Special report

The Signpost got 380,000+ views in 2018; sounds reasonable enough, right?

In 2018, the fourteenth year of The Signpost, a total of 157 articles have been published spanning 12 issues from January to December. Collectively these 157 articles, created by 64 Wikipedia users, have received a total of 353,134 pageviews until 7 December. After including views from the first page and the single-page edition the pageviews sum reaches 388,484. These 12 issues have also seen a total of 1,222 comments, totaling 96,473 words.[a]

Article pageview totals, both one week totals as well as all time totals. Each dot represents an article, Dot 1 is Vol 14, Issue 1, Article 1 and so on. A total of 157 articles are covered till Issue 12. Correlation between one week totals and all time totals is 0.83. (Pageviews counted till 7 December, hence the overlap visible for Issue 12)

The Signpost statistics 2018, an effort to understand The Signpost, throws up various other findings, such as:

2018's highest viewed articles (till 7 December)
Date Article title Pageviews (all-time)
29 Mar Op-ed: Death knell for The Signpost? 4,988
29 Jun From the editor: The Admin Ship is still barely afloat, while a Foundation project risks sinking 4,068
30 Aug News and notes: Flying high; low practice from Wikipedia 'cleansing' agency; where do our donations go? RfA sees a new trend 4,061
20 Feb News and notes: The future is Swedish with a lack of administrators 4,054
29 Jun Discussion report: Deletion, page moves, and an update to the main page 4,038
  • Average views per article (one week total) for the first six months – January to May – is 780, and for the last six months – June to December – is 906. Although this indicates a general increase in readership per article from the beginning of 2018 to the end of the year, this increase in readership cannot be observed when average all-time views per article are considered.
  • Over 80% of all page views of any given Signpost article come in the first four weeks.

Which categories of articles get the most pageviews?

  • "Op-ed" and "From the editor" articles have the highest average pageviews (one week totals). "Op-ed" articles get an average of 1,340 pageviews and "From the editor" articles 1,320 pageviews. Gallery articles get the least pageviews.
"Op-ed" and "From the editor" articles have the highest average pageviews.

How many users have contributed to The Signpost in 2018?

10 contributors to The Signpost (Vol 14) amount to 72.8% of the total byline mentions, with the remaining 56 contributions accounting for the remaining 27.2% of byline mentions.
  • 10 Wikipedia users for The Signpost in 2018 amount to 72.8% of the total byline mentions, with the remaining 54 users accounting for the remaining 27.2% of byline mentions. (This includes bylines for 'essays', 'from the archives' and 'blogs', which may have just been "selected" by the user.)
  • 103 articles out of the 157 have only one name in the byline; that is, 65.6% have either been written or compiled by one user. The remaining 54 articles have two or more names in the bylines.

How many comments did The Signpost get in 2018?

  • Seven articles in 2018 (Issue 1 to Issue 12) generated comments crossing 4,000 words. 42 articles got one or no comments.
2018's most commented-upon articles (till 20 December)
Article title No. of comments No. of commentators Total words
Op-ed: Has the wind gone out of the AdminShip's sails? 79 37 11,460
Op-ed: Death knell for The Signpost? 73 34 7,436
News and notes: Flying high; low practice from Wikipedia 'cleansing' agency; where do our donations go? RfA sees a new trend 72 35 4,877
Op-ed: Wikipedia's Strickland affair 61 36 5,621
Op-ed: What do admins do? 47 15 4,567
Community view: It's time we look past Women in Red to counter systemic bias 28 21 4,327
Opinion: Google isn't responsible for Wikipedia's mistakes 28 21 4,102

How many users subscribe to the The Signpost?

A total of 1,149 users have added their names to the user-talk page delivery list. Template subscription transclusions total 2,007, whereas the global delivery list currently has 227 users.

Footnotes
  1. ^ Total words has been calculated excluding signatures. Each signature generates an approximate of seven words in MS Word, the word counter used to count the total words in comments.