Malgudi Express: From the pages of RK Narayan to the railway tracks of Mysore. - Vageesh

About Rating/View Count.
Maintaining dynamic statistics on the site takes a lot of CPU, memory, storage (both hardware and software), and adds to the overall load. Also, we have been reluctant to make changes that might slow down page delivery. Over the past couple of months, we have been re-engineering and upgrading the site - hardware & software - so that much more dynamic statistics can be delivered without slowing down the site. With the latest changes, we have set the ground work for more sophistication by way of numbers and counts, without affecting site responsiveness.
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nomenclature for the view count (as before) is "Rating/Number of Views". The view scheme was recently revised. Previously, only if a logged-in member explicitly rated/closed a blog post, the View count would increase.
Now, every time a particular blog post is "exposed" to a unique viewer, the view count increases. "Exposed" means either through the Main page, individual post, "My Posts", "Bookmark", etc. The blog entry might be displayed uniquely, or in a collection with others. The viewer might be anyone - guest, member or Admin. Simply hitting refresh does not increase the view count.
Also, please note the word "unique" - by IP Address. But this is "daily uniqueness". So, if the same viewer (same IP) views the same blog post tomorrow, then the View Count increases by 1. But, tomorrow, if he/she views it multiple times, then the View Count does not increase further.
Over the next few weeks/months, we shall be slowly evolving these statistics, based on feedback and usage. For example, sometimes, some Blog Entries get quickly pushed off the main page due to high traffic, quick archiving, etc. Such Blog Entries will have very low view count because of low exposure. We can therefore display the main page in alternative ways, so that Entries with low exposure are pushed to the top, to get a fair chance of getting answered.
Other ideas may come forward based on usage of these features.
Thanks.