Wikipedia page hit stats

March 5, 2008 8:50 AM

Wikipedia page hit statistics (finally).
posted by stbalbach (34 comments total)

Cool, but - no Top 100?

I NEED MORE DATA NOM NOM
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane at 8:58 AM on March 5

This tool is experimental, lets hope it or something like it lasts, now everyone can get positive feedback that their work is actually being read, it is a huge motivator. Beyond the ego gratification it is also a helpful tool in fighting deletionists, to demonstrate an article has interested readers.

I am personally amazed how some of the most obscure stub articles I wrote are getting page views, and some others getting 40 or 50 thousand a month, which over time that probably surpass what most professionals would get in a printed publication.
posted by stbalbach at 8:59 AM on March 5 [2 favorites]

Woohoo!

(has nerdgasm)


BTW, do they publish their overall traffic stats? It'd be nice to know if some days are just naturally busier than others...
posted by tkolar at 9:12 AM on March 5

Thanks, stbalbach! Nice find!
posted by indiebass at 9:27 AM on March 5

britney_spears has been viewed 655011 times in 200802

Ban_ki_moon has been viewed 1597 times in 200802
posted by Shebear at 9:56 AM on March 5

Super find, clunky interface.

Feb page views

646,899 - Hillary Clinton
81,365 - Hilary Clinton
Fail
posted by Samuel Farrow at 9:58 AM on March 5

This is just a ploy to bump up the stats on your Master I.A.M. article, right?
posted by yhbc at 9:59 AM on March 5

metafilter has been viewed 1697 times in 200802

wilmot_proviso has been viewed 12606 times in 200802

Wow, Wilmot Proviso is killing us.
posted by marxchivist at 10:00 AM on March 5

I am personally amazed how some of the most obscure stub articles I wrote are getting page views

Well, you don't know their stubs until you visit... and then you're disappointed.
posted by smackfu at 10:01 AM on March 5

It's very case sensitive. And kind of awesome.
posted by heyho at 10:09 AM on March 5

awesome.
posted by lunit at 10:11 AM on March 5

It's very interesting to do American English vs. Everywhere Else English:

Coriander: 47618
Cilantro: 7548

Colour:10036
Color:109986

Aluminium:126542
Aluminum: 32900
posted by Pyry at 10:30 AM on March 5

Does Wikipedia plan / intend to make raw usage data available to people, or do they hold this data private?
posted by Nelson at 11:30 AM on March 5

Interesting point 1: if you look at a moderate-visibility article which had no special noteworthiness in a month you can plainly see a weekly period.

Interesting point 2: When Heath Ledger died his article had ~2M views in one day.
posted by DevilsAdvocate at 11:37 AM on March 5

Coriander/cilantro isn't strictly American vs. everywhere else, since "coriander" is still used in the US to refer to the seeds of the plant, just not to the leaves.
posted by DevilsAdvocate at 11:39 AM on March 5

Strangely, "lolcat" was more popular than "intelligence" last month.
posted by katillathehun at 11:59 AM on March 5

BTW, do they publish their overall traffic stats? It'd be nice to know if some days are just naturally busier than others...

That'd be cool to see. There are some clear week-day vs. week-end usage differences for technical stuff; for example, support vector machines gets hit during the work week.
posted by agent at 12:02 PM on March 5

My stub has been viewed 222 times this month, and they're talking about deleting it, the bastards. Deletionists are going to ruin Wikipedia.

Oh yeah: great post!
posted by languagehat at 12:02 PM on March 5 [1 favorite]

America's_Next_Top_Model has been viewed 524559 times in 200802
America has been viewed 52044 times in 200802

It's as if it records the idle curiosities of bored people who don't have anywhere else to go for meaningless or esoteric trivia!
posted by kittyprecious at 12:27 PM on March 5

817? Really? How much of that is spider traffic?

Either that, or there are a lot of SCotS fans out there this month.
posted by Eideteker at 12:33 PM on March 5

I wonder how long it will last after being posted in Digg and Reddit?
posted by zouhair at 12:50 PM on March 5

WIL VOPE FOR HALLARY CLINTO N1!1
posted by aftermarketradio at 1:03 PM on March 5

Definitely cool to see articles I created getting hits in the 600s a month.

One aspect that might play a role in the hits, and perhaps this was addressed on the website and I missed it, but what about editors working on the article? I know when I was heavy into wikipedia, I kept an eye on my Watch List and if I saw a change done on one of the articles I worked on, I'd instantly go in and check it out. Multiply that by the number of watchers and it'll add up on a daily basis.
posted by Atreides at 1:23 PM on March 5

Leap Year
posted by voltairemodern at 1:33 PM on March 5

America has been viewed 52044 times in 200802

America is one of those disambiguation pages, not the page on the USA.
posted by smackfu at 1:39 PM on March 5

The all important question will now be answered:

Pirate: 31144
Ninja: 103442
Robot: 92410
Cowboy: 41523
Zombie: 98668
Hooker: 6884

Once again ninjas steal the day.

"Pirate Ninja Hooker" comes up with zero hits though, so I guess I'm off to write my first article.
posted by quin at 2:19 PM on March 5 [1 favorite]

Beyond the ego gratification it is also a helpful tool in fighting deletionists, to demonstrate an article has interested readers.

Possibly. These have been posted in a few AFDs the last few days, but I don't see it convincing anyone when the article is in poor shape or the sourcing is nonexistent or there are huge BLP issues. It amounts to a [[WP:USEFUL]] argument.
posted by dhartung at 4:10 PM on March 5

How many looked at the article on Ron Paul?

Ron Paul. Pfftt.

How about Ru Paul? (2,095).
posted by dasheekeejones at 4:50 PM on March 5

It'll happily provide stats for pages that don't exist and how many people are snooping your contribution pages.
posted by cillit bang at 4:52 PM on March 5

You forgot Monkey (130656).
posted by Eideteker at 5:34 PM on March 5

Canine_reproduction 1104342 ????
posted by BrotherCaine at 7:48 PM on March 5

Pyry, I think those counts are heavily influenced by the spelling that Wikipedia happened to end up with. For example, "aluminium" won out over "aluminum", so that's why there are more visits to the former, but "colour" lost to "color", so the latter gets more hits. The numbers don't do anything but reflect the article's current title.
posted by yath at 10:25 PM on March 5

Anyone know why the article on Canine Reproduction is tenth on the list of most viewed articles between Feb 1st and Feb 23rd?
posted by peacheater at 5:16 PM on March 6

It could be the new Los Angeles law mandating pet sterilization, or their are way more dogfuckers on the Internet than I ever realized.
posted by BrotherCaine at 6:26 PM on March 6