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Date: Fri, 9 Nov 2012 14:50:24 -0600
From: Joe Brockmeier <jzb@zonker.net>
To: cloudstack-dev@incubator.apache.org
Subject: Re: [DISCUSS] Site Analytics?
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On Fri, Nov 09, 2012 at 12:19:11PM -0500, David Nalley wrote:
> On Fri, Nov 9, 2012 at 11:08 AM, Joe Brockmeier <jzb@zonker.net> wrote:
> > Since we transitioned cloudstack.org to the Apache Incubator site, we no
> > longer have any analytics running on CloudStack.org.
> >
> > I wanted to ask whether we'd like to remedy that.
> >
> > The first question is - would we like to set up something like Google
> > Analytics or Piwik to track visitors to CloudStack.org and also gather
> > information on what pages they visit, how long they stay, where they
> > came from, etc.
> >
> > The second question, if the answer to the first one is "yes," is what
> > we'd like to use?
> 
> I think this could be very useful - especially measuring things over
> longer periods of time.
> 
> So there are two questions in my mind that we need to define:
> 
> First, what are we specifically seeking to track. (you said a number
> of things including: what pages folks visit, how long they stay, where
> they came from) I can think of several ways of thinking about each of
> those, and have seen a number of implementations. I am leary of some
> of the extreme examples (I've seen some tracking platforms that will
> identify specific individuals browsing, their email address, name etc
> all based on other sites, tracking every page they visited, etc.). I
> also realize this is somewhat platform specific. That said, I
> personally would like to see this fleshed out a bit more to detail the
> specific information we went to track. This is also important from a
> project perspective IMO because we want meaningful statistics that
> provide useful information about both the usefulness and ease of
> operation of our various web properties, but also a perspective into
> the relative health of the community.

So - basically, I'd be proposing we use Piwik, and can point folks to
the Piwik site or explain what it tracks - but it is not as extreme as
getting email address and such.

Piwik's features are detailed here: http://piwik.org/features/

Note that you can extend or set up custom reports with Piwik, but I'd
specific any custom reports that we'd use if they gathered any
additional data we didn't talk about initially. 

> Second: If we go down this route, who gets access to it and what are
> they permitted to do with it? Do we make it all public? Do we permit
> only committers, or only PPMC members to have access? Once they have
> access, (whoever the 'they' is decided to be) what are the
> expectations we make with regards to the use of the data. Are people
> allowed to share it? with whom? People allowed to make commercial use
> of the data or tell other people about the data?

That's really up to the community. My proposal is we give access to
interested committers and PPMC members. 

We *might* also choose to make some basic data public that the larger
community would find interesting, like monthly visits/overall traffic,
etc.

> Also - (this isn't a question but rather a statement) it is important
> to note that the ASF has servers (that serve the CS site) in the EU
> and thus we do have some constraints on exactly what and how we can
> collect information.

Are these constraints enumerated anywhere? 

As a side note, I notice everybody always cites Europe when they talk
about data collection restraints. Doesn't anybody outside Europe care
about data collection? :-)
-- 
Joe Brockmeier
Twitter: @jzb
http://dissociatedpress.net/