Views

[Dalo]

How does it work? In some forums the number get raised by 1 anytime you visit a thread,even it is your own! Which I find rather strange.

That is luckily not the case here. If I visit one of my threads the number of views remains unchanged, and I like it this way. But when happens when I visit somebody else's thread? Does the number get raised only the first time, or only if there has been a new post?

[iNow]

It’s clicks, regardless of user. Doesn’t update in real-time AFAIK

[Dalo]

Just now, iNow said:

It’s clicks, regardless of user. Doesn’t update in real-time AFAIK

so, if I come back 10 times to the thread, it will become +10 even if nothing has been changed?

[Dalo]

I suppose it is a company secret, since no official has reacted.

[Sensei]

17 hours ago, Dalo said:

How does it work?

That all depends on code of website.

f.e. you have PHP code:

<?php
 $counter = file_get_contents( "counter.txt" );
 printf( "Counter %d<br />\n", $counter );
 $counter++;
 file_put_contents( "counter.txt", $counter );
?>

(at first you will have warning, because of not existing counter.txt file)

It'll increase by 1 every time you click Refresh button in web browser.

Detection of "unique visitors" (that's proper name for it), is much more complicated, and requires knowledge who is visiting website (logging to website and registration).

Not always (rarely) the same IP address of visitor means it's "unique visitor" (some people might have private and/or dynamic IP addresses, which will cause problems counting by IP).

Say you go to website from your home, then you go from work, then from your smartphone, then you go from free wifi in the market etc. etc. Each time it's different IP address.. Is it unique visitor, or should be counted separately (and increase counter)?

 

If programmer will modify code to use cookies, to store boolean "visited this website" information, it can easily being misused by hackers or other people (programmers) who will find it.. and unique counter will stop counting the right people again..

 

Edited November 18, 2017 by Sensei

[Dalo]

Just now, Sensei said:

That all depends on code of website.

f.e. you have PHP code:

<?php
 $counter = file_get_contents( "counter.txt" );
 printf( "Counter %d<br />\n", $counter );
 $counter++;
 file_put_contents( "counter.txt", $counter );
?>

(at first you will have warning, because of not existing counter.txt file)

It'll increase by 1 every time you click Refresh button in web browser.

Detection of "unique visitors" (that's proper name for it), is much more complicated, and requires knowledge who is visiting website (logging to website and registration).

Not always (rarely) the same IP address of web browser means it's "unique visitor" (some people might have private and/or dynamic IP addresses, which will cause problems counting by IP).

Say you go to website from your home, then you go from work, then from your smartphone, then you go from free wifi in the market etc. etc. Each time it's different IP address.. Is it unique visitor, or should be counted separately (and increase counter)?

 

If programmer will modify code to use cookies, to store boolean "visited this website" information, it can easily being misused by hackers or other people (programmers) who will find it.. and unique counter will stop count the right people again..

 

This certainly makes sense. How does it relate to a thread title being shown in bold, and then in regular font once you have visited the thread, and no new content has been posted? To then become "bold" with new content?

[Strange]

1 hour ago, Dalo said:

I suppose it is a company secret, since no official has reacted.

Or no one knows. Or cares.

[Sensei]

42 minutes ago, Dalo said:

This certainly makes sense. How does it relate to a thread title being shown in bold, and then in regular font once you have visited the thread, and no new content has been posted? To then become "bold" with new content?

Forum software asks you to register and log in, so it has chance to detect things like that.

User makes questions and/or answers them.

Forum software knows you're logged in (or not logged in).

It's (session id) stored (the most likely) in cookies (rarely in URI/URL) these days.

 

41 minutes ago, Strange said:

Or no one knows. Or cares.

Just look at cookies/URI, write code that will try to connect to some website from PHP/Java/C/C++/.NET Framework, and everything will be revealed how it was implemented..

It's quite interesting subject by itself. Especially if you are owner of service like Google/Facebook or want to emit ad about whatever you want to sell to people using Internet as medium.

IT businesses have much more wider knowledge about visitors than for example television or radio stations, which would love to know what IT knows about their customers, to better address their ads..

One of method of showing list of websites is showing them by popularity (view count). If view counter is abused by programmers who made bots visiting multiple (or millions/billions) times, their website is showed prior the rest. But these views are not from the real people.. IT business owners are trying to fight with it by using various techniques (mentioned above and in the previous post).

 

Edited November 18, 2017 by Sensei

[iNow]

2 hours ago, Dalo said:

I suppose it is a company secret, since no official has reacted.

Yes, it’s code word clearance and above. I could tell you, but I’d have to kill you. 

[Dalo]

Just now, iNow said:

Yes, it’s code word clearance and above. I could tell you, but I’d have to kill you. 

please don't. I promise I won't tell anybody.

[Phi for All]

2 hours ago, Strange said:

Or no one knows. Or cares.

FTW. 

We've had many posters before who title threads provocatively, always about science being wrong, then point to the number of views as proof they're right. I think most members clicked wondering wtf? That's not good discussion.

Like post count, views don't give you data rich enough to develop meaningful information.

[Sensei]

41 minutes ago, Phi for All said:

FTW

We've had many posters before who title threads provocatively,  (...)

FTW is (also) Internet shortcut for Fuck The World..

Quite provocative content from your side..

41 minutes ago, Phi for All said:

I think most members clicked wondering wtf? That's not good discussion.

They make provocative thread, you or other scientist should answers them in the best manner to learn them something.. If they want to learn, it'll be revealed during discussion..

That's scientists on this website who should show up from their the best side..

Imagine, 1000+ years later somebody, future archeologist is reading what webarchive collected, and reading what you or others wrote... Will he/she/it bother about what unknown entity wrote, or bother what you personally wrote on forum? You wrote thousands posts here.. while entity jumped in, wrote couple or just one provocative post, and escaped, while thread started living its own life for days or weeks...

 

Edited November 18, 2017 by Sensei

[Dalo]

On 11/18/2017 at 9:13 PM, Phi for All said:

Like post count, views don't give you data rich enough to develop meaningful information.

I certainly agree with you on this. Anyway, if I had to judge the value of my ideas by their popularity I would look first at my reputation. I am glad I do not.

But both reputation and views do give some information about the interests and the convictions of the users of this forum. As such, they are fairly decent indicators.

[Dalo]

On 11/18/2017 at 9:49 PM, Sensei said:

FTW is (also) Internet shortcut for Fuck The World..

Quite provocative content from your side..

They make provocative thread, you or other scientist should answers them in the best manner to learn them something.. If they want to learn, it'll be revealed during discussion..

That's scientists on this website who should show up from their the best side..

Imagine, 1000+ years later somebody, future archeologist is reading what webarchive collected, and reading what you or others wrote... Will he/she/it bother about what unknown entity wrote, or bother what you personally wrote on forum? You wrote thousands posts here.. while entity jumped in, wrote couple or just one provocative post, and escaped, while thread started living its own life for days or weeks...

 

We already know how archeologists will deal with the opinions in this or other forums. At least, if the past is any indication of the future. Just look how scholars handle debates which have taken place centuries ago. They will tend of course to look for opinions which have turned out to be right while everybody considered them wrong (or maybe vice versa). Views of the Atomists through the centuries, writings of Giordano Bruno if he had been allowed to continue preaching his "insane ideas".

Archeologists of different era and of different convictions will look for different things in the past. And they usually find them.

Edited November 23, 2017 by Dalo

[Sensei]

4 minutes ago, Dalo said:

We already know how archeologists will deal with the opinions in this or other forums. At least, if the past is any indication of the future. Just look how scholars handle debates which have taken place centuries ago. They will tend of course to look for opinions which have turned out to be right while everybody considered wrong (or maybe vice versa). Views of the Atomists through the centuries, writings of Giordano Bruno if he had been allowed to continue preaching his "insane ideas".

Archeologists of different era and different convictions will look for different things in the past. And they usually find them.

Archeologists/historicist can be ideologically biased, like f.e. searching for proof of supremacy of one (their own) race, proof of supremacy of one nation above other nations, and so on, so on.. White man living long enough (for generations) in tropics will turn black, and black man living long enough on far north will change color of skin to white. It's natural adaptation to environment in which organism is living. They're paid by government, which want results fitting their ideology.

 

True unbiased archeologists/historicist can exist only in environment in which government do not tell them what to search for, and what should be results of researches, in advance.

World in which somebody telling uncomfortable truth is not punished and ostracized.

[studiot]

47 minutes ago, Dalo said:

We already know how archeologists will deal with the opinions in this or other forums. At least, if the past is any indication of the future. Just look how scholars handle debates which have taken place centuries ago. They will tend of course to look for opinions which have turned out to be right while everybody considered them wrong (or maybe vice versa). Views of the Atomists through the centuries, writings of Giordano Bruno if he had been allowed to continue preaching his "insane ideas".

Archeologists of different era and of different convictions will look for different things in the past. And they usually find them.

Archeologists can also get it wildly wrong.

I remember a Science Fiction story I read once about a group of cosmic archeologists digging through the ruins of a planet the inhabitants had wrecked.

The found a picture strip which they worked out were sequential frames so they worked out how to view the film.

Upon watching they came to the conclusion that the planet was the most hostile place in the universe.
Stick like inhabitants wandered around but were constantly being blown up, shot or knocked down.
Yet they seemed to keep getting up to be knocked down etc again and again.

At the end of film there was a scene they couldn't work out, but seemd to be writing of some sort.

 

It said

 

It said "A Looney Tunes production"

[Dalo]

19 hours ago, Sensei said:

Archeologists/historicist can be ideologically biased

 

19 hours ago, studiot said:

Archeologists can also get it wildly wrong.

Of course. The problem is that there is no supreme authority that can claim to be neutral and objective. Truth, in such a context, is not scientifically definable, and is an object of struggle and competition.

The scientific struggle for "truth" is luckily more institutionalized and rule-driven. That does not mean that we should ignore the human, economical and political factors. Only that they are not as preponderant as they used to be.

We do not know of course how the future generations will look back on our era. Maybe they will see it as comparable to that of the Church dominated period of the Middle Ages. Or, hopefully, as the beginning of the Enlightening.