7 ms·

plenty of adblocking filters block even self hosted analytics JS packages.

by throwaway2048 5y ago

KronisLV 5y ago
Indeed, that's why i'm saying that they're a bigger problem if you want your analytics to be truthful than LibreJS or people with JS disabled outright, since overall it's more likely that they have an ad blocker of some sort, rather than no support for launching JS at all.
- swiley 5y ago
  The point is that users will mess with javascript on your page (especially analytics.) And as someone pointed out bellow, bots that run javascript are becoming increasingly common. Either way you're going to have to do some work with the data (and probably include statistics from the server side anyway.)
  - KronisLV 5y ago
    But if 1-5% of your data is affected, is it even worth doing anything about it? Server side logs could be useful for detecting abnormalities indeed, but for getting overall usage statistics, i doubt the occasional bot or user with disabled/blocked JS execution is at all relevant.
    - swiley 5y ago
      How do you know it's 1-5% if you're not even looking?
      - KronisLV 5y ago
        Something along the lines of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_large_numbers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_large_numbers Essentially, if 1-5% (example number, the actual one probably differs) of the general population have ad blockers, or will not execute the JS that you want them to, then it stands to reason that the demographics of your site would also be representative of the overall picture.* As for how those numbers would be figured out in the first place - i'm sure that plenty of larger sites and parties with more resources have figured out ways to aggregate this information and have published it (like the statistics in the posts above). So essentially you don't have to look, because others already have. *unless the audience of your site is really niche and therefore differ in this regard from the average. For example, Facebook would be a decent representation, whereas Hacker News would not.
        swiley 5y ago
        Why bother running analytics then if you can get everything you need from wikipedia?
        KronisLV 5y ago
        Mostly to see the usage patterns in your particular site. Wikipedia or other sources might tell you that "approximately X% of the devices that use e-commerce sites are mobile phones" which would be useful in figuring out that you should have a responsive site, but analytics could tell you "this one element doesn't display properly on mobile devices and therefore 95% of the users on mobile devices don't use this particular functionality".

plenty of adblocking filters block even self hosted analytics JS packages.

Indeed, that's why i'm saying that they're a bigger problem if you want your analytics to be truthful than LibreJS or people with JS disabled outright, since overall it's more likely that they have an ad blocker of some sort, rather than no support for launching JS at all.

swiley 5y ago
The point is that users will mess with javascript on your page (especially analytics.) And as someone pointed out bellow, bots that run javascript are becoming increasingly common. Either way you're going to have to do some work with the data (and probably include statistics from the server side anyway.)
- KronisLV 5y ago
  But if 1-5% of your data is affected, is it even worth doing anything about it? Server side logs could be useful for detecting abnormalities indeed, but for getting overall usage statistics, i doubt the occasional bot or user with disabled/blocked JS execution is at all relevant.
  - swiley 5y ago
    How do you know it's 1-5% if you're not even looking?
    - KronisLV 5y ago
      Something along the lines of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_large_numbers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_large_numbers Essentially, if 1-5% (example number, the actual one probably differs) of the general population have ad blockers, or will not execute the JS that you want them to, then it stands to reason that the demographics of your site would also be representative of the overall picture.* As for how those numbers would be figured out in the first place - i'm sure that plenty of larger sites and parties with more resources have figured out ways to aggregate this information and have published it (like the statistics in the posts above). So essentially you don't have to look, because others already have. *unless the audience of your site is really niche and therefore differ in this regard from the average. For example, Facebook would be a decent representation, whereas Hacker News would not.
      - swiley 5y ago
        Why bother running analytics then if you can get everything you need from wikipedia?
        KronisLV 5y ago
        Mostly to see the usage patterns in your particular site. Wikipedia or other sources might tell you that "approximately X% of the devices that use e-commerce sites are mobile phones" which would be useful in figuring out that you should have a responsive site, but analytics could tell you "this one element doesn't display properly on mobile devices and therefore 95% of the users on mobile devices don't use this particular functionality".