Why Did Steemit Remove Number of Views Feature on Posts?
Headline
Alright, I have just noticed this. Steemit has removed the “number of views” feature on a post. I have no clue why did they do that..
Synopsis
Some time ago, i made a contribution on @utopian-io that number of views can seriously make or break growth / popularity of an article.
Why??
Because if someone has got 500 views on a post with only 20 upvotes, that generally means public did not like the post and after reading it, they chose to ignore it.
However there was a catch, a single user can refresh a link to a post multiple times to increase the number of views.
So my contribution aimed at using a technique that would allow one view per user no matter how many refreshes are done by that particular user.
I know few people have also contributed who suggested that names of viewers must also be visible and some even said to remove the feature altogether due to its benign nature.
Steemit has finally gone in a direction. I am not sure how i feel about this to have this feature entirely removed.
Conclusion
I am still not sure whether it is a glitch or steemit has really removed the feature altogether .. would love to get some insight from a credible witness or an elite user like @acidyo @lukestokes @themarkymark or @transisto.
The house is open for discussion in the comments section..
Update
Here is the link to my utopian contribution related to number of views. Link. The same has been added in the post as well..
Hmm, you guys think Steemit will ever implement some form of analytics to Steemit, so that we can get a better understanding of what's working, and what isn't?
Very strange. Wasn't it just there earlier today?
Now it's harder to see who purchased votes. It was much more obvious if there were lots of votes and few views.
You can still do that.. if the number of upvotes are 10 and payout is 100$, you know the author has purchased votes. Also you can see who has upvoted the post and we know a lot of bots by name so there is that..
I was thinking more of the low value purchased votes to make a post look more popular. Like one would get from smartmarket or minnowbooster. Something that would produce a lot of low value upvotes.
Is there a list somewhere of the common bots so we know who is spamming/buying votes to flag them?
May be they find it no more interesting. Post is popular due to the upvotes and comments. Other features donot tell about the popularity of post due to self viewing people easily attain high views number.
You are very much right my friend...sounds about right..
I wonder why they have changed this :( , it was the only way we can see how many people have visited the blog. May be it is a glitch or they are working on more accurate way like you mentioned that only 1 view from 1 user even user refresh many times.
May be.. but for now it seems that we have waved goodbye to this feature for good..
I actually like that it was removed! This number could only show how many times the post was loaded using steemit.com and the metric could easily be gamed. Any views from other interfaces (steemitstage/busy/utopian/esteem/custom/...) were not registered. Steem is more than Steemit, a Steemit view count is misleading.
Very well written.. you are right..
Well as u mentioned the view feature has drawbacks too, one can increase no. of views by just viewing the post no. of times and if no. of views are more than upvotes clearly this indicates that people just ignored it, the post is not interesting...
But if that was the case then steemit should have come up with an algorithm that doesnt count more than 1 view per person on a post.. but you can be right. Removing the feature is easier than tweaking it..
Thanks sir @jbn for informing us that steemit removed the number of views, I think no need to remove it. If our post don't get more votes as people ignore it then try to create better content. No matter, we all respect steemit all decision.
Nice post...
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