User blog:SlyCooperFan1/Acepedia Survey Results August 2022

"On a scale of 1-10, what is your overall opinion of Acepedia?"

Greetings, aces! Last month marked the 16th anniversary of Acepedia! After so many years, the wiki has gone through a LOT. The community is currently in a quieter period between Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown and the next Ace Combat game, so we wanted to take the opportunity to gauge everyone's opinions of the wiki and where we are right now. At the start of August, I posted a survey for Acepedia readers and editors to fill out. 97 people filled it out, and we'd like to thank all of you! We sincerely appreciate it!

This blog post goes over the details of the survey, from data analysis to specific responses. Let's dive in!

Visiting and Editing

The first two sets of questions were centered around how often survey respondents visit and edit the wiki.

Visiting

The vast majority of people who responded to the survey visit the wiki at most on a weekly basis. A little over 75% of respondents said they visit the wiki "weekly", "monthly", or "rarely". In fact, "weekly" received 33% of the votes, the most of any option. The remaining respondents visit the wiki quite often, at least daily. I was surprised to see 15.5% of the respondents say they visit the wiki multiple times a day; that really boosts my confidence in the current overall quality of the wiki. Not a single person responded with "never", which was also great to see.

For anyone who responded with "monthly" or "rarely", a follow-up question asked why that is. The overwhelming majority of this subset said they didn't have a specific reason or just don't really need to visit that often right now, which makes sense. There just isn't too much news happening at the moment, so there's not as much reason to constantly check the wiki.

Four people responded that they don't like Fandom's advertisements. I was really surprised by how low that number was. I had written a small paragraph to explain that using an adblocker on both desktop and mobile helps a lot in this regard, but fewer people seem to be bothered by Fandom's ads than I expected, at least to the point to avoid visiting the wiki. Still, I'll copy here what I posted there for anyone who is interested:

If you avoid Acepedia because of Fandom's advertisements, please feel free to use an adblock extension or browser. uBlock Origin is highly recommended. On mobile, you can install Firefox and use the uBlock Origin extension there as well. Please note, the advertisements are not under Acepedia's control, and no Acepedia user sees any ad revenue (it goes straight to Fandom--all users are volunteers).

Mobile

80% of respondents said they visit Acepedia on mobile, either through a mobile browser (Chrome, Firefox, Safari, etc.) or the dedicated Fandom app. This is regardless of whether they also view on desktop or not, so it was very important for us to see this statistic since traffic tends to be mostly on mobile these days. We all have to consider mobile users very heavily when editing the wiki. Nearly 20% of those who visit on mobile said they use the Fandom app, which means we definitely need to consider app users when considering mobile users. The app shows less ads, but is much older and isn't as intuitive to use so it doesn't always look exactly the same as mobile browsers.

As an aside, the current mobile browser experience is a horrible one because of Fandom's insane mobile ad practices. As I explained above, you can use a mobile browser like Firefox to have a mobile adblock solution. It's the only way I personally can browse Acepedia, or any Fandom wiki, on mobile.

Editing

As expected, asking about editing the wiki received much more varied responses than just visiting the wiki. 73% of respondents said they never edit the wiki, and 20% said they only rarely edit. One person said they edit monthly, and the remaining five people said they edit weekly. This was anticipated; I believe somewhere around 99% of Fandom's traffic only views and doesn't edit.

When asked why they don't edit or what could motivate people to edit, these were the most common responses:

• 50% of the respondents selected "I'm afraid of making a bad edit or breaking something". This is also what I expected, since it's a common fear, but if you have this fear, don't be afraid! We assume good faith of all users; if something breaks, we simply go in and help fix it. No harm done! Only those who intentionally harm the wiki are removed, and I'm sure most of you aren't in that group!
• 40% selected "I don't think anything needs editing". That implies we're pretty much done and as good as we can be, and while that's a sweet thought and much appreciated, the truth is, we definitely have a LOT of work to do. I'll get into this in a second, because...
• When asked if there's anything that would encourage respondents to edit, we got a lot of answers boiling down to, "I'm not sure what needs editing, is there a list of articles, is there a category?" I was dumbfounded, because we have Category:Stubs and Category:Articles marked for cleanup for this exact purpose, but this means we need to work on making these more visible for would-be editors. Clearly, these categories are not receiving the attention they deserve, so we'll have to figure out how we can improve that.
• A few people mentioned they genuinely have no idea how to edit. I totally get that, and honestly, my best recommendation is to simply click that button and try it out. There's no better way to learn than through experience! There are tutorials, especially on Fandom's Community Central, that you can browse if you'd like as well.

Content and Social Media

The next set of questions centered around the content of the wiki and our social media presence.

Games and Articles

First off, we asked respondents to vote on how important certain types of articles are to them, on a scale from 1 (least important) to 5 (most important). For each type of article, I graded the total votes by counting "5" as five points, "4" as four points, etc. to create this graph:

Judging from this, most people are interested in our aircraft and conflict articles. World News surprisingly received an outlier of especially low votes, which implies either people don't know what they are or people don't really care about those articles in particular, as long as we integrate their information into all the other articles.

Next, we asked "for which games should Acepedia prioritize development over the next few months?" We're still a ways away from the next Ace Combat, so until then we have an opportunity to improve our info for the older games. These were the results:

* Advance, Xi, Northern Wings, Infinity, 7, and the next Ace Combat were custom responses, hence their relatively-lower vote totals. We didn't include them because we already have very comprehensive information on Infinity, we've been working and are still working on 7, we can't work on the next Ace Combat without new details, and most people really aren't searching for the obscure mobile titles.

By far, it's clear that people want Acepedia to improve its status on AC3 and ACX. Less people were interested in improving AC1 and AC2 than I expected, but AC6 is also up there, followed closely by 5 and Zero. This is extremely helpful and we'll certainly try to shift gears to work on AC3 and ACX far more over the next few months.

Social Media

I've spent years working on Acepedia's presence on social media platforms. Did you know we used to have a Google+ page? Rest in peace. This section only had one simple question: how important to the survey respondents is our social media presence on Discord, Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook? The possible answers were "Not at all important", "Important", and "Very important". Here's the results, scored in a similar way to the article importance above:

I couldn't help but laugh. I haven't updated Acepedia's Facebook page in a long time, and from the looks of things, it's no love lost there. 19 people said our presence on Facebook is important, but only 2 people said it's very important, while a staggering 76 people (78% of respondents) said it's not at all important. Sorry, guys, but I think our Facebook page will remain dead :P

I was surprised to see our YouTube channel receive so many votes in its favor. I suppose people have been wanting for a source of the older videos from before the modern internet and the ACE COMBAT Channel. This just goes to show how important archival is, even and especially for videos.

Next Ace Combat

We asked two simple questions here: how important will spoiler warnings be when the next Ace Combat game releases, and how likely is it that you'll visit Acepedia when it comes out? I didn't expect the spoiler warnings to receive so many votes, but here's the results:

Custom Suggestions

And now we come to the final question: "Do you have any suggestions for Acepedia that weren't addressed in this survey?" I'd like to address these directly where I can. If your suggestion wasn't listed in here, that's because it either wasn't a suggestion (thank you for the kind words for those who sent them in through this question!) or it's already covered by a previous question.

Anonymous #40

In regard to my selection for what games Acepedia should prioritize on the previous page, I think that the website would benefit both the reader and the creators behind Ace Combat if certain respect is given to the artistic intent used in these games. Regardless of their contribution to the "story" or "timeline" of Ace Combat, their contribution to the "series" of Ace Combat should be highlighted in an important manner.

It's hard to convey this idea in text form, so I apologize for any confusing words or structuring.

Thank you for being so passionate about this relatively niche series, and for creating and maintaining an encyclopedia that new and old fans can rely on.

- Anonymous (survey respondent #40)

The games they're referring to were AC1, AC2, and AC3. I'm afraid I don't exactly understand what this user is trying to say. My best guess is that they feel these games are under-represented on the wiki? Or that we don't cover enough history of gameplay mechanics? In both of those cases, we're definitely intent on improving the PS1 coverage on the wiki as well as descriptions of gameplay mechanics. Other than that, though, I'm not sure. If anyone has a better idea of what they're talking about, feel free to comment!

Oltrex, Anonymous #60, and #86

More in depth aircraft statistics, since a screenshot of the in game stat bars is not very precise and stuff like the F15E's turn speed boost when below 700mhp (I think) is not documented, maybe more precise data can be acquired trough data mining since the pc files can be decrypted now, same thing for missiles would be cool, Ive been told that LAAMS get a homing boost after flying for a while but that's not officialy explained anywhere, such data should be on acepefia to enhance its usefulness

- User:Oltrex

i would recommend taking a step into having a technical section for the games... like how the engine works and some other things in the game code itself... if its possible

- Anonymous (survey respondent #60)

find more info about cut content from the games like ac 4, 5 0 and 6

- Anonymous (survey respondent #86)

There's a LOT of statistics and mechanics that we don't get to see without thorough testing. For example, did you know that the J35J Draken and MiG-31 Foxhound have the exact same top speed in Ace Combat Zero: The Belkan War (2,400 km/h (1,500 mph))? (Credit to dead_d0g and Xaddio96 for a LOT of AC5/ACZ hidden stats!) You wouldn't know that just by looking at their Speed stats: the J35J has a Speed stat of 70 while the MiG-31 has a Speed stat of 97.

The problem with simply datamining some of this information and then throwing it onto the wiki is that it's not conducive to citations that other users can verify. I'd venture a guess that 99% of people who have played Ace Combat have never touched any of the internal data files. The process of opening up the games and analyzing their data is only performed by a select few. There's no easy answer here. In fact, in that linked tweet above with dead_d0g and Xaddio96, I even mentioned that I'd like to add those stats somehow to Acepedia but adding references is tricky, otherwise anyone could say whatever numbers they want to and say "don't worry, I datamined it, just trust me". It's something we, as a community, should certainly figure out as time goes on and we get more and better access to the internal files of the older games. dead_d0g suggested documenting the process of using Cheat Engine, for example.

Keystone's release of AC7's cut content is highly detailed in his process and that's something we can refer to. But then the problem with cut content becomes, how much of it do we put on the wiki? What value does it provide our readers, especially since it's all been, well, cut? I don't want to expand the number and length of the wiki's Trivia sections... We'll probably be responding to this on a case-by-case basis if anyone adds such content to the wiki, but it's not a particular priority of mine, personally. We've got enough non-cut content to still work on...

Aquidu and CalamitousEnigma

Be more on-top of removing "leftover" ideas from old Acepedia posts that don't have a solid source, or any source at all.

Also creating a list of valid "canon" material, to stop influxes of people trying to add lore from what they *think* is canon, but is actually fan-material. (Like the "full" map of Strangereal, the one with Evropa and the other named places in Sotoa)

- User:Aquidu

Acepedia still has a fair few remnants of speculatory or fanon information, as well as a lot of information that requires proper sourcing. Unfortunately, stuff like this is hard to weed out.

- User:CalamitousEnigma

Fighting off fanfiction on a wiki dedicated to official and confirmed material is a perpetual challenge for all wikis. After all, the point of being a wiki is that anyone can edit it, so we'll always have someone coming in to add whatever they want. That said, I think we've done very well at getting rid of most of the fan-made fluff from Acepedia. If you find anything that doesn't have a reference and isn't completely obvious to any player, feel free to add Template:Refneed (adds the ^{[citation needed]} text) and Template:Refimprove (adds a banner). Both of those templates add Category:References needed to the page.

YmirFritz1845

I think we should try to wrangle in some of the AC Infinity lore presented in the Special Plane descriptions since they include things like the implication that Pixy never became a terrorist, but rather had to fly the Morgan in live combat due to dubious circumstances and that some of Ace Combat 3's events were canon in that universe.

- User:YmirFritz1845

YmirFritz1845 is referring to this part of the ADFX-01 -Pixy- 's description:

According to one theory, it was used in live combat, demonstrating the viability of various experimental technologies. However, for some reason the original aircraft has been lost, leaving only records that the famous pilot was the last person to fly it.

I don't think this implies Pixy wasn't a terrorist. He did, in fact, enter live combat with Cipher. I'm pretty sure the missiles I fired in Zero were real missiles... In any case, if there were details in an Infinity Special Aircraft description that contradicted Strangereal lore, we probably would prioritize the Strangereal lore in regards to Strangereal. We only consider Special Aircraft to be canon when there's no conflict present, such as the Mobius Squadron aircraft.

As for AC3's events, the only AC3 aircraft in Infinity (the R-101 and X-49 and their Special variants) merely described the pre-AC3 events as we knew them already: Neucom made the R-101 and Rena tested the X-49. That's not disputed anywhere. As far as whether those events also happened in Infinity... well, I think that one we can leave up to the fans and not have to directly report on it. After all, those descriptions were all meant to be references for the fans, not necessarily world-building specifically for Infinity.

Anonymous #71 and #82

The way ads are presented, automatically popping down from the top on every new page click, make browsing the website unbearable for more than a few pages on both phone and laptop. I would spend longer on acepedia if it wasn't for the dreadful user experience in this respect.

- Anonymous (survey respondent #71)

Ads bring you to the top of the web page no matter how far into the article you were.

- Anonymous (survey respondent #82)

Yeah, it's seriously obnoxious. As I explained above, Acepedia does not control the ads, nor does any Acepedia user see a penny of ad revenue. It's all controlled by Fandom since we're hosted on their network. Click here to scroll up to my explanation in the "Visiting" section.

Anonymous #30

I would say for all the games to make a section just for the s rank requirements and guides for each mission on doing so so I don’t have to navigate to each mission page and scroll down to find only the score requirement

- Anonymous (survey respondent #30)

I believe this is in regards to the Mission Lists? Definitely, we can work on adding those. The problem with doing them in the past (and for a couple of the games...) is that we didn't (don't) know all of the S Rank requirements. With the Perfect Guides now, we should be able to add them for most of the games.

Anonymous #79

The lore, trivia and the characters could be expanded in the articles. There are outside sources which address this type of info while acepedia does not.

- Anonymous (survey respondent #79)

What information? What "outside sources"? I'm fairly certain we've got the largest collection of official info on the characters. If you're talking about fan-made stuff, we don't allow that on this wiki, see my response to Aquidu and CalamitousEnigma.

ApriliaBelka

Expand the weapon information overall. Some weapons have trivia about what their real world weapon reference and many don't.

- User:ApriliaBelka

Our standard and special weapon coverage has been pretty consistently poor in general. In regards to the real-life models, I'd like to have a standardized way to list the real-life model without fluffing up the prose. Maybe the gallery sections would be the best use for that. Definitely need to work on this one, thanks for the remarks!

NASCARFAN1820

I feel like the community page could have like events and stuff, but I guess that's what discord's for

- User:NASCARFAN1820

The thing is, we used to have events. We ran multiplayer sessions in Infinity and they were a lot of fun. There isn't much we can do today in terms of events; AC7's multiplayer is barebones, and we don't have enough editors to run editing events on the wiki. We are running Round Table discussions every now and then in the Discord server, but anything further will really depend on the future of Ace Combat itself.

bismo.maniac

Take some idea from other wiki such as Call of Duty wiki / Resident Evil wiki / Battlefield wiki

- User:bismo.maniac

I asked bismo.maniac what he meant by this; he said he was referring to a Main Page redesign. I agree, I've been thinking the Main Page could do with a refresh, but I think I'm going to wait to see the aesthetic style of the next game so we can take some elements from there to design the wiki overall.

JettStorm

Have a larger emphasis on the OST’s and tracks

- User:JettStorm

Years ago, I went on a spree to delete or redirect all of the single-song pages that weren't particularly notable. They added unnecessary fluff to the page count; they were short articles with little substance beyond a YouTube video embed. I think any emphasis we place on soundtracks should stay on the soundtrack pages as well as pages for individual notable tracks. Of course, if anyone has any thoughts on this, please feel free to comment below!

Conclusion

PHEW, that was a lot! It took me over a week to put this blog post together! I hope this was as informative for you all as it was for us. This is going to be an invaluable resource for us to look at over the next few months as we continue working on the wiki and doing our best to improve it day-by-day, step-by-step! Thank you all for your support, thank you to everyone who responded to the survey, feel free to leave comments below, and we'll see you all on the wiki!