Two weeks ago, we did a round of A/B testing on a small percentage of anonymous users with very promising results. We found that when we removed the grey bar below the article title, users clicked the "Edit" button at the top of a page a whopping 11% more often. We're excited about what this means for ease of use and increased activity, and will be rolling out this change to all wikis this week. Here's what the change looks like...
Before[]
What you see now:
After[]
What it will look like after the change:
Summary of changes[]
- A "Page History" link will be added to the drop-down menu attached to the Edit button.
- The grey bar will be removed. This also means:
- The "read more" links will be removed.
- The "Edited by [name]" menu will be removed.
What this means for you[]
On most wikis, this will mean a minor layout change and an increase in edits from new and anonymous users, which will hopefully lead to an increase in long-term contributors.
If you were used to using the "read more" links, you can get similar content from the "read more" section at the bottom of most article pages. You can also still see who edited most recently by checking the Page History (which is now easier to get to via the Edit button drop-down).
A small number of wikis had used Javascript to insert extra buttons into the grey bar. In these cases, the wikis’ extra buttons will likely also disappear at the time of this change. Since these modifications were hacks on official Wikia layout elements, we can't support them at the expense of a site-wide improvement, and we're sorry for that inconvenience.
It's coming soon![]
Everything at Wikia is a work in progress, and we are continually testing and experimenting to make our tools better and more effective. We've found that this adjustment helps users make a visual connection between the Edit button and the page content below it.
It's possible we may continue to adjust these layout elements based on what we learn about other aspects of user behavior, but we hope you'll agree with us that an 11% increase in edits makes this change worth it.
The change is scheduled to happen next week. Let us know what you think!