Wiki Statistics as a future feature?

Statistics are an important part of using TN Wiki. “Are” I say? I should say “should be” an important part of using TN Wiki. If you’re creating or contributing to Wiki pages, it’s natural that you want to know if anybody reads it, to justify the effort you’re putting in a page. If you’re promoting a certain Wiki page, you want to be able to see if that has had any effect. And if you’re reading a page, you might be interested to see some stats to get an indication of how authoritative a page is.

I’ve searched around and noticed that many people agree with me, so I think it would be great if statistics could be added as a new feature to TN Wiki. The TN Wiki user interface certainly allows this feature to be added in a natural way: all it takes would be an additional tab. Now, I’m certainly no graphic designer, but I thought it would be fun to create a screenshot that demonstrates how that would look. Pretty cool, eh? Okay, I’ll admit that if anybody, after seeing this work, wants me to redo the look of their company’s web site, they need glasses, but I guess it gets the idea across.

Luckily, you don’t have to sit around and wait for this feature to be added. You can use a service like StatCounter to get an idea. This has been well documented at http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/5885.track-your-wiki-article-page-views.aspx

Equally important, there’s something you can do to actually improve the chances that Wiki Statistics will be added as a future feature. Visit http://communityninjas.uservoice.com/forums/155543-general-site-feedback, it will allow you to vote for certain new features that will improve TN Wiki. More specifically, you need to go to the following page (which unfortunately requires a separate log in)  http://communityninjas.uservoice.com/forums/155543-general-site-feedback/suggestions/2799985-add-views-to-technet-wiki-pages and vote for the adding of views to TN Wiki pages. Leave a comment where you specifically ask for a new view named “Statistics” (like Tord G. Nordahl did).

If you’ve done that you will have contributed to the improvement of the TN Wiki world, in which case I thank you. If you’re in the flow and want additional tips about changing yourself and the world, I really can’t help you that much, but Gandhi can: http://www.positivityblog.com/index.php/2008/05/09/gandhis-top-10-fundamentals-for-changing-the-world/