Board Thread:Administrative/@comment-61022-20160813165629

Good day fellow admins,

I got back from Community Connect late last night and I wanted to take a moment to go over some of the insights that I gleaned from the trip and share them with the rest of you.

Our Wiki was used as an example on a number of items that relate to Search Engine Optimisation. The example they used was out page on Wolverine. My comments are in italics.

(1) The first thing that they went over was that Google and other search engines are getting to the point where it can make a connection between multiple identifiers for a subject. So, to simplify it, Google intuitively knows that James Howlett, Logan, and Wolverine are all the same thing. When Google crawls through the internet picking things up, it will actually correlate all the data the page. As such we can have a page identified by the usual naming conventions and as long as all the relevant data is on the page, Google will make those connections so that when people do a search it will pull up the right thing.

I'm not sure if we still have pages that are named like "Spider-Man (Peter Parker)" or the like, but we can change them back to "Peter Parker (Earth-616)" and not worry about it impacting SOE scores so long as all the relevant info is on the page.

(2) Speaking of, they also talked about the SOE rankings, search engines usually rank hits based on when the relevant information is mentioned on a page and how far all identifiers are spread out. So what is really hurting us right now is that most other sites on a given subject break down all the basic info at the top of the page and then go into more detail as it goes on. Using the Wolverine page as an example, it doesn't mention his mutant powers or his affiliations until much later in the article which doesn't help with page ranking.

''My suggestion in this set of circumstances is to go through pages an add an "overview" section. Something that's about a paragraph long that explains who the character is, what their powers are, what their motivations are and who they are affiliated with. I think something similar to the paragraph blurbs that Marvel uses to describe the subject of a comic book at on page one of every comic they publish would be an ideal model to base off of for this sort of exercise.''

(3) The discussions section is going to eventually replace forums as Wikia works more towards becoming more mobile friendly.

''There was a lot of questions they were asking us to try and make this a "good fit" with users. But basically that's where they're going. They're going to try and increase customisation so you can follow specific subjects. Customisation for VS opinions and such. My take away from this is that perhaps it would be better for admins and Mods to start a Facebook group or something similar where we can all congregate and talk privately since I can foresee this making admin/mod internal communication more difficult.''

(4) Fan Contributor Program will be expanded: Right now they are still looking for contributors to write opinion pieces or hype pieces for the Fandom side of things. Check out [this page] for more details. Right now there is a vetting process, but eventually Wikia will be opening the floodgates to just about everybody to write stuff to make Fandom almost like a Wiki of opinions on Fandom. Also right now they are telling people that only English language submissions are being accepted right now, but they will be expanding to other languages in the next 12 to 18 months (give or take)

Thoughts? 