| List of topics with top views in each sub-forum [message #631298] |
Mon, 12 January 2015 08:54  |
Lalit Kumar B
Messages: 3174
Registered: May 2013
Location: World Wide on the Web
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Senior Member |
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I think it would be a good idea to know the topics which have high number of views compared to other topics in the respective forum.
It might not instantly improve anything on the site, however, it might let us know the FAQs on this site. Folks who are inerested in site statistics would also find it useful. The older the topic, the probbility of number of views would be higher. But that might also be a factor. We could even filter it by the DB version, given that OP has mentioned it in the topic.
I saw Michel sharing some beautiful analysis and reports of the site. But unfortunately he is not updating it that frequently.
Personally, as and when time permits, I try to work on FAQs, and this is one of the reason I find this related and interesting. I can see the number of views against the topics, however, it would be a huge task to manually figure out what I am expecting. I would be equally happy if Michel would add this to the site statistics page.
Regards,
Lalit
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| Re: List of topics with top views in each sub-forum [message #631359 is a reply to message #631316] |
Tue, 13 January 2015 01:56  |
Lalit Kumar B
Messages: 3174
Registered: May 2013
Location: World Wide on the Web
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Senior Member |
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My point is, the topics with high number of views means that those topics were searched and viewed more. Just an example, the row generator topic has 20000 plus views, which means that this topic has been searched and viewed much more than other topics in that forum, thus it is a strong contender in FAQs. As of now, it is in General forum, but the content is related to SQL & PL/SQL forum. I would like to see it on top of the SQL & PL/SQL forum as a FAQ. Questions related to convert comma separated string into rows is very common. Every now and then we see such a question, with only change in the delimiter or the pattern. We got several good answers, but spread across different topics. We could have this as a part of the FAQ and keep adding as and when a different technique is posted.
Therefore, a list of FAQs would be useful. The only criteria I think is number of views, since any other criteria is not feasible. May be generating a report would give some more dimensions.
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| Re: List of topics with top views in each sub-forum [message #631413 is a reply to message #631398] |
Tue, 13 January 2015 14:40 |
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Barbara Boehmer
Messages: 9100
Registered: November 2002
Location: California, USA
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If the number of views a post has is displayed, then obviously it is stored somewhere or the information that is used to calculate it is stored and can be extracted, and you can use some form of MYSQL TOP-N to get the posts with the most views and pin them to the top, but I think that would be a bad idea.
I think it is better to have more organized informational FAQ'S, rather than have to read through lengthy threads to find the ultimate solution amidst various attempts and advice, some good and some bad.
The posts with the most views could be used to find what subjects are frequently viewed, in order to determine what FAQ's we might want to create, but I suspect that you would find that everything has already been pretty well covered. It would be difficult, but not impossible, to syntactically analyze the subjects in some automated way. For example, you could load the list of most viewed subjects obtained from MYSQL into an Oracle database and use Oracle Text document classification. However, I doubt it would be worth the effort. I think you could analyze a short lists of subjects by looking at them and find that everything is already covered in our current FAQ's.
Also, bear in mind that the age of threads and length of threads, which includes multiple repetitions of words searched for, and the number of hits already, can influence the ranking in subsequent Google searches, so older, lengthy threads get higher ranking and more hits in searches and more views on this site. So, the threads with the most views do not necessarily contain the best answers.
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| Re: List of topics with top views in each sub-forum [message #631449 is a reply to message #631413] |
Wed, 14 January 2015 02:06 |
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Michel Cadot
Messages: 68722
Registered: March 2007
Location: Saint-Maur, France, https...
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Senior Member
Account Moderator |
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Concerning site statistics, for the moment, I have no strings from the database only figures, that I have no names, no posts, only IP, date, that is anonymous data. We (Frank and I) chooses this to keep as confidential as possible information and avoid him to send me any data I don't need to build the statistics charts I chose (which may change). In this way, I have no information on topics themselves (like the title and number of views).
The only exception are forum names which are moreover not displayed in the charts but only present in the statistics files you'll find in the attached zip file.
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| Re: List of topics with top views in each sub-forum [message #631516 is a reply to message #631449] |
Wed, 14 January 2015 08:10 |
Lalit Kumar B
Messages: 3174
Registered: May 2013
Location: World Wide on the Web
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Senior Member |
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Thanks Barbara and Michel for sharing your thoughts.
Michel, with only IP and date, I think it won't be possible to get what I am expecting. I know that older a thread, more is the probability of its views.
Ok, this is my final question, is it possible without much complexity to get a list of top 100 topics with maximum views(SQL & PL/SQL forum to start with, since it is one of the most visited forum)?
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