[Steely Tom]

In the early days, we had quite a few trolls. At first, FR was small enough that everyone trusted each other without question; some really devious trolls were able to exploit this and as a result caused a lot of strife and confusion; that was when FR started to really grow rapidly, in 1999 and 2000.

There was a lot of discussion back then about how to detect them, and probably the most visible outcome of that discussion was Jim's thoughtful addition of the "member since" float-over feature.

For a while there was also a "total views" feature for each story, but I think that took too much server bandwidth to keep current, so it was dropped.

[ConservativeWarrior]

“For a while there was also a “total views” feature for each story, but I think that took too much server bandwidth to keep current, so it was dropped.”

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That feature was great for gauging interest in topics, but also created a little embarrassment for FR, IMO.

You’d have “Judge Suspends Sentence in Pro-life Trespassing Debacle” with 3 views and 1 reply.

And “Pamela Anderson Talks Lingerie” with 700 views and 158 replies.

[glock rocks]

When the total views counters went away on the latest news page, so did the hover sign up date on the news page (well, all forums). The hover still works in the articles.

[SgtHooper]

AND, it was interesting about the view count being so high with certain gender pics! That was when Lazamataz was inundated with guilt determinations! :-)