Hi everyone,
we just put a new graph on Tor Metrics called "Tor Browser downloads and updates":
https://metrics.torproject.org/webstats-tb.html
This graph is the result of a joint effort of the metrics team (with a lot of input on the underlying code from iwakeh) together with Sebastian (who co-authored the original database schema and who operates the web log sanitizer), gk and boklm (who analyze an earlier graph and provided insights about Tor Browser internals), and others who discussed the graph and earlier prototypes.
Please take a look at this graph, play a bit with the two inputs (start and end date), and give us feedback by raising questions about the data or giving answers to previously raised questions.
The goal would be to write a blog post about this graph together with an early analysis.
Currently open questions are:
- gk asks on the ticket (https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/21236#comment:11): "The results still confuse me (like: We have 100,000 new downloads each day but that does not show up in the update pings which basically stay the same? We still have more than 120,000 update requests every day, even after almost 6 weeks after the last release?). But that is probably another story. :)"
- hellais asked at yesterday's Vegas meeting: "how many times does a normal tor browser do an update ping every day?" which was answered by mikeperry and gk with "twice" "and on every start". This is probably something we should clarify in the graph description.
- yawning asks on the ticket (https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/21236#comment:25): "Does it matter that the Linux sandbox behavior is totally different from everyone else, because it uses a different implementation to download, update check, and update? I suspect the user base isn't that big right now, but I'd hate to throw stats off..."
Note that we're mostly hoping for feedback on the data, not on the presentation. We know that there's room for making the graph prettier or for providing more inputs to customize it. But we already spent way more time on this graph than we had planned, so we'd save any feedback on the presentation (except for typos or trivial tweaks) for later in the year.
Thanks!
All the best, Karsten