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Artificially inflated pageviews on an article about a politician in various languages
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Description

To whom it may concern,

I am observing an anomaly in the last few months on pageviews.wmclour.org for more than 10 language versions, starting from bg.wikipedia.org, with the assumption that the stats are manipulated via e.g. user-agent spoofing. I started a Google doc with screenshots that you can access here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-6eews11ANjytkmdR2r_SfsiTSjyzdt7/edit?usp=drivesdk&ouid=117250534463287377604&rtpof=true&sd=true.

The data is for July, but especially for Bulgaria I am checking on a daily basis and yes, for months the article about Carles Puigdemont is among the most read even if there is no current event or increased media coverage to explain such an interest, and what's more interesting, mobile visits are much less than the average, while according to the data, impressions are user-generated. Yet, it is illustrative that their quantity on a daily basis is almost identical for most of the month (and this is true for most of the language versions that I checked and included in the doc),

Given that the article is about a political figure (no matter who he/she is) and the fact that a large share of users access Wikipedia from a mobile device and constantly see the articles about him at the top on the homepage in the various language versions, I don't think that the case should be passed over lightly and kindly ask for your time and attention over it.

Sincerely,
Pelajanela

Event Timeline

Hi @Pelajanela, thanks for taking the time to report this and welcome to Wikimedia Phabricator!
This has been already reported, so I'm going to merge this task.

Hi @Pelajanela, thanks for taking the time to report this and welcome to Wikimedia Phabricator!
This has been already reported, so I'm going to merge this task.

Thank you for addressing my request, @Aklapper!
Please accept my apology for not checking before posting about it - I didn't expect that it had already been reported. Also, first time using Phabricator :)
Will follow the development and would be glad to be helpful if there is something I could contribute with :)

All the best,
Pelajanela