discuss: Tracking hits to a HOWTO?
Subject:
Re: Tracking hits to a HOWTO?
From:
"Rodolfo J. Paiz" ####@####.####
Date:
19 Apr 2004 18:01:58 -0000
Message-Id: <6.0.3.0.0.20040419113554.02738150@mail.simpaticus.com>
At 10:12 4/19/2004, Machtelt Garrels wrote:
>We have nearly 300 mirror sites. It would take a lot more cooperation
>than what we expect now from our mirror maintainers to realize a
>significant measure of visits.
It's not all that complicated, really. All the HOWTO's are in just a few
directories, so it's not hard to get at the data.
We could set up a short script to grep the webserver logs for those, cut
the filename out of the log record, and count the uniques. Then run that
script via cron, have it mail back the results and you're done on the
remote end. On the local end, since those mail messages will have a
standard format, one can automate the tabulation of the incoming data.
Alternately, to avoid the use of mail, the remote script could submit (via
SCP, FTP, or other means) a simple file with that data. That file can then
be read at will by the tabulation program.
>that you reached something when publishing into TLDP is a good start, and
>knowing that hits on your own site are only the tip of a very big iceberg
>has also always been comforting, to me anyway ;-)
>The very fact of having my guide in TLDP is enough stimulus to check it
>regularly.
I understand your point perfectly, and the fact that such an intangible
motivation is enough for you is laudable. However, not everyone is like
you, and having additional incentive (in the form of additional perceived
recognition) may help to provide more motivation for other authors to
improve and maintain their documents, or it may motivate others to submit
more stuff that is now hosted externally. Also, it really does provide some
measure of which documents are more important to users, and therefore help
LDP's efforts at quality control.
Plenty of ways to skin this cat, *if* we want to skin it. I see some value
in the idea, but does anyone else?
Cheers,
--
Rodolfo J. Paiz
####@####.####
http://www.simpaticus.com
