View count

I'm not sure how/when your view count is updated, but it seems slightly odd. I made a post; it had one view. Two people viewed it but nobody replies; it now has three views. Then, I replied to my own post: it now has six views.

Four would be "correct", but admittedly counting views is not mission critical. I suspect that I got one view for going to the post, one view while replying, and then one view as I view the result of my post. It seems that the easiest fix would be to not tally views while the bbshowpost action is 'add'.

Perhaps this is not a bug, but a 'feature'. *grin*

I think the bit of code that draws the existing thread updates the view count by one. This would happen as you write your reply (the thread is shown underneath) and after posting the reply (you see the thread again).

You don't really know what the view count "should" be, as you don't have any way of knowing whether or not someone was reading your thread while you were busy replying to it. That is what the view count is all about. Counting times people look at it.

You are probably right, replying would add three:

• One to view the thread
  
• One as you view the thread while replying
  
• One as you see the resulting thread with the reply.

However at least two of those are really genuine views. The first, because you may not reply, so we have to count that. The second, maybe not. The third, well you are now viewing the changed thread.

I think the effect is pretty marginal. According to my stats there are an average of 22 posts per day, but 2,591 views. So if the 22 posts counted as 3 views each, then that is an extra 44/2591 counted which are maybe not "real" views. But that is only 1.7% out.

Plus, I don't count viewing the index pages as views, so if someone stops by to browse the main page and doesn't see anything interesting, that isn't counted. So it probably balances out a bit.

Actually, this was on the BMud forums, so I can be pretty darn sure that it was just me at the time. :PPersonally I would not count the third as a view. For me, the view count is representing people reading the thread; but as you finish posting you are not viewing the thread, you are simply posting to the thread you just looked at. Certainly we count the first and I think just as certainly we should not count the second; the third seems debatable.

I believe that on my forum software, it does count the third, simply because it's too much of a bother not to. In the ideal world I wouldn't, but IIRC I didn't bother not doing it. :)

Admittedly though, the effects in the long run are marginal; I just noticed it as I was posting on the BMud forums (which are rather low-volume in terms of views and posts, especially these days *grin*) and thought it was a little odd that posting increased views by three.