Sunday, April 03, 2011

Writing what will be popular by readers

blog post by Wizardist on this subject
On the #Belarusian #Wikipedia a stub was written about Robert Bunsen on the day when Google celebrated his birthday with a doodle. This was an experiment to learn if the topic would be popular.

In Belarus people google in Russian when they seek information. When good quality information on the "essential topics" is available in either of the two Belarusian Wikipedias people may get used to seeking information in their own language.

The English article on Robert Bunsen was new as well

The Belarusian article was read 778 times. This is 10 times more then the typical number of reads for a Belarusian article. The numbers for the English article prove that the availability for a popular topic generates a lot of traffic for the English Wikipedia as well.

The Belarusian Wikipedias want to become more popular. They observed that what is in the public's eye generates disproportionally more traffic. In the traffic statistics we can find what people are missing the most. When this information is available, we can prevent misses by writing new articles or by adding redirects. This will not only motivate our editors, it helps us bring knowledge to all the people of our world.
Thanks,
       GerardM

2 comments:

  1. "The English article on Robert Bunsen was new as well" - depends what you mean by "new". It's been around since 2001... ;-)

    http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Robert_Bunsen&dir=prev&action=history

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  2. It would be nice if users could anticipate on the doodles Google is going to use.. If users have to wait till that very day, the effect is smaller.

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