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Is there a way of knowing how many members subscribe to a post's updates? I understand it's called "following":

You can follow any question or answer (that you did not author) by clicking on the [follow] button that is shown in the menu immediately below the post (alongside the [share] button)

The reason I'm asking is I imagine if I somehow manage to get a lot more members following a question post, that would indicate that I've succeeded in creating a lot more attention from people that know the answer, and thus increasing the likelihood that one of them will provide it.

Please let me know if I'm wrong in believing this!

Now some would argue that I could simply check out how many visitors that have viewed the post - and anyway that information is readily available and I know how to find it and so I don't need to ask about that: however for instance, for the purpose of getting an answer, unfortunately a title can result in many views, but that doesn't mean the visitors are interested or know the answer once they see what the post is about.

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    What would you do with that information? I can hardly think of any benefits of knowing how many people follows your post. Approximate numbers can be obtained if you check whether you have these badges or not, though.
    – nicael
    Feb 4 at 23:13
  • "The reason I'm asking is I imagine if I somehow manage to get a lot more members following a question post, that would indicate that I've succeeded in creating a lot more attention from people that know the answer, and thus increasing the likelihood that one of them will provide it." this doesn't really make sense. I don't see how users who know an answer would be any more willing to follow or how following indicates somebody knows an answer. Usually if somebody knows an answer and is willing to post it they do so. Following a post is orthogonal.
    – VLAZ
    Feb 5 at 11:24
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    A lot of follows (by members that don't have an answer) implies a high demand for an answer, and every follow bumps the post up higher in priority where it's more visible to everyone whether they follow it or not. If anyone proves that this is not the case, I'll open a feature request so members can vote for it (I'll also suggest that an accepted answer should give a higher reward for posts with many follows, and for posts that have been unanswered for a long time).
    – Anders Brandén
    Feb 6 at 2:47

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For the most part, you can't. Follows have never been publicly available. Favorites/bookmarks (now called saves), which used to be public, were made private when the name was changed most recently. If something says you can see them, it's outdated or plain wrong.

Briefly during Winter Bash 2022, there was a hat you could get for the first time someone saved one of your posts. Additionally you can estimate how many saves you have since there are badges for saves, such as Favorite Answer ("Answer saved by 25 users") and Stellar Answer ("Answer saved by 100 users") and their question counterparts.

Your best bet to check how valuable (or interesting) your post is would be to check the score. Feedback from users without voting privileges is also available (but may not be as useful).

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