How are "views" counted?

My apologies if this question is too simple, but I'm still puzzled by the 'Views" column of Opera forums. After I view a thread the counter doesn't change. Even more disturbing the case I just stumbled across: Replies 1, Views 0.
Why doesn't count a reply as a view?

I have view this thread at least four times and is still on 6 views, so its a valid question, but why does it matter?

Maybe the OP would like to know why the counters aren't working correctly? *shrug* Just a guess...

Originally posted by Pesala:

so its a valid question, but why does it matter?

Maybe then My Opera Devs should completely remove the Views column from the forums. Nothing is still better than misleading.

Originally posted by mochikun:

Even more disturbing the case I just stumbled across: Replies 1, Views 0.

This must have been a buggy isolated case.

Originally posted by Pesala:

I have view this thread at least four times and is still on 6 views

It may count in a per-user (per-IP / per-cookie) per-day basis. The same user viewing the same topic various times in a day shouldn't count, right? So it's working fine.

Originally posted by Swapnil99pro:

Maybe then My Opera Devs should completely remove the Views column from the forums. Nothing is still better than misleading.

+1

Originally posted by rafaelluik:

It may count in a per-user (per-IP / per-cookie) per-day basis. The same user viewing the same topic various times in a day shouldn't count, right? So it's working fine.

No, it isn't. I tested with a dead old thread to make sure that any new view would be mine. I tried hard to increase the counter. Javascript on/off, Logged in/out, I waited 24 hours, nothing happens. Did anyone ever manage to increase this obscure number?

And to answer the previous question by a curious visitor: Yes, apparently it matters. Why would Opera provide statistical figures if they don't matter? Only if these figures are impossible to be understood or to be verified then they don't matter at all. I think Swapnil99pro's proposal is a good one...

Originally posted by Swapnil99pro:

Nothing is still better than misleading.

The thing is, the view count is not misleading. Its clearly incrementing, since this thread currently has 121 views, so that's enough to know that someone has been opening it. Maybe the views are updated from a stats counter every 24 hours or something.

I will ask again, “Why does it matter?” What would you do with this information if it was reliable?

Maybe the forum gurus should spend their time on something useful rather than providing an accurate census of the number of views a thread has had? I am sure that a rough estimate is quite good enough for most people.

Originally posted by Pesala:

Maybe the views are updated from a stats counter every 24 hours or something.

Yes, that's more or less the case. I remember someone once explained it somewhere, when asked why album view counter clearly is lacking behind (display zero views even when people have commented pictures).

The explanation went something like: "It would dramatically slow down the server if it would be updated too often."

Originally posted by Pesala:

Maybe the forum gurus should spend their time on something useful rather than providing an accurate census of the number of views a thread has had?

+1

For a start, they could fix the opera:config help links, or at least reply to my thread to explain why they are not working.

Originally posted by Pesala:

For a start, they could fix the opera:config help links, or at least reply to my thread to explain why they are not working.

For a start, they could do many of the missing things. See my signature's last line for what extremely important things are missing.

Originally posted by Swapnil99pro:

ee my signature's last line for what extremely important things are missing.

As far as I can see, all of those issues are to do with the browser, so nothing for the Forum gurus to concern themselves with.

Originally posted by Pesala:

I have view this thread at least four times and is still on 6 views, so its a valid question, but why does it matter?

I don't recall the forum mechanism at the top of my head, but in general we're usually caching (storing in memory) the results for X time, and then writing the updated number once that period has passed. If we were to update the number in real time, it would be a much larger strain for the servers.

That said, the cache time could possibly be reduced, but I'm not sure if it's worth investing too much time into at the moment.

Originally posted by robertj:

If we were to update the number in real time, it would be a much larger strain for the servers.

Thank you. Yes, makes perfect sense. I just didn't think of the server load since everything else is updated in real time.