On Tue, Nov 25, 2014 at 1:59 PM, Oliver Keyes <okeyes@wikimedia.org> wrote:
Actually, I'd argue it's not equivalent at all, for two reasons:

  1. it doesn't present all of the same data. In fact, it presents very little data, compared to a pageview of the "File" page;
  2. The argument behind MMV is, as I understand it, that people are focusing on the images. It is designed so that people do so, on the basis that people clicking on images probably want those images. As such, it'd be inaccurate to weight it as equivalent to say https://az.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mar%C3%A7ello_Malpigi in textual value - we believe (correct me if I'm wrong) that someone clicking for an image wants a media file, not a wall of text.

MediaViewer hash loads and File page requests have little to do with each other. File page request happens when 1) someone clicks on a thumbnail, 2) someone shares the URL of a file page and someone else follows that URL. In the case of MediaViewer, only the first case results in a text/html request to the server. The second case (which is about 30x more frequent) only results in a bunch of AJAX calls and an image request (actually more than one, due to preloading). Those AJAX calls could easily be made unique, if that is of any interest.

So basically when you click on an image, MediaViewer uses AJAX requests to load some of the information from the file page, then creates an <img> tag so the browser loads a large image thumbnail. When you visit an URL ending in #mediaviewer/..., that just tells the MV code to simulate an image click as soon as the page has loaded.