On Saturday, August 3, 2013, Kerry Raymond wrote:
Hi Kerry. Thanks for the comments. :)
I wonder if a variable worth considering is the number of views of the DYK vs the average number of page views of the article(s) (per day/week/month or whatever) promoted by the DYK *before* the publication of the DYK (obviously this can only measured for expanded articles rather than new ones). The hypothesis here is that more popular topics make more popular DYKs.
This is actually one of the areas that is worth looking at further. People have attempted to time DYKs to coincide with certain events. TonyTheTiger is actually very good at doing this for some his hooks. It can and sometimes does create tension in the project as people try to get things timed for these events and not everyone wants to oblige them. (One situation that particulary comes to mine is the Kony2012 article at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kony_2012 where the article was stalled at DYK because a reviewer did not want to time it to coincide with an already large media blitz.) It just would require a lot of subject knowledge to do any indepth research on this topic and looking through T:TDYK to see where things are in the special holding areas often to identify some of these.
Another interesting variable is number of page views of the article in the days/weeks/months after the DYK. It would be interesting to know the extent to which DYKs drive additional interest in the topic both in the short term and whether any increase in interest is sustained longer term. I would hypothesize any initial sharp increase during the DYK, with a sharp fall-off after the DYK finishes but with a small sustained elevation.
Yes, my casual observation has been that historically, articles get an average page views per month bump after DYK that they do not enjoy with other processes like GA or peer review. (This casual observation and assumption further research would bear it out as likely fact is based on the fact that you have rapid content development other processes do not require, and then subsequent SEO stengthening by appearing on the front page.) I think having looked at the articles the hypothesis is true, but would need a great deal of additional data that you also have two mini traffic bumps prior to appearing at DYK, with the first being from the contributors working on the article, and the second as a result of the DYK review.
It would also be interesting to see if articles mentioned in DYKs show any increased edit activity OR the creation of new inbound links to the article in the short or long term, but I am less sure about what is the baseline for comparison (given that a DYK article will have recently been created or expanded, suggesting an abnormally high level of edit activity immediately preceding the DYK). Possible proxies are articles in the same categories?
The possible baseline would be new articles that meet DYK articles that do not appear at DYK or conversely comparing the article's editing history in several periods: Before DYK work, during DYK expansion, during DYK review, the day of and the week after DYK review, and the two month period after the DYK. (I had actually considered doing this type of research to look at the contributions and DYK, but it would serve a completely different purpose. Hence, it would need to be retooled. I think this could potentially be one of the strengths of DYK that people fail to consider in that it does give new articles of a slightly higher caliber more eyes and potential contributors from the established editing pool than the article would otherwise get. I would love to see someone do research on the contribution effect of DYK, especially say if they could possibly compare it to other processes in terms of contributor participation.
Sincerely,
Laura Hale
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