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{{DISPLAYTITLE:Talk:wikiFactor}}{{TOCright}}

It's certainly worth considereng. [[User:Proxima Centauri|Proxima Centauri]] 08:05, 4 March 2009 (EST)

: I like your "wikiFactor" :-) - for MediaWikis, <code>number_of(edits)/number_of(good_pages)</code> is interesting too. --[[Wolf Peuker|Wolf]] | <small>[[User talk:Peu|talk]]</small> 10:00, 4 March 2009 (EST)

hmm [[TedErnst]] | <small>[[User talk:TedErnst|talk]]</small> 14:52, 5 March 2009 (EST)

: Lets have a look on our wiki:

:'''Popular pages (of WikiIndex):'''

|-

|-

|-

|-

: If you count the entries with <code>views > 1000*p</code> (marked with green) you get the wikiFactor (12 for WikiIndex). I hope this helps. Greetings from Berlin --[[Wolf Peuker|Wolf]] | <small>[[User talk:Peu|talk]]</small> 03:07, 6 March 2009 (EST)

::Thanks for the illustration Wolf. That is precisely how the wikiFactor is calculated. The wikiFactor is not an indication of the size of a wiki, but rather the interest that a wiki has attracted. It is entirely feasible to populate a wiki with many 'uninteresting' pages, that attract very few visits other than the Main Page. The wikiFactor is based on the highly popular (at least amongst the scientific community) [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H-index h-index (Wikipedia entry)]. --[[User:Spud Gun | <b><FONT COLOR="#8B3A3A">Carl McBride</FONT></b>]] ([[User_talk:Spud_Gun |talk]]) 05:39, 6 March 2009 (EST)

::: Ah, okay. And would this be added through code of some kind, or by hand? [[User:24.12.195.33|24.12.195.33]] 22:06, 6 March 2009 (EST)

::: I imagine that initially the value of the wikiFactor would be inserted by hand, as is the case at the moment with the ''wiki_pages'' parameter in the Size template. --[[User:Spud Gun | <b><FONT COLOR="#8B3A3A">Carl McBride</FONT></b>]] ([[User_talk:Spud_Gun |talk]]) 05:30, 9 March 2009 (EDT)

Carl, I do worry about how this will scale to non-mediawiki wiki. Any ideas on that? Best, [[MarkDilley]]

:I think most implementations of the wiki model have a facility for listing the most popular/visited pages. Instructions on exactly how to do this for each wiki type could be outlined on the category page, in a similar fashion to the list on the [[Template:Size]] page for the size of a wiki. --[[User:Spud Gun | <b><FONT COLOR="#8B3A3A">Carl McBride</FONT></b>]] ([[User_talk:Spud_Gun |talk]]) 13:22, 9 March 2009 (EDT)

Given the generally positive response to the [[Proposal:wikiFactor]] I have started work on an 'experimental' template along the same lines

as the Size template: [[Template:Size experimental]]. --[[User:Spud Gun | <b><FONT COLOR="#8B3A3A">Carl McBride</FONT></b>]] ([[User_talk:Spud_Gun |talk]]) 11:52, 23 March 2009 (EDT)

:: I included two new parameters <code>wiki factor</code> and <code>wiki factor URL</code> into [[template:size]]. Have fun! --[[Wolf Peuker|Wolf]] | <small>[[User talk:Peu|talk]]</small> 17:25, 24 March 2009 (EDT)

I collect stats for [[Rosetta Code]] blog posts and the admin there noted to me not long ago that the views count in the wiki statistics was skewed because of caching. If someone views a cached page in the wiki, it is not counted in the wikiviews because it doesn't trigger the script that keeps track of those views. I realize there's nothing much that can be done here about that except maybe put up a disclaimer or somehow create/promote a caching plugin that does count cache views on the stats page. I thought it should be noted somewhere though. --[[User:129.21.93.164|129.21.93.164]] 10:08, 14 August 2009 (EDT)

:One could just as easily argue that if a page was ''not'' cached then the statistics would be skewed. If someone has already seen a page (and thus forms part of their cache) then viewing it again is not a fresh view with a fresh pair of eyes. All said and done, if everybody has the same working conditions (i.e. their wiki does perform caching) then, with regard to the wikiFactor, everybody is working on a level playing field. --[[User:Spud Gun | <b><FONT COLOR="#8B3A3A">Carl McBride</FONT></b>]] ([[User_talk:Spud_Gun |talk]]) 10:18, 14 August 2009 (EDT)

::There are several forms of caching that can be occur. Internally, MediaWiki (and perhaps some other engines) cache various items of data used to reconstruct a page. Busy sites often use a "front-end" cache such as [[Wikipedia:Squid (software)|Squid]] (in reverse-proxy mode) or [[Wikipedia:Varnish (software)|Varnish]] to accelerate the delivery of pages and files, shielding the web server from duplicate requests from different clients where permitted by response headers. Finally, there are the intermediary server and user caches, also advised by caching and age headers. The latter caches are the ones you refer to, but on busy sites it is probably the server-side cache for anonymous users that has the most effect on perceived popularity. Indeed, it will greatly affect the hit-count for most-accessed pages (since they are very likely to be served from cache), and so disproportionately affect wikiFactor. [[User:GreenReaper|GreenReaper]] 14:37, 11 November 2009 (EST)

:There ''is'' something that can be done - use a tool like [[Wikipedia:Google Analytics|Google Analytics]] ([[mw:Extension:Google Analytics Integration|extension]]) to track website usage. This is triggered on each access, regardless of whether a page has been served from a cache. To me, this is the right way to do it - after all, a citation is still counted even if someone copied it from another paper's list of citations. Those wikis using caching are the very ones that you would expect to have a high wikiFactor - some get hundreds or even thousands of HTTP requests a minute. [[User:GreenReaper|GreenReaper]] 14:25, 11 November 2009 (EST)

:::Interesting. I opened an account on Google Analytics, but I stalled not knowing what to do with a wiki site. Thanks for the info on the extension! --[[User:Spud Gun | <b><FONT COLOR="#8B3A3A">Carl McBride</FONT></b>]] ([[User_talk:Spud_Gun |talk]]) 04:56, 12 November 2009 (EST)

::Okay, I see your point on wikiFactor and info going to pages that are putatively different, but the information given on each page regarding how to calculate the score is identical. If you are happy with that, that's fine, but I feel it just takes up extra unneeded space: clicking on [[wikiFactor]] will give you the same information. I can also see your interpretation of verify: I think to both of us "verify" means "confirm", but when I see verify I usually see it in a more active tense (please provide confirmation), whereas I think you read it passively (have a look an see if it is correct). Looking at dictionary definitions, verify is probably fine - it may just be that when I am given things at work to verify it means I need to sign off on them... which probably makes me read it that way! --[[User:Thedugganaut|thedugganaut]] ([[User talk:Thedugganaut|talk]]) 15:09, 20 September 2012 (PDT)

How easy is it for a wiki to manipulate this figure by falsifying or inflating its statistics? My concern was mainly for its inclusion as a filtering criterion per [[mw:Extension:InterwikiMap/Data]]; we could add it if there were a way to verify the figure's validity. [[User:Leucosticte|Leucosticte]] ([[User talk:Leucosticte|talk]]) 20:05, 20 November 2012 (PST)

:If they control the database, it is trivial to modify. Most larger sites will use a third-party tool like Google Analytics, and might give you access to view the account, which has greater validity - they'd have to manufacture actual visitors, which is more trouble than it is worth. [[User:GreenReaper|GreenReaper]] ([[User talk:GreenReaper|talk]]) 14:50, 2 January 2013 (PST)

::Interesting discussion. I am aware that the Special/PopularPages in [[:Category:MediaWiki|MediaWiki]] can be manipulated (as can Special/Statistics). However, it is important to note that many MediaWiki sites disable PopularPages - the most notable are also arugably the most important, those being all [[:Category:Wikimedia Foundation|Wikimedia Foundation]] wikis. It also important to note that hardly any of the other wiki engines provide page ranking reporting facilities - we have identified only [[Template:Size#Where to look|four other engines]]. Finally, we need to remember that [[WikiIndex]] is not an encyclopaedic wiki - we don't function on the same ethos as Wikipedia, we don't require any independent verification of said stats. [[User:Hoof Hearted|Sean, aka <small>Hoof Hearted</small>]] • _{[[:Category:Active administrators of this wiki|Admin]]} • <small>[[User talk:Hoof Hearted|talk2HH]]</small> 01:22, 3 January 2013 (PST)

According to Google Analytics (Special:Popularpages is not relevant as the wiki is behing a caching proxy), the 40th most visited since September 2008 (when Google Analytics was integrated) page of my wiki has 40468 hits. Does this make WikiFactor 40?<br />[[User:Alex Mashin|Alex Mashin]] ([[User talk:Alex Mashin|talk]]) 04:43, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

: ''Is that a public stat? Which wiki? Best, [[MarkDilley]]

[[:Category:MediaWiki|MediaWiki]] have removed the 'Popular Pages' tool from all releases since around October 2014. Unfortunately this is going to make this metric largely obsolete. --[[User:Thedugganaut|thedugganaut]] ([[User talk:Thedugganaut|talk]]) 18:56, 26 May 2015 (PDT)

:For reference, this is [https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/c/150699/ Gerrit Change 150699] deployed on Oct 21, 2014, and released in MediaWiki 1.25 on 25 May 2015. Might need a new way of getting wF for new MediaWiki installations --[[YiFei]] | <small>[[User talk:Zhuyifei1999|talk]]</small> 07:18, 16 June 2015 (PDT)

the RFc was set up by a person with a similar name as our [[Carl McBride]]. If that is his MW-account, maybe we should ask him ;-) [[User talk:Manorainjan|'''<span style="color: orange;">Manorainjan</span>''']] 11:10, 16 June 2015 (PDT)