Can Number of Views Be Manipulated on a thread?

[wripro]

Hope I don't get flamed for this thread but I am truly curious about this and wonder if or how the number of views an any given thread can be manipulated. The reason I am asking is that I have watched certain threads on different boards where posters write about their cruises while they are underway. On Regent Travelcat2 just finished a two week cruise posting about food etc. She received about 13000 views. Keith1010, one of the most respected, revered and followed posters on the luxury line boards was on Crystal for over FOUR MONTHS posting daily about his adventures. He received about 56000 views. Yet here on Seabourn a poster goes on a cruise and within a week or ten days accumulates 120000 views, sometimes getting 10 or 15 thousand a day. Really? And this has happened several times. Perhaps it's an internal error on the Seabourn board or perhaps everyone who voted for Bristol Plain on Dancing With the Stars is also coming to the Seabourn board to follow this particular passenger's experiences. I don't know and I don't begrudge the number of views. It just doesn't seem accurate to me. If anyone can explain it I would love to understand.

[knotheadusc]

I think it might have to do with the article Cruise Critic editors wrote about the couple who were escorted off the ship. People probably read the article and then went looking for the thread that broke the news that prompted the article... at least that's why I started reading that thread.

[Emperor Norton]

Hope I don't get flamed for this thread but I am truly curious about this and wonder if or how the number of views an any given thread can be manipulated. The reason I am asking is that I have watched certain threads on different boards where posters write about their cruises while they are underway. On Regent Travelcat2 just finished a two week cruise posting about food etc. She received about 13000 views. Keith1010, one of the most respected, revered and followed posters on the luxury line boards was on Crystal for over FOUR MONTHS posting daily about his adventures. He received about 56000 views. Yet here on Seabourn a poster goes on a cruise and within a week or ten days accumulates 120000 views, sometimes getting 10 or 15 thousand a day. Really? And this has happened several times. Perhaps it's an internal error on the Seabourn board or perhaps everyone who voted for Bristol Plain on Dancing With the Stars is also coming to the Seabourn board to follow this particular passenger's experiences. I don't know and I don't begrudge the number of views. It just doesn't seem accurate to me. If anyone can explain it I would love to understand.

 

What the above poster stated, also perhaps people are frequently F5ing the thread to see if the menus have been posted yet, whether there are more hippy dippy pot smoking heathens or something else along those lines.

[Jim Avery]

We, over here, tend to be a mite older.:eek: Possibly I forgot I had seen it already and went back again, and again, and again.......:D

[wripro]

Perhaps. I don't think it has anything to do with the CC article on the couple thrown off the Sojourn because tis has been going on since way before then.

[knotheadusc]

Is there some reason someone would want to manipulate their page views?

[seabournaddict]

quite simple really, just hit the refresh button over and over to increase the hits OR there are also software programs that can "hit" automatically...and as I was once an admin of a website, it can very easily be done by "the powers that be".

[Emperor Norton]

OK, thats how it can be done. But why? And who?

 

And in any event, is it worse than a hypothetical serial poster who everyday without fail opines on a multitude of different cruise threads and in doing so drives up their number of posts so they can belong to an x000+ club. And would appear to value quantity over quality.

 

And does any of this really matter to anyone.

 

Ill make some guesses about this.

Why would a thread of shorter duration have more views?

• The OP has more frequent updates, ergo people will refresh more
  
• The OP isn't pulling punches rather an OP posting in a thread while wearing rose colored glasses and candy coating their view
  
• The OP has an entertaining posting style
  
• The OP has attracted viewers from other sub forums who while they may not post, still enjoy reading (see the menu idea ported in the Regent forum)
  
• Im unsure about this, but do email subscriptions count as views each time an email is sent? If this is the case a thread with more updates and non-OP posts would jump in size astronomically
  
• Some (or multiple) viewer(s) connections/systems are horrid and require frequent refreshes in an attempt to get a page to fully load
  

 

I don't believe a view count matters. Just because something is widely read, that does not mean I would enjoy it. Post count on the other hand can sometimes tell a story, but that's mostly with respect to Godwins law. What none of this takes into account is that as far as I'm aware no forum software has a reliable way of stating the S:N ratio of a thread. You could see a thread with 10k+ posts but if 95% of the are "me too" or "that's neat" attempting to read it is like opening a bag of chips and finding it 95% Styrofoam packing peanuts.

 

/that's a lot of text for something (thread view count) I find no meaning in

[fairbourne]

Hope I don't get flamed for this thread but I am truly curious about this and wonder if or how the number of views an any given thread can be manipulated. The reason I am asking is that I have watched certain threads on different boards where posters write about their cruises while they are underway. On Regent Travelcat2 just finished a two week cruise posting about food etc. She received about 13000 views. Keith1010, one of the most respected, revered and followed posters on the luxury line boards was on Crystal for over FOUR MONTHS posting daily about his adventures. He received about 56000 views. Yet here on Seabourn a poster goes on a cruise and within a week or ten days accumulates 120000 views, sometimes getting 10 or 15 thousand a day. Really? And this has happened several times. Perhaps it's an internal error on the Seabourn board or perhaps everyone who voted for Bristol Plain on Dancing With the Stars is also coming to the Seabourn board to follow this particular passenger's experiences. I don't know and I don't begrudge the number of views. It just doesn't seem accurate to me. If anyone can explain it I would love to understand.

 

Wripro - you have had your desired effect of flaming and I truly do wonder why you started this "I don't begrudge etc ... " talk, when really what IMO your intention was was to ensure the exact opposite! If it was intended as a general, and genuine question, then please Dan can you respond to this genuine enquiry?

 

Yet again those serial lurkers pop up when an opportunity to use their ill-chosen BIG words, and slate anyone who is writing a thread of their experience.

 

It can't be so difficult can it to either contribute something positive or say nothing at all. Positive means a reasoned, thought out post, not always in agreement, but constructive! And before I get flamed, particularly for starting my sentences with an "and", silliness and good humoured banter - MarianH for example has me in stitches most days with his dry wit - its a public Internet forum and as such anyone can write pretty much whatever they choose, so who knows if it's true, untrue, or who anyone is hiding behind our online names as we do!

 

OK it's time to come clean - me and ST are one and the same, and Miss Martita B is my Mum, and Dan is my cousin, and RHN is my Godmother - yes what a load of rubbish - but who really knows??????? Fairy stories indeed!

 

It reminds me a lot of those people who complain about television programmes being "unsuitable" - well there is an off button, much like you don't have to read anything online if it upsets you all as much as you make out it does!

 

And no I am not coming to anyone's support, I don't need to!

[LauraS]

Hello there:

 

First, it would have been very nice if this "discussion" had remained general in nature and not directed at any one individual. Posts have been removed, as you can see.

 

To be totally honest, it is not out of the ordinary that a single thread of that nature be viewed so many times, especially since it has been featured in one of our news articles, and on our Facebook page.

 

So, not only do the "views" include members and guests on the forum, it includes anyone who may have clicked off the news article (which is sent out on thousands of RSS feeds), and our Facebook page.

 

Even if someone *were* to sit there and manually reload the page over and over again -- which I do not believe to be the case -- does it really matter? Search engines operate off of other statistics, which is a totally different set of numbers that reflected on the forum.

 

The truth of the matter is that the thread IS very popular, for whatever reason. Perhaps it's the lively language, or just other armchair travelers who would love to be able to travel on a cruise of that nature.

 

I'm really unsure why all the fuss over this, actually.