Is there a reason that post view count is not public? (for each post? Anonymous counter)
Old style mybb forums had this function. Seems simple and easy to implement, OTOH at least have the post author be able to know how many views they are getting?
I’d be interested in the views a post is getting, the total site views a month, and therefore the relevance to the user base of my posts. (independent of comment and vote metric data)
It’s definitely an intentional decision, though I am open to discussing whether it’s a good one. We have an admin-only view-counter, and what posts tend to get a lot of views is quite uncorrelated, and in some domains pretty predictably anti-correlated with what I think good content on LessWrong looks like.
I am worried that if we add a prominent view-counter, we will start a goodharting process on a metric that the whole internet is already optimizing on (since indeed, the posts that get the most views are just the ones that are closest to broad internet clickbait and/or community drama).
For me, I don’t write a clickbait and I don’t write a community drama. But I’ve written posts with 5 hours of work and posts with 30mins of work. And different styles and qualities of 30min posts. I’d love to know if people are reading them.
A post with 100 views and +10 up votes VS a post with 15 views and +10 up votes is a very different thing.
I certainly can imagine local improvements people would get from having more information here, the question is whether you can implement the function without causing all the longterm distortions Habryka described.
An option is giving the feature to people with high karma so you have to demonstrate some acculturation before being handed Goodhart’s Key, but honestly I’m not sure there are people, high karma or otherwise, who I really trust to remain impervious to the subtle pressure to write more clickbaity things, over time.
If it’s a non-public view count, I don’t see it becoming a goodheart metric. If something is too clickbait or trash, it would get downvotes. If it doesn’t get downvotes, maybe there’s good reasons.
Maybe it would be worth internally having:
page view count
upvote count
downvote count
vote total (also possibly up and down vote total)
comment count
some sort of relative metric that can compare this article to the other articles nearby.
Is there a reason that post view count is not public? (for each post? Anonymous counter)
Old style mybb forums had this function. Seems simple and easy to implement, OTOH at least have the post author be able to know how many views they are getting?
I’d be interested in the views a post is getting, the total site views a month, and therefore the relevance to the user base of my posts. (independent of comment and vote metric data)
It’s definitely an intentional decision, though I am open to discussing whether it’s a good one. We have an admin-only view-counter, and what posts tend to get a lot of views is quite uncorrelated, and in some domains pretty predictably anti-correlated with what I think good content on LessWrong looks like.
I am worried that if we add a prominent view-counter, we will start a goodharting process on a metric that the whole internet is already optimizing on (since indeed, the posts that get the most views are just the ones that are closest to broad internet clickbait and/or community drama).
For me, I don’t write a clickbait and I don’t write a community drama. But I’ve written posts with 5 hours of work and posts with 30mins of work. And different styles and qualities of 30min posts. I’d love to know if people are reading them.
A post with 100 views and +10 up votes VS a post with 15 views and +10 up votes is a very different thing.
I certainly can imagine local improvements people would get from having more information here, the question is whether you can implement the function without causing all the longterm distortions Habryka described.
An option is giving the feature to people with high karma so you have to demonstrate some acculturation before being handed Goodhart’s Key, but honestly I’m not sure there are people, high karma or otherwise, who I really trust to remain impervious to the subtle pressure to write more clickbaity things, over time.
There are two features. “author sees view count” and “public sees view count”. Which one are you talking about?
Author sees viewcount
If it’s a non-public view count, I don’t see it becoming a goodheart metric. If something is too clickbait or trash, it would get downvotes. If it doesn’t get downvotes, maybe there’s good reasons.
Maybe it would be worth internally having:
page view count
upvote count
downvote count
vote total (also possibly up and down vote total)
comment count
some sort of relative metric that can compare this article to the other articles nearby.