Indeed weird. I would have guessed that the spikes were due to us not having identified spiders correctly back then, but then we should see spikes in the agent=spider version of the graph:
https://tools.wmflabs.org/pageviews/?project=en.wikipedia.org&platform=a...
Our user base that knows about Special:RecentChanges is too small to justify the spikes, so it's definitely bots. It would be good to figure out which bots so we can maybe reach out to them and offer them better ways of consuming the data (we have streams, etc.). This might be something the reading team is interested in following up on. In any case, I don't see an obvious problem other than generally we need to get better at bot detection but that's *really* hard for a number of reasons. It's a goal of ours.
On Thu, Feb 23, 2017 at 6:11 PM, Joe Matazzoni jmatazzoni@wikimedia.org wrote:
Hi Analytics! I was looking at the page views chart for the Special:RecentChanges page, here
https://tools.wmflabs.org/pageviews/?project=en. wikipedia.org&platform=all-access&agent=user&start=2016- 01-01&end=2017-02-22&pages=Special:RecentChanges
Over the last year, the PVs count has gone through some pretty wild swings, some of which were sustained over months. I assume these are artifacts or bugs, and not a reflection of true usage patterns? Is that right? (The last month has seen a new surge; any idea what that is?)
*Joe Matazzoni* Product Manager, Collaboration Wikimedia Foundation, San Francisco mobile 202.744.7910 <(202)%20744-7910> jmatazzoni@wikimedia.org *"Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge." *
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