On 01/15/2014 06:27 PM, Federico Leva (Nemo) wrote:
Matthew Flaschen, 15/01/2014 03:17:
Yes. Regular page views can also use index.php (https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Earth). For example, navigation popups constructs the main article link like this.
Navigation popups are really a bad example to mention in this case. :)
Why? The magnitude is not overwhelming, but they are legit views, not something loaded in the background. Basically, if you mouseover a link, then click the main link in the popup, that's an index.php URL with just title parameter, but it's a regular view.
Popups does load things in the background, but I think they all use api.php.
index.php with only a title URL parameter should be treated identically to /wiki/ requests without URL parameters.
How many actual/"legit" page views can we expect from there, as opposed to bots of all sorts, stuff loaded in background etc.?
Any index.php with only a title parameter is equivalent to a regular /wiki/ view.
If we decide to exclude bots or crawlers (obviously an important discussion), they should probably be excluded based on User-Agent or IP, not simply because they should a less common URL that's equivalent to the common one.
it's probably better to hunt for biggest sources of views legit but missing or fake but counted.
I agree this is a good way to look at it, though different people will have different definitions of "fake".
Matt Flaschen