Talk:Lady Gaga

Ported article from WP

This is the 12th most popular article on WP in Dec 2009 with over 90,000 views per day. So the subject of Lady Gaga is highly interesting. I added some more information with references but I did not check all the references or text. What I'm wondering is: if we port the most popular WP articles and improve them, maybe this will bring more readers to CZ, or at least get CZ registering on Google searches? Such is my theory. But if my logic is incorrect, I don't mind if other CZ editors call for deletion here, since the topic is somewhat racy, albeit highly popular among all kinds of young people today. I'm not attached to this article.--Thomas Wright Sulcer 04:58, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

Personally I'd prefer having too many people bringing in (possibly) too many unsuitable WP articles that then have to be rearranged than not having any new articles created at all. Hayford Peirce 05:03, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for letting me know, Hayford; for me this is somewhat of an experiment. I'm trying to boost readership to CZ by porting WP's "hottest" (most read) articles, improving them, and seeing what happens. Readership is a big thing for me. I'm not particularly interested in Lady Gaga but lots of other people out there are, and I'm exploring ways to bring them in to CZ. My tentative hypothesis is: bringing in "hot" articles will boost CZ readership. Any idea if this hypothesis is right?--Thomas Wright Sulcer 13:05, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

Tom, your logic is sound but as you say the article needs to be improved upon. If the article is a copy of what's on WP, why would anyone want to read it here when the WP article would more than likely be ranked higher on say, Google? The key here is for the article to be *better* than the WP original. Offer something to the reader/researcher that the WP article doesn't. Keep it up to date and relevant. Huge task I know. I'm not against articles being imported from WP. It's a start. But if the object here is to attract a bigger audience share than WP, the article must offer something more that keeps the reader coming back and discovering other articles in the process. I don't know of any LG fans on CZ, that could help out on that. Meg Ireland 05:24, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

Meg, thanks for your input. And I plan to improve this article with new and better information. I'm a former Wikipedian, freshly on CZ, but for me a substantial drawback is that there is little indication to me that CZ is attracting any readers. When I do a Google search for "Lady Gaga", the first thing that comes up is LG's website, then the THIRD entry down is Wikipedia -- but CZ is nowhere to be found, even after pages and pages of scrolling. And, for me, a big motivator is readership -- why should I work super hard and create great stuff if *nobody is reading it*? At any rate, my tentative plan is to do both -- port hot articles AND improve them if I can.--Thomas Wright Sulcer 13:05, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

I definitely think that CZ can profit from directing some of its activities towards information that is of interest to potential readers rather than to us writers, and so I welcome Thomas' initiative, even though I have to admit I never even heard of Lady Gaga before. If we go further down this road, however, I would stress that we need differentiators, and the best thing we have (apart from approval and the lack of vandalism) is better contextualization. So I would urge you to pay special attention to filling in the Related Articles subpage of those popularity-driven imports and perhaps also work a bit on the articles that appear there. On a related note, I am keeping a list of search terms that drive traffic to both sites, which may be of interest in this regard. --Daniel Mietchen 21:44, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

Daniel, I clicked on the list of search terms -- about half are red (unwritten). If CZ has articles about these unwritten terms (making them blue) would this increase traffic to CZ?--Thomas Wright Sulcer 12:12, 27 February 2010 (UTC)

I definitely think so. By the way, replies on talk pages here are not done in logical but chronological order (though I would prefer the former), so whenever you reply, please do so after the last reply in the thread, and indent from there. --Daniel Mietchen 12:51, 27 February 2010 (UTC)

Thanks Daniel, you sound wary, like this is a bad choice. If it is, it's easy to delete Lady Gaga, or YouTube, or popular articles; one mouse click, poof; I don't really care that much if these popular articles are deleted since I haven't worked on them that much. But I'm willing to try to improve them as best I can. I need help understanding about the "related articles" stuff. I tried reading through the files about it and my eyes glazed over. But I'm willing to add stuff; just don't know how. I find the CZ help files somewhat complex and intimidating. Are these related stories? Or a file linked to the article; not sure. Btw, I had never heard of Lady Gaga either until I saw it on the list and clicked on it. Also like to know what ideas there are to drive more traffic to CZ; my general impression is that few people are reading CZ, and my interest is winning more readers, and the experiment is to see if stuff like Lady Gaga and YouTube will help bring more readers to us. Does anybody understand how the Internet works, that is, why when I type in a search term, that WP comes up on the first page, and CZ doesn't? How can we get CZ to be on the first page too? And I still have to figure out about this forums stuff and how it works.--Thomas Wright Sulcer 02:00, 27 February 2010 (UTC)

Only administrators such as Constables and Sysops can delete articles. Anyone can blank the text, but that's all. And if they didn't have a pretty good reason for it, the Cops would be all over them. Hayford Peirce 02:06, 27 February 2010 (UTC)

Of the many dozens of articles that I've brought over from WP, all of them are here for the sole purpose of MAKING THEM BETTER. Most of them were vandalized or dumbed down to incomprehensibility at WP. I first wanted to restore them to a semblance of literacy, then to expand them with additional information. Isn't that what Thomas is proposing? I think he should be given a gold medal for doing so. Obviously, there's no point in porting over Pokemon Article Number 10,000 unless it's going to be improved. But who is to say that it *can't* be improved? Hayford Peirce 00:15, 27 February 2010 (UTC)

Agree with Hayford. I want to do better than WP.--Thomas Wright Sulcer 02:00, 27 February 2010 (UTC)

(unindent) Sorry if I sounded negative — I intended to sound positive with an accompanying cautionary second voice, and you can be sure that I did not even think of marking this page for deletion. To get an idea about CZ:Related Articles, you may have a look at any of them (listed in Category:Related Article Subpages) or at this forum thread on a related issue. To some extent, we are all still finding our way on this, since it is a considerable deviation from the way things are handled in other wikis. And if the instructions for using the forums, related articles or anything else here are not instructive, please try to point out where the problems are, so that we can make it smoother for the next time around. --Daniel Mietchen 02:57, 27 February 2010 (UTC)

Yes, CZ is still very much a Work In Progress, sigh.... Hayford Peirce 04:55, 27 February 2010 (UTC)