Refreshing the stream
I'm submitting the following for inclusion into the Creator Camp learning materials. Feel free to change it as needed. I felt that it was important that streamers have access to good information on the journey between Affiliate and Partner.
If you've been on Twitch for any length of time, you may
have seen a message when you raid into another streamer,
along the lines of, 'Hey raiders! If you wouldn't mind,
please refresh your stream to count as a viewer.' There
might be some elaboration, like 'and to help us with our
achievements.'
So, this is all based on the supposition that, if a
viewer who raids in refreshes the page, then Twitch no
longer tracks them as having raided in, and counts them
as a viewer for the purposes of getting to the viewer
average needed for partner.
This is not true. Worst case scenario, viewer gets to
sit through another bunch of pre-roll ads before they
see the stream again, instead of being welcomed in.
Which, if you've recently watched any tips videos on
YouTube about how to react to being raided, you'll know
that the welcome is your chance to tell these newly
arrived viewers what you're all about, and that might
be what gets them to stick around and watch for a while.
Anyway, this myth was debunked publicly on Twitter by
Fugi nearly two years ago, who was at the time working
for Twitch.
https://twitter.com/Fugiman/status/1401052105989771267
So I did some Google searching and the top result for
"what does referrer=raid mean" is a tweet from a Twitch
streamer which says this is how Twitch excludes raiders
from average viewer numbers. Which is technically not
correct.
Twitch already knows how many people raided into a
channel because... it's the platform, it moved those
viewers over.
This isn't the only example that I came across. On a
different search "Nightbot syntax" I came across an
example command !raid which sends this message in chat,
"Please remember to refresh the page by pressing F5 on
your keyboard or double clicking my Profile Picture so
Twitch actually counts you."
Because this myth has been spread around for so long,
it's become like the boogeyman. Streamers are so afraid
that it might be true that they don't question it, they
just take it onboard as part of their ordeal to try and
achieve Path to Partner. Which, if you hadn't noticed,
streamers often experience burnout as they do their best
to raise their viewership to the minimum requirement. The
last thing they need is bad information making their job
more stressful.
So let's look at what refreshing the page actually does.
Refreshing is useful when certain elements on a page fail
to load, because it submits a request to the remote
server to get a fresh version of all the elements on a
page.
While the elements on the page are displayed locally in
your browser, the contents of each element are controlled
by the remote server. The only reason you can see a live
stream at all is because of a remote server sending a
constant stream of video data which is then decoded on
your end into video and audio.
What this means for someone who raided in is that
refreshing the page does nothing to help a streamer meet
the requirements for 'Path to Partner.' Information
on the remote server relating to whether you were part of
a raid can't be changed.
Perhaps you know of someone who swears that they got to
partner by getting everyone to refresh when they raided
in. I would say, that instead, they got to partner on
their own merits, by writing a good application, and by
having good and consistent numbers.
Raids don't really hurt streamers who are looking to get
to partner. The extra viewer numbers help by pushing
that channel higher up in a category or by getting them
recommended to other viewers who are just surfing in,
who are sometimes called 'organic' viewers. Twitch will
take into account the viewers added by raids and if your
numbers still look good after adjusting for raids, and
the rest of your application is a good fit, then you may
be invited to the partner program.
What does hurt is having bad information floating around
and misleading streamers who are trying to meet the
requirements for 'Path to Partner.'