Documentation/Tools/Documentation metrics dashboard

This page provides information about the documentation metrics dashboard (also known as technical documentation dashboard). The first version of the dashboard was released on 30 July 2024. For more information, see task T334839 and task T356976 and the following resources:

• Initial design
• Requirements
• Source code repository
• README

Usage instructions

1. Go to https://techdoc-dashboard.toolforge.org/.
2. In the PagePile ID field, specify the identifier of the page pile you want to analyze and click Load. If you don't have a specific collection of pages you are interested in, you can use a collection listed on Documentation/Collections. The dashboard only supports collections of pages on MediaWiki.org, Wikitech, and Meta.
3. The application displays the list of pages in the page pile. Click Open PagePile stats to proceed with the loaded pile, or specify a different PagePile ID and click Load again. Note that the dashboard limits the number of pages to 230, regardless of how many pages are in the page pile (phab:T378644).
4. The application opens the statistics dashboard for the page pile. Scroll down the page to analyze the documentation metrics. You can sort all tables as needed.
5. The dashboard features a list of pages in the page pile. To view statistics for a specific page, click that page.

Background

Goal

Provide staff and community members with access to relevant statistical data about technical documentation collections and individual pages.

Predicted result

Establish a baseline of data to collect about single pages and collections of pages, and then present that data on a publicly available dashboard. For MVP, the dashboard tracks readership, edits, and other details, ensuring that all insights relevant to stewardship of technical documentation are always easy to access.

Data collection

The purpose of this project isn't to introduce any new tracking, but to collect the already available metrics in a single place for ease of use.

Glossary

PagePile

PagePile is a service that allows you to create lists of wiki pages. It's available on https://pagepile.toolforge.org. Each list, a page pile, has a unique identifier.

Instead of providing an interface to specify lists of pages directly, the current version of the dashboard uses PagePile as a way of defining collections.

A rewrite of PagePile - GULP - is underway, with the new version available on https://gulp.toolforge.org. The plan is to support GULP in a later version of the dashboard.

Throughout this documentation we refer to the service as PagePile, and to individual lists available on PagePile as page piles.

Application, dashboard

We use the terms "application" and "dashboard" interchangeably to refer to the documentation metrics dashboard.