Maybe the activity meter needs to be rethought. Most board software has a stupid (sorry, is my prejudice showing?) "active or not" indicator that has nothing to do with activity level. These boards have a setting on the control panel that allows the administrator to set how many posts make a thread an "active" thread. A common number for this setting is 15 or 20. Therefore, all threads with more than 15 or 20 posts are indicated with the "active" icon, often a red folder or flames or some such image.
But a thread with more than 15 or 20 posts gets this indication even when it's been a year since anyone posted, and that's just plain dumb.
The board software used by EvC Forum, dBoard from PerSoft, uses an activity meter which is an actual proportional measure of recent activity. The parameters are settable by administrators through the control panel. At present, the time period is set to 48 hours (2 days), and the number of posts above which to indicate maximum activity is 50. So if there have been 50 or more posts in the last 48 hours, then the bar will extend all the way to the right and it will be red.
But, as I said, the measure is proportional to time. If there have been 25 posts in the past 48 hours, but they all occurred in the past day, that's a higher activity level than if they had all occurred a day ago. In other words, the older a post within the time period, the less impact it has on raising the activity level.
But as has been said, the activity meter is often a source of questions, and I'm always interested in improving the board software. I think your suggestion is to change "AM" that appears in front on the bar for each thread to "Thread Activity" or "Hot or Not" or something else more explanatory. I would like to do this, but I don't want to give up that much real estate to text that would appear for every single thread.
A compromise that might work and actually provide more information would be to make the bar also be a link to a page that contains a clear description of the activity meter, as well as the stats for the past
time period hours for the thread.
-- | Percy |
| EvC Forum Director |