Does viewing your own question add to its view count?

Question

Does viewing your own question add to its view count?

Answer 1

Actually, it does, but we're extremely strict in the way we track viewcounts so it ends up not mattering a whole lot.

(as a point of reference, if we say a question has 1,000 views it probably has at least 2x real world views, and potentially as many as 5x real world views)

We do, however, suppress self-viewcount when viewing your own user page.

Answer 2

This question is clearly about viewing questions, not about viewing profiles (mentioned as a reference in the previous answer). From what I've seen happening (and experimented with), I think the answer to this question is like "yes, but only if there are at least 15 minutes between 2 such views, those views add to the view count of the question". And by the way it doesn't matter if it's your own question, or it's a question you didn't post.

Some more details about an experiment you may want to try for yourself (to QA-test what I claim):

• Do a random pick of any question, no matter if you posted it or somebody else. To so so, select it from any list of questions (newest posts, hot questions, popular questions this week or this month, etc).
• Remember (write down) the amount of views as shown in the list you start from, let's say it has X views.
• Actually "view" the question (via the link in the list you used), and pretty sure the nr of views (shown to the right) will still be X.
• Use the "back" option of the browser you're using, to return to your list. Most often, the amount of views (as shown in the list) is still X. Though sometimes it already changed to X+1.
• Wait a few minutes (something like between 2 and 5 minutes), and do a refresh of the page with the list of questions you used. At some point (I guess when the cache is updated or something), the amount of views changed to at least X+1. If it's above X+1, it must be because the question was viewed also by another user during your experiment. If it is still X views (only), do another refresh a few minutes later. Keep refreshing a few minutes later if needed, untill the number of views became X+1.
• After at least 15 minutes passed (since you first viewed the question), view the question again (by selecting it again from the same list). And then also perform a "back" operation to return to the list of questions. Refresh the list-page again after a few minutes, until the number of views became X+2.
• Repeat the above sequence as many times you want (5 times, 100 times, 1000 times), after which the number of views has increased accordingly.

Of course, the above is not a proof: e.g it could be that some other user(s) were also viewing that very same question during your experiments. However if you conduct this experiment with a very old question with hardly any views, the result is the same. Which makes me believe that what I described above is pretty much how the current implementation looks like. And hence it does really matter (dispite what is written in the previous answer .... sorry Jeff ...).