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User:Sebwite/navbox study

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There is a question I am trying to answer: Does a navbox improve readership and editorial improvement of an article?

The answer to this question will help in determining whether or not navboxes are a useful tool on Wikipedia.

This page is dedicated to a case study to determine:

  1. If readership rises following placement of a navbox on a page
  2. If editing rises following placement of a navbox on a page
  3. If there are any other benefits to a navbox


Readership/Editing

[edit]

Template:Commercial air travel was used for this study. It was created on February 27, 2008. It listed 28 articles in the final version published on that date.

This site provides information the number of times any Wikipedia page has been visited since December 2007.

Article Views in January 2008 Views in March 2008 Difference Edits in January 2008 Edits in March 2008 Difference
Airline Reservations System 400 963 563 0 0 0
Airline timetable 851 1137 286 0 5 5
Frequent flyer program 10,422 10,050 -372 9 8 -1
Government contract flight 458 685 227 1 0 -1
Red-eye flight 7859 9217 1358 2 2 0
Standby (air travel) 946 1423 477 1 3 2
Airline hub 11,771 11,985 214 20 9 -11
Bag tag 777 1520 743 1 1 0
Baggage allowance 315 900 585 0 0 0
Checked baggage 467 797 330 1 2 1
Lost luggage 480 979 499 0 4 4
Airport check-in 1302 2058 756 3 1 -2
Airport security 8509 8250 -259 13 13 0
Airline seat 4020 5130 1110 0 8 8
Business class 8277 8307 30 13 17 4
Economy class 5211 5927 716 4 7 3
First class (aviation) 4165 5473 1308 10 16 6
Airline meal 3639 4853 1214 6 5 -1
Airsickness bag 4405 1364 -3041 0 0 0
In-flight entertainment 4279 5096 817 8 15 7
Deadheading (aviation) - 6448 - - 1 -
Flight attendant 20849 21360 511 19 21 2
Aviator 19877 21063 1186 17 26 9
Airline security 645 884 239 0 2 2
Flight data recorder 5835 6319 484 4 12 8
Pre-flight safety demonstration 2298 2952 654 0 4 4
Overwing exits 188 515 327 0 0 0
Total 128,245 139,207 10,962 132 181 49

Conclusion

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Out of these 28 articles, 27 had existed in January 2008, the month before the navbox was created. Only these 27 articles are counted in the totals.

Most of these articles had an increase in both readership and editing. In 24 of the 27 articles, readership increased. In 22 of the 27 articles, editing increased.

Overall, in these 27 articles, readership increased by an average of 406 views, or about 8.5% between January and March 2008. Editing increased by about 1.8 edits, or about 37% during this period.

This study shows that both readership and editing are likely to increase as a result of the placement of a navbox on a page.

Criticism

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These results do not justify the statement of conclusion. The conclusion is statistically invalid. The data is raw, and not normalized to seasonal and normal month-to-month variations in readership. I checked only one of these articles and it showed month-to-month page hit variations far greater than the conclusion's results. This being a travel-related set of articles, it would appear reasonable to expect that readership would be higher in the spring than in the middle of winter. Kbrose (talk) 04:15, 16 September 2010 (UTC)