Because similar patterns are observed for many other languages (but not all), it looks like R.Stuart Geiger explanation is correct: from October 16 2014 Special:Random page is just not counted any more (with some not clear exceptions).
That’s a pity because we lost valuable source of info how Wikipedia users look for information. Random search was (and is?) a major way users explore Wikipedias. In many languages Special:Random was significantly higher than Main_Page count and certainly higher than search with index.php.
(I do not want to point finger, but maybe somebody at WMF considered this emotionally.)
IMHO, logs should be logs and log actual activity. At least such dramatic changes in logging user’s activity should be documented somewhere. Betters in Read.me file that should accompany raw logs.
Date: Mon, 11 May 2015 20:08:40 -0700 From: "R.Stuart Geiger" sgeiger@gmail.com To: Research into Wikimedia content and communities wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Wiki-research-l] Wiki-research-l Digest, Vol 117, Issue 14 Message-ID: <CAKt0Q=e-_=0=aepKeSVnT0Ce2FmJZu5bNtpNnYwZV7x21A3tXQ@mail.gmail.com
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
Going from 86,000,000 a month to 31,000 a month is quite a drop, and the shift is pretty dramatic. It goes from 1.7 million one day to 715 the next and stays flat (http://stats.grok.se/en/201410/Special:Random).
I was also thinking there could be a bot or something that is scraping Special:Random, but the drop also happens for Special:Random/Talk -- which hardly anybody uses, but it still drops flat the same day ( http://stats.grok.se/en/201410/Special:Random/Talk). It doesn't happen for Special:Upload or Special:Log though.
October 16th, 2014 is the day it changes. Anybody know of something that might have changed that day with logging? Also, there have to be way more than ~1,000 hits a day to Special:Random. Perhaps pageviews started to be counted for the page that it got redirected to, rather than the Special:Random page itself. But then why wouldn't it go to 0? What are those ~1,000 hits a day?
👻 ~~ it is a mystery ~~ 👻
Hoi, One search result I am looking for years now is where a search is performed and nothing is found. These are significant for several reasons.
- Wikidata may have information on the subject - They are articles in need of writing because there is an audience for them
The first reason provides us the opportunity to show information anyway as is done on many Wikipedias. The second reason helps us identify subjects people are interested in. At the same time they offer a reason for editors to work on subjects that clearly matter, Thanks, GerardM
On 12 May 2015 at 07:56, Alex Druk alex.druk@gmail.com wrote:
Because similar patterns are observed for many other languages (but not all), it looks like R.Stuart Geiger explanation is correct: from October 16 2014 Special:Random page is just not counted any more (with some not clear exceptions).
That’s a pity because we lost valuable source of info how Wikipedia users look for information. Random search was (and is?) a major way users explore Wikipedias. In many languages Special:Random was significantly higher than Main_Page count and certainly higher than search with index.php.
(I do not want to point finger, but maybe somebody at WMF considered this emotionally.)
IMHO, logs should be logs and log actual activity. At least such dramatic changes in logging user’s activity should be documented somewhere. Betters in Read.me file that should accompany raw logs.
Date: Mon, 11 May 2015 20:08:40 -0700 From: "R.Stuart Geiger" sgeiger@gmail.com To: Research into Wikimedia content and communities wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Wiki-research-l] Wiki-research-l Digest, Vol 117, Issue 14 Message-ID: <CAKt0Q=e-_=0=
aepKeSVnT0Ce2FmJZu5bNtpNnYwZV7x21A3tXQ@mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
Going from 86,000,000 a month to 31,000 a month is quite a drop, and the shift is pretty dramatic. It goes from 1.7 million one day to 715 the next and stays flat (http://stats.grok.se/en/201410/Special:Random).
I was also thinking there could be a bot or something that is scraping Special:Random, but the drop also happens for Special:Random/Talk -- which hardly anybody uses, but it still drops flat the same day ( http://stats.grok.se/en/201410/Special:Random/Talk). It doesn't happen
for
Special:Upload or Special:Log though.
October 16th, 2014 is the day it changes. Anybody know of something that might have changed that day with logging? Also, there have to be way more than ~1,000 hits a day to Special:Random. Perhaps pageviews started to be counted for the page that it got redirected to, rather than the Special:Random page itself. But then why wouldn't it go to 0? What are those ~1,000 hits a day?
[image: 👻] ~~ it is a mystery ~~ [image: 👻]
-- Thank you.
Alex Druk alex.druk@gmail.com www.wikipediatrends.com (775) 237-8550 Google voice
Wiki-research-l mailing list Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l
A lot of thanks and credit to the analytics team for keeping these counts running.
That being said, it might be a good idea not to draw too many conclusions from the pageview counts on user behaviour without a closer analysis, especially for the Special:* pages. As demonstrated by the October 16th drop, these are strongly affected by instrument bias.
On Mon, May 11, 2015 at 10:56 PM, Alex Druk alex.druk@gmail.com wrote:
Because similar patterns are observed for many other languages (but not all), it looks like R.Stuart Geiger explanation is correct: from October 16 2014 Special:Random page is just not counted any more (with some not clear exceptions).
That’s a pity because we lost valuable source of info how Wikipedia users look for information. Random search was (and is?) a major way users explore Wikipedias. In many languages Special:Random was significantly higher than Main_Page count and certainly higher than search with index.php.
(I do not want to point finger, but maybe somebody at WMF considered this emotionally.)
IMHO, logs should be logs and log actual activity. At least such dramatic changes in logging user’s activity should be documented somewhere. Betters in Read.me file that should accompany raw logs.
Date: Mon, 11 May 2015 20:08:40 -0700 From: "R.Stuart Geiger" sgeiger@gmail.com To: Research into Wikimedia content and communities wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Wiki-research-l] Wiki-research-l Digest, Vol 117, Issue 14 Message-ID: <CAKt0Q=e-_=0=
aepKeSVnT0Ce2FmJZu5bNtpNnYwZV7x21A3tXQ@mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
Going from 86,000,000 a month to 31,000 a month is quite a drop, and the shift is pretty dramatic. It goes from 1.7 million one day to 715 the next and stays flat (http://stats.grok.se/en/201410/Special:Random).
I was also thinking there could be a bot or something that is scraping Special:Random, but the drop also happens for Special:Random/Talk -- which hardly anybody uses, but it still drops flat the same day ( http://stats.grok.se/en/201410/Special:Random/Talk). It doesn't happen
for
Special:Upload or Special:Log though.
October 16th, 2014 is the day it changes. Anybody know of something that might have changed that day with logging? Also, there have to be way more than ~1,000 hits a day to Special:Random. Perhaps pageviews started to be counted for the page that it got redirected to, rather than the Special:Random page itself. But then why wouldn't it go to 0? What are those ~1,000 hits a day?
[image: 👻] ~~ it is a mystery ~~ [image: 👻]
-- Thank you.
Alex Druk alex.druk@gmail.com www.wikipediatrends.com (775) 237-8550 Google voice
Wiki-research-l mailing list Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l
Alex Druk, 12/05/2015 07:56:
Going from 86,000,000 a month to 31,000 a month is quite a drop, and the shift is pretty dramatic. It goes from 1.7 million one day to 715 the next and stays flat (http://stats.grok.se/en/201410/Special:Random).
That's expected. The new data excludes redirecting URLs (requests which got a 301, 302 or 303 status code. https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T73790
Nemo
wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org
