Views

[nanor00]

I think that peoples posts should track how many views they receive, thoughts?

[Danny Toledo]

I don't really see how that would be useful. Could you explain your reasoning?

[LB]

I strongly disagree.

[shadowmouse]

I find it can be useful to know whether nobody knows the answer because there have been loads of views but no posts, but what I tend to find most useful on other forums is the ability to see what other people are doing on the forum (viewing/posting etc), because it lets you know whether your question is being answered at that moment, which is nice if I want to know whether or not to close it and go and do something else before coming back for another look, or to just wait a minute or two.

[jlb]

I find it can be useful to know whether nobody knows the answer because there have been loads of views but no posts,

Just because there are a lot of views with no posts doesn't mean no one knows the answer. It could be that many of the viewers are not interested enough to answer your question.

but what I tend to find most useful on other forums is the ability to see what other people are doing on the forum (viewing/posting etc), because it lets you know whether your question is being answered at that moment,

Just because someone has their browser open to your topic doesn't mean that they're answering your question. It doesn't even mean that anyone is in the same room as the computer.

I want to know whether or not to close it and go and do something else before coming back for another look, or to just wait a minute or two.

Many forums have email notification option available to let you know when someone has posted something in a topic of interest. With this forum you can subscribe to the topic to get notifications. But really if you just sit and wait you're probably wasting time that could be spent trying to research your problem. Remember people providing answers are not getting paid and it may take from several minutes to several hours, if not several days, before someone is interested enough to try to answer the question.

[shadowmouse]

I'm talking about a system like the SFML forum where it tells you what topic people are viewing, and whether or not they are posting in it, meaning you can tell if someone has just left their computer on your topic, or if they are actually answering. Also the point is to know whether to wait at my computer for them to finish, or whether to go and do something else (not on my computer so email doesn't help). Besides, I can always easily know if someone has finished posting via refresh, my point was so that you can know if someone is part way through posting.

[jlb]

my point was so that you can know if someone is part way through posting.

There is no way of telling if someone is part way through posting. You may be able to tell if someone has started to post an answer but you can never know if that someone will ever finish, until they actually submit an answer.

[Z e r e o]

Just because there are a lot of views with no posts doesn't mean no one knows the answer. It could be that many of the viewers are not interested enough to answer your question.

But it does give you an idea. You will rarely find things that are 100 percent certain in life, usually the best you can do is round up the available information and make your own decision from that information.

So yes knowing that a lot of people have viewed your post and no one has yet to answer does give you information that either they don't know the answer, you didn't explain it well enough, etc.

Just because someone has their browser open to your topic doesn't mean that they're answering your question. It doesn't even mean that anyone is in the same room as the computer.

Lol again basically the same thing I said above. Yes you don't know for certain but you can make a reasonable guess with the information provided.

Anyways trying to argue these things are meaningless to the subject that the OP posted. Instead of debating what other members said, we should just give our own opinions on that subject of showing the views that a post has gotten.

Things like how it would help, anything it could hurt, possible ways to implement it, etc. This way the forum admin knows what the members of the forum think and can make a better decision. Because none of us can actually make this decision, all we can do is voice our opinions on the matter and let Twicker decide.

Otherwise the whole thread will turn out like all the other ones that have appeared on this forum where all the members are bickering over if "X" is actually a good thing or bad and a whole other host of things that contribute nothing to the subject at hand.


As for myself I don't see myself benefiting much from it other then what is listed below.

Pros

- Can help the poster know if anyone is even viewing his question. Which as shadowmouse mentioned can be helpful to guess when you might be getting an answer.

Cons

- Can't really think of any cons to having this feature.

[LB]

On forums where viewcounts are a thing, I frequently see new users replying to their thread complaining that there have been numerous views and no responses. That's a bad thing in my opinion, both for the person complaining and for everyone else.

[E0p9LyTq]

thoughts?

VERY bad idea.

But then that is just my opinion. YMMV.

The point of the forum is to participate, not merely read.

Yes, I do more reading than I reply, but then I am closer to the noob side of the "house" than I am the "expert" side.

[Peter87]

I like the way it is. Now I don't have to think how I navigate the site will appear to other members. On forums that have view counts I sometimes feel I'm screwing up the view count if I view the same topic too many times and that changes my behaviour.

I don't know about others but I always press F5 after submitting a reply to see if there was any replies between my reply and the one I see above. I also press F5 while typing a message (especially long ones) to check if there has been other replies while I was typing. This adds up to a lot of page views.

[LB]

+1 Peter87, it psychs me out.

[YFGHNG]

I don't really have any positive or negative view on viewcounts per se, but let me ask you this, @OP: as a programmer, are you really going to sit idle and wait for someone to reply to your post while you sit there and do nothing to your (I assume not working) program? That's the equivalent of waiting for all your windows updates to install and you sitting there staring at the screen.

And that, my friend, is truly wasting time.

[Pizza God]

Like a lot of other people on this topic I do not see how this will help anyone learn or do anything good for this forum at all. Instead all it would do is make people wonder why they haven't got any help after 100 views on their question. This website would also just become "Who got the most views on their question?" and has no good benefit that could be seen by a normal user.