I have noticed that the topics which have more replies tend to get more views. People generally avoid looking at the topics which don't have any (or very less) replies. This makes the forums skewed and is not conducive to a balanced participation. Can we just stop showing the number of views and replies? I have seen many other forums do it.

I wasn't even aware you could control that on a forum. hmm interesting . It is almost like the "curiosity factor" though I understand what you are saying. How would you be able to tell if anyone replied to a thread though? I don't think balance participation is related at all to the number of views and or replies all of the time, but the type of question being asked. If it is a more general questions it's probably going to get more replies. If it's a technical question it's probably going to get less. That does happen here quite often.

You shouldn't go to a topic just to see what others have written in their replies. You should also go and see if you can contribute something :-)

I understand were your coming from. The way I look at the topic is if it's a general question I will usually skip over it. If it's a thought provoking thread or something I familiar with I will read it. If you think about it the wiki was designed for that purpose, so people wouldn't keep asking the same general questions over and over again that their were already answers to. I think the previous idea of using the wiki as the main page was well though out, but a lot of people around here like to "dive" right into the topics. With the increasing number of users to this forum the wiki is essential as is a fairly straight forward no BS approach to the TOS.

I kind of like to see the number of replies and views listed for each topic.

I generally scan quickly through the topics and only check those that seems to be related to my fields of interest.

However sometimes I notice a topic turning red (due to the high number of replies) and I might consider to check it out, just for curiosity. Unless it is a flame war going on, it could be a good debate with interesting views.

So I think the number of replies is a great thing to show.

The number of views is interesting to follow if you have posted a new topic, as it allows you to see if people are actually interested in the topic you posted. Most of the time people only lurk around and don't post replies. The view counter is a great indicator of "lurking" activity.

Finally, it is not a popularity contest, about whose topic gets the most replies and views.

Or is that topics with more views get more replies? Or (could it be?) that interesting topics get more of both.

I hate topics that are 15 page long, they should be split because people end of going "off-topic" when another issues comes up and trust me when I say people don't want to read through 15 pages of 'mumbo-jumbo' with only 3 being relevant to the discussion.

In my case it's exactly the other way around...

the views of a thread are not very representative. If there's a topic with several pages and you read all of them you generate several hits, since every page gets counted and not just the topic as a whole. If you post a new message you're redirected to the thread, which counts as another hit and if you edit your post, you'll generate another one

Also, if there's just one new post, many of the participating members will take another look. So if there're 50 replies, a new reply could easily generate 50 hits just by the people who've postet in that thread. And besides that, active topics show up more often on the most recent posts and therefore attracting more people. Sometimes you're just curious what's going on in there if it stays active for a couple of days

But to come back to the original question: I'd leave everything as it is. Some people don't know the answer to a question, but would like to know it. So there's no point in clicking the topic if noone has replied yet.

I disagree with your implied causal relationship here - you seem to be saying that people generally avoid looking at certain topics because they have fewer replies.

Where is your evidence of a causal relationship? This is kinda like getting caught in a traffic jam behind an accident and assuming the traffic jam caused the accident.

People look at topics because the topic interests them. Topics that are interesting get more views and more discussion. There is only one reason I ever even look at the number of replies: If a topic seems to pose a question and I also wish to know the answer and there are no replies yet, I wait until there are some, since the possible answers will be in the replies.

Mark

Replies and Views will definitely stay...

Although I don't want to see the replies and views gone, there is a way to tell if a post has been viewed or not without them: the little picture next to the thread.