[Wikimedia-l] Research:Anatomy of English Wikipedia Did You Know traffic

[Laura Hale]

On Saturday, August 3, 2013, Kerry Raymond wrote:

> Hi, Laura!
>
>
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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