Jamandy52 wrote:
It would be less pages to scroll through for the profile views
Typically I don't think anyone would actually scroll through the thread - the only people who would really view it are those who would be posting their own signature for viewing. So essentially, those posting their own signature for viewing are the ones doing the viewing. Because after you post you are directed to the last page of the thread, you automatically view all of the signatures on the last page of the thread as well. This system is successful in unlocking all posted profiles quickly enough (with maybe the exception of whoever posts as the last post on a page). Also note that you don't actually need to view the signature for the "view" to count - you just need to load the page the signature is on. So by simply loading the last page and not even scrolling down, you've already "viewed" all of the signatures on that page.
Additionally, I would say that thread kind of defeats the purpose of the IP viewing requirement in the first place. The IP viewing requirement is there for a reason. It's not just some random thing I decided to implement. I chose IP views as a way to start an account for these reasons:
- You don't actually have to create a login account to have an account (what I mean by this is that you don't actually need a username/password to log in with). I figure people already have enough online accounts, and don't need to remember the details to any more.
- It's a self-selective process for more active/interesting accounts. The profiles created on RuneTrack will naturally tend to be more active, which makes the site more interesting. Because the only people who take the time to get the IP views are those who would be active enough in RuneScape to want to track their stats, it maintains a high proportion of active profiles being created. The level of "difficulty" in unlocking a RuneTrack profile is intentional to avoid wasting time/space on accounts which won't be active.
- Advertisement for RuneTrack. Remember that everything on RuneTrack is free and I don't buy advertisements on other sites - so there had to be some way to bring in traffic. If each user creates a signature and multiple people see it from external sites and create their own signatures, ideally there would be exponential traffic growth for the site (which was somewhat true in the beginning, but the traffic growth is now pretty linear as market saturation increases). This doesn't work if the only people seeing it are already on RuneTrack.com.
So basically - if you want your profile unlocked quickly, follow the system correctly and put your RuneTrack signature in a fansite/clan forum signature and you'll gain 10 views in a matter of minutes.
The only reason I've left the thread stickied is because people would just make their own thread in these forums anyway if it wasn't there. It's nice to see that the vast majority of account creations are still happening via views on external fansites/forums though, so it's Ok if a few people want to use the thread if they feel they really can't get the views from an external site (at the cost of waiting an extra day or two for their profile to be unlocked).
Hope that makes things clearer.
