View Count

[deleted]

When you are in the main index area, it should give visitors the options of whether they see number of replies/posts in a topic or number of times it was viewed. I recommend that when they click on the tap that shows "Follow" it should have "Views". Once toggled it should display views rather than replies/Unread.

jasperkade

For sure, I agree totally. A view count for threads is a must. Either a quick toggle to view them on the list page as you say [deleted] or as a display option in the admin backend for permanent display..

Franz

Why exactly is it a must?

Dominion

I've been pondering this for the past couple days. I haven't been able to come up with a good reason for having them.

There have been times (in other forums) where I've taken pity on the poor soul whose thread has been viewed 200 times with no reply, and made the extra effort to give some sort of answer. But since I started using esoTalk, I haven't really missed this feature.

If someone can provide a good rationale for view counts, I'd love to hear it. That's not snark, I'm truly curious.

jasperkade

Dominion

Ok, not a 'must' but a worthwhile inclusion in my opinion. As an example of where I feel it could be beneficial is in a thread that doesn't necessarily elicit a continual response from other members - like for example starting a 'conversation' in your Coffee Connoisseurs Forum showing off some WIP pictures of a custom coffee grinder that you are building. It may only get a few text responses and maybe only 25 'likes', but with all your pictures posted there it may have over a million views...

I don't know, that data seems important to me for certain types of posts - so while not 'critical' in the extreme sense, still pretty standard and worthwhile data to allow users to see..? Certainly as important as showing the chronology of a conversation.. is stating "3 MONTHS LATER" in a grey bar in the middle of a conversation a must, is the time-stamp not enough?

But yes, Extension probably makes most sense 🙂

johnanisere

Dominion There have been times (in other forums) where I've taken pity on the poor soul whose thread has been viewed 200 times with no reply,

? ? just kill me

but view counts are necessary though

Toby

Extension 🙂

Dominion

jasperkade Thanks for the explanation, what you say makes a lot of sense. I'm not a veteran forum admin by any stretch of the imagination, and most of my experience has been with using forums for exchange of information. (We're currently using esoTalk as a way to host conversations that we used to do by mailing list.) It's interesting to learn how others approach forum management, and what sorts of things become important in different situations.

Coffee Connoisseurs Forum? Hmm, sounds interesting ... but I probably belong in the Coffee Addicts forum. 😃

kamildev

Extension 🙂

ameo

Can anyone please make this extension?

chrisberthe

What do you guys think is better functionality in this case?

Whenever the thread is hit, increase the total count number but limit it to 1 time per user? Or increment it no matter how many times the thread is hit?

valgrid

For support forums visitors are far important to know than views. As visitors are people and views don't really have a meaning.

meetdilip

I think it would be nice to have views as well. Kind of conventional feature.

jordanjay29

meetdilip Since you dug it up, I would like to ask (since I don't think anyone answered it sufficiently before), why are views useful besides being convention? Considering they don't tell you who viewed the discussion or post, it's basically nothing more than a badge of honor (and these days, is more telling that a robot viewed your topic than a human).

meetdilip

View counter is a good tool if you are an admin. An easy way to know how much popular posts are. Don't we all keep watch how much popular our forum is getting with time ? Also I am sure there will be people who keep track of statistics that " how many views it took before the thread got a reply "

@jordanjay29 , won't it possible to protect view counter from bot views ?

I would even welcome bot views because some people peep into less active boards while evaluating forums. Having a view counter with good no. of view is a nice way to hold them back.

jordanjay29

meetdilip An easy way to know how much popular posts are. Don't we all keep watch how much popular our forum is getting with time ?

Hmm, I wonder if views are the best way to gauge this, though. I'm not against someone writing an extension for this, of course, I'm just curious. It always seemed like a convention that's become more and more useless over time, especially with the rampant spiders and spam bot trawling the net that account for more views than human.

Popularity might be a useful means to calculate on the basis of logged in views, as well as other factors (likes, perhaps, replies, etc).

ron_jeremy

I prefer not to have a view count, or at least an option to disable view counts. I can't remember a scenario where seeing a view count provided any added-value to the thread or the community as a whole.

Flarum is currently spot on with only showing the number of replies and also the way likes are implemented.

Prosperous

It's an aesthetic feature if anything. Doesn't really do anything but provide inaccurate statistics as people have mentioned already. If there was a way to just show registered users' views in topics then that would be a different story and I would support it.

isti37

View count is extremely important on forums that provide useful content because the number of views tells the user that the topic might be more serious than other similar topics or that the topic is worth reading even if it is old.
Of course, we could innovate a little and give a meta score instead of views. (maybe implement an algorithm which would check for visitors from google/facebook, the total time spent on a topic, the number of followers, number of likes given in a topic and number of views and even the letter count)

Many topics won't receive a considerable amount of replies but would still be very popular.