Popular Discussions Feature

[Chris Cox]

Ok, could someone explain to me exactly what determines a "popular" discussion?

[Chris Cox]

How has a thread 8 months obsolete gotten that many page views?

External links wouldn't work because of the forum change.

And there's no current activity.

Hmmm......

[Guest]

adobe-admin wrote:

I don't know if it is a quirk. I looked up the thread and it has 1708 page views. Pageviews is one of the criteria for "popularity."

Most threads don't come close to that many page views.

John

maybe seventeen hundered and eight people have clicked the link to see why it's so popular...

......... 😕

[Mark_A__Boyd]

I don't know if it is a quirk. I looked up the thread and it has 1708 page views. Pageviews is one of the criteria for "popularity."

Most threads don't come close to that many page views.

Using the formula mentioned in the thread kanguyen linked us to (assuming I understand it)...

((thread views) * (number of messages in thread + 2)) * 1/(1 + number of days since modification date)

Popular

Canon Thread (Thread views increased by 47 within the minute it took me to double check!)

( 1755 * (46 + 2)) * 1 / (1 + 252) = 332

Beware of using Adobe Web Galleries
( 2605 * (81 + 2)) * 1 / (1 + 232) = 927

Not Popular

Report Spam (here)

( 2605 * (78 + 2)) * 1 / (1 + 0) = 208,400

Where were you (photography)
( 1663 * (2582 + 2)) * 1 / (1 + 33) = 126,388

Hmmm. Again, assuming I've done it correctly, my guess from this tiny sampling is that a thread grows more popular with age and views - with number of messages tossed in somewhere. If one were to post a new reply in a popular thread, would that then make it unpopular? (I know. I could try it, but I'm [not] that curous.)

What I would like, though, is the date and forum names displayed in the box. Is that a preference setting I'm missing somewhere? Do those fields appear in your "More Like This" boxes, too? "More Like This" is actually beginning to make sense in several threads in the Dreamweaver/Dreamweaver forum.

[Edit]  Oh. And obviously, the lower the result the more popular.

[Edit2] Added not as in "not that curious."

[Mark_A__Boyd]

((thread views) * (number of messages in thread + 2)) * 1/(1 + number of days since modification date)

Not Popular

Where were you (photography)
( 1663 * (2582 + 2)) * 1 / (1 + 33) = 126,388

I just noticed that that particular thread illustrates another quirk. Since the number of message outnumbers the number of views by more than 900, and it is very unlikely anybody replied without viewing what they were replying to, I will assume that many of the messages arrived by email (or NNTP if it includes messages from that era). Thus the thread views count is skewed. Thus the formula is inaccurate. Thus the Popular Discussions is even less useful than ... than...what is its purpose again?