Unfortunately, I can't tell you anything more than what you already know! I think that huge, temporary spikes in edits or pageviews that don't match expected patterns of human use (like the death of a celebrity or a big editing campaign) are most likely caused by bots. With editing spikes, I can usually confirm this belief by examining the edits. With pageview spikes, it's much harder. If the spike was in the last 90 days, I could investigate more by looking at the confidential raw traffic data <https://wikitech.wikimedia.org/wiki/Analytics/Data_Lake/Traffic/Webrequest>, but after 90 days, that data is deleted to protect user privacy. <https://wikitech.wikimedia.org/wiki/Analytics/Data_Lake/Traffic/Webrequest> The case you mentioned fits all my criteria. First, it is a huge, temporary spike. Second, it doesn't match expected patterns of human use: there is no matching spike in mobile pageviews and the pages involved are not pages humans would want to read. So, it's for these reasons only that I am confident that it was caused by bots.
Now, *why* would someone use a bot to access millions of Bangla Wikipedia articles for a single month? I have no idea. It could just be a programmer somewhere doing an experiment. Your guess is as good as mine 😊 On Fri, 18 Dec 2020 at 21:52, Ankan Ghosh Dastider < [email protected]> wrote: > Hi Neil, > > Thank you very much for responding so fast. > > That's can be the potential answer! Can you please share any definite (or > relative) information regarding the error at that time, if possible? Can > you give me any idea on why the bot view increases so much on a certain > year (and on some certain dates)? If possible, any example will be really > helpful. > > > Ankan > > On Fri, Dec 18, 2020 at 10:01 PM Neil Shah-Quinn <[email protected]> > wrote: > >> That's a good question! I think the most likely explanation is that a bot >> automatically viewed those pages. I see that you have already removed >> "spider" and "automated" traffic in your Wikistats graphs, but those >> classifications are not perfect. Before March 2020, they only detected bots >> that explicitly marked themselves as bots. Now, our methods are more >> sophisticated >> <https://wikitech.wikimedia.org/wiki/Analytics/Data_Lake/Traffic/BotDetection>, >> but I am sure they still miss some things. >> >> On Fri, 18 Dec 2020 at 18:48, Ankan Ghosh Dastider < >> [email protected]> wrote: >> >>> Hello everyone, >>> >>> I am Ankan, a Wikimedian from Bangladesh. Recently, I was searching for >>> the Wikimedia stats website for research purposes. I got a bit curious >>> regarding the Bengali Wikipedia total page view section >>> <https://stats.wikimedia.org/#/bn.wikipedia.org/reading/total-page-views/normal%7Cbar%7Call%7Caccess~desktop*mobile-app*mobile-web+(agent)~user%7Cmonthly>, >>> as the traffic didn't match the normal flow in January 2018 and faced a >>> sudden surge of desktop access by users. It is unprecedented and highest >>> till today. If you check the normal rate of desktop access, you will see >>> that it is almost 450% than the second highest. >>> >>> The pageview result suggests that the top-visited pages are >>> category-related and date-related pages (the highest visited one is >>> 'Category:Stubs', see here >>> <https://pageviews.toolforge.org/?project=bn.wikipedia.org&platform=desktop&agent=user&redirects=0&start=2018-01-01&end=2018-01-31&pages=%E0%A6%AC%E0%A6%BF%E0%A6%B7%E0%A6%AF%E0%A6%BC%E0%A6%B6%E0%A7%8D%E0%A6%B0%E0%A7%87%E0%A6%A3%E0%A7%80:%E0%A6%85%E0%A6%B8%E0%A6%AE%E0%A7%8D%E0%A6%AA%E0%A7%82%E0%A6%B0%E0%A7%8D%E0%A6%A3>) >>> which is quite enigmatic as these pages are hardly viewed by the general >>> readers. The result of certain dates in January 2018 is completely >>> exceptional. >>> >>> Note that, I have checked some other languages and the rate is normal >>> there. >>> >>> I am seeking your assistance to analyze the probable reason behind this >>> surge. Thanks in advance! >>> >>> >>> Best regards, >>> Ankan >>> >>> -- >>> Ankan Ghosh Dastider (he/him) >>> User:ANKAN <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:ANKAN> || All Wikimedia >>> Foundation <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation>'s >>> public Wiki >>> Executive Member || Wikimedia Bangladesh <http://wikimedia.org.bd/> >>> Twitter <https://twitter.com/Iagdastider> | LinkedIn >>> <https://www.linkedin.com/in/ankan-ghosh-dastider/> | ResearchGate >>> <https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Ankan_Ghosh_Dastider> >>> _______________________________________________ >>> Analytics mailing list >>> [email protected] >>> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/analytics >>> >> >> >> -- >> Neil Shah-Quinn >> senior data scientist, Product Analytics >> <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Product_Analytics> >> Wikimedia Foundation <https://wikimediafoundation.org/> >> _______________________________________________ >> Analytics mailing list >> [email protected] >> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/analytics >> > > > -- > Ankan Ghosh Dastider (he/him) > User:ANKAN <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:ANKAN> || All Wikimedia > Foundation <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation>'s > public Wiki > Executive Member || Wikimedia Bangladesh <http://wikimedia.org.bd/> > Twitter <https://twitter.com/Iagdastider> | LinkedIn > <https://www.linkedin.com/in/ankan-ghosh-dastider/> | ResearchGate > <https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Ankan_Ghosh_Dastider> > _______________________________________________ > Analytics mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/analytics > -- Neil Shah-Quinn senior data scientist, Product Analytics <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Product_Analytics> Wikimedia Foundation <https://wikimediafoundation.org/>
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