Post views

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Posts that have only a handful of replies sometimes have hundreds of views. I know that people who have posted in a thread will want to revisit it to see responses, which adds to the views, but the post views generally just seem very excessive. Are a lot of them by bots? Does anyone know or have any theories?

I'll often read a new post and think "I can't or shouldn't respond to this"
Some posts are way harder to craft a reply to.
I imagine most of us will do the same. (Or am I Halomorphising again?)

Bots as an explanation for views on some threads, has crossed my mind, also.

I will often read a post and not reply to it myself, just because I don't know what to say or have nothing to add. What is Halomorphising?

Thread view counts (post read totals) are generated only by members.
Posts read by non-members (aka "the general public", which includes bots) cannot influence the count.

Google and many other search engines regularly use bots to "scrape" WP content to improve their search functionality; if those were counted as "post viewed" then every thread on WP accessible to the public would have view counts in the hundreds of thousands - or more.

Further, if the counts were being incremented by bots, those threads in Members Only or the Adult forum would be in stark contrast with considerably lower counts - because they can only be read by members.

We must have a lot of lurkers on WP, in that case.

Depends on what's meant by "a lot", I suppose.
But considering the intended audience, maybe reading more than writing would be more typical?

When I grow up....? i want to be a bot ...or some other method to immortalize my inputs to the web ..? perhaps?
( some method to up load my conciousness ?) ...... .....

Often wished to be a Lurker, if'n I could just keep my fat trap shut ...

Thanks Cornflake!

Happy to help.

Despite the slightly pejorative tang to the word "lurker," I'm beginning to think they're a superior species to myself. They keep their mouths shut until they know what they're talking about. I manage that myself sometimes, but not always.


I just said the same thing (see above), only more verbosely and too late to be the first to say it. Oh well.