Was just checking the # of downloads my 2 snippets had when it occured to me…

A top downloads list might be nice.

Like… visit the code repository and the root shows the top downloads for the entire list, and each folder shows the top ones in it.

That sounds like a good idea to me. The mindless masses will be able to find something to look at that way!

Well, I don't know about the mindless masses, per se… but those of us who are number oriented enough to like lists like top poster, top uploader, and such would prolly get a small kick out of seeing which files in the repository have been downloaded the most often. :smile:

Though that'd probably be much more meaningful if there was a way to view a snippet (if it's a c or a txt file or what-have-you and not tarballed or zipped) without it counting as a download. So, I guess consider that aspect to be my additional suggestion along with my concurrance of the suggestion made above… :wink:

Sounds like a good idea to me. Will add it to our to-do list :)

While its not exactly a bad idea there should be some way to keep people from downloading it and adding to the numbers too. If not I could easily see someone downloading again and again just to boost a snippets count. Yea, we can hope people wouldn't, but we don't always get what we want when it comes to others lol.

Lol, it still has Samson as being the last one to post in this thread even though I was :) guess It hadn't updated it like it should…it should update it this time, I fiqure it didn't because the site went down right after I finished posting the last one.

*Edit* Yep it updated it correctly that time.
*And yes I'd already refreshed the page a few times to see if that was the deal lol*

That is a good idea, but how do you limit the download count for a given file? By logon ID/Username? Samson will vehemently complain about that notion because it'd mean either having the forum track each file to each user or storing it in a cookie which could then be subsequently deleted/edited. And who knows how many files or users we may someday have here. I'd certainly hope not by IP since that'd mean that if I download something, Dragona can't and vice versa while someone on a dynamic IP that changes more frequently than ours could still abuse it the way you're trying to avoid.

Lol, the downloading of it I wouldn't stop, just the increasing of a counter if they had already downloaded it. There are ways around the ip, don't need to sign in to download something so in the end theres ways around most the ways of keeping people from constantly increasing the download counter for them. Guess we can just hope people act mature enough to not fake the download counter purely to have a specific snippet always shown as the top download.

Samson and Davion are pretty creative guys, maybe they'll come up with a solution neither of have thought of yet and you'll still get that counter limiting along with us getting the top downloads counter to begin with. :)

Why would it matter if that certain snippet was the top download? Most people are going to download what they want to use which may or may not be the popular one…

It's not that it matters competitively.. per se… it's more like some folks will go searching for a new snippet by looking at popularity.. and, well, ok, maybe there is a small bit of competitiveness involved.. *shrug*

Yes, you are right that I'd complain about having to track all that data. It would be pretty easy to tell what had been spam downloaded and what hadn't. The way I figure it is this. We can set it up relatively easily. But if it turns out to be getting abused, I have nothing against pulling it back off the site.

Seems like a fair enough solution, maybe not perfect, but we hardly live in a perfect world, even online.

Works for me. If you spam it up and it sucks you're just opening yourself for flames, so the people who feel the urge to spam download their files are probably gonna get themselves flamed.

*nodnod* There will be something along those lines in the next update. Though, I might not leave out archives as you say. It wont count for downloads either. Might have a count for viewing, dunno if I'll display them or just use it for caching. Anyways, yup! Thanks for the ideas guys. Keep them coming!

A view count would be good as long as it doesn't carry any special meaning beyond just stat junkies :)

True enough, so maybe it's not important to restrict the counting either.

Awesome, Davion, I can't wait to see it! It feels wrong to click on download in order to open the file to decide if it's a snippet I want or not and then have to click the download link again to save the file if I decide that I do want it, so I end up saving them all so I can open them locally instead. :sad:

I like the idea of a view counter too..

(Can you tell that I'm what Samson so endearingly calls a stat junkie myself? :lol:)

I'd take it based on just that.. I see no reason to 'rank' files by download and certainly not for just views. We've already got a rating system in place for the files, but it is interesting to be able to look at someone's profile and see how many files they've submitted (even if they haven't made the Top Uploaders table) and to look at a snippet, especially if it's your own submission, and see how many times it's been downloaded or viewed online. ..of course, I may well resemble that last comment you'd made about this a bit more than I like to admit… :wink:

I was just thinking… it'd be nice to allow people whose snippet isn't "viewable" due to things like… tarballing… could upload a viewable file that'd allow people take a peek at what's inside.

Granted this has the issue of keeping the view file representative of the snippet…