> If we /do/ include RESTBase requests we will not only have to
> rewrite the pageview definition for the apps to recognise the new URL
> scheme
I really think that apps and APIs should do something proactive to tag or log a pageview. With more ways of viewing content, it is going to get harder and harder to maintain a pattern based definition. A pageview should be an event that is logged, not something that is pattern matched out of a very noisy stream of data.
Most mediawiki requests do this now, via the page_id field in the X-Analytlics header, but we can’t use this for all pageviews because APIs are more complicated (e.g. more than one page can be served in a single request, etc.). In the longterm, there should be a pageview event stream just like rcstream! :)
-Ao
> On Aug 18, 2015, at 19:58, Oliver Keyes <okeyes@wikimedia.org> wrote:
>
> On 18 August 2015 at 19:11, Bernd Sitzmann <bernd@wikimedia.org> wrote:
>> This discussion is about needed updates of the definition and Analytics
>> implementation for mobile apps page view metrics. There is also an
>> associated Phab task[4]. Please add the proper Analytics project there.
>>
>> Background / Changes
>>
>> As you probably remember, the Android app splits a page view into two
>> requests: one for the lead section and metadata, plus another one for the
>> remainder.
>>
>> The mobile apps are going to change the way they load pages in two different
>> ways:
>>
>> We'll add a link preview when someone clicks on a link from a page.
>> We're planning on switching over the using RESTBase for loading pages and
>> also the link preview (initially just the Android beta, ater more)
>>
>
> Woah woah woah woah woah. By RESTBase do you mean Gabriel's RESTful service API?
>
> Last time I checked that wasn't even consumed by HDFS. Is it now being
> consumed by HDFS?
>
> More importantly the actual URLs are going to look /totally/
> different. If we do not include RESTBase requests, we will miss the
> apps. If we /do/ include RESTBase requests we will not only have to
> rewrite the pageview definition for the apps to recognise the new URL
> scheme, we will also potentially have to rewrite every /other/ bit of
> the definition to /not/ incorporate those requests.
>
> (I use "we" in a collective sense. This isn't my baby any more,
> although if Joseph et al want help with the refactor here I'm happy to
> spend my volunteer time on it).
>
> But basically every other bit of your email is important but now
> secondary: this is a potentially massive change, all on its own, even
> without the link preview, even if the substance of the requests going
> to RESTBase were identical.
>
>> This will have implications for the pageviews definition and how we count
>> user engagement.
>>
>> The big question is
>>
>> Should we count link previews as a page view since it's an indication of
>> user engagement? Or should there be a separate metric for link previews?
>>
>> Counting page views
>>
>> IIRC we currently count action=mobileview§ions=0 query parameters of
>> api.php as a page view. When we publish link previews for all Android app
>> users then we would either want to count also the calls to
>> action=query&prop=extracts as a page view or add them to another metric.
>>
>> Once the apps use RESTBase the HTTPS requests will be very different:
>>
>> Page view: Instead of action=mobileview§ions=0 the app would call the
>> RESTBase endpoint for lead request[1] instead of the PHP API mentioned
>> above. Then it would call [2].
>> Link preview: Instead of action=query&prop=extracts it would call the lead
>> request[1], too, since there is a lot of overlap. At least that our current
>> plan. The advantage of that is that the client doesn't need to execute the
>> lead request a second time if the user clicks on the link preview (-- either
>> through caching or app logic.)
>>
>> So, in the RESTBase case we either want to count the
>> mobile-html-sections-lead requests or the mobile-html-sections-remaining
>> requests depending on what our definition for page views actually is. We
>> could also add a query parameter or extra HTTP header to one of the
>> mobile-html-sections-lead requests if we need to distinguish between
>> previews and page views.
>>
>> Both the current PHP API and the RESTBase based metrics would need to be
>> compatible and be collected in parallel since we cannot control when users
>> update their apps.
>>
>> [1]
>> https://en.wikipedia.org/api/rest_v1/page/mobile-html-sections-lead/Dilbert
>> [2]
>> https://en.wikipedia.org/api/rest_v1/page/mobile-html-sections-remaining/Dilbert
>> [3]
>> https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Apps/Team/RESTBase_services_for_apps
>>
>> [4] https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T109383
>>
>>
>> Cheers,
>>
>> Bernd
>>
>>
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>>
>
>
>
> --
> Oliver Keyes
> Count Logula
> Wikimedia Foundation
>
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