Hi all,
Is it possible to find out how many times any given image has been viewed?
I know that this can be done on Wikipedia (e.g. [1]), but can it be done on Commons?
Ideally, I'd like to know how many times an image is viewed by all sites that use Commons as their image repository, preferably using the API. I see that there is a "counter" option in the API, but that doesn't seem to be working [2].
It's very useful to know the number of times images have been viewed when talking to people about releasing their images onto Commons. This was mentioned in one of the outcomes of the GLAM-WIKI event: "Provide statistics on visits to articles and images (including thumbnails loads) related to cultural institutions, information or images provided by them, or articles about their collections, and work with GLAM institutions on adding this to their existing metrics." A lot of this can be done externally if the information can be provided by the API or some other means.
Thanks, Mike
[1] http://stats.grok.se/en/200909/File%3AQueen%20Wilhelmina2.jpg [2[ http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/api.php? action=query&titles=File:Queen% 20Wilhelmina2.jpg&prop=info&inprop=protection|talkid [3] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/GLAM-WIKI_Recommendations
On Sat, Oct 10, 2009 at 5:56 PM, Michael Peel email@mikepeel.net wrote:
I know that this can be done on Wikipedia (e.g. [1])
Can it be? Doesn't the page you linked just list how many times the image description page has been viewed?
[1] http://stats.grok.se/en/200909/File%3AQueen%20Wilhelmina2.jpg
2009/10/10 Michael Peel email@mikepeel.net:
Ideally, I'd like to know how many times an image is viewed by all sites that use Commons as their image repository, preferably using the API. I see that there is a "counter" option in the API, but that doesn't seem to be working [2].
The counter field in the prop=info output provides the number of pageviews for the image description page, not for the image itself. Also, the page view counter is disabled on Wikipedia because of performance reasons and because Squid caching would cause it to miss a lot of views and report a ridiculously low number.
Roan Kattouw (Catrope)
On Sat, Oct 10, 2009 at 5:56 PM, Michael Peel email@mikepeel.net wrote:
Is it possible to find out how many times any given image has been viewed?
Modulo caching, I don't see why not. You'd need to process Squid logs as for page views. I don't know if it's being done right now, though.
On 10/11/09 5:36 PM, Aryeh Gregor wrote:
On Sat, Oct 10, 2009 at 5:56 PM, Michael Peelemail@mikepeel.net wrote:
Is it possible to find out how many times any given image has been viewed?
Modulo caching, I don't see why not. You'd need to process Squid logs as for page views. I don't know if it's being done right now, though.
As far as I know it's not currently being done, but it certainly could be.
I actually got some interesting image view stats out of the sampled page view logs for my talk at SVG Open; since thumbnails have the width in the URL we can for instance compare the actual usage of different sizes of images inline. (Though I only pulled up the data for SVG images for this test.)
Annotated presentation slides are up at: http://leuksman.com/pages/presentations#October_2009
It could be really interesting to pull such hit data straight out of the logs and make them available through the wiki, allowing comparing view frequencies of a given image over time and large vs small etc.
-- brion
2009/10/15 Brion Vibber brion@pobox.com:
On 10/11/09 5:36 PM, Aryeh Gregor wrote:
On Sat, Oct 10, 2009 at 5:56 PM, Michael Peelemail@mikepeel.net wrote:
Is it possible to find out how many times any given image has been viewed?
Modulo caching, I don't see why not. You'd need to process Squid logs as for page views. I don't know if it's being done right now, though.
As far as I know it's not currently being done, but it certainly could be.
I actually got some interesting image view stats out of the sampled page view logs for my talk at SVG Open; since thumbnails have the width in the URL we can for instance compare the actual usage of different sizes of images inline. (Though I only pulled up the data for SVG images for this test.)
Annotated presentation slides are up at: http://leuksman.com/pages/presentations#October_2009
It could be really interesting to pull such hit data straight out of the logs and make them available through the wiki, allowing comparing view frequencies of a given image over time and large vs small etc.
I have talked to Domas a couple of times (most recently Wikimania) about the possibility of aggregating thumbnail views for images a la his "wikistats". He is not too keen to do it...
You can approximate the same thing by combining CheckUsage with the wikistats page views. You won't get the info about the size of the thumbnail unless you do some extra hackery though. Also, it's quite a pain as CheckUsage is only a toolserver tool, and is subject to those usual vagaries of service.
I agree it would be great for Commons. All it needs is someone (with access to squid logs) who shares that enthusiasm... I think??
cheers Brianna
On Wed, Oct 14, 2009 at 10:03 PM, Brianna Laugher brianna.laugher@gmail.com wrote:
You can approximate the same thing by combining CheckUsage with the wikistats page views. You won't get the info about the size of the thumbnail unless you do some extra hackery though. Also, it's quite a pain as CheckUsage is only a toolserver tool, and is subject to those usual vagaries of service.
And it's not of much historical use, because CheckUsage doesn't tell you when the image was added. And it would quite possibly overload CheckUsage to poll every single image every day or whatnot.
I agree it would be great for Commons. All it needs is someone (with access to squid logs) who shares that enthusiasm... I think??
I'd think that's all it would take, yep.
Brianna Laugher schrieb:
Also, it's quite a pain as CheckUsage is only a toolserver tool, and is subject to those usual vagaries of service.
Yes. /me points again to http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:GlobalUsage which seems ready but need code review to be enabled on WMF wikis.
Raymond.
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