problem
When I started using steemit I was delighted to see after I made a post that at least one person had viewed my contribution already when I checked the posting result. Only recently did I realize that it was my own viewing of the post. It's confusing to me that my own views are counted. And each time I reload the post (or open the post to reply to a comment) the view count is increased once more - that certainly doesn't feel right.
Screenshot of the view count at the bottom of a post:
Observe that the count increases (+1) each time the post is reloaded.
solution/suggestion
I suggest not to count views by the owner of a post - I expect the view count to represent how often others have viewed the post. To communicate this to the user, on mouse-over of the view icon, the text should reflect this: thus instead of "14 views" it should say "14 views by others" for instance.
I think it is appropriate to reflect the actual view count by others - even if they reload the post.
benefits
From occasional comments by other steemit users I've noticed a similar expectation that view count reflects the views of other users, so this change should eliminate some confusion.
implementation
I'm not sure about the technical details but I'd expect the solution to be simple: on rendering of a page, check whether the viewer is the owner of the post and only increase the view count if that is not the case.
Pseudo code:
on render if viewer != owner then viewcount = viewcount + 1
Additionally, the text value of the "title" attribute of the view icon (with class "PageViewsCounter") should ideally be modified: append text " by others" or something similar
Posted on Utopian.io - Rewarding Open Source Contributors