Has anyone brought to attention the insane number of views each thread here gets? Is this a bug with the view counter or is each thread actually getting hundreds to thousands (and in the case of the MSU election thread, 18 000) views?

I realize that each view is not a unique person, but the post count to view count ratio for threads here is something I've never encountered on any other forum.

Are there dozens to hundreds of people out there just reading threads but not replying? If so, I encourage you to start posting or create an account now. You may think you don't have anything brilliantly interesting to add, but it's just an internet forum, you can just post. You can start in this thread.

Everyone has an opinion, it's just that most do not want to share it. If they did, there would be 20000 candidates running against you! Besides, if you take away the negative spam posts that could have easily been written in private messages between members, that ratio drops even more.

I do agree with you though. This forum is a great medium for the MSU students to tell the candidates what they want to see get done next year.

At last count MacInsiders had over 5100 members, so those counts aren't due to a "bug".

I think a lot of members at Macinsiders are mostly here for information and finding out about events and things like that, so they're not as inclined to post unless they have a specific question. That could be a totally wrong guess though. No one has to post if they don't want to, since the forums are active enough to keep them running. Of course it would be nice to have everyone's input, but it's not necessary.

To be honest, I visit a few forums and I think of MacInsiders as more than just an online forum to obtain university related information. I think of it as a community of students that attend my university and it's a chance to get to know them. That might just be me though because I am all about socializing. I like going out there and getting to know people. I would love it if more students think of it like that as well. I think it would be a great idea to engage in discussions every once in a while about things non-university related and just conversing and getting to know each other. Ever since I've signed up on MacInsiders, I've regularly browsed the discussions and questions that have been posted. It is enriched in information that is very useful and it has really made me that much comfortable going to McMaster before even arriving here so I appreciate that. Some people might feel differently about that though..

Anyone besides me find that thing where the site forces you to log in after a few page views really annoying? I don't get why people should be forced to sign up for this site just to look at it. I don't see a problem with lurkers.

The only thing that's worse than that is when you download something from the internetz and it turns out to be password archived in such a way that you have to sign up to some stupid forum to open it...

Also, I always forget my user name, since it's one character shorter than I normally use because of the maximum character length :p, so I always have to log-in a few times. And no, I will not leave that remember me thing on. I don't trust leaving my computer around some of my friends...

Hi all,

The view counts you were seeing were from people refreshing the threads over a very short period of time (it appears some people are really anxious to know the updates in the election-related threads). I have updated the counters so that it ignores quick refreshes of the thread and won't count them as views (so refreshing the thread 100 times in a minute won't count as 100 views). Note that of the thousands of students who view the site on a daily basis, a large percentage of those are viewing the site as 'guests' and either not signed up or not logged in.

Originally Posted by nino

To be honest, I visit a few forums and I think of MacInsiders as more than just an online forum to obtain university related information. I think of it as a community of students that attend my university and it's a chance to get to know them. That might just be me though because I am all about socializing. I like going out there and getting to know people. I would love it if more students think of it like that as well. I think it would be a great idea to engage in discussions every once in a while about things non-university related and just conversing and getting to know each other. Ever since I've signed up on MacInsiders, I've regularly browsed the discussions and questions that have been posted. It is enriched in information that is very useful and it has really made me that much comfortable going to McMaster before even arriving here so I appreciate that. Some people might feel differently about that though..

Thanks for the kind words! If you have any ideas on how we can improve the site be sure to send me a private message. We're always open to ideas. Spread the word about the site to your friends!

Ownaginatios, I've also upped the number of 'guest views' that can be seen before it asks you to log in. We implemented the guest block to try and encourage students to signup and be more engaged with the discussions in the forums rather than just 'lurking' them as kokosemara points out.

Thanks for contributing to the MacInsiders community everyone!