Wikipedia:Background noise

This is an essay.

It contains the advice or opinions of one or more Wikipedia contributors. This page is not an encyclopedia article or a Wikipedia policy, as it has not been reviewed by the community.

Shortcuts

This page in a nutshell: A redirect having dozens or hundreds of all-time page views doesn't necessarily merit keeping it.

In RfD discussions, the metaphor of background noise is occasionally used as an argument for the deletion of certain redirects.

The metaphor

Just like how background noise is trivial, unimportant and should be ignored (cf. the phrase everything else is background noise), so are the view counts of frankly useless redirects which have existed long enough to amass several dozens or even hundreds of views since their creation by virtue of their mere existence.

Causes

Nevertheless, page views considered 'background noise' have to come from somewhere. Sources of background noise include, but are not limited to:

Web crawlers, manipulative scripts, and malware
Readers stumbling across the redirect in the search bar whilst searching for something else, and clicking on it out of curiosity
Editors clicking through redirects on the target article's Special:WhatLinksHere
Editors reviewing and/or categorising redirects

Limits

There is no definitive cut-off point as to how many all-time page views (ATPV) are above being considered background noise. However, a general guideline that can be used for redirects of any article is 500 or fewer ATPV; any redirect which has more ATPV is generally unlikely to come from 'background noise'. That being said, the guideline for ancient redirects (i.e. pre-July 2015) and redirects to articles with hundreds of thousands or millions of monthly views can be raised higher than that, to 1000 ATPV or fewer, or even higher in special circumstances.

Etymology

The earliest usage of this phrase on English Wikipedia seems to come from a reply by MartinRe written on 12 July 2006, in reference to cross namespace redirects obsfucating encyclopaedic results for readers.

Notes

↑ Note that identified non-human hits (which account for the majority) are by-default excluded from page view counts.
↑ This is especially the case with partial-title-match redirects.
↑ This is the month and year when page views first began to be uniformly recorded for all Wikipedia pages, including redirects.
↑ 'Special circumstances' can include, for example, a redirect being linked in a well-viewed article for a few minutes, hours, or days before being unlinked; thereby gaining hundreds or thousands of views during its short stint in the article, but otherwise having negligible views outside of it.
↑ Remember, however, that as you increase the bar of 'enough' ATPV, you also increase the chance that you will inconvenience readers who actually find the redirect useful.

References

↑ User, Anonymous (26 December 2014). "Question about English (US) — What does "everything else is background noise" mean?". HiNative.

[2] Note that identified non-human hits (which account for the majority) are by-default excluded from page view counts.

[3] This is especially the case with partial-title-match redirects.

[4] This is the month and year when page views first began to be uniformly recorded for all Wikipedia pages, including redirects.

[5] 'Special circumstances' can include, for example, a redirect being linked in a well-viewed article for a few minutes, hours, or days before being unlinked; thereby gaining hundreds or thousands of views during its short stint in the article, but otherwise having negligible views outside of it.

[6] Remember, however, that as you increase the bar of 'enough' ATPV, you also increase the chance that you will inconvenience readers who actually find the redirect useful.

[1] User, Anonymous (26 December 2014). "Question about English (US) — What does "everything else is background noise" mean?". HiNative.