Tool:Popular Pages
The Popular pages bot project aims to help WikiProject contributors gain deeper understanding about which article pages are popular among readers. The bot posts monthly updates of the most read pages within a WikiProject for the previous calendar month, the pageviews, the article's assessment and its importance. An example report can be found at en:Wikipedia:WikiProject Spiders/Popular pages.
History
For nearly 8 years, this task of compiling page view statistics for WikiProject pages was done by Mr. Z bot's popular pages bot. When the tool was built, the Pageviews API wasn't around so it painstakingly computed the data from pageview dumps. During July 2016, the bot went offline and couldn't be revived. Since we had Pageviews API around by then, we decided to create a new tool to perform the same function. This project was based on the 9th ranked request in the 2016 Community Wishlist to Fix Mr.Z-bot's popular pages report. The bot has been re-written with a few changes and enhancements.
Features
- The bot can post up to 1,000 articles per WikiProject, but the total amount is customizable per project in the config.
- The report includes assessments made for the article by the Wikiproject (data sourced from the PageAssessments extension).
- The bot pulls pageview data from the PageviewAPI and includes data from both desktop web and mobile web + app, combining redirect pageviews (e.g. views to /wiki/Obama are added to /wiki/Barack_Obama in the table.)
- You can find a list of all reports on English wikipedia here: en:User:Community Tech bot/Popular pages
Looking to contribute?
- The relevant code can be found on GitHub (https://github.com/wikimedia/popularpages).
- The master ticket on Phabricator is T141154
- Config for the English Wikipedia can be found at en:User:Community Tech bot/Popular pages config.json
FAQ
Why does the bot post using the User:Community Tech bot account?
The bot is maintained by the Community Tech team at WMF. For now, it works as a sub-bot for the Community Tech bot. At some point in future, we might consider having it in a dedicated bot account of its own if there are interested volunteers.
How do I get a report for my project?
If your project does not have a report yet, you can add the config for your project on the config page. The page is in JSON and is pretty straightforward to edit, because you have examples to look at. If you're unsure how to do this or what to write in the config, please don't hesitate to contact us either on the talk page here, or on the bot talk page or contact one of the developers listed on the bot user page.
I don't want a report for my project. How do I get rid of it?
You're free to remove the config for your bot from the config page. The page is in JSON and is pretty straightforward to edit, because you have examples to look at. If you're unsure how to do this or what to write in the config, please don't hesitate to contact us either on the talk page here, or on the bot talk page or contact one of the developers listed on the bot user page.
How often are the reports generated? When will I get to see it?
The report for a month begins being generated on the 2nd of the next month. The task for generating all the reports can roughly take two weeks so it might be that long before your report shows up.
I added a category to the page but the bot over-wrote it. What should I do?
Add the category above the first header. Anything under the first header will be brutally over-written. Sorry about that!
I found a bug! Where can I report it?
Good job! Can you please create a Phabricator ticket for it? You can find the form here. If you aren't familiar with Phabricator, please don't hesitate to contact us either on the talk page here, or on the bot talk page or contact one of the developers listed on the bot user page and we will take care of it.
What language wikis are supported?
The bot currently only posts on English-language Wikipedia but we will consider expanding it to more wikis if there's interest. You can reach out to us if you want to see the bot work on your language wikipedia.
I have a question not listed here! Where should I ask about it?
The talk page! :)