Mark J. Nelson writes:
Specifically, a small slice of content, mainly
English Wikipedia
articles on pop culture, recent news events, and U.S. politics,
contribute a disproportionate share of views. (A weekly top-25 list for
enwiki is at
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Top_25_Report ). So
if you're measuring aggregate numbers, you're measuring mainly that
specific type of content. If the goal is really simply to reach as many
people as possible, have high page views and unique visitor counts,
etc., then this subset of articles is really the only important part of
Wikimedia's mission--- articles on, say, mathematics, don't contribute
anything to moving the needle if that's the metric.
One should also consider the fact that significant number of users use
Wikipedia as entertainment. As an example of such use is random searches. On
all Wikipedia sites number of random searches in 2014 exceeded 1 billion.
Here is a simple graph illustrated this:
[image: Inline image 1]
~~Alex
On Sat, Mar 19, 2016 at 1:00 PM, <
wiki-research-l-request(a)lists.wikimedia.org> wrote:
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Today's Topics:
1. Re: unique visitors (Mark J. Nelson)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Message: 1
Date: Fri, 18 Mar 2016 20:57:45 +0100
From: Mark J. Nelson <mjn(a)anadrome.org>
To: Research into Wikimedia content and communities
<wiki-research-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
Subject: Re: [Wiki-research-l] unique visitors
Message-ID: <87zitvzhhi.fsf(a)mjn.anadrome.org>
Content-Type: text/plain
phoebe ayers <phoebe.wiki(a)gmail.com> writes:
I wonder if there's a qualitative project
somewhere in here about
*types* of use -- e.g. if I'm using WP on my phone & my work pc is
that really equivalent use? Perhaps I am using them for different
kinds of information seeking, e.g. looking up terms related to work vs
looking up info on movie stars -- does this different kind of use
matter for how we construct and present information, or count "use"?
Beyond the issue of devices, I think this is important in part because
the raw traffic counts (and reach numbers and similar) paint a very
specific story of what Wikimedia is doing and is successful at. (And
what you measure influences what you tend to optimize for.)
Specifically, a small slice of content, mainly English Wikipedia
articles on pop culture, recent news events, and U.S. politics,
contribute a disproportionate share of views. (A weekly top-25 list for
enwiki is at
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Top_25_Report ). So
if you're measuring aggregate numbers, you're measuring mainly that
specific type of content. If the goal is really simply to reach as many
people as possible, have high page views and unique visitor counts,
etc., then this subset of articles is really the only important part of
Wikimedia's mission--- articles on, say, mathematics, don't contribute
anything to moving the needle if that's the metric.
-Mark
------------------------------
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End of Wiki-research-l Digest, Vol 127, Issue 15
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Thank you.
Alex Druk
alex.druk(a)gmail.com
(775) 237-8550 Google voice
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