Results From Wikia's Communications Survey
About a month ago, the Wikia Community Support team asked for your feedback on our product release process; the response rate was huge, with just under 4,000 users taking the survey! Below are some of our findings as well as some recommendations based on this information.
Let’s dive in to some numbers! 
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- Who took the survey?
- 59% of respondents are between the ages of 13-18
- The age of account (length of time the respondents have been members of Wikia) is pretty even, though the folks who’ve been here between 1-3 years (27%) nudges the noobs out by one percent (26%)
- 62% of respondents have never given feedback on one of the Wikia staff blog posts before
- What did we learn?
- Just over a third of the people who responded want to learn about new features via a sitewide message (36%)
- 39% of respondents only want to learn about new features 1-2 weeks in advance of release
- 65% are most concerned about changes to the tools they use to edit a wiki (like the editor, theme designer, etc.)
The thing I’m most concerned about is that 81% of people who responded indicated that they don’t learn about new features until they appear on their wikis. We also learned that 72% of you didn’t know we post weekly technical updates on our Staff Blog, which is a bummer!
The Community Support team will be testing new ways to let the Wikia community know about both technical updates and feature announcements in the coming weeks and months.
Thanks again to everyone who participated!
Want to receive updates on the latest Staff blog posts? Then click here to follow this blog.
- Showing 10 most recent
39 comments
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Wait, wut? 65% are most concerned about changes to the tools they use to edit a wiki! That means talk page editor.
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I can honestly say, I believe the poll results. However, the results are eye opening to some of the wikia helpers, and until now they have failed to see the disconnect they are making.
Sarah Manley, you know I love editing at Wikia, as you've seen by my blogs, and contribution numbers. Let me try to level it a bit, " learn about new features via a sitewide message "...Blogs and going to community central period does not make sense to a fan of a show/movie. It just doesn't. People don't care about the Wikia company like we do, they care about the content. This has always been true, and always will. Sitewide messages about new features 2 weeks in advance is actually a logical answer. I was one of the many that answered that.
Wikia needs to learn who they are catering to, and the poll was a good start. I for one don't like some of the recent ads introduced on larger/active wikis. Wikia needs there promotions more based on the wikis they promote on. When my wiki has a ad for amazon or ebay, I have been clicking it, so maybe you'll would start to understand that those ads work. Heck, I go to both sites at least once a week. Why you choose to sell promotions to half baked comedies on Ghostbusters Wiki is beyond me.
And in short, I think you should be asking people what products and services we use/like. That to me would make sense, so the ads fit the wikis. Sorry if I come off ranting Sarah, you know I care.
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Hi Devilmanozzy - Thanks for the post. We are constantly looking at the types of ads we use on all of your wikis - so thanks for sharing your feedback there. If you think of other ways you (or your community) would like to be informed of change - please let us know.
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Thanks for posting the results!
Aside: I am surprised that Staff were surprised at the results, though. My Bayesian forecast for the survey pretty well jibed with the actual results. I did, however, expect the 13-18 cohort to be even greater than 59%. Thanks again!
— SpikeToronto 07:09, October 15, 2011 (UTC) -
I can't believe that 26% of people said that changes to Wikia "don't matter to them". To my mind, if you edit any wiki, the changes matter immensely!
And talking about changes, the Extended Wiki Navigation is excellent. Please pass my thanks on to the development team.
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Passed on :)
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Agree, I love Wikis :)
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Remember, not all the people who answered the survey are active or dedicated users.
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81% of people who responded indicated that they don’t learn about new features until they appear on their wikis. -- But that doesn't mean Admins of Wikis also don't want to hear about new features beforehand or does it?
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I like knowing myself. (Yes I'm an admin on a wiki)
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No it doesn't - it means we need to figure out ways to make sure folks do know - if you have suggestions for methods you like - please share.
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I do not recall exactly, but if the survey did not ask each of us respondents if we are/are not admins, then we cannot qualify that 81%. It may be that 81% of all respondents answered the question as they did, but that 75+% of those respondents were not admins. I would hope that admins and founders know of changes before they hit their wikis.
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I'd hope so too. I love adding labs before they're features, and would hate it if the time given to warn us of possible errors is made smaller because of this survey.
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Questions - how often do you check back to labs? I have been thinking about a way to get better notifications when new features are in labs. Would you find that helpful?
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If they ever get around to adding a link to Special Pages, I would check regularly.
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Sarah: I check regularly, by which I mean every two to four weeks.
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I check labs rarely, but I keep up on what might be showing up in labs. I would say, I've turned on maybe 1-2 features in labs. Most I don't like. Of the 3 I would consider turning on currently (Polls, Blogs, and Chat), Polls is rarely used, Blogs are rarely used by non-admins, and Chat is pretty screwed up now.
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Because the staff blog posts contain things like "don't feed the trolls" and "updates coming soon". Then the updates aren't released in new blog posts, but edits to the existing blog.
Meanwhile, things like the Message Wall gets a ton of updates because outspoken wikia members post about it.
I get regular emails from the staff blog. Most of the blog posts are useless at informing wikia members of things. They are either promoting things that might possibly come to a limited number of test wikias, or just about junk in general (like featured wikian), which I'm sure some people might care about, but trying to mentally sort all these posts and stay on top of which ones actually affect my wikia is nigh on impossible.
I mean, go look through the last 10 staff blog posts, tell me which ones affect or will affect the Zoids wikia, and when? I highly doubt you'll be able to do it, so why is it surprising that I can't either.
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Have you thought about following just specific categories within the staff blog - like new features or community news? We do try to get a variety in since there is a diversity of interests there. Following just specific categories might be helpful to you.
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The blogs name tells you what it is about. Too mean?
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yes it does - but if you know there is a whole subset you aren't interested in and don't want it emailed to you - then you can just follow specific categories
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Yes, we only actually care for editor changes, we really are used to talk pages, so introducing features like message wall is just useless in my opinion, we actually want technical improvement. =/
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I agree.
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Good point, especially since the message wall is less an improvement than a diminishment, a hindrance.
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"The thing I’m most concerned about is that 81% of people who responded indicated that they don’t learn about new features until they appear on their wikis. We also learned that 72% of you didn’t know we post weekly technical updates on our Staff Blog, which is a bummer! "
I think what you guys should be doing is wiki-wide messages about your updates because more people actually know what's going on. And yes, it's a bummer that almost the majority of wikian users don't read the update blogs, in which it isn't good. I think... I think you guys read the first sentence. :P But, I think we should try to get the lurkers, readers, IP editors and some of the inactive users to get more involved with the wikia community, that way we have more of a feedback from more users. I don't really know how we should do that, but hopefully, wiki-wide messages for updates and stuff like that would help.
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I think you should read comments first too =) The comments directly below almost say the exact same thing.
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K. I know, I'm just explaining my response.
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It's pretty common that creators of services think they are THAT important to others that they automatically get all attention they want. Matter of the fact is, yust a small core of groupies come at the informative part. The major masses aren't that dedicated to land on the right spots, and an even larger group isn't that into wiki editing that they even get to follow up on a notice when it's presented right under their noses. Hence, that's the main issue nearly every large corporation working with volunteers is dealing with. Fine by me, but i am actually a bit stunned by the naive thinking you would get to the large masses with yust a hard to get to blog which regularly fancies not interesting stuff. Yes, again you hear me talk about that it's hard to get to. It should be spread out about technical information, wiki enhancements/ new stuff/ improvements of coding and 'empowerment' / 'fun' / getting in touch kind of blogs.
Beside that, it would be nice to be able to identify all staff members their post with the blue color, while i have noticed regularly that some staff members don't have the blue background at their comments.
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"The thing I’m most concerned about is that 81% of people who responded indicated that they don’t learn about new features until they appear on their wikis."
So only 19% are leaving negative feedback about new features when it could be more? Much more? I see.
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That should have been on the survey - "Do you generally like the features Wikia produces?"
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I honestly think a detailed survey should go out site-wide on new features before and/or after official release.
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Per Moncho.
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We do hope do to more surveys with the community - and looking at what products, communication methods and timing is definitely a big part of that.
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It could also mean that the negative feedback thusfar are outspoken. 62% had posted on blog posts before, so that means 43% aren't giving "negative feedback".
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"62% of respondents have never given feedback on one of the Wikia staff blog posts before" Lurkers, you gotta love 'em. :)
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Yep - any ideas on how we can get them more involved here?
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There will always be a majority not responding, EVER. But you can pursuade them to at least read here by spreading the word around a bit more and make the staff blogs destinguish easier in what is interesting (technical, new features, or for some social), so people can shift through the info quickly and move on to their other routines/ edits/ adoring others their work/ chatting (which is where they are here for) Really, i have seen at highly responsive forums people starting to post after having been reading for 3 (!!) years without posting. And that most of the times is triggered by interesting topics/ informative information.
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Thanks for the feedback - and feel free to send in interesting ideas or requests.
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I'll simply quote from Wikipedia: "Lack of trust represents one of the reasons explaining lurking behavior (Ridings, Gefen & Arinze 2006)."
I guess you know how to fix that. ;)
