Ian Baker wrote:
Basically, I'd like to publish per-editor pageview stats. That is, Mediawiki would keep track of the number of times an article had been viewed since the first day you edited it, and let you know how many times your edits had been seen (approximately, depending on the resolution of the data). I think such personalized stats could really help to drive editor retention. The information is available now through Henrik's tool, but even if you know about stats.grok.se, it's hard to keep track and make the connection between the graphs there and one's own contributions.
This is a neat idea. MediaWiki has some page view count support built in, but it's been disabled on Wikimedia wikis for pretty much forever. The reality is that MediaWiki isn't launched for the vast majority of requests. A user making an edit is obviously different, though. I think a database with per-day view support would make this feature somewhat feasible, in a JavaScript gadget or in a MediaWiki extension.
Are there other specific projects that require this data? It will be much easier to make a case for accelerating development of the dataset if there are some clear examples of where it's needed, and especially if it can help to meet the current editor retention goals.
Heh. It's refreshing to hear this said aloud. Yes, if there were some way to tie page view stats to fundraising/editor retention/usability/the gender gap/the Global South, it'd be much simpler to get resources devoted to it. Without a doubt.
There are countless applications for this data, particularly as a means of measuring Wikipedia's impact. This data also provides a scale against which other articles and projects can be measured. In a vacuum, knowing that the English Wikipedia's article "John Doe" received 400 views per day on average in June means very little. When you can compare that figure to the average views per day of every other article on the English Wikipedia (or every other article on the German Wikipedia), you can begin doing real analysis work. Currently, this really isn't possible, and that's a Bad Thing.
MZMcBride