What does the number of views mean? Is it only a stat? Are many views an indication of the value of the thread? What does it take to get a 5 star rating? Is it an indication of the value of the thread?
In my understanding, the number of views is just a stat. It certainly denotes interest in a thread though interest is not a correlate to value or substance in my opinion. The star value is assigned by posters who use the 'Rate This Thread' feature at the top right of the page, just below the Results heading. I believe that it is arrived at by the average of the number of ratings. A single 5 star rating would stand until additional (lower) ratings changed it, much like consumer reviews, if I have assessed this value correctly. That is my perspective as a member. A moderator may have more to add or can correct any errors in this submission.
I suppose that really depends upon the topic under discussion and how relevant it may be to a wider audience. For certain subjects, the topic may be so specialized that few have the expertise or interest to follow the thread. Other topics with broader influence, perhaps something along the lines of fresh water, green energy etc. have potential to affect us all and so I would expect a lot more views. To be honest, though, there seems to be a lot more viewers of topics such as jokes, movies and politics. With 494,599 views, the following link may be the most popular thread on the forum. http://www.sciforums.com/showthread.php?68020-Jokes-and-Funny-Stories
Most of the views probably come from various kinds of web-crawling bots. So no, a high count doesn't necessarily indicate a robust human interest in a thread. If readers don't bother rating threads (as occasionally seems the case in some forums), then I assume either a thread's author or a friend can submit a 5-star rating and thereby avoid having it watered down by differing votes. Thus when said forums feature any rated topics at all, they're often nothing but the 5 or 4 star sort. Purely speculation on my part, however, since I'm among the guilty who suffer cognitive blindness when it comes to noticing and clicking the "Rate this thread" link, and scouting what it allows / disallows.
You have just cited two observations, not 'reasons'. The reasons would be the answers to why has the thread persisted for that duration and what has induced so many posters to respond. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! A good point raised by CC, that many of the views are simply from bots doing their job and not humans reading out of an interest in the topic.
The older a thread is the more chance it has to be viewed & the more posts it has, the more often interested people will view it.
The older a thread becomes, unless it gets responded to on a regular basis, it drops off the viewer into the archives, where it has to be actively searched as a topic to resurface so I'm of the opinion that if a thread has a lot of responses and is of long duration that it must be a topic that people gravitate toward, such as the humor thread. Every forum that I am on has a jokes or funnies thread and all of them are among the most if not THE most viewed thread on the forum. Science has long looked at our relationship with humor. http://chronicle.com/article/The-Science-of-Laughter/147571/
That thread is a sticky. 1 of the moderators made it stick to the top. I didn't even think that you might not know that. Sorry. I don't know whether they do that in other forums. Great article!
Yes, on this forum, that thread was started by a moderator and given prominence. On other forums, it is not a sticky, yet consistently has a lot of contributions, 'Likes' and views. One thread started on March 12th, 2014 is already up to 24,874 views and 1,141 replies. Bots may contribute to the views but they are not making replies that I am aware of, at least not yet, lol.
Members who have read this thread: 25 appears at the bottom of a thread page then it lists 17 members. Another thread says 32 yet lists 19 members. How does that "work"??? I know it won't show Enmos. Enmos is a ghost.
