Category talk:WikiFactor

This was a good feature. Even if it was probably software-intensive. Are there alternatives?--Max Sinister (talk) 03:45, 29 October 2022 (UTC)

Extension:HitCounters generates the identical 'Popular pages' output. It was totally re-written (by Mark A. Hershberger, MediaWiki software developer) to prevent the server-intensive loading of the original incarnation. But this replacement HitCounters is not included in the core MediaWiki software - it needs to be installed as a separate extension.

Alternatives are Google Analytics, but that has potentially serious issues with data security, and can cause conflicts with other MediaWiki extensions and dependencies! Sean P, aka Hoof Hearted • _{Admin / 'Crat / Staff} • talk2HH 23:05, 1 November 2022 (UTC)

I see. Maybe we could use an alternative that doesn't measure page views, but nonetheless help to categorize Wikis. What about most-linked pages? After all, Wikis are all about linked informations...--Max Sinister (talk) 10:32, 2 November 2022 (UTC)

Interesting comment on most-linked to pages. However, I have two concerns.

Firstly, wikiFactor was specifically 'created' for the sole purpose of reporting specific page views on a a wiki site, and wikiFactor uses the same Hirsch-index of grading views of profession journal articles for published authors. To change this now would jeopardise the integrity of our wikiFactor.

The Special:WhatLinksHere feature, called 'backlinks' in the non-MediaWiki world, is great on encyclopaedic sites such as Wikipedia - where they strive to actively achieve a number of backlinks. However, the vast majority of wiki sites (even Wikivoyage) do NOT seek to chase backlink importance. Indeed, this WikiIndex site has many articles which have zero backlinks (called 'orphan' in MediaWiki speak), yet WikiIndex is no worse for not chasing high backlink figures!

All that being said, we are always happy to explore new ideas and suggestions of how we can develop WikiIndex further, especially new options for presenting data. Loving your enthusiasm. Sean P, aka Hoof Hearted • _{Admin / 'Crat / Staff} • talk2HH 23:09, 2 November 2022 (UTC)

Yes, I see the purpose of wikiFactor. And I understand your point: WP pages heavily link to each other; those here on WI don't, except via common categories, which is a different thing again; and on some wiki where I'm admin, people create "walled gardens" - see, it's about constructed worlds, so it's mostly pages for the same world which link to each other, and only disambiguation pages link to pages from more than one world. Because anything else wouldn't make much sense.

At the very least, we could use Spiecial:MostLinkedPages to tell different kinds of wikis apart. But that's a different thing.--Max Sinister (talk) 10:44, 5 November 2022 (UTC)

Did you want to start a new list article, maybe List of wikis by number of most linked-to pages? (Note that the Special:MostLinkedPages here on WikiIndex is broken, along with many other SpecialPages). Category:Lists gives a few examples of what we currently report on, but obviously, we could do with more help to output our data! This will also need new Semantic properties creating, along with a new field in either the Wiki infobox template, or Size stats box template.

Are you able to create a bot to pull such data from other sites? If so, a separate bot account ought to be created.

My only caution is that this new list will be a MediaWiki-centric output (which will be fine for use on WikiApiary), and might not include the many other wiki engines which are in use. Sean P, aka Hoof Hearted • _{Admin / 'Crat / Staff} • talk2HH 13:46, 5 November 2022 (UTC)