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[danicast]

Title:
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Area:
features

Summary:
I would like to have something like LiveJournal's My Guests feature. Is free to use (you don't have to be a paid member to use) and it's very useful. Thanks!

Description:
I would like to have something like LiveJournal's My Guests feature. Is free to use (you don't have to be a paid member to use) and it's very useful, it shows how many people visit each one of your entries, who they are, how many people visited the whole journal. Is so useful! And all users have. I think we could have something like that here. Thanks!

Poll #7710 Page statistics

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 65

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This suggestion:

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Should be implemented as-is.
11 (16.9%)

Should be implemented with changes. (please comment)
7 (10.8%)

Shouldn't be implemented.
31 (47.7%)

(I have no opinion)
10 (15.4%)

(Other: please comment)
6 (9.2%)

Comments

[ninetydegrees]

Why not but only if there's an opt-out option: "don't be tracked; don't track".

Edit: and yeah +1 on the making this opt-in and default is "no tracking please!"

Edit2: also considering the option to use Google Analytics isn't available to free users, I'm not sure this should be available to all users.

[denise]

It would almost certainly have to be a paid user feature, due to load.

[jazzfish]

While I have no opinion as to whether it exists, I feel strongly that *if* it exists it should meet these criteria.

[kyrielle]

If it has to be done, I think it should meet these criteria. I'd rather it wasn't done. Google Analytics doesn't bug me, the journal names in My Guests I find stalker-ish.

[montuos]

I like My Guests, especially when nobody's been commenting on my LJ. [EDIT] Specifically, I like to know who has been looking at my journal. [endedit]

That being said, I agree with ninetydegrees on all points, especially that it should be opt-in on both sides before any name is displayed.

[elf]

A lot of people are at DW because they consider LJ's policies invasive. I don't use LJ's My Guests feature, because I don't want to leave footprints everywhere I go. It only shows visits from people who have My Guests turned on (that's the incentive: allow the system to display where you go, and you get to see who visited your journal).

While I wouldn't mind if it were implemented here as it is on LJ, I wouldn't participate--and if it it were opt-out instead of opt-in, or mandatory to show every journal owner when I'd visited their pages, I'd cut way back on the number of journals I visited.

Whether it'd be worth implementing here depends on how difficult the coding is and how many people would want to use it. If only a few people would participate, it wouldn't be worth adding in the extra options.

[msilverstar]

You know that anyone with Google Analytics and/or hosting their own graphics can see your IP address, right?

[kyrielle]

But LiveJournal's "my guests" shows the journal id's of the last 100 users to have viewed your journal (that are opted into My Guests...) - not just their IP address. Even those who are opted out show as "anonymous guest" so you know someone was there, but in that case not who.

[elf]

I'm aware that IP addresses can be tracked; didn't know those specific details. (Or rather, knew IP address could be tracked if I'm not paranoid and using an anon-server thing. I'm not.) There's a difference between "see IP address" and "see username," especially at a journal I've never commented at. There's also a difference between info tracked by third-party services and what's built into DW.

I'd be okay with a system like LJ's. I can't say I'd like it, but my annoyance at it would be minor, and I'd be happy for those who wanted to participate to have it.

OTOH, a system that gave everyone's username on visits to other people's journals, with no opt-out, would bother me enough to make one or more sockpuppets for browsing away from my readlist. And that sounds like a ridiculous effort, so it'd probably just mean not clicking on anything not on my readlist--or logging out first.

[charmian]

IIRC Google Analytics doesn't show IP address.

[turlough]

+1

[lanterne_rouee]

Your icon is gorgeous! :)

[boundbooks]

I really do not like the idea of being tracked. As has been said elsewhere, only if this was an 'opt-in' function for users, so that the default would be 'don't be tracked.'

[cheyinka]

This is my "with changes" - I can see it being useful, I can see people liking it, but I wouldn't want to be tracked, and would happily trade not seeing others' visits in return for not being tracked.

[arethinn]

+1

I have this turned off on my LJs. I am not particularly interested in seeing others and in turn do not wish them to see me.

[matgb]

My change- have a built in Analytics style feature that gives you basic information about page visits, views, search keywords, etc, but doesn't tell you who's visiting and similar.

I'm stilla bit uneasy when I see friends visit from their reading page on my Analytics--this is daft as I know it's an irrelevence, but...

I really don't like the way My Guests is implemented, especially not the "who's reading" feature, that struck me as very intrusive and unneccessary.

(I've had reason to pay a lot of attention to my analytics last 48 hours and I'm very very glad I had that turned on)

[piranha]

+1

[lanterne_rouee]

Yes, this would be better. A list of usernames isn't necessary.

[charmian]

Yes, as long as users are allowed to opt out from it (in other words, working like how it does on LJ). The LJ Stats other than My Guests would also be useful.

[ratcreature]

I would like to see the basic statistics as you can on LJ without having to go and set up the google analytics thing or the statistics you see on Wordpress, i.e. seeing which entry was really popular in visits and your overall visitor number, but not this individualized "My Guests" feature that tracks specific people and tells me their journal names.

[ciaan]

Which basic statistics does LJ show and where can they be found? Apparently I don't know, unless it's a paid feature and I can't access it.

[turlough]

It's only available to paid users but you can read about it in the FAQ here.

[ciaan]

Ahh, they must have rolled that out after I stopped being paid. Yeah, those kinds of stats look useful/interesting/nice to have, and seem to be all aggregate and anonymous.

[turlough]

I look at mine at most once a year or so. Mostly I forget it's there at all. Maybe I would use it more on DW, but I doubt it somehow.

[ratcreature]

Yeah, you can't tell which people visited you, it's just aggregated. I don't monitor it constantly or anything, but I try to get exposure for my journal by linking and enabling search engines and indexing and such, but these days I mostly link to the DW side, so seeing just the visitors on LJ is not the best.

[susanreads]

I wouldn't want to use it, but if both parties are OK with it ... should definitely be opt-in on both ends. I'd rather there was a hit counter sort of thing that didn't specify who was who.

[ciaan]

I do not have this feature turned on at LJ and wouldn't use it at DW. It would have to be opt-in and not have your journal name listed on people's pages if you didn't opt in. I would not want to be automatically included in such a system.

That said, I wouldn't necessarily veto it for other people who wanted to use it, either.

[feathertail]

+1

[fyreharper]

+1

[pauamma]

I never tried the LJ feature. How is it different (other than being free) from the Google stats feature available for paid DW accounts?

[azurelunatic]

My Guests shows actual usernames of people who have been reading your journal.

[zeborah]

Would absolutely have to be either aggregated data only or opt-in (on both sides) only.

Or at least IP-address only. But... Dunno, even though plenty other sites do this - I do it myself on a blog elseweb - it feels not quite right for DW to it. (ETA: That is, I've always assumed one could, say, shove some external statcounter code in there if one wanted, but it's just not the kind of thing I'd expect DW itself to be implementing.)

[daweaver]

I really can't see any good coming out of this. G****e Analytics only works for the diminishing proportion^* of visitors who can and do run a third-party javascript. Even aggregate statistics is something I'd rather not be included in.

Forced exposure is spectacularly dangerous, and that includes allowing journal owners to see IP addresses of their readers. It would also require an alteration to the Privacy Policy, a document that Dreamwidth does accept as binding in law.

Quite honestly, if the system's going to tattle where I've been reading, I will be routing dreamwidth.org to /dev/null.

^* A reduction from 99.9% to 99.89% is still a reduction.

[aedifica]

If it were to be implemented, it would have to be opt-in on both sides, like LJ has it. But I don't think it should be implemented at all--when LJ came out with it my trust in LJ dropped a little lower, and I don't want Dreamwidth to do anything that feels like it's heading down the same route.