This is the thirteenth of my month-in-review posts. I started month-in-review posts in October 2014. You can see my first post here and my previous month-in-review post here.

Some overall background

This month was quite busy for me work-wise, so my non-work output was very limited.

Wikipedia editing

For background information, see my site page about Wikipedia

I created the following Wikipedia pages this month:

• Neil Barsky: Barsky is a filmmaker and journalist, best known for making the documentary Koch and for co-founding The Marshall Project (disclosure: I created that Wikipedia article).
• Chae Chan Ping v. United States, better known as the Chinese Exclusion Case. The creation of the page was an outgrowth of my efforts to better understand the events surrounding the passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act in the United States.
• Angell Treaty of 1880, also known as the Treaty Regulating Immigration from China. Like the previous page, this was part of my exploration into the Chinese Exclusion Act.

I also made a bunch of edits to timeline pages, including the timeline of Uber, timeline of Snapchat, timeline of Facebook, timeline of Twitter, timeline of Pinterest.

Content plans for November: I intend to make a few more pages on topics related to the Chinese Exclusion Act, and also finish my page on consular nonreviewability. I might also make pages on some court cases or BIA decisions related to migration, particularly those that have bearing on the idea of consular nonreviewability or particular social group. I don’t have clear expectations regarding how many pages I will create. I am also interested in editing existing pages, and also in creating new pages, on content related to charities and charity evaluation, in preparation for the end-of-year giving season.

Pageview counts and impact: The numbers below are for pageviews in October 2015, and are based on data collated by stats.grok.se and further summarized at Wikipedia Views. As with all numbers from stats.grok.se, note that these numbers exclude mobile pageviews but include bots. One day was missing; adjusting for the missing day would make all counts go up by an extra 1/30 (or 3.33%).

• Pages I created over my lifetime: 201,371 views.
• Pages I created in October 2015: 421 views.
• Pages I created in September 2015: 65 views.
• Pages I created in August 2015: 1,364 views.
• Pages I created in 2015: 36,940 views.

Comparison with forecast: The number of pageviews (201,317) was a little above the 90th percentile in probability distribution for the number of pageviews. Adjusting for the missing day continues to keep it above the 90th percentile but still well below the 97.5th percentile estimate of 225,000.

November forecast: After poorly centered forecasts for two consecutive months, with one of them having the actual value outside the 95% range, it’s time to rethink my methodology. It seems that there are a few pages where the number of pageviews could vary dramatically by month, and these drive most of the variation in the estimates. Two pages that appear to be most responsible for month-to-month variation are Internet.org and Park Yeon-mi. In addition, in the month of November, another page that I expect will get a lot of traffic is the page I created on Giving Tuesday.

Therefore, I will make a forecast for the distribution of total pageview counts for pages I created excluding these three pages.

• 2.5th percentile: 95,000 pageviews.
• 10th percentile: 110,000 pageviews.
• 25th percentile: 125,000 pageviews.
• 50th percentile: 141,000 pageviews.
• 75th percentile: 166,000 pageviews.
• 90th percentile: 190,000 pageviews.
• 97.5th percentile: 215,000 pageviews.

Here are my percentile estimates including the three pages:

• 2.5th percentile: 110,000 pageviews.
• 10th percentile: 135,000 pageviews.
• 25th percentile: 148,000 pageviews.
• 50th percentile: 176,000 pageviews.
• 75th percentile: 205,000 pageviews.
• 90th percentile: 230,000 pageviews.
• 97.5th percentile: 280,000 pageviews.

Note the huge room on the right, reflecting uncertainty about the number of pageviews of those three pages.

Subject wikis

General background information: My site page about the subject wikis

I did not spend any time on the subject wikis this month. Year-on-year traffic growth on Groupprops was quite small, at about 6%. It’s not clear what’s driving the variation by month in year-on-year traffic growth.

Metric	Oct 2015	Sep 2015	Aug 2015	Oct 2014	Sep 2014	Aug 2014
Pageviews	111,203	73,510	41,813	104,663	60,637	36,844
Sessions	55,802	37,313	21,775	49,971	31,475	17,778
Pages/session	1.99	1.97	1.92	2.09	1.93	2.07
Pageviews in sessions with at least 5 pageviews	35,440	23,066	13,046	36,456	18,157	13,205

Here are pageview counts for the other subject wikis:

• Market: 22,697 pageviews, versus 24,028 for October 2014.
• Calculus: 24,430 pageviews, versus 22,170 for October 2014.

Comparison with forecast: The value of 111,206 pageviews was close to the median estimate of 113,000 pageviews, and within my 50% probability interval estimate (95,000-130,000 pageviews) and 80% probability interval estimate (80,000-150,000 pageviews).

November forecast: The number of pageviews in November 2014 was 99,940. Assuming a similar 6% year-on-year growth, my median estimate for November 2015 is 105,500 pageviews. My 50% probability interval estimate is 90,000-120,000 pageviews and my 80% probability interval estimate is 80,000-135,000 pageviews. The intervals have contracted somewhat owing to greater confidence about the slowdown in year-on-year growth.

Other things

I expect the extended weekend of Thanksgiving to be mostly work-free and therefore I hope to get some content creation work done at the time. I intend to have published, by the end of the month, one blog post for the Effective Altruism Forum and one blog post for Open Borders: The Case. However, I’m not very sure I’ll accomplish either goal.

Entertainment

I enjoyed listening to and bought the MP3 for Love Me like You Do, sung by Ellie Goulding and used for the movie Fifty Shades of Grey. I also listened to Gangnam Style and the female version featuring Hyuna and Psy, which I enjoyed but not enough to buy either.

This is the twelfth of my month-in-review posts. I started month-in-review posts in October 2014. You can see my first post here and my previous month-in-review post here.

Some overall background

This month was quite busy for me work-wise, so my non-work output was very limited.

Wikipedia editing

For background information, see my site page about Wikipedia

I created the following Wikipedia pages this month:

• Particular social group, a long-pending draft that I got a little time to polish and publish.

I also made edits to Wikipedia pages I had created previously, including Doing Good Better, Gusto (software) (renamed from ZenPayroll), and Tracy Chou.

I also started a draft of the Wikipedia page on consular nonreviewability, which I hope to publish in October. Realistically, I don’t expect to do any more Wikipedia work this month.

The numbers below are for pageviews in September 2015, and are based on data collated by stats.grok.se and further summarized at Wikipedia Views. As with all numbers from stats.grok.se, note that these numbers exclude mobile pageviews but include bots.

• Pages I created over my lifetime: 217,908 views.
• Pages I created in September 2015: 89 views.
• Pages I created in August 2015: 1,279 views.
• Pages I created in July 2015: 7,024 views.
• Pages I created in 2015: 36,717 views.

Comparison with forecast: The number of pageviews (217,908) fell outside of my 95% probability interval of 115,000-200,000. All the unexpected component of the variation came from Internet.org, which became a big news subject in India after being associated with the Digital India Initiative. The pageview count for this page was 62,536 in September, compared to 11,437 in August. Even excluding this page, there appears to have been a slight overall increase in pageviews, which might reflect the fact that July and August were “summer months” whereas September is a “back-to-school” month. There was also a slight increase in traffic to pages about venture capitalists and angel investors, which might have been coincidental or may again reflect seasonal cycles.

October forecast: The extra traffic to Internet.org persisted through the first few days of October. Accounting for how this shades the traffic estimates, here are my estimates:

• My point estimate (for the median) is 157,500 pageviews. In other words, I believe there is a 50% probability that the number of pageviews will be above this number, and a 50% probability that it will be below or equal to this number.
• My 50% probability interval estimate is 145,000-180,000. In other words, I expect a 50% probability that the number of pageviews will fall within this interval, a 25% probability that it will fall below 145,000, and a 25% probability that it will be above 180,000.
• My 80% probability interval estimate is 133,000-200,000. In other words, I expect an 80% probability that the number of pageviews will fall within this interval, a 10% probability that it will be below 133,000, and a 10% probability that it will be above 200,000.
• My 95% probability interval estimate is 120,000-225,000. In other words, I expect a 95% probability that the number of pageviews will fall within this interval, a 2.5% probability that is will be below 120,000, and a 2.5% probability that it will be above 225,000.

I’ve also described my estimates in terms of values at particular percentiles in my probability distribution below:

• 2.5th: 120,000
• 10th: 133,000
• 25th: 145,000
• 50th: 157,500
• 75th: 180,000
• 90th: 200,000
• 97.5th: 225,000

WikiHow

For background information, see my site page about WikiHow

I created a new WikiHow page How to Use Amazon EC2 Spot Instances. As of October 5, 2015, it has 75 views.

I also made some edits and updates to WikiHow pages I had created previously. The pageview counts as of October 5, 2015, as well as the increments since September 5, 2015, are provided below:

• How to Optimize Your Amazon S3 Costs: 227 views as of October 5, up by 128 from September 5.
• How to Optimize Your Amazon EC2 Costs: 238 views as of October 5, up by 106 from September 5.
• How to Gauge the Popularity of a Topic Online: 682 views as of October 5, up by 38 since September 5.
• How to Efficiently Work Offline: 228 views as of October 5, up by 97 since September 5.
• How to Ride BART from the East Bay to San Francisco: 683 views as of October 5, up by 98 since September 5.

Subject wikis

General background information: My site page about the subject wikis

I did not spend any time on the subject wikis this month. Year-on-year traffic growth has reverted to about 20% after slumping to 10% in August.

Below is the traffic information for Groupprops.

Metric	Sep 2015	Aug 2015	Jul 2015	Sep 2014	Aug 2014	Jul 2014
Pageviews	73,510	41,813	38,388	60,637	36,844	34,973
Sessions	37,313	21,775	19,400	31,475	17,778	16,495
Pages/session	1.97	1.92	1.98	1.93	2.07	2.12
Pageviews in sessions with at least 5 pageviews	23,066	13,046	12,616	18,157	13,205	12,887

Here are pageview counts for the other subject wikis:

• Market: 20,745 pageviews, versus 19,550 for September 2014.
• Calculus: 21,579 pageviews, versus 17,843 for September 2014.

Comparison with forecast: For Groupprops, the total number of pageviews (73,510) was close to my point estimate of 66,500, and well within my 50% probability interval estimate (54,000-80,000) and 80% probability interval estimate (45,000-90,000).

October forecast: Last year, Groupprops for 104,663 pageviews in October. My point estimate for October 2015 is 113,000 pageviews. My 50% probability interval estimate is 95,000-130,000 pageviews and my 80% probability interval estimate is 80,000-150,000 pageviews.

Entertainment

I re-watched some episodes of Gilmore Girls. I also bought the MP3 for Wrecking Ball. I also enjoyed listening to Can’t Forget You, Arjun and Jonita Gandhi’s remake of my all-time favorite song, Tujhe Bhula Diya.

Notes: (a) Apologies for delay with publication; I had a bunch of other stuff I wanted to get done. (b) I’ve shortened the update to exclude domains where I didn’t add anything this month and where the passive impact of my cumulative work (as measured in e.g. number of pageviews) was insignificant. Of course, some of these may reappear in future monthly updates if I make contributions on those fronts in those months or their cumulative contribution becomes big enough. This selectivity keeps the update short enough for me to squeeze in the time to publish it.

This is the eleventh of my month-in-review posts. I started month-in-review posts in October 2014. You can see my first post here and my previous month-in-review post here.

Some overall background

The pace of work has started picking up again after a (somewhat) relaxed July, so progress for me in non-work dimensions was low overall. I expect this situation to continue (and worsen) till at least March of next year (with the potential exception of December), though I hope to better prioritize within non-work options as time goes along, so that my overall non-work output will hopefully remain roughly constant or even increase.

Wikipedia editing

For background information, see my site page about Wikipedia

I created the following Wikipedia pages this month:

• Animal Charity Evaluators, created Sunday, August 2, 2015, in about an hour. Got 165 views in August.
• Holden Karnofsky, created Tuesday, August 4, 2015, in about an hour, part of it spent on a BART ride. Got 400 views in August.
• Tracy Chou, created Wednesday, August 5, 2015, in about an hour, part of it spent on a BART ride. Got 539 views in August.
• Jim Greenbaum, created Sunday, August 9, 2015, in about an hour. Got 88 views in August.
• Operation Streamline, created Sunday, August 23, 2015, after several hours of drafts in BART rides. Got 91 views in August.

I made substantial progress with my user-space draft for particular social group but it did not reach the stage where I feel comfortable publishing it to main space.

The numbers below are for pageviews in August 2015, and are based on data collated by stats.grok.se and further summarized at Wikipedia Views. As with all numbers from stats.grok.se, note that these numbers exclude mobile pageviews but include bots.

• Pages I created over my lifetime: 150,407 views.
• Pages I created in August 2015: 1,283 views.
• Pages I created in July 2015: 4,912 views.
• Pages I created in June 2015: 365 views.
• Pages I created in 2015: 32,040 views.

Comparison with forecast: I had forecast 152,000 pageviews for all pages I created, and the actual count of 150,407 was quite close. It fell within my 50% probability interval estimate of 140,000-170,000, my 80% probability interval estimate of 115,000-200,000, and my 95% probability interval estimate of 100,000-225,000.

September forecast: Since September has only 30 days (compared to 31 in August) I will adjust my monthly estimates for September slightly downward to account for this. I have also shrunk my intervals somewhat, taking into account the high proximity of recent estimates to my point estimates. Here are my new estimates:

• My point estimate (for the median) is 147,500 pageviews. In other words, I believe there is a 50% probability that the number of pageviews will be above this number, and a 50% probability that it will be below or equal to this number.
• My 50% probability interval estimate is 141,000-160,000. In other words, I expect a 50% probability that the number of pageviews will fall within this interval, a 25% probability that it will fall below 141,000, and a 25% probability that it will be above 160,000.
• My 80% probability interval estimate is 130,000-180,000. In other words, I expect an 80% probability that the number of pageviews will fall within this interval, a 10% probability that it will be below 130,000, and a 10% probability that it will be above 180,000.
• My 95% probability interval estimate is 115,000-200,000. In other words, I expect a 95% probability that the number of pageviews will fall within this interval, a 2.5% probability that is will be below 115,000, and a 2.5% probability that it will be above 200,000.

I’ve also described my estimates in terms of values at particular percentiles in my probability distribution below:

• 2.5th: 115,000
• 10th: 130,000
• 25th: 141,000
• 50th: 147,500
• 75th: 160,000
• 90th: 180,000
• 97.5th: 200,000

WikiHow

For background information, see my site page about WikiHow

I created two new WikiHow pages on Saturday, August 29:

• How to Optimize Your Amazon S3 Costs: 99 views as of September 5.
• How to Optimize Your Amazon EC2 Costs: 132 views as of September 5.

My previous pages have continued to get more pageviews:

• How to Gauge the Popularity of a Topic Online now has 648 views (or, about 89 in August plus the first few days of September).
• How to Efficiently Work Offline now has 131 views (or, about 43 in August plus the first few days of September).
• How to Ride BART from the East Bay to San Francisco now has 585 views (or, about 143 in August plus the first few days of September).

Subject wikis

General background information: My site page about the subject wikis

I did not spend any time on the subject wikis this month. There was a little year-on-year traffic growth but it’s down to about 10% (from 20%+ a few months ago). This probably reflects a huge jump that occurred around July/August of last year.

Below is the traffic information for Groupprops.

Metric	Aug 2015	Jul 2015	Jun 2015	Aug 2014	Jul 2014	Jun 2014
Pageviews	41,813	38,388	48,593	36,844	34,973	38,363
Sessions	21,775	19,400	24,136	17,778	16,495	18,695
Pages/session	1.92	1.98	2.01	2.07	2.12	2.05
Pageviews in sessions with at least 5 pageviews	13,046	12,616	16,314	13,205	12,887	13,065

Here are pageview counts for the other subject wikis:

• Market: 10,490 pageviews, versus 11,112 for August 2014.
• Calculus: 12,570 pageviews, versus 8,822 for August 2014.

Comparison with forecast: For Groupprops, the total number of pageviews (41,813) was close to my point estimate of 40,500, and well within my 50% probability interval estimate (33,000-50,000) and 80% probability interval estimate (20,000-70,000).

September forecast: My point estimate for pageviews in September for Groupprops is 66,500 (about 10% more than the September count). My 50% probability interval estimate is 54,000-80,000, my 80% probability interval estimate is 45,000-90,000, and my 95% probability interval estimate is 40,000-120,000. The estimates are a bit wider than for previous months, because the counts are a little more uncertain owing to details about when and how the academic year starts in various colleges.

Open borders

General background information: My site page about open borders

One blog post of mine was published to the site: The bait-and-switch from fiscally realistic to humane, or, the weakness of the mainstream moderate case against deportations. I also made some edits to site background pages but did not get time to draft the blog posts I had hoped to. However, two of the Wikipedia pages I worked on this month (Operation Streamline and particular social group) were related to my interest in migration policy.

Other sites and forms of online presence

• My personal site vipulnaik.com (on which you’re reading this post) got 2,000 views (excluding spam referrals and fake views in Google Analytics) (WordPress showed 2,073 views) in August 2015.
• Wikipedia Views got 312 views (excluding spam referrals and fake views) in August 2015.

Friends’ projects

• AI Impacts, started by Katja Grace and Paul Christiano, and managed primarily by Katja, got 3,001 views.
• Cause Prioritization Wiki, started and managed by Issa Rice, got 1,051 views excluding spam referrals.

Entertainment

I re-watched some episodes of Gilmore Girls. I also bought the MP3 for Rolling in the Deep.

This is the tenth of my month-in-review posts. I started month-in-review posts in October 2014. You can see my first post here and my previous month-in-review post here.

Some overall background

This was a somewhat relaxed month at work for me, relative to the last three months, but still more hectic than the beginning of the year. I was able to spend more time on Wikipedia editing and blogging, but many of my personal projects have exhausted low-hanging fruit, so visible progress was relatively low.

Wikipedia editing

For background information, see my site page about Wikipedia

I created the following Wikipedia pages this month:

• Shashank Khaitan, created Tuesday, July 7, mostly on a BART ride.
• Shervin Pishevar, created partly on a BART ride on Friday, July 17, and then completed on the morning of Saturday, July 18.
• Catch and release (U.S. immigration policy), created on the evening of Saturday, July 18, starting from a long pending draft on my computer.
• Expedited removal, created on the morning of Sunday, July 19.
• Reinstatement of removal, created on the evening of Thursday, July 23, after a drafting process that spanned several BART rides. The drafting took longer because I was reading some of the referenced material in greater detail than I needed for the Wikipedia page.
• Doing Good Better, created on the evening of Monday, July 27 after a draft during a BART ride. The page is about a book by William MacAskill released the very next day about effective altruism.
• Stipulated removal, created over a morning and evening BART ride on Tuesday, July 28.

The numbers below are for pageviews in July 2015, and are based on data collated by stats.grok.se and further summarized at Wikipedia Views. As with all numbers from stats.grok.se, note that these numbers exclude mobile pageviews but include bots.

• Pages I created over my lifetime: 148,556 views.
• Pages I created in July 2015: 2,604 views.
• Pages I created in June 2015: 339 views.
• Pages I created in May 2015: 4,506 views.
• Pages I created in 2015: 28,110 views.

Comparison with forecast: I had forecast 150,000 pageviews for the month of July for all pages I created. The actual number of pageviews (148,556), was a little lower. The number falls well within my 50% estimate (135,000-175,000), my 80% estimate (110,000-220,000), and my 95% estimate (85,000-265,000).

August forecast: My point estimate for the August pageview count is 152,000 pageviews, adjusted upward slightly from the July estimate to account for the many new pages I created. My 50% probability interval estimate is 140,000-170,000 pageviews, my 80% probability interval estimate is 115,000-200,000 pageviews, and my 95% probability interval estimate is 100,000-225,000 pageviews. While my point estimate hasn’t changed, I have narrowed my intervals somewhat in light of the relatively narrow intervals in which past pageview counts have fallen. Also, I want to avoid the phenomenon where I simply choose wide ranges and feel happy to hit bull’s eye. A 50% probability interval estimate should be violated about half the time!

WikiHow

For background information, see my site page about WikiHow

I did not create any new WikiHow pages. The pages I had created in May got additional pageviews, as described below:

• How to Gauge the Popularity of a Topic Online has 559 lifetime views (68 in July).
• How to Ride BART from the East Bay to San Francisco has 442 lifetime views (99 in July).
• How to Efficiently Work Offline has 88 lifetime views (26 in July).

For July, I had been considering making one WikiHow page, focused on how to reduce Amazon EC2 costs. This will be based on my experience at my workplace, but won’t involve any information specific to my job. I believe that laying out this information clearly will be helpful to everybody: users can save costs, and more efficient use of the computational infrastructure of the world means more value can be squeezed out of it. I didn’t get time to make that page, but I just might do it this month. It’s not a priority though.

Subject wikis

General background information: My site page about the subject wikis

I did not spend any time on the subject wikis. Year-on-year traffic growth seems to have declined, though it’s still nonzero. I expect that we’re running out of whatever caused the 20% jump (accounting for seasonality) around the middle of last year, so year-on-year growth will now be sub-10%.

Metric	Jul 2015	Jun 2015	May 2015	Jul 2014	Jun 2014	May 2014
Pageviews	38,388	48,593	77,232	34,973	38,363	63,211
Sessions	19,400	24,136	37,834	16,495	18,695	31,225
Pages/session	1.98	2.01	2.04	2.12	2.05	2.02
Pageviews in sessions with at least 5 pageviews	12,616	16,314	26,016	12,887	13,065	20,727

Here are pageview counts for the other subject wikis:

• Market: 9,248 pageviews, versus 11,148 for July 2014.
• Calculus: 9,813 pageviews, versus 7,576 for July 2014.

Comparison with forecast: The total number of pageviews for Groupprops (38,388) was just a little short of the lower end of the 50% probability interval (40,000-52,000) and far from the point estimate of 46,000. It was well within the 80% interval estimate of 33,000-60,000 and the 95% interval estimate of 25,000-70,000.

August forecast: In August 2014, Groupprops had a total of 36,844 views. Using the ~10% year-on-year growth seen in July, my point estimate for August is 40,500 pageviews. My 50% probability interval estimate is 33,000-50,000 pageviews. My 80% probability interval estimate is 27,000-60,000 pageviews, and my 95% probability interval estimate is 20,000-70,000 pageviews. (Note that the bulk of Groupprops’ traffic is seen in the months of September-November, while June-August is the slowest season).

Open borders

General background information: My site page about open borders

My blog post titled Can deportation be a key crime-fighting strategy? was published on the site on July 29, 2015. Also, many of the Wikipedia pages I created this month were related to migration policy. Specifically, I created a large number of pages related to various aspects of immigration enforcement, including various types of deportation and removal.

I intend to do 2-4 blog posts for the site this month (posts that are already partly or fully drafted and waiting to go out the door; plus some quick news-type posts). In addition, I hope to get going with bits and pieces of the site revamp, which I currently see as rewriting existing pages to incorporate more recent material and better overall conceptualization of the issue.

Other sites and forms of online presence

• This website (vipulnaik.com) got 2,891 views in the month of July according to Google Analytics (and 1,976 views according to WordPress Analytics). I implemented the spam filter exclusion for the site on July 4, and the count of spam-free views measured by Google Analytics for this date onward is 1,643. Extrapolating based on higher overall traffic in the first couple of days gives a number similar to the WordPress Analytics count.
• The views for Quora content created by me were as follows: about 5500 for questions, about 20000 for answers, and about 200 for posts.
• Wikipedia Views got 1,721 views according to Google Analytics, but excluding spam referrals gave a view count of 298 for the time period July 4 – July 31 (I implemented the spam referral exclusion only on July 4).

Friends’ projects

• AI Impacts, started by Katja Grace and Paul Christiano, and managed primarily by Katja, got 3,826 views.
• Cause Prioritization Wiki, started and managed by Issa Rice, got 1,167 views overall and 1,052 views excluding spam referrals.

Entertainment

I watched Mary Kom. I did not purchase any new music in July.

This is the ninth of my month-in-review posts. I started month-in-review posts in October 2014. You can see my first post here and my previous month-in-review post here.

Some overall background

This was a very busy month for me at work, more so than most preceding months. The latter half of the month was in particular very crunched. The crunch ended on July 1, so I expect the workload in July to be more representative of the business-as-usual scenario (which might still be pretty hectic!).

Wikipedia editing

For background information, see my site page about Wikipedia

I created the following Wikipedia pages this month, both in the second week when the workload hadn’t picked up fully:

• Facebook Instant Articles, created Thursday, June 11, 2015, drafted over a couple of BART rides.
• Chinese Confession Program, created Friday, June 12, 2015, drafted over a BART ride with some further editing when I came back online.

I also made updates to these pages:

• Timeline of Twitter
• Timeline of Facebook
• If London Were Syria

Unfortunately, stats.grok.se, whose numbers I use to feed in to Wikipedia Views, is missing one day from the month of June. Therefore, the numbers reported here are about 3% lower than the actual numbers. As with all numbers from stats.grok.se, note that these numbers exclude mobile pageviews but include bots.

• Pages I created over my lifetime: 138,745 views.
• Pages I created in June 2015: 458 views.
• Pages I created in May 2015: 1,155 views.
• Pages I created in April 2015: 4,360 views.
• Pages I created in 2015: 20,360 views.

Comparison with forecast: I had forecast 160,000 pageviews for the month of June for all pages I created. The actual number of pageviews (138,745) was significantly lower, and even adjusting for the missing date (to get a total of 143,529 views), there’s still a huge gap. The gap was in the opposite direction to the direction of my gaps in previous months. For instance, for May my point estimate for the number of pageviews was 151,000, but the actual pageview count (excluding two days for which stats weren’t available) was 174,425. The steady underestimation trend had led me to up my June estimate to 160,000. However, the pageview count did fall safely within my 80% probability interval estimate of 125,000-215,000.

The key source of month-to-month variation appears to be the pageview counts for some highly popular pages. In April and May, the Wikipedia page about Internet.org got a lot of pageviews because of the topicality of the topic. There were no comparably topical pages in June, explaining the lower pageview count.

July forecast: My point estimate for the July pageview count is 150,000 pageviews, adjusted downward from the June estimate but still higher than the actual June value. For July pageviews, my 50% probability interval estimate is 135,000-175,000, my 80% probability interval estimate is 110,000-220,000, and my 95% probability interval estimate is 85,000-265,000.

Here is a list of Wikipedia articles I am considering creating for the month of July:

• Shashank Khaitan, a Bollywood movie director whose directorial debut was the movie Humpty Sharma Ki Dulhania. I believe there’s enough material online on Khaitan to justify a Wikipedia page, and was mildly surprised that the page didn’t already exist.
• Bored Panda, one of the top viral websites, broadly in the genre of BuzzFeed (before it became an uber-serious news outlet) and PlayBuzz. I was surprised to see that Bored Panda didn’t have a Wikipedia entry.
• Form I-140, a United States immigration form.
• Expedited removal, a concept in United States immigration enforcement where people may be deported directly without their deportation case going through a judicial process.
• Arriving Alien, a concept in United States immigration enforcement for somebody who has recently arrived.
• Immediate Relative (U.S. immigration law), a concept in United States immigration law for a type of relationship that makes one eligible to apply for family-based immigration categories that do not have numerical limits.

I am also considering making edits and improvements to these pages:

• Cecilia Munoz, a member of Barack Obama’s administration who previously worked as an immigrant rights advocate but has recently come under flak for defending the Obama administration’s record deportation numbers. I’d like to update the page to reflect recent events, and also uncomment some portions in the Wikipedia page that were commented out due to a lack of diverse citations.

WikiHow

For background information, see my site page about WikiHow

I did not create any new WikiHow pages. The pages I had created in May got additional pageviews, as described below:

• How to Gauge the Popularity of a Topic Online has 491 lifetime views.
• How to Ride BART from the East Bay to San Francisco has 343 lifetime views.
• How to Efficiently Work Offline has 62 lifetime views.

For the month of July I am considering making one WikiHow page, focused on how to reduce Amazon EC2 costs. This will be based on my experience at my workplace, but won’t involve any information specific to my job. I believe that laying out this information clearly will be helpful to everybody: users can save costs, and more efficient use of the computational infrastructure of the world means more value can be squeezed out of it. Whether I can do a good job writing that page is a moot point, and we’ll only know once I start trying.

Subject wikis

General background information: My site page about the subject wikis

I did not spend any time on the subject wikis. Traffic was within the range of expectation, with robust year-on-year growth (but a month-on-month decline, as expected based on academic seasonality).

Metric	Jun 2015	May 2015	Apr 2015	Jun 2014	May 2014	Apr 2014
Pageviews	48,593	77,232	88,046	38,363	63,211	66,233
Sessions	24,136	37,834	43,968	18,695	31,225	34,310
Pages/session	2.01	2.04	2.00	2.05	2.02	1.93
Pageviews in sessions with at least 5 pageviews	16,314	26,016	27,991	13,065	20,727	19,837

Here are pageview counts for the other subject wikis:

• Market: 11,808 pageviews, versus 13,477 for June 2014.
• Calculus: 11,575 pageviews, versus 9,310 for June 2014.

Comparison with forecast: The total number of pageviews for Groupprops (48,593) was close to my point estimate of 46,000, and well within my 80% probability interval estimate of 35,000 to 60,000.

July forecast: In July 2014, Groupprops had a total of 34,973 pageviews. Based on the robust year-on-year growth trend, my estimates for July 2015 are as follows. My point estimate for the number of pageviews is 46,000. My 50% probability interval estimate is 40,000 to 52,000. My 80% probability interval estimate is 33,000 to 60,000. My 95% probability interval estimate is 25,000 to 70,000.

I don’t intend to put in any work on the subject wikis in July, beyond fixing reported errors.

Open borders

General background information: My site page about open borders

After a fairly long time, I drafted a blog post for Open Borders: The Case. The post, titled My reasons for skepticism of linking open borders to legalizing private discrimination, was published on the site on June 17, 2015. I also created the Wikipedia page on the Chinese Confession Program, which was an outgrowth of reading and research I was doing for forthcoming Open Borders: The Case posts.

I aim to spend more time on the site in July, resuming the site revamp as well as publishing more blog posts. I believe this will help with a general revival of the site after a significant decline in the publication rate of new material.

Other sites and forms of online presence

• This website (vipulnaik.com) got 2,154 views in the month of June according to Google Analytics (and 1,871 views according to WordPress Analytics).
• The views for Quora content created by me were as follows: about 9000 for questions, about 18000 for answers, and about 250 for posts.
• Wikipedia Views got 1,050 views according to Google Analytics.

Friends’ projects

• AI Impacts, started by Katja Grace and Paul Christiano, and managed primarily by Katja, got 3,705 views.
• Cause Prioritization Wiki, started and managed by Issa Rice, got 2,914 views. Issa also set up web traffic minus spam referrals, and got a count of 1,087 views for the time period June 14-June 30 for the site, which extrapolates to 1,918 views for the month (note that the proportion of traffic that is spam referrals goes down as the overall pageview count of the site goes up).

Entertainment

I bought a few songs: Waka Waka (by Shakira and FreshlyGround), Blank Space (by Taylor Swift), and Samjhawan (unplugged) sung by Alia Bhatt (you can read the history of these songs, and get the names of the composers and lyricists involved, on their Wikipedia pages). I also watched the movie Humpty Sharma Ki Dulhania (my interest in the movie was initially piqued by the song).

This is the eighth of my month-in-review posts. I started month-in-review posts in October 2014. You can see my first post here and my previous month-in-review post here.

Some overall background

As predicted, this was a busy month work-wise. In addition to the greater workload, the increased commute time meant less time for personal pursuits. The increased workload will continue into at least the first two or three weeks of June, at which point I expect to be able to get weekends back for finishing some long-pending projects.

Wikipedia editing

For background information, see my site page about Wikipedia

I created the following Wikipedia pages this month:

• The Marshall Project, a journalism nonprofit focused on the criminal justice system in the United States. I created this over two BART rides (one on Thursday May 7 and one on Friday May 8), incorporating material I had read sporadically over the past week.
• USCIS immigration forms, created Saturday, May 23, 2015, after on-and-off editing since the beginning of April 2015.
• Direct Consular Filing, created Saturday, May 23, 2015, after 1-2 hours of editing.
• Credible fear, created Saturday, May 23, 2015, after 1-2 hours of editing.
• Form I-130, created Wednesday, May 27, 2015, after half an hour of editing on a BART ride, and about an hour of editing at home.
• Traveler Redress Inquiry Program, created Wednesday, May 27, 2015, after half an hour of editing on a BART ride, and under half an hour of editing at home.

I also added some content to these pages:

• Analytics.usa.gov: Added some links to reception and feedback of the tool.
• Facebook Safety Check: Added discussion of the use in the context of the May Nepal earthquake.
• 10 Hours of Walking in NYC as a Woman: Added link to and discussion of corresponding video shot in Mumbai.
• Timeline of Twitter
• Zenefits
• Internet.org

Unfortunately, stats.grok.se, whose numbers I use to feed in to Wikipedia Views, is missing two days from the month of May (May 9 and May 24). Therefore, the numbers are underestimated somewhat, by a factor of about 5%.

The pageview counts for the remaining 29 days are given below. As always, note that these include bots but exclude mobile pageviews.

• Pages I created over my lifetime: 174,425 views.
• Pages I created in May 2015: 488 views.
• Pages I created in April 2015: 3,973 views.
• Pages I created in 2015: 21,189 views.

June forecast: Historically, my forecasts have tended to be underestimates: I’ve generally managed to just about stay within 80% intervals but actual values have tended to be at or near the upper bounds of the intervals. I’m trying to adjust for this, while also working to avoid erring in the other direction. For June, my point estimate is 160,000 views, my 80% probability interval estimate is 125,000-215,000 views, and my 95% probability interval estimate is 95,000-275,000 views.

WikiHow

For background information, see my site page about WikiHow

On Saturday, May 16, 2015, I forayed into editing WikiHow. My first edits were to the page How to Ride Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART). My motivation for exploring editing was two-fold: have a way of sharing wisdom that was of a how-to nature, and understand the nature of the site so I could suggest it to other people as a place to write. Over the course of the month, I created the following pages:

• How to Ride BART from the East Bay to San Francisco, created Sunday, May 17, 2015 (after about 1-1.5 hours of editing). At the end of the month, the page reported 244 views.
• How to Efficiently Work Offline, created Sunday, May 24, 2015 (initially drafted offline for about 30 minutes, then incorporated online with some edits and improvements in about 45 minutes). At the end of the month, the article reported 39 views.
• How to Gauge the Popularity of a Topic Online, created Sunday, May 24, 2015, edited for about 2 hours total on that day (the initial version was created after 30 minutes of editing). At the end of the month, the article reported 401 views.

Subject wikis

General background information: My site page about the subject wikis

I spent some time correcting some site errors (reported in an error-reporting form by others) and also made some other edits (including creating some new pages) to Groupprops. I have a list of further planned edits to Groupprops, that I intend to continue making in my spare time, but it is not a high priority or bound by any deadline. Traffic was within the range of expectation, with robust year-on-year growth.

May impact: I’ve put the numbers for Groupprops in a table for easy perusal and comparison. Numbers are from Google Analytics.

Metric	May 2015	Apr 2015	Mar 2015	May 2014	Apr 2014	Mar 2014
Pageviews	77.232	88,046	82,377	63,211	66,233	57,724
Sessions	37,834	43,968	40,280	31,225	34,310	29,249
Pages/session	2.04	2.00	2.05	2.02	1.93	1.97
Pageviews in sessions with at least 5 pageviews	26,016	27,991	27,641	20,727	19,837	17,924

The total number of pageviews (77,232) was within my 80% interval of 72,000-96,000, but a little lower than my point estimate of 82,000, suggesting that my estimate precision could be improved.

Here are the pageview counts on some other subject wikis:

• Market: 19,626 views.
• Calculus: 15,667 views.

June forecast: June 2014 saw 38,363 views according to Google Analytics, significantly less than May 2014. This is because of the nature of the academic year: students in the US and in many other countries around the world are off studies in June. I expect a similar 20% year-on-year improvement for June as seen for May, so my point estimate for June is 46,000. I estimate that, with 80% probability, the number of pageviews will fall between 35,000 and 60,000.

Quora

General background information: My site page about Quora

I wrote five Quora answers in the month of May, higher than most previous months. Here are the answers:

• Benefits of writing web pages that say the obvious things about a topic
• Social value-to-valuation ratio
• Disclosure that one wrote a Wikipedia article when linking to it
• BART passes
• Humanity’s top priority

My Quora views were: about 23,000 for answers, about 11,000 for questions, and about 200 for posts. The view count for answers was higher than usual because of the large number of new answers (new answers get shown more in feeds) as well as Issa Rice’s decision to promote one of my answers (the answer on the benefits of writing web pages that say the obvious things about a topic).

Open borders

General background information: My site page about open borders

Very similar to last month: no blog post of mine was published, nor did I get time to work on any drafts. However, some of my Wikipedia page creations and edits related to migration were indirect preparation for future blog posts. I hope to get enough free time around the end of June to begin work on a much needed revamp.

Other sites and forms of online presence

• This website (vipulnaik.com) got 2,853 views in the month of May according to Google Analytics (and 2,057 views according to WordPress Analytics).
• Wikipedia Views got 1,136 views according to Google Analytics.

Friends’ projects

• AI Impacts, started by Katja Grace and Paul Christiano, and managed primarily by Katja, got 4,679 views.
• Cause Prioritization Wiki, started and managed by Issa Rice, got 3,499 views.

Server downtime

There was about ten minutes of server downtime. The downtime ended on the automatic server restart (that is currently scheduled to happen once every 20 minutes, down from once every 5 minutes now that the server seems quite stable).

Entertainment

After a fairly long time, I watched two Bollywood movies (on alternate weekends) using my Eros Now subscription: Ek Villain and Queen (despite the English words in the titles, both are Hindi-language Bollywood movies, though the latter is partly set in Paris and Amsterdam). I also bought two of Carly Rae Jepsen’s songs (I Really Like You and Call Me Maybe) and the song Galliyan from Ek Villain.

I also explored many cover songs on YouTube with different artists rendering songs I had already heard in their original form several times. For instance, I listened to Siddharth Slathia’s and Gaurav Dagaonkar’s versions of Tujhe Bhula Diya, my favorite song. I also enjoyed acoustic covers by Aakash Gandhi for Galliyan and Tum Hi Ho. While I find the originals (which I’ve listened to hundreds and in some cases thousands of times) better overall, the variants offer new perspectives into the songs. The scope for rich variation also speaks to the songs’ strengths.