Wiki Stats - End February 2012

The total number of pages in the Wiki (as at 1 March 2012) now stands at 3947 (previously 3829, 3724, 3672), an increase of 118 pages during the past month. Of these 702 pages (was 669, 591, 576) begin with number and are most probably a date related gleaning. We currently have 1289 wiki pages categorised as "People", of which 975 begin with the letter "R".

TRP Users

We currently have 67 user accounts on TRP, including 3 new members who successfully activated their accounts in February. We welcome Anne, Sharon & Renee and look forward to their contributions to TRP.

Forthcoming Milestones

I don't know if you cast an occasional glance at the "Stats" page within "Explore TRP". If you do, you'll have noticed that we're likely to reach some milestone numbers in the coming days and weeks. On Monday 5 March it will be 700 days since Barry first fired up The Reeves Project wiki.

We are slowing moving towards having one third of a million visits to our wiki pages. And we are also approaching half a million total pageviews. What's the difference? Visits to wiki pages are the result of following links to and between TRP pages. The pageviews count is higher since activities such as "Preview" whilst editing a wiki page generates a new html page for you to view, but the url doesn't change.

And I'd expect about the tenth of the month, somebody will add our 4000th wiki page. Will that be a page you create?

Stale Comments?

We all recognise that over time food can get stale. For fresh produce that can happen in a few days and even preserved foods deteriorate over time. But I wonder if you'd thought about your comments on our wiki pages becoming stale? There are two primary reasons why this may happen.

• The more obvious reason is that you subsequently discover additional information and in such circumstances you are encouraged to add the new information to the wiki in a timely fashion.
  If it doesn't affect the context of any subsequent comments you can edit your original post. Please don't simply delete the previous posting, rather add the new information and provide as much explanation of the change as you can.
  Otherwise please post a new comment on the wiki page and consider editing the original comment to add a simple "PS See new comment titled xxxx below" to high-light the existence of the new information.
  
  
• There is a second, perhaps less obvious reason. As you know, The Reeves Project wiki is a dynamic beast; new pages are added, the occasional redundant page is removed and existing pages are enriched with new and updated content. And it is this evolution of a page's content that can also cause a comment to become stale. The content of the page may have changed, perhaps in response to the original comment, such that the comment now no longer makes sense in the context of the current version of the wiki page.
  In such circumstances, it may be appropriate for you to delete your original comment and you are encouraged to do so to help keep the content in our wiki fresh. The whole comment can be deleted if that's appropriate or particular paragraphs of the comment can be struck through. See TRP News for February for more information on using strike-through.

NB the above relates to comments only. And please always consider editing the content of a page as a means to providing new or updated information. Collaboration is a strength of the wiki and the inherent versioning of wiki pages provides a safety net if thing go wrong :-)