Cross posting to wikitech-l
2009/5/8 Ian Woollard<ian.woollard(a)gmail.com>om>:
Well, the wikipedia is big... google is big
also.
One of the tricks google use is they try stuff out on victims... I
mean users. They pick a small percentage of the internet and do
something slightly different for them, and see if it works or not. The
advantage of only doing it for a small number is that it means you can
write the test with prototyping tools, rather than having to make it
run fast, and you'll have a lot less complaints if it doesn't work
very well. It also means you can do back-back comparisons stuff like:
'we tried this, and it showed a 23% improvement in referencing'.
I think if at all practical, the wikipedia needs to start doing stuff like that.
That sounds like an excellent idea to me. Is it achievable?
Such A/B testing is planned for various things where feasible. Some
things will be easier to do this way than others. :)
-- brion