On 09/06/2016 08:23 PM, Leila Zia wrote:
Hi Lars,
This is Leila from WMF Research. Recently, we have been receiving a lot of requests about search queries. Here is a response we've given to another researcher few days ago, FYI, and hopefully it will be helpful.
Best, Leila
Hi, Leila,
Thanks for the background info. The thread from July[1] is interesting. What I was hoping to look at is even simpler, more of a small task [2] than a Large Project. But looking at the Wikimedia Foundation Annual Plan for 2016-2017 [3] I could see that it could be made into a project if dealt with as a more generic interface to do for search terms (internal or external) what the Pageviews Analysis tool does for page views that fits in two places in the plan:
* The addition of such a utility would match "Technology" "Program 1: Improve tools that help us understand user needs" in meeting "Objective 1 – Improve tools for data display for the Foundation and community" In particular it will help understanding of what is going on as far as how visitors are discovering Wikibooks and their chapters.
* It would also match "Product" in "Program 2: Maintain and improve content discovery", specifically "Goal 3: Evolve content discovery and interactive tools on Wikimedia projects". In particular it would show how visitors are using search engines to find and use Wikibooks and their chapters.
I'm asking for this data for a specific Wikibook. However, expanding it to be more generic for all Wikibooks would be fine for my needs as well. The data I request is a subset of what is contained in two HTTP headers and easily extractable in such a way as to completely protect the privacy of the visitor, as only the destination chapter, the corresponding search terms, and date are saved in the database after being extracted from the raw stats.
The basis for this is the idea that a great many visitors enter the Wikibooks via search engine activity.
Regards, Lars
[1] https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2016-July/084745.html
[2] At least it was simple back in the late 90's when dealing with Apache to extract and index a subset of the HTTP_REFERER header.
[3] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Annual_Plan/2016-2017/F...