Michael Rosenthal wrote:
I suggest keep the bug on Wikimedia's servers and using a tool which relies on SQL databases. These could be shared with the toolserver where the "official" version of the analysis tool runs and users are enabled to run their own queries (so taking a tool with a good database structure would be nice). With that the toolserver users could set up their own cool tools on that data.
If Javascript was used to serve the bug, it would be quite easy to only load the bug some small fraction of the time, allowing a fair statistical sample of JS-enabled readers (who should, I hope, be fairly representative of the whole population) to be taken without melting down the servers.
I suspect the fact that most bots and spiders do not interpret Javascript, and would thus be excluded from participating in the traffic survey, could be regarded as an added bonus.
-- Neil