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So... if I go to my user page to look at where I got those extra 40 rep points (or whatever) from, does me going to my own user profile page increase my "user profile views"?

I'd really rather it didn't. If it says 100 views, I'm hoping that's other people, not just me jumping in to find that question that I was interested in.

Edit: Ok... now that we have an answer here, I've put this question in to ask for the change. Can "user profile views" NOT include narcissism please? - on which I won't mark an answer without a Yes or No from someone who can actually implement the change.


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I don't seem to be able to increase the view count by refreshing (or Ctrl+F5 "hard refreshing") so maybe it's that smart. I agree that it should be if it isn't. –  Matt Hamilton Aug 6 '09 at 1:04
Well, I just gave you a pity view on Meta. So at least one person has cursorily glanced at your profile! –  Sean Aug 6 '09 at 1:04
Haha - I'm honoured, Sean. And Matt, I suspect that that kind of data doesn't get updated immediately. For example, it seems to take a few minutes for the system to award the Autobiographer badge, which should be pretty instant once you tell it your birthday. –  Rob Farley Aug 6 '09 at 1:22
@Rob: I've done a complete 180 on my answer - I did some testing and I can't get self-views to increment the count. I've updated my answer correspondingly. –  Kyle Cronin Aug 6 '09 at 1:55
But... I think it probably only adds it on later. –  Rob Farley Aug 6 '09 at 2:01
@Rob: possibly, I'm going to do some more testing to see if there's a time issue too –  Kyle Cronin Aug 6 '09 at 2:04
@a_m0d: I didn't figure it was a bug, I was really just asking what the behaviour was. Happy for it to be considered a bug if people want though. –  Rob Farley Aug 6 '09 at 2:09
Is it narcissism or onanism? –  Scott Wilson Apr 19 '12 at 10:59

1 Answer 1

up vote 7 down vote accepted

I know for a fact that it did, but I'm not sure that it still does. Continually refreshing doesn't continually update the count on my (or anyone else's) profile, and although I have noticed the count increasing by one as I view several pages in my profile in quick succession, this could be because I'm such a popular guy ;-)

I've done some experimentation with my least-active account (ServerFault). I was unable to increase the view count by visiting it logged in. I also used a different browser, logged out, and viewed my profile, but that, too, didn't work. I then SSHed into a remote server, fired up Firefox, and viewed my profile there as well. Initially it didn't appear to change there either, but it eventually it incremented by 2. Subsequent visits in all three browsers have not changed the value, even when cookies were cleared, so it's likely IP tracking and not user tracking.

In other words, I can't get the system to increment when I'm logged in and view my profile, so I don't think that "narcissistic" views count anymore.

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stops obsessively refreshing Kyle's profile long enough to post this comment –  Shogging through the snow Aug 6 '09 at 1:10
Yeah - I generally use my profile page an entry point to SO, and so I'm sure it's very weighted by self-views. –  Rob Farley Aug 6 '09 at 1:23
@Rob: I've actually done some testing of this and I've come to the complete opposite conclusion, so I've updated my answer. –  Kyle Cronin Aug 6 '09 at 1:55
over on this question meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6578/… devinb reckons (in a comment) that it's cookie-based. –  John Fouhy Aug 6 '09 at 2:53
I've cleared cookies in FF and it's not incrementing my view count in my SF profile (please don't visit, I'm still testing) –  Kyle Cronin Aug 6 '09 at 2:56
OK, the count was incremented again. I visited my ServerFault profile and it was 211 (up from 210) and when I visited again, it was at 212. So maybe there's a two-hour period after which profile visits (including self-visits) will increment the count again. I'll keep an eye on it, but an official statement would work much better than random guessing. –  Kyle Cronin Aug 6 '09 at 4:48
Cool. Thanks Kyle. New question posted, asking for the behaviour to change. –  Rob Farley Aug 6 '09 at 6:20

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