WHERE HAVE ALL THE LURKERS GONE???

Robert Drobot | 24 September 2007 | Robert Drobot

[Guenevere]

Noticed this too.
Why the change?

[alicewonders]

I agree. Why did they take it off?

[AmericaUnited]

WHERE HAVE ALL THE LURKERS GONE???

The Shadow knows...

[period end of story]

You have a good point.

[badpacifist]

Maybe we mocked Ron Paul too much?

[dangus]

I certainly have used the lurker tracker to gauge whether what I’ve posted was appreciated.

[Mr. Jeeves]

Maybe there aren’t as many as they used to be. The Spanish Inquisition has taken over FR lately...and no one expected it. ;)

[newzjunkey]

I agree and hadn’t noticed this change. Eyeballs matter.

[Always Right]

Lurkers have been banned for even thinking about voting for Rudy.

[newzjunkey]

Ping.

[Jim Robinson]

It’s broke.

[Izzy Dunne]

Having removed the number of people who 'viewed' a thread eliminates the true value of a thread, and subjects it to a value shaped only by the number of replies it may or may not attract.

I find that preposterous.

The "true value" of a thread is not measured by how many people reply OR by how many even see it.

Reply counts are boosted by those who point out misspellings or other errors, or who otherwise snark at something, without adding any value.

View counts are boosted by clicks on an interesting title, or a title about a subject that is interesting. Changing the title of an already-posted article and postingit again adds no value, but has another set of viewers, because people might think it's something different.

The value of a thread is the information it contains, and that cannot be measured by counting anything.

[Smokin' Joe]

lurking, of course!

[Peter W. Kessler]

There ya go.

[wagglebee]

Great points! If a thread was posted with the title, “Nude Pictures of Jessica Alba” and the moderators didn’t pull it, the thread would get thousands of views. However, nobody would be able to make the argument that the thread had any value in terms of conservative politics or world events.

Many threads here that deal with popular culture get a lot of posts and there is nothing wrong with that, but they still don’t have anything to do with FR’s purpose.

[shadeaud]

I tend to agree with you. It’s the same with print media. One piece of print media in a public area can be viewed by multiple readers. How many respond is irrelevant at the time, it’s the exposure that is counted

[668 - Neighbor of the Beast]

I will never start a thread while there’s a view replies function to be seen. I have a very feeble self-esteem and a low count might do it serious damage. Even the My Comments page is hard to take sometimes. I don’t know which scares me more, that when I go to My Comments I might see a reply disagreeing with me, or I’ll only see my own comments which nobody was inspired to reply to. ;)
Maybe I should go back to watching Bob Newhart reruns!

[longtermmemmory]

..or the usual suspects figured out how to manipulate the “views” numbers to artificially bump up a thread.

Much like one group has artificially manipulated a FR poll.

[Bear_Slayer]

My guess is that FR is becoming irrelevant and fewer people are lurking, thus remove the indicators of such.