What Happened to the Views Column?

This was once a good feature to see if your threads were at least getting attention, hopefully it will return....

I believe that the calculations for that column were munching a lot of processor time. Slowing down the boards.
You can still see overall views in your profile.

But yeah, it was pretty cool to see how many are looking.
Maybe it will be tweaked, and show up again.

Originally posted by spacedoubt
I believe that the calculations for that column were munching a lot of processor time. Slowing down the boards.

I doubt very seriously that a views column was slowing down this site.

They have been there since I decided to become a member, you have to come up with better than that.

You can still see overall views in your profile.

Take another look, new threads views aren't reflecting in your profile.

My Three Most Recent Threads
What Happened to the Views Column?
This was once a good feature to see if your threads were at least getting attention, hopefully it will return....
flags: 2, replies: 2, views: 0
visit: topic last post by JacKatMtn

This is what this thread says in my profile.....

And those you see in your profile are locked on the numbers as they were about 1am GMT when the view column disappeared -- they are not moving.

Hope it's only temporary.

BTW belowtopsecret and abovepolitics still have the columns.

Yep, the total views is gone too.
Must be quite the processor hog.

I guess we'll find out the reason soon enough.

Guess you all will have to start flagging everything a bit more, if you are compelled to reply to a thread maybe you should flag it.

With the page views gone... Flagging is the way to go!

Originally posted by JacKatMtn
I doubt very seriously that a views column was slowing down this site.

They have been there since I decided to become a member, you have to come up with better than that.

You just can't fool the smart ones... The "Views Column" from ATS was traded to Iran for the 15 UK hostages, who in turn will turn it over to Kim Jon Il for some fissile material and missile technology.

There will be a pixely YouTube video about the whole thing posted next week exposing this shadowy subterfuge... But alas, the plot has been revealed.

Occam's Monkeys, not just for being the most convoluted poo on the internet anymore...

Okay, as long as you not trade the numbers to NSA, CIA and their ilk we should be secure.

Originally posted by UM_Gazz
Guess you all will have to start flagging everything a bit more, if you are compelled to reply to a thread maybe you should flag it.

With the page views gone... Flagging is the way to go!

Flagging must be fixed first, there have been many times I started a thread and flagged it, but once the thread show up on the forum they had 2 or more flags with 4 or less views, I have U2U'd SO about this so he is aware.

As far as flagging compulsion, that is much different than trying to gauge whether your thread title is enticing enough to get someone to check it out,
I am sure I am not the only one who has fell victim to a good title only to be disappointed in the thread content.

On top of that , just because you reply to a thread does not mean you deem it worthy of a flag, did you flag this thread UMGazz?

Originally posted by JacKatMtn
On top of that , just because you reply to a thread does not mean you deem it worthy of a flag, did you flag this thread UMGazz?

As a matter of fact I did, almost immediately.

As for the double flagging on a new thread when the first flag is applied, I have also noticed this, and I can assure you after watching this very closely, only the first flag given is doubled, every flag after counts as 1 and only one so there is no issue there.

As for the page views missing, I am sure you all know that SkepticOverlord is always working on things and making changes that include improving site performance, and this could be a part of that, or something else, I am sure he will answer for all on this issue as soon as possible.

Still I think the flagging is a good way to build on discussions, and get others involved.

Originally posted by UM_Gazz

As for the double flagging on a new thread when the first flag is applied, I have also noticed this, and I can assure you after watching this very closely, only the first flag given is doubled, every flag after counts as 1 and only one so there is no issue there.

Wrong, I have ahad 1..2...3 and even 4 flags when I posted a thread, immediately after posting, the one time I had 4 flags with 2 views.

Still I think the flagging is a good way to build on discussions, and get others involved.

I have nothing against flags, if I find a thread that I deem important or interesting, I flag it so others might check it out, but that has little to do with views, you need a catchy thread title to draw interest, from what you are saying they might as well eliminate thread titles and let us just pick a topic based on flags alone.....

Originally posted by JacKatMtn
Wrong, I have ahad 1..2...3 and even 4 flags when I posted a thread, immediately after posting, the one time I had 4 flags with 2 views.

OK you or anyone reading this can test this and see for yourselves, find a thread with 0 flags, open it, click the flag button wait then hit the back button, and you will see that your one flag has become 2, then have others flag that thread and you'll see that everyone after that only counts as one... and you cannot flag a thread with more than 0 and make it double no matter how hard you try, nor can you flag any thread again once you've flagged it, the system is working fine, I don't know where you had this problem or why JacKatMtn. If you test the flagging system as I have and suggested above you will see it is working as designed.

edit: nevermind - I think I missed a memo.

[edit on 3/31/2007 by Gools]

UM_GAZZ,

I appreciate your input and response to my inquiry, but I really am not concerned with the flags.

I saw some problems and relayed what I saw to SO,

My concern is with the views column, I may be overreacting but I always used this as a reference point and now it is gone, heck I may be the only one who noticed lol.

So once again I appreciate yours and others response to my question and I will just have to wait and see what others have in store.

Have a great weekend!!!

UM_GAZZ,

I appreciate your input and response to my inquiry, but I really am not concerned with the flags.

I saw some problems and relayed what I saw to SO,

My concern is with the views column, I may be overreacting but I always used this as a reference point and now it is gone, heck I may be the only one who noticed lol.

So once again I appreciate yours and others response to my question and I will just have to wait and see what others have in store.

Have a great weekend!!!

No offense meant but all the changes being made to the forums lately are really getting annoying. I'm starting to miss the old ATS.

Originally posted by JacKatMtn
I doubt very seriously that a views column was slowing down this site.
They have been there since I decided to become a member, you have to come up with better than that.

Well... that's the best we've got.

In reality, the "views" tracking is indeed an item that is a "luxury" and was beginning to introduce some problems.

As most people who work with high-volume technology are aware, simple database writes can often take up to four times the processor cycles as read queries, even read queries that touch on more data than a simple one-column update write... such as incrementing the view counter for a thread.

I ran a test by removing the view increment for guests, and db server load immediately decreased... so now it's implemented across all sites and we're no longer tracking views. You may notice other very large boards have adopted a similar approach.

The issue of incrementing a view-tally on every page load is not an issue on small-traffic and/or small-size sites. But as our threads table continues to grow in size with more than 262,000 topics, it has become an increasingly processor-heavy operation to open the large table, read the current views, write the views+1, then close the large table each time a thread is viewed. Now consider that our threads are getting close to 200,000 views a day, and you start to see our problem.

So, now that we're not incrementing a view-counter, views are no longer shown.

No more 'views' for our threads? ...no more 'total views' in our profiles?
I hope you're kiddin' ..it can't be right.
...but ...come to know you haven read any thread technical or on changes you appear in, I'm afraid you're not.

*sigh*
I guess we can learn to live with it... But you do realize it is the most important member tool to judge how you are doing. More important than the bars, I think.

The views are still being counted, right!?! Less processor drainage, because no more write, add one, and close, everytime a thread opens.

But what about if it did every 100 time? If we had a counter displaying K times. When a hundred views done, it shows 0.1, a thousand 1.0, and so forth.

The processor usage would only be the fraction that we would count in then, right?

[ed to chime with SkyWay, yes we need to see something move.]

[edit on 31-3-2007 by khunmoon]

The removal of the views column makes the board seem slower because you can see only a small fraction of the activity that is taking place on the forums. The views column reflected the large number of people that are visiting the forum and indicate the high energy of this forum. Now, with only the replies listed, it makes this place seem as though it is sparsely attended. Almost casts a desolate feel to the board. Makes you think there's no one out there but a few.