Hi all -
I'm checking with people in ops, but we're planning to add a well defined
parameter to the end of URLs to see the level of clickthroughs on such
links. For example:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epirus?analytics=ios_share_a_fact_v1
(If there are existing params on the URL - not an issue so far that I know
of for the apps as they canonicalize the title and URL - then the param
would be last in the ampersand separated query string parameter.)
And then we'd use Varnish to remove the parameter to reduce the risk of
cache fragmentation.
We "know" this is probably only a short term solution, and as a follow up
from the meeting with the people on the CC line, I'm emailing to open the
discussion on options for a more generic option.
So far I think there are a few options from what we've discussed, if we're
to support additional bucketing.
(1) More parameters (e.g., ?analytics=ios_share_a_fact&version=1)
Downside: potentially harder to standardize and remove things from the URL
(2) More conventional provenance (e.g.,
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Castle&oldid=645632619/ref=_…
provenance info as desired>/).
Downside: technically speaking, may break the schema of well-formed titles
(3) Rely upon (1) or (2), or perhaps an even more RESTful shortlinker (it
could have features like target - web or w:// wor wiki:// protocol or
whatever - versioning, etc.).
Downside: maybe a little more work to stand up service. As we recalled,
there's an extension out there that may, perhaps with some tweaks, fit the
build.
-Adam