Lack of interest People Viewing Sections/threads
- Thread starter Sir nick
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Private_Ale
Member
I know that a variation of this has been brought up in only one thread, and for lack of a better word has been shot down already, yet, I just wanted to share my feelings on how the lack of this feature will do more harm than good for communities.
It looks to be apparent that xenForo lacks one main feature that will end up presenting more harm for growing communities than good. xenForo lacks showing how many users are viewing a forum.
I know many people will say, "It's OK, we don't need that!", however, once you switch to xenForo and start to settle in, the lack of it will slowly begin to make itself known and it will hurt your community participation. This is especially true to people switching from vBulletin. Your members will notice it's not there anymore and it will bring a severe penalty.
xenForo is an extremely active community, however at first glance, it looks completely dead. The first thing my eyes focus on is not the latest timestamp, rather, the first thing my eyes focus on is the titles of the individual boards. When I see a lack of people viewing it (when in reality hundreds are viewing it) the first thing I think is "Inactivity". Nobody wants to be a member of an inactive community. If this is the thought that potential new members have, they will surely leave.
This simple little feature, does more good than most of you realize. In fact, most of you take it for granted without even knowing. It doesn't hurt forum performance unless your forum is running on a Pentium II with 64MB of RAM on a 56k connection, and if it is, you have far worse concerns. If the developers are truly concerned with performance at the risk of potentially killing off their future clients' forum activity, then make it cached.
I know that for some reason unbeknownst to me this will never be considered and that I will have to end up paying someone to create a module for it, and it will never be as efficient as if it were a part of the core. I just wanted to get my opinion on the issue out on how you are leaving out a very minimalistic, yet purposeful feature. Perhaps one day, it will be said "Hey, that really should have been included.." and I can say with an indifferent grin, "I told you so".
Thank you, goodbye for now and have a nice weekend.
It looks to be apparent that xenForo lacks one main feature that will end up presenting more harm for growing communities than good. xenForo lacks showing how many users are viewing a forum.
I know many people will say, "It's OK, we don't need that!", however, once you switch to xenForo and start to settle in, the lack of it will slowly begin to make itself known and it will hurt your community participation. This is especially true to people switching from vBulletin. Your members will notice it's not there anymore and it will bring a severe penalty.
xenForo is an extremely active community, however at first glance, it looks completely dead. The first thing my eyes focus on is not the latest timestamp, rather, the first thing my eyes focus on is the titles of the individual boards. When I see a lack of people viewing it (when in reality hundreds are viewing it) the first thing I think is "Inactivity". Nobody wants to be a member of an inactive community. If this is the thought that potential new members have, they will surely leave.
This simple little feature, does more good than most of you realize. In fact, most of you take it for granted without even knowing. It doesn't hurt forum performance unless your forum is running on a Pentium II with 64MB of RAM on a 56k connection, and if it is, you have far worse concerns. If the developers are truly concerned with performance at the risk of potentially killing off their future clients' forum activity, then make it cached.
I know that for some reason unbeknownst to me this will never be considered and that I will have to end up paying someone to create a module for it, and it will never be as efficient as if it were a part of the core. I just wanted to get my opinion on the issue out on how you are leaving out a very minimalistic, yet purposeful feature. Perhaps one day, it will be said "Hey, that really should have been included.." and I can say with an indifferent grin, "I told you so".
Thank you, goodbye for now and have a nice weekend.
Brandon_R
Guest
Yeah but that's really not the best way to show activity up front like that. By having your friends and people you know on a site, or by having just people sharing content the activity is reflected automatically.
xenForo is given a unique opportunity to make these primitive ways obsolete and i don't think they should waste it.
xenForo is given a unique opportunity to make these primitive ways obsolete and i don't think they should waste it.
Grover
Well-known member
Why it this so primitive? I think it's just useful information. This...
... is a good point.
Dean
in memoriam
I completely agree. The amount of people viewing a forum is usually an excellent indicator that something interesting is going on, and more people then flock to that busy forum. Basic human nature at work.
AmericanForum.com
Well-known member
Its a useful feature ... Birds of a feather flock together ... no flock no feathers or something like that 
Dean
in memoriam
That information currently exists on the whos online page, which is great.Would love to see this on forums, but it seems useless on individual threads.
Atlantisss
Member
Now that you mention it, I was thinking the same when I first browsed these forums. So, I completely agree.
I would say it's a combination of the lack of the list and online indicators in threads which gives a sense of inactivity, even if the reality is very different.
I think online indicators are still under consideration by Mike & Kier though so they may/should be coming in due course.
I think online indicators are still under consideration by Mike & Kier though so they may/should be coming in due course.
erich37
Well-known member
also, at the members-list, we could have for each member a little button named "Follow" and also "Member is online now" information.
http://xenforo.com/community/members/
http://xenforo.com/community/members/
F
Floris
Guest
I think it should be on the thread list page, showing how many are in the forum you selected. I don't think it's needed for the frontpage where the list of forums are displayed.
Harry
New member
Primitive? Primitive is NOT having it. I'll admit that the chance is very high i wont even use this if it does not have such a basic and more so needed feature. Besides what the thread starter mentioned it is a great moderation tool. Heck i now refuse to use software that does not have who is viewing a thread let alone viewing a forum. And i surely don't wanna have to rely on a plugin for this.
As far as this goes who's viewing ( Thread or Forum ) i believe IPB has had the best approach up to this point. This is one of the things that initially attracted me to IPB. Theirs goes as far as letting you know when someone is making a reply in a thread or perhaps replying or starting a new thread via the forum. That user name will look different vs the rest of those who are online browsing that forum or thread.
Anyways i really hope this is reconsidered..
Thanks.
Brandon_R
Guest
No, i believe it's called simplicity when it's not having it. Because a forum has X users viewing it doesn't mean it is active by any means, however the feature you said where it shows a user is replying to a thread or starting a new thread does imply activity and i think that is a better indicator of activity.
pablo escobar
Member
Forum activity is an important tool not in attracting visitors, but in getting them to stay.
Once they stay, being able to see who's on what thread builds a sense of closeness.
Once they stay, being able to see who's on what thread builds a sense of closeness.
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