[Foundation-l] foundation-l Digest, Vol 90, Issue 121

[Craig Franklin]

I'd caution against putting too much faith in those raw numbers without a
clear understanding of what they mean.  They can make sense comparing
different language editions of the same project, but comparing different
projects is apples and oranges.  For instance, some months ago I was doing
some research and I found that for Wikisource it doesn't count the "Page"
and "Index" namespaces as "articles", even though that's where the bulk of
the content generation is taking place these days.

This might have since been fixed, and I'm sure that you (Phillipe) are aware
of it, I just wanted to jump in before someone started complaining that
Wikinews is only a certain unimpressive %age of where Wikipedia was at the
same point.

Cheers,
Craig

Message: 5
> Date: Wed, 21 Sep 2011 00:49:01 -0700
> From: Philippe Beaudette <philippe at wikimedia.org>
> Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Minor projects withering and dying?
>        Really?
> To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List
>        <foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org>
> Message-ID:
>        <CAPb+kY-o0e0fqgnf0LbwLsbogFO6y5w+2wQ-gqy1a4t013_mzA at mail.gmail.com
> >
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-2022-JP
>
> Usage statistics alone, I would agree with you.
>
> But stats can tell so much more than just what you get from usage stats.
>  For instance:
> http://stats.wikimedia.org/wikinews/EN/ChartsWikipediaEN.htm   (be
> sure to scroll all the way to the right).
> ___________________
> Philippe Beaudette
> Head of Reader Relations
> Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.
>
> 415-839-6885, x 6643
>
> philippe at wikimedia.org
>
>
>
> On Tue, Sep 20, 2011 at 11:51 PM, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net>
> wrote:
>
> > On 09/20/11 10:11 PM, ?????? wrote:
> > > Certain projects are bound to loose active contributors. Projects like
> > > Wikisource, Wikiquote, Wikispecies or even Wiktionary do not have the
> > same
> > > growth curve as a general purpose encyclopedia. These tools have
> serious
> > > competition as well. Statistically looking at numbers is unwise unless
> > you
> > > are going to look at it with a perspective. This is not to say these
> > > projects are without problem, but that doesn't mean the wikis are
> > failures.
> > >
> > >
> > This is all very true. The important thing is to keep focused on your
> > own project.  If you look at competing projects, rather than looking at
> > their usage statistics, a better question is "What are they failing to
> > do that you could do better?"
> >
> > Ray
> >
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>