This commit implements 2 new metrics/stats in the /about page for the _estimated_ numbers of unique visitors from the EU and the rest of the world. This new feature is currently off by default, but it can be enabled by turning on the hidden `display_eu_visitor_stats` site settings via the rails console.
There are a number of assumptions that we're making here in order to estimate the number of unique visitors, specifically:
1. we're assuming that the average of page views per anonymous visitor is similar to the average number of page views that a logged-in visitor makes, and
2. we're assuming that the ratio of logged in visitors from the EU is similar to the ratio of anonymous visitors from the EU
Discourse keeps track of the number of both logged-in and anonymous page views, and also the number of unique logged-in visitors and where they're from. So with those numbers and the assumptions above, we can estimate the number of unique anonymous visitors from the EU and the rest of the world.
Internal topic: t/128480.
Adds a new statistics (hidden from the UI, but available via the API) that tracks daily participating users.
A user is considered as "participating" if they have
- Reacted to a post
- Replied to a topic
- Created a new topic
- Created a new PM
- Sent a chat message
- Reacted to a chat message
Internal ref - t/131013
We will be collecting the logo URL and the site's default locale values along with existing basic details to display the site on the Discourse Discover listing page. It will be included only if the site is opted-in by enabling the "`include_in_discourse_discover`" site setting.
Also, we no longer going to use `about.json` and `site/statistics.json` endpoints retrieve these data. We will be using only the `site/basic-info.json` endpoint.
Now forums can enroll their sites to be showcased in the Discourse [Discover](https://discourse.org/discover) directory. Once they enable the site setting `include_in_discourse_discover` to enroll their forum the `CallDiscourseHub` job will ping the `api.discourse.org/api/discover/enroll` endpoint. Then the Discourse Hub will fetch the basic details from the forum and add it to the review queue. If the site is approved then the forum details will be displayed in the `/discover` page.
This adds the ability to collect stats without exposing them
among other stats via API.
The most important thing I wanted to achieve is to provide
an API where stats are not exposed by default, and a developer
has to explicitly specify that they should be
exposed (`expose_via_api: true`). Implementing an opposite
solution would be simpler, but that's less safe in terms of
potential security issues.
When working on this, I had to refactor the current solution.
I would go even further with the refactoring, but the next steps
seem to be going too far in changing the solution we have,
and that would also take more time. Two things that can be
improved in the future:
1. Data structures for holding stats can be further improved
2. Core stats are hard-coded in the About template (it's hard
to fix it without correcting data structures first, see point 1):
63a0700d45/app/views/about/index.html.erb (L61-L101)
The most significant refactorings are:
1. Introducing the `Stat` model
2. Aligning the way the core and the plugin stats' are registered
