Forum:Wikia's New Style evaluation

Statistics
Last June, Danny said the following would be evaluated, among other things:
 * the actual impact on ad sales and click-through rates
 * the overall impact on readers and contributors, which we can evaluate by looking at the stats on pageviews, edits and active editors.

Given it's been almost 9 months, I expect there are statistics now to report. I'm curious as to what they are. -- LordTBT Talk! 23:59, 24 February 2009 (UTC)


 * Sure, I'm glad you asked. Obviously, we keep a close eye on what's going on with the site, but we don't usually take the time to actually share that with everyone. We should do that more, so I'm glad you brought it up!


 * Since you're interested in this stuff, I'd recommend keeping an eye on Special:WikiaStats. You can use that page on any wiki to track the stats for that wiki -- including the number of editors, edits and pages. If you look on the WikiaStats page on Central, you can get that info for all of Wikia. (Click on "All wikis" in the left-hand box, and then the "show statistics" button.)


 * So here's some stats. We switched over to the new Monaco style in June. Comparing the monthly numbers from June 2008 to January 2009:


 * Active editors (5+ edits a month) went up 23% -- from 11,600 in June to 15,100 in January.
 * The number of people who make more than 100 edits a month also went up 23% -- from 1,300 to 1,600.
 * The number of edits went up 39% -- from 794,100 to 1,100,000.
 * Our pageviews have also gone up 50% since June.


 * In the same time period the previous year (June 2007 to January 2008), active editors went up 17%, editors with 100+ edits went up 13%, and the number of edits went up 26%.


 * So people were understandably concerned that the new style would make editors and readers run away -- but that hasn't happened. The site is growing a lot -- more wikis, more contributors and more readers.


 * On the advertising side, the new ad style has helped a lot. The new style has given us the opportunity to attract advertisers that we couldn't reach before, and our monthly revenue has doubled. That's contributed a lot to the overall financial stability of the site, although we're still working to get to a point where our revenue matches our costs. As we all saw this summer, it's hard to find a good balance between the contributors who build the site every day, and the advertisers who pay for it. So far, it looks like the new format is helping us find that balance. -- Danny (talk ) 00:38, 27 February 2009 (UTC)