[xwiki-devs] [ActiveInstalls][Brainstorming] Sending the number of users/wikis in the ping: a problem?
8 Nov
2015
8 Nov
'15
11:40 p.m.
Hi devs,
Right now, during the Active Installs ping we send a certain number of information
(http://extensions.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Extension/Active+Installs+Client…)
which allow us to have this dashboard:
http://www.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/ActiveInstalls/
This allows us to have an idea of how XWiki’s usage is moving forward (whether it’s
growing, reducing or is stable). This also allows us to try new changes in new XWiki
versions and see how that affects the number of active installs, thus validating or
invalidating the changes.
Since XWiki is a Server software, I was thinking that the number of instances around the
world isn't really a good indicator of how much XWiki is used by users. Imagine an
XWiki instance with 10K users. Right now it’s counted the same as an instance with 1 user.
That doesn’t seem quite right since the instance with 10K users shows a much more
important usage of XWiki.
Thus I was thinking that we could add sending both the total number of users (from all
subwikis) + the number of wikis, for the current XWiki instance.
Since the data is anonymous and there’s no way to link it to any company/user, I don’t
feel it would generate a privacy issue.
WDYT?
Thanks
-Vincent
9 Nov
9 Nov
1:12 a.m.
On Sun, Nov 8, 2015 at 11:40 PM, vincent(a)massol.net <vincent(a)massol.net>
wrote:
Hi devs,
Right now, during the Active Installs ping we send a certain number of
information (
http://extensions.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Extension/Active+Installs+Client…)
which allow us to have this dashboard:
http://www.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/ActiveInstalls/
This allows us to have an idea of how XWiki’s usage is moving forward
(whether it’s growing, reducing or is stable). This also allows us to try
new changes in new XWiki versions and see how that affects the number of
active installs, thus validating or invalidating the changes.
Since XWiki is a Server software, I was thinking that the number of
instances around the world isn't really a good indicator of how much XWiki
is used by users. Imagine an XWiki instance with 10K users. Right now it’s
counted the same as an instance with 1 user. That doesn’t seem quite right
since the instance with 10K users shows a much more important usage of
XWiki.
Thus I was thinking that we could add sending both the total number of
users (from all subwikis) + the number of wikis, for the current XWiki
instance.
While I agree with the fact that number of instance alone is not a good
indicator of XWiki’s usage, I also do not see the number of users so
significant, because you can have thousand of users that never login to the
wiki. More than just volume, what really shows the usage are activities.
A good indicator would be to report the number of distinct login during the
last 24 hours. Other interesting indicator would be the number of documents
(existing, changed, delta between creation/deletion), activity stream could
also be a source for measuring the level of activity of a wiki.
Btw, measuring the level of activity of a wiki is also a need for farm
administrators who needs to detect used and unused subwiki.
Since the data is anonymous and there’s no way to link
it to any
company/user, I don’t feel it would generate a privacy issue.
WDYT?
Thanks
-Vincent
_______________________________________________
devs mailing list
devs(a)xwiki.org
http://lists.xwiki.org/mailman/listinfo/devs
--
Denis Gervalle
SOFTEC sa - CEO
11:28 a.m.
Why not the amount of Activity Stream events during the last month? It's
still very anonymous (since we don't know what exactly are these events)
and relevant.
+ the amount of pages view during the last month (a wiki could have a lot
of pages view meanwhile it is not edited often)
I think these 2 metrics could be good indicators.
Thanks,
Guillaume
2015-11-09 1:12 GMT+01:00 Denis Gervalle <dgl(a)softec.lu>lu>:
On Sun, Nov 8, 2015 at 11:40 PM, vincent(a)massol.net
<vincent(a)massol.net>
wrote:
--
Guillaume Delhumeau (gdelhumeau(a)xwiki.com)
Research & Development Engineer at XWiki SAS
Committer on the XWiki.org project
Hi devs,
Right now, during the Active Installs ping we send a certain number of
information (
http://extensions.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Extension/Active+Installs+Client…
)
which allow us to have this dashboard:
http://www.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/ActiveInstalls/
This allows us to have an idea of how XWiki’s usage is moving forward
(whether it’s growing, reducing or is stable). This also allows us to try
new changes in new XWiki versions and see how that affects the number of
active installs, thus validating or invalidating the changes.
Since XWiki is a Server software, I was thinking that the number of
instances around the world isn't really a good indicator of how much
XWiki
is used by users. Imagine an XWiki instance with
10K users. Right now
it’s
counted the same as an instance with 1 user. That
doesn’t seem quite
right
since the instance with 10K users shows a much
more important usage of
XWiki.
Thus I was thinking that we could add sending both the total number of
users (from all subwikis) + the number of wikis, for the current XWiki
instance.
While I agree with the fact that number of instance alone is not a good
indicator of XWiki’s usage, I also do not see the number of users so
significant, because you can have thousand of users that never login to the
wiki. More than just volume, what really shows the usage are activities.
A good indicator would be to report the number of distinct login during the
last 24 hours. Other interesting indicator would be the number of documents
(existing, changed, delta between creation/deletion), activity stream could
also be a source for measuring the level of activity of a wiki.
Btw, measuring the level of activity of a wiki is also a need for farm
administrators who needs to detect used and unused subwiki.
Since the data is anonymous and there’s no way to
link it to any
company/user, I don’t feel it would generate a privacy issue.
WDYT?
Thanks
-Vincent
_______________________________________________
devs mailing list
devs(a)xwiki.org
http://lists.xwiki.org/mailman/listinfo/devs
--
Denis Gervalle
SOFTEC sa - CEO
_______________________________________________
devs mailing list
devs(a)xwiki.org
http://lists.xwiki.org/mailman/listinfo/devs
11:56 a.m.
Thanks for your feedbacks!
If you check how all enterprise software out there do pricing, it’s almost always per
user. So IMO counting users is a good approximation of the size of an xwiki instance (you
don’t create users for nothing in general). It’s an easy figure to get (I can probably
implement it in 1 hour), while counting activity is much more complex to do. Also note
that it’s possible to regularly clean the AS and if you have a very large wiki you’ll
probably want to do this regularly.
Counting page views is also difficult from inside XWiki since you’d need to introduce a
new table in the DB for it but more importantly it’s going to affect your performances
when you save that number.
I agree that number of documents could be interesting too but XE by default comes with
over 700 and when users install extensions more are added without it being a good
indicator of usage of the wiki. Still I think it’s interesting.
So what I’m proposing to do right now is sending:
* number of wikis
* number of users
* number of documents
* number of AS events (count on the table)
I’m not saying it’s enough but let’s talk incremental and we can always add new metrics
later on as we learn how to get them.
So WDYT about adding those for now? Do you see any privacy issues?
Thanks
-Vincent
On 9 Nov 2015 at 11:29:17, Guillaume Louis-Marie Delhumeau (gdelhumeau(a)xwiki.com) wrote:
Why not the amount of Activity Stream events during the last month? It's
still very anonymous (since we don't know what exactly are these events)
and relevant.
+ the amount of pages view during the last month (a wiki could have a lot
of pages view meanwhile it is not edited often)
I think these 2 metrics could be good indicators.
Thanks,
Guillaume
2015-11-09 1:12 GMT+01:00 Denis Gervalle <dgl(a)softec.lu>lu>:
On Sun, Nov 8, 2015 at 11:40 PM, vincent(a)massol.net
<vincent(a)massol.net>
wrote:
Hi devs,
Right now, during the Active Installs ping we send a certain number of
information (
http://extensions.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Extension/Active+Installs+Client…
)
which allow us to have this dashboard:
http://www.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/ActiveInstalls/
This allows us to have an idea of how XWiki’s usage is moving forward
(whether it’s growing, reducing or is stable). This also allows us to try
new changes in new XWiki versions and see how that affects the number of
active installs, thus validating or invalidating the changes.
Since XWiki is a Server software, I was thinking that the number of
instances around the world isn't really a good indicator of how much
XWiki
is used by users. Imagine an XWiki instance with
10K users. Right now
it’s
counted the same as an instance with 1 user. That
doesn’t seem quite
right
since the instance with 10K users shows a much
more important usage of
XWiki.
Thus I was thinking that we could add sending both the total number of
users (from all subwikis) + the number of wikis, for the current XWiki
instance.
While I agree with the fact that number of instance alone is not a good
indicator of XWiki’s usage, I also do not see the number of users so
significant, because you can have thousand of users that never login to the
wiki. More than just volume, what really shows the usage are activities.
A good indicator would be to report the number of distinct login during the
last 24 hours. Other interesting indicator would be the number of documents
(existing, changed, delta between creation/deletion), activity stream could
also be a source for measuring the level of activity of a wiki.
Btw, measuring the level of activity of a wiki is also a need for farm
administrators who needs to detect used and unused subwiki.
> Since the data is anonymous and there’s no way to link it to any
> company/user, I don’t feel it would generate a privacy issue.
>
> WDYT?
>
> Thanks
> -Vincent 
1:17 p.m.
For what it's worth, several of the public xwikis I hosted have huge
spam issues and the number of users will be fed by that... Sometimes I
have rages and manage to fight against them, but for the platforms it
went over 500, I abandoned....
Maybe counting the number of users who have create more than pages is a
lot more expressive?
I do not find it very convincing to state that access stats cost an
amount because they need to be written to the DB. Such analytics should
have a way to be streamlined into memory and only written to disk once
in a while (even... once every five minutes). Of course, this means
there may be some stats loss, but that is ok, crashes are not to be
entirely cared for.
Paul
vincent(a)massol.net <mailto:vincent@massol.net>
9 novembre 2015 11:56
Thanks for your feedbacks!
If you check how all enterprise software out there do pricing, it’s
almost always per user. So IMO counting users is a good approximation
of the size of an xwiki instance (you don’t create users for nothing
in general). It’s an easy figure to get (I can probably implement it
in 1 hour), while counting activity is much more complex to do. Also
note that it’s possible to regularly clean the AS and if you have a
very large wiki you’ll probably want to do this regularly.
Counting page views is also difficult from inside XWiki since you’d
need to introduce a new table in the DB for it but more importantly
it’s going to affect your performances when you save that number.
I agree that number of documents could be interesting too but XE by
default comes with over 700 and when users install extensions more are
added without it being a good indicator of usage of the wiki. Still I
think it’s interesting.
So what I’m proposing to do right now is sending:
* number of wikis
* number of users
* number of documents
* number of AS events (count on the table)
I’m not saying it’s enough but let’s talk incremental and we can
always add new metrics later on as we learn how to get them.
So WDYT about adding those for now? Do you see any privacy issues?
Thanks
-Vincent
On 9 Nov 2015 at 11:29:17, Guillaume Louis-Marie Delhumeau
(gdelhumeau(a)xwiki.com) wrote:
Why not the amount of Activity Stream events during the last month? It's
still very anonymous (since we don't know what exactly are these events)
and relevant.
+ the amount of pages view during the last month (a wiki could have a lot
of pages view meanwhile it is not edited often)
I think these 2 metrics could be good indicators.
Thanks,
Guillaume
_______________________________________________
devs mailing list
devs(a)xwiki.org
http://lists.xwiki.org/mailman/listinfo/devs
2:06 p.m.
On Mon, Nov 9, 2015 at 11:56 AM, vincent(a)massol.net <vincent(a)massol.net>
wrote:
Thanks for your feedbacks!
If you check how all enterprise software out there do pricing, it’s almost
always per user. So IMO counting users is a good approximation of the size
of an xwiki instance (you don’t create users for nothing in general). It’s
an easy figure to get (I can probably implement it in 1 hour), while
counting activity is much more complex to do. Also note that it’s possible
to regularly clean the AS and if you have a very large wiki you’ll probably
want to do this regularly.
Counting page views is also difficult from inside XWiki since you’d need
to introduce a new table in the DB for it but more importantly it’s going
to affect your performances when you save that number.
I agree that number of documents could be interesting too but XE by
default comes with over 700 and when users install extensions more are
added without it being a good indicator of usage of the wiki. Still I think
it’s interesting.
So what I’m proposing to do right now is sending:
* number of wikis
* number of users
* number of documents
* number of AS events (count on the table)
I’m not saying it’s enough but let’s talk incremental and we can always
add new metrics later on as we learn how to get them.
So WDYT about adding those for now? Do you see any privacy issues?
Regarding users, a small improvement that could probably be done easily,
and that could be interesting to introduce early, would be to store the
last login date in the XWikiUser object. This way, you would be able to
select the count of users that have login recently (last month for example)
to get a better idea of the real usage. This is also a security information
for users.
Another easy indicator of activity is the number of document with a recent
date, showing that document are being updated regularly, which is clearly
expected for a wiki (compare to a simple web site).
Regarding the AS, I tend to agree with you that it could be cleaned, making
the value of the measurement not reliable, I am not sure it is worth to be
logged.
Regarding the privacy of those information, if you never make the
information correlated with their source, I do not think it is an issue to
collect them. But, for the sake of being kind with our user, a
configuration to choose whether you just ping, or you also provide
additional statistical informations, may be nice to have.
Thanks
-Vincent
On 9 Nov 2015 at 11:29:17, Guillaume Louis-Marie Delhumeau (
gdelhumeau(a)xwiki.com) wrote:
Why not the amount of Activity Stream events during the last month? It's
still very anonymous (since we don't know what exactly are these events)
and relevant.
+ the amount of pages view during the last month (a wiki could have a lot
of pages view meanwhile it is not edited often)
I think these 2 metrics could be good indicators.
Thanks,
Guillaume
2015-11-09 1:12 GMT+01:00 Denis Gervalle <dgl(a)softec.lu>lu>:
the
--
Denis Gervalle
SOFTEC sa - CEO
On Sun, Nov 8, 2015 at 11:40 PM,
vincent(a)massol.net <vincent(a)massol.net>
wrote:
http://extensions.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Extension/Active+Installs+Client…
Hi devs,
Right now, during the Active Installs ping we send a certain number of
information (
)
> which allow us to have this dashboard:
> http://www.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/ActiveInstalls/
>
> This allows us to have an idea of how XWiki’s usage is moving forward
> (whether it’s growing, reducing or is stable). This also allows us to
try
> new changes in new XWiki versions and see
how that affects the number
of
active
installs, thus validating or invalidating the changes.
Since XWiki is a Server software, I was thinking that the number of
instances around the world isn't really a good indicator of how much
XWiki
is used by users. Imagine an XWiki instance with
10K users. Right now
it’s
counted the same as an instance with 1 user. That
doesn’t seem quite
right
since the instance with 10K users shows a much
more important usage of
XWiki.
Thus I was thinking that we could add sending both the total number of
users (from all subwikis) + the number of wikis, for the current XWiki
instance.
While I agree with the fact that number of instance alone is not a good
indicator of XWiki’s usage, I also do not see the number of users so
significant, because you can have thousand of users that never login to wiki. More than just volume, what really shows
the usage are activities.
A good indicator would be to report the number of distinct login during
the
last 24 hours. Other interesting indicator would
be the number of
documents
(existing, changed, delta between
creation/deletion), activity stream
could
also be a source for measuring the level of
activity of a wiki.
Btw, measuring the level of activity of a wiki is also a need for farm
administrators who needs to detect used and unused subwiki.
> Since the data is anonymous and there’s no way to link it to any
> company/user, I don’t feel it would generate a privacy issue.
>
> WDYT?
>
> Thanks
> -Vincent
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devs mailing list
devs(a)xwiki.org
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3283
days inactive
3284
days old
5 comments
4 participants
participants (4)
-
Denis Gervalle -
Guillaume "Louis-Marie" Delhumeau -
Paul Libbrecht -
vincent＠massol.net