What's the deal with recent readers?

[MichelangeloCzech]

What does that measure? Because mine recently went down to zero on my story, but I've since seen the amount of watchers increase, and there are literally people viewing the thread right now as I write this. So I don't get what information this metric tells me.

 

[JadeKaiser]

Heck if I know. I doubt even the admins do, it's probably something you'd have to ask the xenforo devs.

 

[doll]

Just mouse over it and it'll tell you.

Member count in the last 7 days who have read a threadmark created in the last 7 days

Click to shrink...

Your last threadmark was 7 days ago today, so it went to zero when it ticked over.

 

[humon]

^^ This.

And it's tied to each threadmark. So let's say you post a threadmark on Monday, and 100 people view it over the next few days, the count ticks up to 100. Then you post a threadmark on Thursday and 200 people view that one, the count rises to 300. Then the following Monday the first threadmark expires and the count will drop down to 200. Then the Thursday after, if you didn't post any threadmarks since, it will drop to zero.

 

[MichelangeloCzech]

Just mouse over it and it'll tell you.

Your last threadmark was 7 days ago today, so it went to zero when it ticked over.

Click to shrink...

Gotcha, thanks.

What's the purpose of limiting it to threadmarks released in the past 7 days though? Wouldn't just the number of readers in the last 7 days be an important thing to know, to see if people are still reading it?

 

[Sadim]

Gotcha, thanks.

What's the purpose of limiting it to threadmarks released in the past 7 days though? Wouldn't just the number of readers in the last 7 days be an important thing to know, to see if people are still reading it?

Click to shrink...

Rather than that not making sense, I think what you're asking for is something that you can't really implement.
You'd have to track every account / IP who accesses the thread in the last week, to make sure it doesn't count them twice.
Otherwise everyone who just opened the thread to check if someone posted something would count as a reader, even if they might just be checking for updates, rather than (re-)reading the story.

With the threadmarks you have something tangible - you can just check how many (unique) readers clicked the threadmark.
Threadmarks are also set by the author / OP of the post, so it reflects a level of author activity.
(Be that posting new chapters or threadmarking omakes, fanart, bonus scenes or whatever.)
If the number of 'Recent Readers' is 0, you can assume that the author hasn't done anything big enough to warrant a threadmark in that thread in the last week.

In that sense, the count described above makes sense, because even if those readers aren't 'unique', they're still highly indicative of how active the thread is, in the sense of 'how many people have read recent threadmarks here'.

So. That is the purpose. To see if the thread is being actively managed by the author.
The more active the author (either as a poster or threadmark-giver) and the more popular the 'big posts' in the thread were over the last week, the higher the number.
The fact that it's misleading to the uninitiated doesn't change the fact that people would rather look at actively-managed threads and engage in them. And that's kind of the point of a forum (or at least it is if you aren't a lurker who mostly just comes here to read, like me.)