* Ansgar: > I'm not concerned about marking messages read after some time and > keeping the view time in ephermal storage for that. But that's not > what Discourse does: as described elsewhere it stores all read times > persistently on the server; that would not be neccessary for marking > posts as read even on a web application. > > I feel it dishonest to compare storing data persistently in a database > and evaluating it for statistical purposes (or other analytics that > people come up with to increase participation and measure community > engagement for community building) with keeping data in ephermal > storage for a short while. > > Evolution also keep track of the mouse cursor, but that is something > different from recording clickstreams and evaluating them to increase > user participation as some people do. Your reply seems to put both on > the same level.
It's also not clear whether the presentation requires message-read-state for every addition to a discussion thread. From the user perspective, it might be sufficient to record the last scroll-down position. What I find concerning is that Discourse (the web application) does not clearly communicate how it shares the data it collects about me with users. For example, it seems to notify other users that I'm not active on the site, next to my posts, without showing me that information. Using message-read information could be used for similar notifications. And with the gamification tendency, users might not even be aware that such information is available to users at higher privilege levels (with better scores).
