User:Smallman12q/Tracking usage

There are several ways to track usage of images on the wiki and on the web.

Wiki[edit]

There are two main forms of tracking: where the file appears (file usage) and how often its viewed (pageviews).

File usage[edit]

Content Projects

Wikimedia Commons is part of the non-profit, multilingual, free-content Wikimedia family.

Wikipedia
Encyclopedia
Wikinews
Open journalism
Wiktionary
Dictionary & thesaurus
Wikibooks
Textbooks & manuals
Wikiquote
Quotations
Wikispecies
Species directory
Wikiversity
Learning resources
Wikivoyage
Travel guide
Wikisource
Source texts
Wikidata
Knowledge base
Meta-Wiki
Coordination
MediaWiki
Wiki software development

After being uploaded to the commons, the file can be used on various Wikimedia content projects as listed above, in their various languages. While the files would be primarily used in Wikipedia to illustrate articles, other projects may make use of the files. Additionally,

The file's visibility within an article will be affected by its placement within the article and the article's popularity (how often the article is viewed).

Things that can be tracked/correlated

The article where the file is used and the article's page views
Placement within in the article: what section and where it appears (top of the page, bottom, etc)
Caption of the file in the article: make sure everything matches up

Internet[edit]

There are three main forms of tracking: incoming links, reverse image search, and referer (this may be disabled due to privacy considerations).

Links[edit]

Links come in the form of direct links to the file on the commons or other wikis.

Embedding the file will allow the file page views to be seen on the wiki.

Reverse Image Search[edit]

When the images are not linked to, they can still be found with a reverse image search.

Referer[edit]

The http referer (it's permanently misspelled that way) provides the url of the page from which you came.

When using a non-secure link (http, not https), when you click on an 'external link', it tells the page you're going to the url from which you came. You can check server logs for referers. There are certain privacy concerns around referers and they may be disabled in the future.

Researcher[edit]

w:Wikipedia:Researcher allows for access to non-public data (possibly server logs) which could be used to track usage. This is not currently supported due to privacy concerns.

Limitations/Inaccuracies[edit]

Tools[edit]

MediaWiki API

Will expand.Smallman12q (talk) 01:18, 22 October 2012 (UTC)