View counter on main site is lagging

Question

The view counter on questions on the main site doesn't seem to get updated immediately as it does on other SE sites, or even in meta, here. I believe this is some software error on the developer's end. I've been actually observing this since Day 1 of the site, however I thought it would eventually get fixed. But finally, I'm compelled to write about the issue.

Proof:

For example, the "viewed" section (notice top-right of image) there was stuck at 1 time, even I clearly and some other people in the chatroom clearly viewed the question. I even left a comment on the question as you can see. But even then the view counter is stuck at 1 time. From what I've noticed it takes around 10-15 minutes after asking a new question, for the view counter to actually show the correct number of views (just a rough observation).

Could the developer team please clarify what's going on?

Answer 1

It turns out that this is standard, expected behaviour, as per this answer on meta SE:

There is some sort of a throttling mechanism in action. It saves the information about a question view per visitor like in pairs:

• for anonymous users, it is IP + QuestionNr.

• for authenticated users it is UserNr + QuestionNr.

This information is saved in an expiring cache entry for about 15 minutes. If a subsequent hit sees the entry is still there it discards the new hit. If it is already gone it allows for a new record.

Every time a new hit is registered, it is also added to a memory buffer in addition to the expiring cache entry. The buffer itself also expires after a few minutes or after it is filled up to a certain size, whichever happens first. When it expires, everything it has accumulated is written into the database in bulk. They call it a "buffered write scheme".

That is, every time a question gathers a unique view in an approximately 15 minute window, that view gets added to a buffer, which then updates the number of views on the question when the buffer is either full or after a few minutes (whichever comes first).

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^{for reference, I wrote a similar answer on Worldbuilding meta}

Answer 2

I believe that to be the standard behavior. View counts are in my experience subject to some caching. I have observed that on many SE sites which would point to a more systemic problem if it isn't a wanted behavior.

Answer 3

Apparently it's updated by a batch background process, see: https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/321488/update-the-viewed-counter-asynchronously or What stats are refreshed automatically, other than post score? (and linked to/related, on the right).

Each user is scored one view no matter how many times they view it. Supposedly there's a lot to it. If you want an update you can refresh the webpage. The same on the main site, or other sites; it's just that elsewhere schedules the process at different frequencies and priorities.

While I was looking for info on this and then came back here it still gave the same value but refreshing incremented it. Refreshing a few seconds later again incremented it, while a third attempt did not.