You can't convince me that that's more than 1000 times more interesting.

QuoteAnd of course the locked topics where we can not judge their popularity by the number of replies.

Why would you be interested in popularity of locked topics? The whole point of locking it is to prevent discussion; popularity logically seems irrelevant to these.

QuoteViews per day/week/month will be even better, but I only can imagine how big of a performance hit this would be.

Performance of tracking hits as it is isn't ideal, and adding a log of hits over time will definitely make it worse.

Hristo

Of course I mean locked-sticky topics. Just an example: Looking at their views here I could say hardly anyone reads them. Why? I have the answer why I do not read them - because I do not see them. That is - my eyes just skip any highlighted row. Good or bad that is a fact, and I know for sure most other people do the same for the same reason. Of course when I look for some specific answers I at least read the subjects, but I hardly notice any activity (new posts) because as said my eyes very rarely stop on these rows. Because of all of this I removed the background on the sticky topics. The logic is - if something is important do not point it, people will ignore it.

Topic views are not perfect by any means, but they are important enough, IMO.

Arantor

Thing is we don't need the view count to know people don't read them... the view count only provides evidence for what was already observable without it.


Antechinus

ROFL. I've never understood why people think this stat is useful or interesting. I know some people do, but they've never been able to really explain why. They just seem to be comforted by having a number there, presumably because it's always been there.

Here's a thought: just use PHP to assign any old random number of views to any old topic title on the fly. 99.999% of the time it would make those people equally happy, and it should save some db queries. :D

Arantor

Oh, there have been attempts at explaining it as being a measure of importance - except every time that argument is trotted out, out comes the evidence of why it's misleading and it's always fobbed with 'but I want them'.

I'd be quite happy to just remove it and be done with it if it weren't for the backlash if I did >_<

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