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Public area => The Pub => Plugins => Topic started by: oOo--STAR--oOo on April 20th, 2012, 11:26 PM

Title: Message view count.
Post by: oOo--STAR--oOo on April 20th, 2012, 11:26 PM

Hey,

I think a plugin to show how many views your message has had would be really cool.
I understand that you only have topic views at the moment ( I think )

But say I post a message after, then its good to see how many people have potentially viewed my message?
You think this would be a waste of space, or a good piece of information?

I mean you could display this information after the date or topic title.
I think it would be a good addition and could even consider core development of this.

What do you think?

Title: Re: Message view count.
Post by: live627 on April 20th, 2012, 11:51 PM

Quote

potentially

Thus is the keyword.

Title: Re: Message view count.
Post by: Arantor on April 20th, 2012, 11:58 PM

I don't think it would be any use, certainly not as a core feature. If anything I'd rather remove topic views before implementing this.

There are major performance considerations attached, namely that you'd *HAVE* to put this in its own database table otherwise the nightmare of updating the messages table (and preventing any other process even viewing threads while that update occurred, as default on MySQL prior to 5.5)[1]

Even then, you'd have to exclude search engines (which in itself is unreliable, just as it is excluded in theory from topic view counts), and even after that, the strong likelihood is that all you're going to see is a stream of increases over time, proportionate to the age of the message.

Ten messages each posted in close proximity to each other are going to have an almost horizontal (level) trend, messages further apart will get a proportionately higher spike, but that's all it'll tell you.

1.	Tables in MySQL before 5.5 are defaulted to MyISAM, where an update to the table requires table-level locking, meaning nothing else can touch the table. You can use InnoDB in 5.0/5.1 and it's default in 5.5 but that's not widespread yet.

Title: Re: Message view count.
Post by: oOo--STAR--oOo on April 21st, 2012, 12:23 AM

Quote from Arantor on April 20th, 2012, 11:58 PM

I don't think it would be any use, certainly not as a core feature. If anything I'd rather remove topic views before implementing this.

There are major performance considerations attached, namely that you'd *HAVE* to put this in its own database table otherwise the nightmare of updating the messages table (and preventing any other process even viewing threads while that update occurred, as default on MySQL prior to 5.5)[1]

Even then, you'd have to exclude search engines (which in itself is unreliable, just as it is excluded in theory from topic view counts), and even after that, the strong likelihood is that all you're going to see is a stream of increases over time, proportionate to the age of the message.

Ten messages each posted in close proximity to each other are going to have an almost horizontal (level) trend, messages further apart will get a proportionately higher spike, but that's all it'll tell you.

1.	Tables in MySQL before 5.5 are defaulted to MyISAM, where an update to the table requires table-level locking, meaning nothing else can touch the table. You can use InnoDB in 5.0/5.1 and it's default in 5.5 but that's not widespread yet.

Yeah I get what you mean there.
Probably would involve a lot more processing especially when adding filters for search engines and what not.
Also on the fact on one page you would have to increase the value for every message on that page rather than just 1 for the whole topic.
Unless there was an easier way lol.

I just thought it would be a good asset to have, but implementing it does seem a lil hard, and use up more resources.

Title: Re: Message view count.
Post by: Nao on April 21st, 2012, 09:28 PM

If you think a post is worthy enough to track its view count, then... Just post it as a new topic ;)

Logic rules! :)

Title: Re: Message view count.
Post by: godboko71 on April 30th, 2012, 11:57 AM

Quote from Arantor on April 20th, 2012, 11:58 PM

I don't think it would be any use, certainly not as a core feature. If anything I'd rather remove topic views before implementing this.

While views are interesting sometimes I agree it's an overhead that is almost worthless, I can use server logs for a better idea of activity.