Commons:Bots/Requests/Ahechtbot 2
Ahechtbot (talk · contribs) 2
Operator: Ahecht (talk · contributions · Statistics · Recent activity · block log · User rights log · uploads · Global account information)
Bot's tasks for which permission is being sought: The bot will scan the English Wikipedia (initially) and other wikipedias that may opt-in for talk pages that transclude the en:Template:Xreadership or similar templates, retrieve page view data for those pages, and upload it as tabular data to subpages of Data:Sandbox/Ahecht/pageviews/en.wikipedia.org/ (initially) or a location such as Data:Pageviews/en.wikipedia.org/ (or similar for other wikis). It will also create or update a corresponding .chart page for each .tab page it uploads. This is part of a larger effort to replace en:Template:Annual readership and en:Template:Graph:PageViews with new templates that use the new Chart extension.
Automatic or manually assisted: Automatic, sporadically supervised.
Edit type (e.g. Continuous, daily, one time run): Daily
Maximum edit rate (e.g. edits per minute): 12/minute (or slower as determined by pywikibot)
Programming language(s): Python/Pywikibot. Source at https://gitlab.wikimedia.org/toolforge-repos/tabulatepageviews
Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 04:30, 18 July 2025 (UTC)
- I did another run of 9 that adds the .chart pages in addition to .tab pages here. Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 14:28, 21 July 2025 (UTC)- @EugeneZelenko Mind taking a look? This has been sitting here without comment for a week since my last update. Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 14:12, 28 July 2025 (UTC)
- @EugeneZelenko Mind taking a look? This has been sitting here without comment for a week since my last update. Ahecht (TALK
- What is that needed for? How many edits, how many opt-ins do you expect? Will there be any limit, or does this scale for nearly every article? --Krd 06:54, 2 August 2025 (UTC)
- @Krd This is replacing the en:Template:Annual readership template, which used the old Graph extension which has since been deactivated. The replacement, mw:Extension:Chart, doesn't support directly accessing the REST API, and WMF has made no indication that they plan to address this as part of the current project (just that they'd investigate it as part of a hypothetical follow-up project). There are about 50,000 pages that currently use the template, so the initial run (which also creates the .chart pages) should take about 5 days and subsequent runs less than three days. Even if we assume that the number of pages doubles, it should be able to update everything at least once a week. Obviously it doesn't scale indefinitely, but it's set up not to run concurrently so more pages just means a longer update interval. Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 14:45, 2 August 2025 (UTC)- What is it needed for, why shouldn't it be discontinued? Krd 06:04, 3 August 2025 (UTC)
- @Krd It's needed for viewing pageview trends from article talk pages without having to click through to an off-wiki tool. I think the fact that 50,000 pages that had opted in to the old version of this template haven't removed it in hopes that the functionality would return is a pretty strong indicator that there is a desire for this feature. Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 16:28, 4 August 2025 (UTC)- I don't think that this has to be automatically the case; I can imagine that a relevant part of that opt-ins have been setup by users that are now inactive, which could be an indicator that this was setup for a reason that may no longer exist. Do we have cases where we can prove that it is actively used? Krd 05:57, 7 August 2025 (UTC)
- @Krd It's kind of hard to prove that, since it hasn't worked for two years, but en:Template:Xreadership, which was created less than a year ago as a manual alternative, has over 100 uses, and this is despite significant drawbacks included the data needing manual updates and the PEIS implications limiting the amount of displayed data to 30 days (or less in some cases). Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 16:33, 7 August 2025 (UTC)- It hasn't worked for two years? Krd 05:34, 8 August 2025 (UTC)
- @Krd The old template stopped working in April 2023 when the old Graph extension was disabled for security reasons. It took 2 years for the WMF to roll out the replacement Chart extension. Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 16:59, 8 August 2025 (UTC)- Understood. Why should we provide an expensive tool when there is no evidence at all that it is of any use? Krd 09:43, 15 August 2025 (UTC)
- @Krd The old template stopped working in April 2023 when the old Graph extension was disabled for security reasons. It took 2 years for the WMF to roll out the replacement Chart extension. Ahecht (TALK
- It hasn't worked for two years? Krd 05:34, 8 August 2025 (UTC)
- @Krd It's kind of hard to prove that, since it hasn't worked for two years, but en:Template:Xreadership, which was created less than a year ago as a manual alternative, has over 100 uses, and this is despite significant drawbacks included the data needing manual updates and the PEIS implications limiting the amount of displayed data to 30 days (or less in some cases). Ahecht (TALK
- I don't think that this has to be automatically the case; I can imagine that a relevant part of that opt-ins have been setup by users that are now inactive, which could be an indicator that this was setup for a reason that may no longer exist. Do we have cases where we can prove that it is actively used? Krd 05:57, 7 August 2025 (UTC)
- @Krd It's needed for viewing pageview trends from article talk pages without having to click through to an off-wiki tool. I think the fact that 50,000 pages that had opted in to the old version of this template haven't removed it in hopes that the functionality would return is a pretty strong indicator that there is a desire for this feature. Ahecht (TALK
- What is it needed for, why shouldn't it be discontinued? Krd 06:04, 3 August 2025 (UTC)
- @Krd This is replacing the en:Template:Annual readership template, which used the old Graph extension which has since been deactivated. The replacement, mw:Extension:Chart, doesn't support directly accessing the REST API, and WMF has made no indication that they plan to address this as part of the current project (just that they'd investigate it as part of a hypothetical follow-up project). There are about 50,000 pages that currently use the template, so the initial run (which also creates the .chart pages) should take about 5 days and subsequent runs less than three days. Even if we assume that the number of pages doubles, it should be able to update everything at least once a week. Obviously it doesn't scale indefinitely, but it's set up not to run concurrently so more pages just means a longer update interval. Ahecht (TALK
Declined. --Krd 06:52, 18 September 2025 (UTC)