Wikimedia Apps/AppAnalytics/ContentConsumption

Content Consumption Tracking Status Quo

The core metric of Wikimedia content usage has historically been pageviews. Pageviews are tracked via processing the request logs and refining those requests into summary tables. These summary pageviews are then made available internally and a subset of the data is exposed via the Pageviews API.

Generalizing the Definition of Consumption

As we evolve and improve the encyclopedia experience, this simple measure is increasingly inaccurate or overly narrow in understanding how our projects are consumed and where. This is true of apps, and also with Page Previews (aka Hovercards) and recommendations coming to the web clients, understanding and measuring these alternate forms of consumption are increasingly important. Below we outline the variant ways content is consumed and presented to users, that need to be tracked and measured beyond the pageview.

App Cases

Pre-Caching/Background Requests

The apps often request pages or revisions of pages without the users explicit request to do so, and with no guarantee that the cached content will be shown to the end user. This makes counting this as a pageview inaccurate, as it doesn't match the web data model where a page request (not made by bots) is mostly converted into an actual view by a human user.

Feed Cards

The apps recommend content using a feed presentation. This presentation is a form of consumption, as users can learn directly from the cards on the feed, blended with being a navigational element. The navigational uses can be tracked and understood via EventLogging (Android already does this) but the learning and consumption is tracked as a pageview, which again is not exactly accurate.

A complication for feed cards is that they do not all share the same level of content. Some are lists of titles, some are more complete presentations of image+lead paragraph+wikidata description. Further subtypes may be needed here.

Link Previews

Starting in FY '15-'16 both apps added a form of "link preview". This allows users to see a preview presentation of a link, either via a tap on Android or a force-press on iOS. These are somewhat analogous to page previews.

Reading Recommendations

At the bottom of articles in the apps, we recommend three additional articles the user may be interested in (based on Morelike search query). These recommendations are presented as cards similar to the feed cards and link previews, but serve a different use case, and may be subject to visual changes to further differentiate it from the feed content.

Places Previews

In the Nearby/Places feature, the user may view an articles lead image, description and/or text extract as a card on a map, in response to a tap on a landmark pin.