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Sharp spike in unique devices for past month on all projects
Closed, ResolvedPublicBUG REPORT

Description

Steps to replicate the issue (include links if applicable):

What happens?:

  • We see a sharp spike for the month of May 2025 and is continuing.

What should have happened instead?:

  • The chart should reflect an accurate unique device count with slight increase or decrease. The fix for this issue is happening in T395934

Other information (browser name/version, screenshots, etc.):

Screenshot 2025-07-21 at 12.08.10 PM.png (1,200×835 px, 114 KB)

Also noting, that the "values under 1000 are not reported to preserve accuracy" message that appears is inaccurate, because, well, 0 < 1000. I suppose perhaps there is code in place that should prevent the 0 from being shown.

This may be a RESTbase metrics problem.

Details

Other Assignee
xcollazo

Event Timeline

Update: FRWS now reports normal data. ENWP and ESWP report normal total page views but 0 unique devices. ENWS reports a roughly 630% increase in unique devices and 200% increase in total pages. It would be good, but it's probably an error (also given the two WPs I tested still say 0 unique devices).

Perhaps a bot scraping issue? For ENWS, reports a 900% increase for Special:Search, and other things which seem unlikely (how would the talk page of a long-gone user, or a script used by 3 people, get 10k views?).

Thanks @Alien333 and @Ahoelzl - We have been tracking this and are investigating in T395934.

This is definitely some form of automated traffic that is being misclassified. We'll share some updates and thoughts on resolution shortly.

I checked wikistats and I am not seeing zero unique devices for any of the projects. Yes they are inflated for May 2025 and we are investigating as mentioned above but could we please change the title and description of this task to reflect the issue correctly?

VirginiaPoundstone renamed this task from 0 unique devices for past month on all projects to Sharp spike in unique devices for past month on all projects.Jun 4 2025, 6:13 PM

Changes task name to "Sharp spike.."

(For some projects, 0 was reported, up to somewhere around June 2.)

Ahoelzl updated Other Assignee, added: xcollazo.