Thank you very much, Neil! This is very much helpful. :)

On Mon, 21 Dec 2020, 4:54 pm Neil Shah-Quinn, <[email protected]>
wrote:

> 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>
>>>> _______________________________________________
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>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> 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/>
> _______________________________________________
> Analytics mailing list
> [email protected]
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/analytics
>
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