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 <[email protected]> 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" <[email protected]>
> >To: Research into Wikimedia content and communities
> > <[email protected]>
> >Subject: Re: [Wiki-research-l] Wiki-research-l Digest, Vol 117, Issue
> > 14
> >Message-ID:
> > <CAKt0Q=e-_=0=
> [email protected]>
> >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
> [email protected]
> www.wikipediatrends.com
> (775) 237-8550 Google voice
>
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>
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