Get rid of (Times Read) in Title Bar

[Garrett]

One pet peeve of mine on SMF 2.0 is the (Times Read) in the title bar above the first post in a topic. It's quite annoying to me. In 3.0, I'd like for it to be removed and placed in a place they could have the stats for that topic.

[Antechinus]

To fix it in 2.0.x:

Display.template.php:

Find:

Code Select Expand

// Show the topic information - icon, subject, etc.
echo '
<div id="forumposts">
<div class="cat_bar">
<h3 class="catbg">
<img src="', $settings['images_url'], '/topic/', $context['class'], '.png" align="bottom" alt="" />
<span id="author">', $txt['author'], '</span>
', $txt['topic'], ': ', $context['subject'], ' &nbsp;(', $txt['read'], ' ', $context['num_views'], ' ', $txt['times'], ')

Replace:

Code Select Expand

// Show the topic information - icon, subject, etc.
echo '
<div id="forumposts">
<div class="cat_bar">
<h3 class="catbg">
<img src="', $settings['images_url'], '/topic/', $context['class'], '.png" align="bottom" alt="" />
<span id="author">', $txt['author'], '</span>
', $txt['topic'], ': ', $context['subject'], '

[Kindred]

what's wrong with it?   I think it's a nice stat to have clearly displayed (as it is).  You want folks to have to make another click (and leave the message) in order to see it?   That's a silly idea, since the whole idea of a forum is to get people to read and respond to the actual messages, not the stats.

[Antechinus]

IMHO (opinion warning here) it's like a lot of other stuff that SMF has inherited in the gui: useless clutter that distracts from the user experience.

[Kindred]

hmmm....   I agree that there is a lot of clutter... 

and maybe the read count should not be actually part of the title itself (bad for seo)
however, I think that this bit is definitely NOT useless clutter nor does it distract...   because it is an important part of the user experience to knw how popular (for viewing, at least) a topic is.

(actually, if we're going to mod it, I'd like to see this parse UNIQUE views only)

[emanuele]

I find the number of views the less useful information you can have while reading a topic...
Well...it all depends on "how" you actually reach the topic: if you come from MessageIndex, UnreadReplies or Unread then you already know that information. The only way it *could* be "interesting" is if you arrive to the topic from a search engine.

If you are thinking about SEO...the number of views is probably the less important factor:

Code Select Expand

<img src="http://media.simplemachinesweb.com/smf/default/images/topic/normal_post.gif" alt="" align="bottom">
<span id="author">Author</span>
Topic: Get rid of (Times Read) in Title Bar &nbsp;(Read 79 times)

this is what is inside the h3 tag (75% of this (an image, the word "author", the word "topic" the number of times the topic has been read) has nothing to do with the topic itself).

So, if you want some stats about the topic it would be better to have them in a separated box (maybe at the same level of "« previous next »") I think, but that's more Ant's field.

[Kindred]

oh, I agree that it does not belong as part of the h3 tag....   but it IS useful information.

[Antechinus]

Ha. Piffle n bollocks. No way am I making an extra box for that stuff.

It is not useful information. See, I can make assertions too. I don't care how many times a topic has been viewed. If it looks interesting, I'll read it.

[NanoSector]

It's only useful 1/100 time you view a topic, so why stuff it in the title? Why not create a nice collapsible box called "Topic info" and store the information in there?

[Antechinus]

Because it's a waste of markup and css and js, and is just something else to clutter the gui?

The number of views is already shown on the message index, and on the unread and replies templates. How many times do you want to show the same number all over the forum? What benefit is there in it?

[NanoSector]

Because it's a waste of markup and css and js, and is just something else to clutter the gui?

Yeah, you got a point, there

The number of views is already shown on the message index, and on the unread and replies templates. How many times do you want to show the same number all over the forum? What benefit is there in it?

None, once is enough.

[Kindred]

lol... of course you can make assertions, Ant, you're an ass, after all.

anyway...

as I said, I find it useful. I know that my users find it useful -- many of them don't come into the post from the message list more than 50% of the time (especially with a FB or G+ link mod installed) so, having that info there is good since it's not seen in the other locations.

I've already agreed that it doesn't belong in the title... but it IS useful.

[emanuele]

Maybe:
Simple Machines Community Forum » SMF Development » Feature Requests » Topic: Get rid of (Times Read) in Title Bar - (Read 183 times)

ETA: I'd remove also "author".

[Kindred]

oh yes...   What the heck is the author column heading doing in the H3 thread title section?

[emanuele]

Well, h3 is used in several places with a lot of things in there...

* emanuele suggests to take a look at boardindex...

[Chalky]

Perfect - I have now removed it, thank you   It was a pain in the butt.  Out of interest, does nobody else read the message as an imperative?  It takes a hell of a long time to catch up on the forum when you have to read the same topic 31 times 

[Antechinus]

lol... of course you can make assertions, Ant, you're an ass, after all.

anyway...

as I said, I find it useful. I know that my users find it useful -- many of them don't come into the post from the message list more than 50% of the time (especially with a FB or G+ link mod installed) so, having that info there is good since it's not seen in the other locations.

I've already agreed that it doesn't belong in the title... but it IS useful.

Ok, please explain why it is useful. I'm genuinely curious here, because I've never seen it as being at all important on the thread pages. Whether or not a topic is worth reading has never seemed to me to be at all related to how many times somebody or something may have hooked up to that url in the past.

Perfect - I have now removed it, thank you   It was a pain in the butt.  Out of interest, does nobody else read the message as an imperative?  It takes a hell of a long time to catch up on the forum when you have to read the same topic 31 times 

In Soviet Russia, forum uses you.

[Arantor]

Were it entirely up to me, I'd remove the 'Times Read' thing *entirely*. I wouldn't track it at all, I'd declutter the UI and more importantly I'd also save the queries that update the table in question.

There are people who think it is important to have such information available and will resent not having it available. But I'm certainly inclined to agree it shouldn't be in the topic itself.

[godboko]

Were it entirely up to me, I'd remove the 'Times Read' thing *entirely*. I wouldn't track it at all, I'd declutter the UI and more importantly I'd also save the queries that update the table in question.

+1

[Arantor]

I'm still thinking about making this an option, actually, but even if I do make it an option I'm seriously tempted to move it out of the title area.

[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

[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.....

[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.

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.

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.

And 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.

Views 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.

[Hristo]

[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.

[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 >_<