Talk:Usage share of operating systems/Archive 2

message: This page has got slightly huge, and discussion seems to have settled down for the moment, so I've archived it.--Harumphy (talk) 12:29, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

message: What is the logic behind the fact that median is used as an avarage not mean. Please kindly justify it.
Pallab1234 (talk) 20:35, 24 April 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: There's archived discussion about this in various places in Talk:Usage_share_of_operating_systems/Archive_1. Essentially, a median is preferred to a mean because it is less influenced by idiosyncratic highs and lows in the some of the cited source figures. --Harumphy (talk) 09:37, 25 April 2010 (UTC)
replies: text:  I think we should use mean instead. Cityscape4 (talk)  —Preceding undated comment added 19:18, 5 July 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Who decided that it is median? 

message: If you add up all the numbers it comes up to 96.77. What other systems comprise the 3.23%? There is a category for "other" so at worst the remaining 3.23% should be added in there.
99.149.197.13 (talk) 20:58, 23 March 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: All data from the chart comes from the median values of the table -- even the other. Unfortunately, this does result in some missing percentage. I'll think about changing it to show a full 100%. But the problem is that adding the 3.23% wouldn't be what's reflected from our sources. Hmmm.... Jdm64 (talk) 00:43, 24 March 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: The medians do not and should not be expected to add up to 100%. So there's nothing 'missing'. --Harumphy (talk) 11:23, 24 March 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Chart is not correct 

message: Here's a source of web client stats for German-language pages which looks quite interesting:. Here's a translation page:. It measures over 100,000 commercial and private, predominantly German-language sites.--Harumphy (talk) 13:02, 3 February 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  www.webmasterpro.de 

message: I feel a bit uneasy about including Android in the Linux column. Android is of course based on the Linux kernel, but of the four sources we cite, only one (Wikimedia) lumps Android in with Linux. The other three treat it as something distinct. As we're supposed to be summarising the sources I think we should have a separate Android column. The only other mobile OS that is cited by at least three sources and has a greater share than Android is Symbian (median 0.24%) so I think we should add a column for that too.--Harumphy (talk) 14:29, 3 February 2010 (UTC)
replies: text:  I agree that we should put Android in a separate column than the Linux one. Cityscape4 (talk) 20:40, 24 February 2010 (UTC)
replies: text:  Since posting the above comment on Feb 3, the table has been modified to split a single Linux column into 'mainstream' and Android columns, both under a Linux 'umbrella' heading, as it were. Do you mean that we should remove the Linux umbrella from the Android column?--Harumphy (talk) 18:34, 24 February 2010 (UTC)
replies: text:  Android Linux and Chrome Linux are simply Linux distributions.  They should remain in the Linux column.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Nwusr123log (talk • contribs) 04:44, 2 March 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Linux, Android and Symbian 

message: At the moment the web client summary table has some notes in the paragraph directly underneath and some amongst the references at the bottom of the page. I propose the put all the notes in a concise, bulleted list within the table, like this. Comments?--Harumphy (talk) 17:08, 7 February 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Looks good to me. Wikiolap (talk) 21:27, 7 February 2010 (UTC)
replies: text:  OK, done it.--Harumphy (talk) 17:34, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  rationalising notes 

message: I will make these changes in a couple of days if nobody objects:
# add webmasterpro.de as a source
# make minor tweaks to reduce column widths
# split the Linux column into 'mainstream' and 'Android' columns
# add a column for Symbian
# add a column RIM BlackBerry --Harumphy (talk) 17:38, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: From what I saw on the webmasterpro.de - it is Germany only source, and therefore I beleive it is too narrow to include in the general article. If it has numbers for the whole Europe - then I would agree to include it. Wikiolap (talk) 19:55, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
replies: text:  It covers German-language sites, not just those in Germany. Please see German language in Europe.--Harumphy (talk) 23:02, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

text: I agree with Wikiolap, Webmasterpro.de is not a good source. It does not cover an extensive enough area. I'm in complete favor of removing it.Cityscape4 (talk) 17:18, 24 February 2010 (UTC)
replies: text:  It covers over 100,000 sites in what is the most widely-used language in Europe and the primary language in Germany, Austria and Switzerland and spoken by the majority of the people in several other European countries. So its area is probably at least as extensive as some of the US-centric stats, which it also helps to balance. If we're going to get rid of sources because their coverage is too small, let's start with StatOwl which is 92% US.--Harumphy (talk) 18:28, 24 February 2010 (UTC)
replies: text:  Okay, I'm all in favor of removing StatOwl. I don't think we should includes sources that do specific areas (example: USA). If we have a source for mainly the US (or mainly german-speaking European countries) then we really should have stats from China, UK, Brazil and many others to counter-act the balance. Lets remove Statowl and maybe Webmasterpro too. Cityscape4 (talk) 20:36, 24 February 2010 (UTC)
replies: text:  Many of the sources have a geographical and/or linguistic bias - the latter maybe unwittingly by only communicating with webmasters in English. The real difficulty is that these are the best sources we've found to date. It would be great to have more data from other areas/languages.--Harumphy (talk) 08:46, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

text:  I'm going to agree with Harumphy. If someone can find better sources then -- good. But, loosing sources is not good unless there's a good enough reason. Jdm64 (talk) 19:24, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

text: The only objections I have is that I think by adding the symbian and blackberry to the table it makes it too large and cumbersome. Especially, for the pie graph, which I still see as valuable. Maybe the chart could only have OSs that are >1%. Jdm64 (talk) 23:45, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
replies: text:  Fully agree. If the chart is large like it is now it is harder and less likely for people to read. If everyone agrees, I will remove symbian, blackberry and anadroid from the chart. They all have less then .30%, I think we should only keep OS's with over .5%. Cityscape4 (talk) 17:18, 24 February 2010 (UTC)
replies: text:  The chart is fine. When I added the mobile columns I made several other tweaks to reduce existing column widths and the ISTM the table still probably fits in most users' screen widths without horizontal scrolling. Certainly it does so on my laptop which is nothing special (1280x800 px screen). --Harumphy (talk) 18:28, 24 February 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  more web client table tweaks 

message: Where does Wikimedia get its information from? Cityscape4 (talk) 05:03, 28 February 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: The links on the Wikimedia stats page tell you, do they not? --Harumphy (talk) 09:43, 28 February 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Wikimedia 

message: What happened to those tables that listed all the historical stat data from the various firms?  Did it move somewhere?
It was similar to what was in this article below, but for the major operating systems.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Rasmasyean (talk • contribs) 22:56, 8 March 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: We did a big rewrite a while back and got rid of the tables of historical web client data. Discussion archived here: Talk:Usage_share_of_operating_systems/Archive_1#Complete_rewrite --Harumphy (talk) 23:45, 8 March 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Web Client stat history tables 

message: This section seems to contain some content about the various mobile OSs that isn't very relevant to usage share and therefore belongs somewhere other than in this article. Could those who have edited this section please take a look and prune stuff that isn't about usage share, sources of usage share data and usage share trends. That's more or less the yardstick for the rest of the article and I think it should apply here too. I'm reluctant to wade in myself because I don't know much about it.--Harumphy (talk) 12:13, 10 March 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: I will do the requested pruning. Wikiolap (talk) 15:58, 10 March 2010 (UTC)
replies: text:  That's much better. Thanks. --Harumphy (talk) 17:51, 10 March 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Mobile devices section 

message: Here's another source of stats: . It appears to update daily so we could average them to get figures for a month. --Harumphy (talk) 15:09, 20 April 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: No objections so far. Good! I intend to add this, averaging the last seven days of the month to make the job a bit easier, and using the Statcounter figures for desktop/mobile split, which seems to be pretty much in the middle of the desktop/mobile splits for the four sources from which such a thing can be derived. Naturally the method would be explained in a footnote. --Harumphy (talk) 11:26, 30 June 2010 (UTC)

text: [comment moved from section below] I have no objections, although do they have a mobile to desktop correlation so we can related ~60% iPhone to what the global share is? Jdm64 (talk) 08:58, 1 July 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: They don't, which is not ideal. We can work around it by using statcounter's desktop/mobile split, which seems to be pretty much in the middle of the range of desktop/mobile splits for the four sources from which such a thing can be derived. We will of course need to explain the method in a footnote.--Harumphy (talk) 14:14, 1 July 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Clicky web stats 

message: The "extended support retired" date for Windows 2000 is 13th July 2010. I suggest we remove its column from the web client OS table on that date, while still including it along with other obsolete Windows versions in the 'all versions' column. --Harumphy (talk) 11:27, 8 June 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: I'll agree with that. Jdm64 (talk) 19:04, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

text: I disagree, we should keep Windows 2000 for a while (say 6months-1year) longer. There are tons of small businesses and stuff that use it. It is still a commonly used version of windows and most programs are still being made for "Windows 2000 or higher". Cityscape4 (talk)  —Preceding undated comment added 19:25, 5 July 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Windows 2000 

message: Four of the seven sources we use list OS share for the Playstation - median share is 0.05%. I suggest we add a column to the web client table.
None of the other odds'n'sods is currently listed by more than two sources. Three sources are splitting out iOS into iPhone/iPod/iPad, but as we're interested in OS share, not hardware share, I suggest we leave it as a single column.--Harumphy (talk) 11:11, 15 June 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Not this again! The Playstation is device not an OS. All the other listed OSs can be and are installed on several different devices. The OS on the Playstation, if you can even call it that, is inseparable from the device. The article is "Usage share of operating systems" not "Usage share of devices". To be on the list the OS must be an identifiable operating system distinguishable from the device that it's installed on. The operating system in current game consoles are more like an advanced BIOS/UEFI than an OS. Jdm64 (talk) 20:35, 15 June 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Fair enough. I've tweaked a couple of mobile column headings slightly in the light of this, so I don't get myself all confused again. ;-) --Harumphy (talk) 10:11, 17 June 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Playstation 

message: Shouldn't the pie chart include versions of Windows, other than the three shown in the chart, under "other"? --Harumphy (talk) 10:25, 2 July 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Ok, sounds fair. The current percentage for "Other Windows" is 1.34%. I'll add it to the June chart. Jdm64 (talk) 20:01, 2 July 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: That sounds too low. Windows 7+Vista+XP have medians totalling 85.05%, all versions median is 89.53, so surely "Other Windows" is 4.48%? (These figures changed a bit because I've just done the StatOwl update, but not that much.) --Harumphy (talk) 16:21, 3 July 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: You're calculating it wrong. You calculated the sum of the medians. I calculated the median of the sums. If that makes any sense. It's best not to work with medians until the end. So, for each source calculate the sum of XP+Vista+7 then find the median -- not the other way around. The value is currently at 1.29%. Jdm64 (talk) 05:58, 4 July 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: That makes perfect sense. Thank you. --Harumphy (talk) 08:01, 4 July 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Pie chart - other 

message: Smartphone has 2010 Q1 figures for smartphone OS share whilst this page only has 2009 Q2 figures. Can someone update?
Some of the numbers here don't seem to add up to me if iphone iOS is 0.9% of the overall OS share and 13% of the smartphone share wouldn't that make smartphone OSs above 10% of the overall OS share? Is the source reliable?
Update of Pie Chart needed. According to the Info under the chart, it's from June 2009.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.138.164.207 (talk) 16:03, 19 July 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Updates needed 

message: I think, this page has definitely too much pictures. The charts are useful, but I see no benefit for the pictures which shows laptops and servers. --one-eyed pirate 18:19, 2 August 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Too much pictures 

message: I think it would be good to see the evolution of these numbers just like in the article Usage share of web browsers. So it would apear the usage share month after month and would be possible to see the trend. --Marceloml (talk) 15:39, 4 August 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree with that, a graph with usage as a function of time would be highly appreciated. 87.72.122.147 (talk) 20:02, 7 October 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: The only sources of data we have for that are the web client stats. The article already gives them as much prominence as they deserve, IMHO.--Harumphy (talk) 06:59, 8 October 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Historical data 

message: Shouldn't "usage share of mobile OS" section be made into its own article?  it's becoming an ever increasingly important topic, just as important as the usage share of web browsers is.--Mark0528 (talk) 05:16, 24 August 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Generally speaking, the idea of WP:SPINOUT is that sections get split out of articles as new articles when the parent article is too big, like 60 - 100 KB. This article is currently 20,773 B so there is no need for this on that basis alone. --Nigelj (talk) 10:11, 24 August 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Usage share of mobile operating systems 

message: Jdm64 - a few comments on your changes:
* AT and Webmasterpro specify (most of) their stats to one decimal place. If we add trailing zeroes it implies an order of magnitude greater precision in the stat than the source actually contains.
* StatOwl August figures are now out, FYI.
* Webmasterpro - did you look at the figures today (2nd)? If so you got the last six days in August and the 1st day in September. It's a rolling 7-day thing that changes daily - it's important to use the figures published on the first of the month, which I did.
* Wikimedia - you've counted Android twice - under both Linux and Android. You need to subtract the Android figure from the Linux total.
I won't have time to fix these until next week, so I'd be grateful if you could take another look at this. TIA. --Harumphy (talk) 21:38, 2 September 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Ok, fixed most of it. I have the extra '0' on AT/Webmaster for alignment purposes -- makes it easier to read. I haven't updated/checked Clicky. I think I fixed the rest. Jdm64 (talk) 04:24, 5 September 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks for the fixes. I understand what you're trying to achieve with the trailing zeroes but I think it is wrong, mathematically - it implies the tolerance is ±0.005% instead of ±0.05% as per the source data. I've reverted the StatCounter iOS figure, which they have split between the desktop and mobile tables - although you have to look at the CSV spreadsheet to spot it.--Harumphy (talk) 13:33, 7 September 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Changes to web client table 2nd Sept 

message: I'm in favor of adding W3 Schools as a source (http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_os.asp). It would be a great addition to the page.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Cityscape4 (talk • contribs) 21:05, 2 November 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: The eight sources we include in the table at the moment each monitor a large number of sites and a wide audience. W3schools' stats are for its own site only and a narrow audience (web developers), so it is very unrepresentative of web users as a whole. There a many web sites which publish user share stats for their own sites. So why single out this one? W3Schools is of interest (especially to Linux users like me) because of its higher Linux figures, and that is mentioned in the article, but that is not a reason to put it in the table. We should not include stats in the table just because their figures match our own biases. Don't get me wrong - I'm not saying that you are motivated by any such bias - but it would be helpful if you could explain why you favor W3Schools' inclusion. --Harumphy (talk) 07:54, 3 November 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Add W3 Schools as a source 

message: I did some research on the numbers that Mary Jane Foley printed, and they aren't right, specifically her numbers do not match the IDC Press Release. I wrote it up on my site, and was looking for information here for another article, and noticed that you are still using her numbers. I'd suggest that someone look into this, since obviously, I'm an interested party, and shouldn't make the changes myself. Link is here (http://madhatter.ca/2010/11/06/server-operating-system-market-share-lies-lies-and-more-lies/).
BTW, good work on the entry, I use Wikipedia as a reference all of the time. I do contribute, but not to the areas I write about. -- UrbanTerrorist (talk) 04:54, 8 November 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks for the tip. You're right: Mary Jane Foley's figures aren't in the press release she cites, so I've removed this line from the table.Harumphy (talk) 09:13, 8 November 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Good catch, and thanks for taking care of it. Wikiolap (talk) 17:28, 8 November 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Server Market Share Figures are Wrong 

message: I suggest removing StatOwl and AT Internet Institute from the web client statistics page. Reasons:
StatOwl
1) excludes mobile market
2) heavily US biased
3) small number of tracked websites compared to other sources. See below:
Source               	Websites tracked	Unique visitors
StatOwl              	???             	27m+
Clicky               	270k+           	???
Statcounter          	3m+             	???
w3counter            	40k+            	???
webmasterpro         	100k+           	???
Net applications     	40k+            	160m+
Gomez  see footnote @	34k+            	150m+
I assume that unique visitors per tracked website ratio is somewhat constant. Since Gomez and Net applications have similar ratios, this assumption is somewhat valid. So StatOwl tracks only about 6k-8k of webpages. This is five times less than numbers of other sources.
AT internet institute
1) does not state its methodology. It's now known where they take the data from.
2) its numbers are very questionable (e.g. 20% Mac share in Switzerland)
3) tracks exclusively European websites
1exec1 (talk) 02:27, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: The eight sources we use are the best we've found to date. If you know of others that are at least as good, let us know. You've listed some of the problems you perceive with two of the sources. But once we go down the route of discarding flawed sources we would logically end up discarding all of them, because they all have flaws, and there are many more flaws than the ones you've listed. We use all eight sources and calculate median figures in an attempt to mitigate against the statistical flaws in each source. The article does not claim that the summary table gives a true picture: on the contrary, it repeatedly draws the reader's attention to the inherent difficulties and shortcomings and just summarises what the cited sources report and leaves the reader under no false impressions about their credibility.--Harumphy (talk) 10:47, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: There have recently been similar discussions, starting at Talk:Usage share of web browsers#Remove Statowl from summary and going on for several sections, especially regarding StatOwl. --Nigelj (talk) 17:17, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm in agreement with Harumphy. With regard to the web browser page, the editors there are so consumed with the global accuracy of the summary table even though there 3+ paragraphs stating that there are countless flaws in any analysis. I would find that a bit humorous, except for the fact that the end result is looking like they're going to start removing sources. Jdm64 (talk) 19:35, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  remove StatOwl and AT Internet institute from the statistics 

message: I reverted two of User:Wikiolap's edits today. Sorry I was a bit terse in the edit summary. The reasons were:
* The change to the notes in the table really cluttered up its appearance. It looked awful IMHO. It was no doubt a good faith attempt to clarify which bit of the table each footnote related to, but that was pretty obvious anyway. The 'cost' greatly exceeded the 'benefit'. --Harumphy (talk) 20:13, 17 November 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: I modeled it after similar table in Usage share of web browsers. Since our table has lots of notes, it looked like it would make it more clear.Wikiolap (talk) 20:32, 17 November 2010 (UTC)
replies: text:  Please never model anything after that article. It's awful! Harumphy (talk) 08:42, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

text: Agree with deleting W3Schools note completely.Wikiolap (talk) 20:32, 17 November 2010 (UTC)
replies: text:  Done. Harumphy (talk) 08:42, 18 November 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  web client table edits Nov 17, 2010 

message: Is this  a credible secondary source? It seems to me to be an exercise in wishful thinking. It seems to be clutching at straws. As a Linux enthusiast myself I've tried to follow her argument but it doesn't stack up IMHO. She says "The best estimate for present sales is around 8%", but she doesn't cite a source for this estimate, and in any case, present sales is a very different thing from the total installed base, bought over several years, that makes up usage share.
I can quite accept that the web client stats under-measure Linux a bit, mainly because Linux users are relatively security and privacy conscious and thus more likely to disable javascript, install adblock etc., all things which reduce counting on the third-party stats sites. It's interesting that Wikimedia's figures, based on server log files and thus immune to this hazard, show a somewhat higher figure (1.57%) than most of the others.--Harumphy (talk) 14:00, 4 December 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Agreed, but still not 8%. I tried to work that 8% figure in somewhere too, but the jump from 'installed user-base' to 'current sales' seemed too sharp for a short addition to existing text. The only way would be to devote a whole couple of sentences to it somewhere, and I'm not sure if she is notable enough for that. O'Reilly is a good source, but I'm not sure of her status to be speaking for them. --Nigelj (talk) 15:10, 4 December 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: The only cited source there is quote from Steve Ballmer where he says that internal Microsoft research showed Linux and MacOS shares comparable. We already have this source covered. The blog doesn't seem notable enough to include in the article.Wikiolap (talk) 20:03, 4 December 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Linux share: Caitlyn Martin's blog piece 

message: I propose to make a couple of minor tweaks to the table when the December figures come out in the new year, unless there are objections here first:
# For the Clicky desktop/mobile 'in lieu' split, take the mean of the Net Market Share and Statcounter figures instead of just using Statcounter. (This will probably have the effect of reducing Clicky's mobile share from around 4.1% to around 3.6%.) The footnote will explain what has been done.
# Android is rising rapidly and within a few months may overtake what we currently call 'mainstream' Linux. I propose to change the "mainstream" sub-heading to "desktop distros.". Harumphy (talk) 14:56, 29 December 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: 2) Oppose. There are several other mobile Linux distributions such as Maemo currently included within Mainstream Linux.1exec1 (talk) 00:24, 31 December 2010 (UTC)
replies: text:  Fair enough. I've done #1 but not #2 in today's update.Harumphy (talk) 11:09, 1 January 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Web client table tweaks - January 2011 

message: Recently somebody added the overview table, and various editors including me attempted to knock it into shape. I don't think we've been very successful. I can't see where many of the figures come from. The web client medians don't (and shouldn't be expected to) add up to 100% and so don't constitute 'share' anyway. Should we delete this section, or can it be improved? Harumphy (talk) 08:55, 17 January 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: I'd lean for deleting it. Many of the fields are blank because some of the selected OSs come from disjoint usage (ie. mainframe and smartphones). Although, the one thing going for the table is the quick summary. I'd purpose that key stats from the table to be included in the opening paragraph. Something to elaborate on the current opening, but with some actual numbers. Jdm64 (talk) 10:32, 17 January 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Does anyone want to speak in the overview section's defence? If not I'll delete it in a couple of days from now. As far as putting figures in the opening paragraph goes, ideally that would be done in a way that doesn't need updating every month. Harumphy (talk) 09:12, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

text: I vote to delete it, the idea of this overview table never appealed to me, and it doesn't look like it is helping the article. Wikiolap (talk) 17:26, 18 January 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Now deleted as agreed. Harumphy (talk) 10:14, 21 January 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Overview section 

message: I've reverted 1exec1's changes to a couple of tables, in which the font size was fixed at 85% of normal.
Please, if font sizes look too big on your computer, it doesn't mean they look too big on everyone else's. The web is not a wysiwyg medium. You can adjust your browser's normal font size to suit your preferences. I have adjusted mine, and I don't want you reducing the font size on my computer (and everyone else's) just because it looks better on yours!
Besides, from a graphic design point of view it looked awful. --Harumphy (talk) 09:37, 9 February 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Font sizes 

message: Are there any authoritative sources suggesting that scanning public websites is a reasonable way to estimate server market share? It seems rather dubious to me.  For one thing, Linux is well known as a good OS for running web servers (the LAMP stack), so a sample of web servers may not be representative of servers in general, but rather biased towards Linux.
Another problem is that a single server OS can host a large number of small websites, whereas a large website may require several servers, especially if it makes heavy use of SSL. If website characteristics differ across sites, then an estimate of server market share based on the number of websites would be biased towards the system most favoured by smaller, less complex sites. Netcraft report a 50 per cent Windows share for SSL websites (http://news.netcraft.com/ssl-survey/), compared with a 25 per cent share for non-SSL websites, which suggests that estimates based on websites may indeed be biased towards Linux.
Unless an authoritative source suggesting that counting the number of public websites using a particular server OS is a valid way of estimating server OS market share, this looks like original research, and I suggest it be deleted. A separate section on web server OS share might be reasonable. Shalineth (talk) 06:55, 10 February 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Netcraft is reliable and verifiable source, and we properly reference it. They choose to analyze OS share of web servers, and we accurately mention it. Hence this is not original research. Some readers may or may not agree with their methodology, but it is really not up to us to make judgments whether or not we like it. As encyclopedia we report citing reliable and verifiable sources. Wikiolap (talk) 20:51, 10 February 2011 (UTC)
replies: text:  Netcraft present website statistics, not server OS market share. You're confusing two different things, and that's where the original research lies. It's like looking at valid statistics for flights out of a particular airport and claiming that represents airliner market share.Shalineth (talk) 11:13, 12 February 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Possibly dubious server share claims based on websites