My view on those 'views', Your comments welcomed Options

[Cleo_Serapis]

Hello all,

Recently, one of our members raised a concern/observation in his thread for critique. It is regarding the number of 'views' noted on the forum index next to each thread. The feeling is that why are so many reading, but not responding?

Here's my view on those views:

I venture to guess there's an 80/20 ratio where 20% are actually views made by people and the remaining 80% are views by automated scripting spiders. Spiders have many other terms (in the computer world that is) - web robots or bots, web crawlers, but the most recognizable link to a crawler is the component software agent that drives them: search engines. These are not people viewing the threads, so the 'views' number must be taken lightly. It's code that seeks out sites, scanning their content (for HOURS) adding keywords to their home pages like google and msn.com for example. The purpose there is so that when you add those key words into a search engine, poof - you'll get links back based on the search criteria you've requested. Even our "most users online" number is skewed by bots crawling the site.

Wiki says: A web crawler is a program or automated script which browses the World Wide Web in a methodical, automated manner. Other less frequently used names for web crawlers are ants, automatic indexers, bots, and worms. This process is called web crawling or spidering. Many sites, in particular search engines, use spidering as a means of providing up-to-date data. Web crawlers are mainly used to create a copy of all the visited pages for later processing by a search engine that will index the downloaded pages to provide fast searches. Crawlers can also be used for automating maintenance tasks on a website, such as checking links or validating HTML code. Also, crawlers can be used to gather specific types of information from Web pages, such as harvesting e-mail addresses (usually for spam).

A web crawler is one type of bot, or software agent. In general, it starts with a list of URLs to visit, called the seeds. As the crawler visits these URLs, it identifies all the hyperlinks in the page and adds them to the list of URLs to visit, called the crawl frontier. URLs from the frontier are recursively visited according to a set of policies.

I should hope others do not come and go without posting solely because of the skewed "views" number? That is very disappointing. It cannot be taken personally as I've mentioned above, it has no bearing on the replies, unless the implied confusion is a root cause of folks NOT posting.

As I've said from the start of MM, it's you, the members, who make (or break) this site, not me, the site owner. I provide the vehicle to have your works seen and workshopped (if that is your intent) in a relaxed, friendly setting; it's up to the members to do the rest. All it takes is a few folks to come in, make those posts and replies and start the change trending upward. How do we enact change, that's the real question? If no one makes any posts when they visit, well then, the whole point of this mute, don't ya think? I saw several people on here last night reading (adding to that views count), but they didn't post anything, just came and went. It also goes with the level of workshopping here, you folks set the bar, and others will follow if it's what they seek. I tend to think of MM as a 'moderate' workshopping venue - some are very thorough and detailed offering strong reviews, others tend to go a bit lighter, so all in all, it's an even, moderate keel IMHO.

I'll get off my sandbox now...

I welcome your thoughts and suggestions everyone.

Have a good day!
~Cleo

[Psyche]

Hi Lori, hi All!

As I already said in Eric's thread, when I saw there had been lots of readers of my poems, I used to think WOW...that's great! I think it's my habit of seeing the glass half full, instead of half-empty...LOL. (a Sagittarian characteristic, which can lead to BIG disappointments...!!).

Now that I know I'm being spidered, ugh! I hate live bugs, hope there aren't any roaches in them thar search engines, even virtual ones give me the shivers.

But honestly, I only glance at the 'viewer' numbers nowadays. I never thought of comparing them to the amount of crits, which of course I love and am delighted when I get several. I sometimes view a few poems and then just comment on the ones that attract my attention more, or else those that have had few or no crits. Practically everybody seems to have an occupation, and I'm no exception, so time is a big factor in writers' forums. And we also want to write our own stuff, listen to our Muse!

Gee, we'd need three lives to get everything moving fast. I've no intention of getting in the fast lane, here or anywhere else!

A long time ago I remember saying that there should be a Nobel Prize for Lit. forums. I just can't imagine how Lori can cope with her job as well as administrating MM so wonderfully. Kudos to you, Lori! You deserve the Nobel! Or the Pulitzer, or whatever!

MM has a special aura about it that I haven't found anywhere else. The richness of this site, its originality, diversity, helpfulness, friendliness and good companionship are not to be found anywhere on the web (IMHO).

Going back to the search engine issue, if the spiders have names like Yahoo, Google and MSN, then that explains why I googled myself and several other poets, family and friends, and found a lot of our names 'out there' for public information. My whole family, all of them musicians (and one a physicist) popped up on Google! It's a consolation, in a way, since editors 'don't have the time' for us little people...

I'll stop waffling on, sorry folks!
Have a good day, Sylvia ***