Page View count

[Zath]

The current version of Proboards allows me to refresh my browser and falsely increase the page view (thread view) count.
Will V5 still be the same or can this be stopped using the IP address or thread number / user name combination ?

[Ryan Roos]

Views represents number of views, not number of users. So it will still increment for every time it's viewed (it doesn't matter if it's the same person viewing it at a later time). Active threads will be viewed multiple times by the same user. The number represents how much activity is taking place in a thread.

[Zath]

Over time, that's fine. However, it can be falsely incremented "on the spot" so to speak. Maybe it looks good if you can make a thread seem to have loads of views but it's still manipulating the numbers.

[VS Admin]

It's not manipulating the numbers, it's showing you exactly how many times a page in the thread was loaded. We increment it when the page is loaded.

[Shorty]

I think his point is that I could sit there and refresh the page 500 times. Makes it look like something its not.

[Zath]

Jul 9, 2012 10:04:19 GMT -8 Shorty said:

I think his point is that I could sit there and refresh the page 500 times. Makes it look like something its not.

Got it in one.

[VS Admin]

It is what it is, a count of how many times the page has been loaded. No more, no less

[Zath]

Jul 9, 2012 13:23:48 GMT -8 VS Admin said:

It is what it is, a count of how many times the page has been loaded. No more, no less

Yes and this has always, in my mind at least, been regarded as a measure of the popularity of the thread. Something that will make visitors want to take a look.
Quite an important feature I would have thought.

If, instead, it is just some lowly regarded stat as you seem to be suggesting, why not have it only visible to admins ?

[Ryan Roos]

Jul 11, 2012 6:44:51 GMT -8 Zath said:

Jul 9, 2012 13:23:48 GMT -8 VS Admin said:

It is what it is, a count of how many times the page has been loaded. No more, no less

If, instead, it is just some lowly regarded stat as you seem to be suggesting, why not have it only visible to admins ?

You can modify the template if you don't want to display it.

The difference between how it works and what you are asking is huge. Forum crippling huge. Currently it just ticks up on page load, the only thing it tracks is if a page was loaded and it updates itself. What you are suggesting would require us to track every thread every member has ever viewed. Then do a check every time a thread is loaded to see if that member has previously viewed the thread. There simply aren't enough resources to make that work in reality. How would guests be handled? IP? Now we have to have a database that tracks every IP on the forum and which threads that IP has viewed. And another check when the page loads to decide if we are increasing the view or not. Do you see how quickly this gets out of hand? The forums would move at a crawl on every page load of a thread.

Especially on a board like Support with 178,652 members times over 368,000 threads. And Support isn't the largest ProBoards forum.

It simply isn't possible even if we weren't going to maintain the current functionality.