Here’s how view tracking should work (but does not currently)
Given that we have either one of
- a unique IP address
- an account ID / username for a logged in user
… and we prefer account when we have it …
We shall count a “topic view” as a visit to the topic by this particular IP or account in the last 8 hours.
Thus, if the IP or account visits the topic again after 9 hours, that is another visit, and the view counter will increment for the topic.
The time interval will be controllable via a site setting that determines the number of hours before we consider a return visit another unique visit. This site setting will default to 8 hours.
This should work the same for all users, anonymous or logged in; obviously we won’t have accounts for the anonymous users, but we will have IPs.