Forum:Knowing our readers

It's August and we're only months away from the wiki's decade anniversary! As part of the upcoming celebration, I thought it would be fitting to know a bit of our readers. This was suggested in a previous forum thread. Let's get to the results, shall we?

The feedback
Several things to note about the feedback:
 * It was opened from 27th June, 2014 till 22nd July, 2014.
 * A total of 35 responses were collected.
 * Information was collected anonymously via SurveyMonkey.
 * A total of ten questions was posted (the maximum for a basic account on SM) and answered.

Gender
It's not surprising that a sizable amount of the readers are primarily male. From the graph, there is a total of 32 males and 2 females. One is "gender fluid". Genius...

Age
It is somewhat surprising (to me) that a significant amount of the individuals are primarily "Young Adults" (18-25), a total of 21 persons (zing!). There are only twelve "Teenagers" (13-18) and only two "Adults" (25+).

Attraction to the franchise
A majority are attracted to the franchise's lore than its social gaming aspect: 31 individuals are lore-fans while the remaining 4 are matchmaking players.

Activities revolving around the franchise
The feedback on this is fairly obvious. A great majority listed "Playing Campaign" as their main activity with "Playing multiplayer" as their secondary. A substantial amount invest heavily on reading novels and exchanging understanding of the fictional universe in the forums. There are also a substantial amount of Forgers and Custom gamers as well. Not that many invest their time in making artistic works unfortunately by the looks of it.

Finding Halopedia
Much of the visits (19) are from search engines (i.e. Bing, Google) which is a good sign that the wiki is gaining some web presence. Word of mouth-type visits via forums (9) are good indication of the wiki's popularity in the Halo community. A minority of the visits are from articles on other fan sites (3).

We have four "Others": two persons are familiar with the wiki based on the phrasing of the answer (and might be potential current users; one person seems to be aware of the wiki's migration from Wikia), and two other persons seem to have found the wiki by accident and through Youtube comments.

Devices and browsers
No graphs here unfortunately. Two individuals skipped this question.

The breakdown of devices are as such (primary use):
 * 21 PC users (incl. those confused and answered "A Computer?")
 * 7 laptop users (incl. one Mac user)
 * 2 tablet users (incl. one Surface RT user)
 * 2 mobile users (iPhone)
 * nb: a total of four individuals listed "mobile/cell phones" as their secondary devices.

A majority of these users use the following browsers as their primary browsing software:
 * 19 Chrome users
 * 7 Firefox users
 * 4 Internet Explorer users
 * 2 Safari users
 * nb: two individuals use a mix of Safari/Firefox and Chrome when browsing the wiki.

Grizzled readers?
A breakdown of the graph:
 * 9 individuals have browsed the wiki since the Halo 3 days (2007).
 * 10 individuals have browsed the wiki since the Halo Wars/Halo 3: ODST days (2009).
 * 7 individuals have browsed the wiki since the Halo: Reach days (2010).
 * 6 individuals have browsed the wiki since the Halo CE Anniversary days (2011).
 * 3 individuals have browsed the wiki since the Halo 4 days (2012).

Activities revolving around the wiki
A breakdown of the graph:
 * A total of 15 individuals contribute and edit the wiki (i.e. contribute to articles, upload files).
 * A total of 6 individuals engage with the community (i.e. contribute to forums and talk pages)
 * A total of 27 individuals lurk around the wiki and read articles.
 * One gave a smart-ass answer: "Research on nerdy things".

The actual feedback on the wiki
I'll let the graph and table do its job.

Comments on improving the wiki
A total of 25 individuals gave comments and a total of 10 individuals skipped this question. In summary:
 * There is a common concern between four (4) individuals is that the wiki is lacking coverage on multiplayer (and gameplay) content. One in particular is concerned with the maintenance of the walkthrough pages.
 * Four individuals commented that the wiki needs a facelift/layout revision:
 * Frontpage layout needs to be updated.
 * General appearance needs to be updated, such as new artworks/headers.
 * Two individuals are concerned with the consistency of the layout/formatting of articles.
 * Two individuals highlighted the need for proper sourcing.
 * One individual wonders if there could be a "dark" theme for anonymous users.
 * One highlighted the need of a wiki user manual for editing purposes.
 * One commented that some explanations are overly complex and needs to be simplified.
 * One commented that our "DYK" ("Did You Know?") lacks variety.
 * One commented that the articles should have less spoiler on book/comic-related content.
 * One commented that the "search engine" (?) needs to be improved. Not sure what the individual meant.
 * The remaining are congratulatory comments (i.e. keep up the good work, just keep it updated). One is a "idk" comment. IDK!

Comments
Took me longer than I wanted. — subtank   23:50, 12 August 2014 (EDT)
 * Well, I was at least one of the two females and most likely the one who responded with "research on nerdy things". I wouldn't give to much concern with the one respondent who stated that they were genderfluid. It simply means that they don't adhere to one particular gender over another. It was very cool to see that the majority of respondents (19) have stuck around since 2009. The data for reader activity and the feedback kinda tells me that there needs to be a greater emphasis on community events and inclusion, and the spaces to encourage that. Personally, my main concern was the wiki's appearance which I believe needs a drastic facelift.
 * This is very interesting. I find that on websites such as Reddit or even Halo Waypoint, when someone links to Halo.wikia, another individual usually "corrects" them by telling them to use Halopedia instead. I would also imagine that a lot of younger users would use the wikia over Halopedia due to it being more likely to appear through a Google search. Although I have also noticed that Halopedia is usually the result directly under the wikia (sometimes even above it) when one searches for Halo-related terms. I'm also curious as to how this survey was distributed. I know I saw it on Halo Waypoint, and obviously on Halopedia. I'm not sure if this was posted to the subreddit, but that would have definitely yielded more results. Nonetheless, great work on the survey! (I love graphs) - NightHammer (talk) 00:36, 13 August 2014 (EDT)
 * In addition to the Google results preference of HN over Halopedia, Wikia is also a more well-known brand of online encyclopedia so casual people tend to instinctively think it's some kind of gold standard in that area. Which really isn't true; many quality wikis run by actual hardcore fans are actually independent, with inevitable cheap counterparts in Wikia. That, and some people aren't even aware that this wiki exists in the first place. --Jugus (Talk  | Contribs ) 01:19, 13 August 2014 (EDT)

Nice work with the survey. I'm not particularly surprised about results like most of the users being male young adults or the massive preference of story/campaign content over multiplayer (the latter of which is fairly obvious from our articles). Still, an interesting read. I am somewhat surprised that no Halo Nation trolls apparently found their way to the survey to sabotage it.


 * "One commented that some explanations are overly complex and needs to be simplified." - wonder what they mean. Too much jargon/technical terminology?


 * "One commented that our "DYK" ("Did You Know?") lacks variety." - I agree. I've been meaning to add stuff for some time but actual articles tend to take precedence. Maybe I'll highlight it in the AID once I get it rolling again.


 * "One commented that the articles should have less spoiler on book/comic-related content." - Not much we can do about that, since spoilery content will inevitably seep into in-universe articles.


 * "One commented that the "search engine" (?) needs to be improved. Not sure what the individual meant." I would presume it's referring to our search bar. Maybe they'd like to have article titles showing up more conspicuously; I'll admit I sometimes wonder if the trade-off was worth it when we removed redirects from the search. On one hand it does reduce clutter but it also eliminates more well-known terms like "plasma rifle" a casual fan might type in the bar which might confuse people (Wikipedia, for instance, includes redirects in the search bar).

It's obvious that multiplayer content is something we need to improve. I know the internet is full of people who mostly play the MP and just a few of those people editing as actively as our lore-focused userbase could bring our MP articles up to speed. --Jugus (Talk  | Contribs ) 01:19, 13 August 2014 (EDT)


 * I think I see the issue with the search bar. I've often found that unless I spell something that specifically exists on Halopedia, I get no result at all. I guess I'm used to searches that will at least provide a list of close or possible words close to the request so you can then choose. I find Halopedia's search is only helpful if you can guess an exact word or term in an article. -ScaleMaster117 (talk) 07:38, 13 August 2014 (EDT)


 * The removal of redirect pages from the search bar was actually a conscious decision we made a while back (the feature can basically be switched on and off), as it was found that many of the suggestions were often redundant or extraneous, and tended to take up space in the field over terms that are actual page titles. For instance, if you typed in "Plasma" you'd get suggestions like "Plasma rifle", "Plasma rifel", "Plasma rifles", "Plasma pistol", Plasma pistols", and so on. But I've also encountered situations where including redirects as suggestions would improve the flow of browsing the wiki (and I can see more casual readers facing this problem even more often). We might want to reconsider adding them back. --Jugus (Talk  | Contribs ) 07:51, 13 August 2014 (EDT)