Who, exactly, is viewing? Forum feature request

[maggie32514]

Forum URL: seekingthekingdom.freeforums.net/

Call me a snoop if you must but I would like to know who is viewing the threads on my forum. I don't mean the spiders of course but like some other forums I would like to be able to know that "Mike" is viewing thread A; "Jill" and "Jack" are viewing thread B, etc. Is this do-able? 

[Thomasss]

This could be a feature request, a admin will be on tomorrow to tell you.


You can also request this as a plugin/template as well.

[RedBassett]

No need post in templates. Here suffices.

I have marked this as a feature request, but be warned that it has been turned down multiple times before for privacy concerns.

[leif]

If I remember right, ProBoards feels this is a privacy violation and will not be doing it.

[Boy_Wonder]

I'd love this as well - even if it was just User x is viewing this board.

Maybe have an option in profiles for users to 'opt out'.

Eg if User z didn't want people knowing where they were looking they could select 'hide my viewing' option.

[Wormopolis]

users in a board is already in the info center at the bottom of the thread listings.

[Boy_Wonder]

But it'd be nice to be able to see it all on one page - eg

[site url]/users/viewing

and a list of who's viewing where of the users for the boards all in one place if the admins didn't particularly want to risk privacy violation

[maggie32514]

Actually, I do see the privacy concern. I could happily settle for knowing when a real person as opposed to a spider is viewing a thread. I mean some of mine have had 50 or 100 views but I am pretty sure that not one was by an actual human.

[Boy_Wonder]

I know I'm interested as it tells me if the thread was viewed by a guest (which could be a bot which could = yay SEO) or if it was an actual user viewing it (yay possible plots coming from the thread/possible new discussions sparked etc)

[RedBassett]

It is very hard to actually differentiate bots and human users, since all guests look the same to the software. You could check against know Google/Yahoo/Bing/Baidu IPs, but that isn't a comprehensive list by far.

[maggie32514]

Well, what I had in mind was "member viewing"  vs "1 viewing". I go back and forth on the privacy issue which I do see.

I don't find the IP addresses particularly helpful. Of course, over time, I have gotten to know certain bots and spiders very well. But not all of them and it is useless for determining whether real people are visiting the forum (which is the major thing I want to know).

[Boy_Wonder]

Oct 2, 2013 7:35:59 GMT -8 jrryan said:

Oct 2, 2013 6:18:04 GMT -8 Boy_Wonder said:

I know I'm interested as it tells me if the thread was viewed by a guest (which could be a bot which could = yay SEO) or if it was an actual user viewing it (yay possible plots coming from the thread/possible new discussions sparked etc)

So your thought is you want to know if it is a real person  so they may or may not take an interest in joining in the conversation on a thread? This only possible if the person joins your forum or you allow guests to reply on your forum? Either way even if you know who that person is you would have no control over what they do or don't do? I just don't understand the reasoning? But I do understand the privacy concerns of PB.

It's not only that

Let me give a better analogy:
So there's a thread I post in with character y, it's also joined by character x and z. However its something that could affect the other characters on an indirect level. I'd be curious as to if characters a,b or c were reading threads etc. 

[Brian]

We do not have any plans to show who is currently viewing a particular thread for privacy reasons. We also do not track who is actively viewing a thread at a particular time.

[Boy_Wonder]

Oct 2, 2013 8:00:49 GMT -8 Brian said:

We do not have any plans to show who is currently viewing a particular thread for privacy reasons. We also do not track who is actively viewing a thread at a particular time.

I'm just curious as to what privacy reasons these maybe. 

[Michael]

Oct 2, 2013 10:12:30 GMT -8 Boy_Wonder said:

Oct 2, 2013 8:00:49 GMT -8 Brian said:

We do not have any plans to show who is currently viewing a particular thread for privacy reasons. We also do not track who is actively viewing a thread at a particular time.

I'm just curious as to what privacy reasons these maybe. 

I think that Brian was more referring to the fact that many people (myself included) wouldn't want to join a forum if we felt that we were constantly being watched. Some users may want to browse a forum at their leisure instead of possibly being interrogated as to why they spent an hour reading a thread, and never responded (for example).