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Indeed -- and the [[usability group]] is still the first link on that
page to people working on the topic. But I see only four interested
members there and the page is stale.

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Usability_group

SJ

On Tue, Dec 2, 2008 at 4:26 PM, Ting Chen <wing.philopp@gmx.de> wrote:
> phoebe ayers wrote:
>> On Tue, Dec 2, 2008 at 9:46 AM, Brion Vibber <brion@wikimedia.org> wrote:
>>
>>> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
>>> Hash: SHA1
>>>
>>> [snip]
>>>
>>> We're already aware of the UNICEF study & extensions and will be
>>> reviewing them alongside other ongoing usability testing and development
>>> projects throughout 2009.
>>>
>>> - -- brion
>>>
>>
>> Lovely. Usability in general is an important topic, and it goes beyond
>> any particular task or set of projects; there are many things in
>> MediaWiki that could be improved. (My vote would be for working on an
>> easier referencing system, which has also been discussed many times).
>>
>> Is there a current page on Meta or elsewhere for this list of
>> potential usability projects, adding suggestions, and discussion of
>> them?
>>
>> -- Phoebe
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> foundation-l mailing list
>> foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
>> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>>
>
> Yes there is: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Usability
>
> Ting
>
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>

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Hoi,
THANK YOU, yes indeed.
Thanks.
GerardM

2008/12/3 Marcus Buck <me@marcusbuck.org>

> Mark Wagner hett schreven:
> > On Tue, Dec 2, 2008 at 08:10, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen@gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >
> >> Hoi,
> >> They were requested to start a new article.. Nothing fancy.. an article
> with
> >> a few lines of text. The car did not crash, it never got moving.
> >>
> >
> > You're still missing the point: *HOW* did they fail? What step in the
> > process of creating an article did not happen? Once this is known, it
> > becomes possible to devise a solution; conversely, as long as it it
> > unknown, any attempts at solving the problem will fail.
> They were placed in front of a opened wiki and got told to create an
> article, start a new page (I guess, it was _not_ the English wikipedia,
> if you assumed that, but more likely a UNICEF wiki). They didn't manage
> to create a page, cause they were not able to find the right place to
> place their article. And that was the very straightforwardly reason to
> create the CreatePage extension, I guess.
>
> Marcus Buck
>
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Yes, indeed. If I recall right, the group started after Delphine posted
her thread "Can anyone really edit Wikipedia?" at Sep. 25.

Delphine, who is surely a veteran wikipedian, failed to edit the article
"Facebook" because she could not find the right place for her edit
through all the templates and refs. I think her example showed very good
our problem. The usability problem is not only a newbies problem, but a
general problem. I can very good understand Delphines difficulty and I
myself have more than once sitting before an article and feeling like I
am working through some other peoples code on my job.

But back to the page. As always on meta and here on the list, a topic
get hot and cools down again. But in the last time the topic usability
is coming hot quite often. After Alexandria I this is already the fifth
or sixth thread I read about this topic. So I think there is a really
common feeling in the community that the problem is pressing. Maybe we
should link that page direct on a prominant place on the start page of meta?

Ting

Samuel Klein wrote:
> Indeed -- and the [[usability group]] is still the first link on that
> page to people working on the topic. But I see only four interested
> members there and the page is stale.
>
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Usability_group
>
> SJ
>
> On Tue, Dec 2, 2008 at 4:26 PM, Ting Chen <wing.philopp@gmx.de> wrote:
>
>> phoebe ayers wrote:
>>
>>> On Tue, Dec 2, 2008 at 9:46 AM, Brion Vibber <brion@wikimedia.org> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
>>>> Hash: SHA1
>>>>
>>>> [snip]
>>>>
>>>> We're already aware of the UNICEF study & extensions and will be
>>>> reviewing them alongside other ongoing usability testing and development
>>>> projects throughout 2009.
>>>>
>>>> - -- brion
>>>>
>>>>
>>> Lovely. Usability in general is an important topic, and it goes beyond
>>> any particular task or set of projects; there are many things in
>>> MediaWiki that could be improved. (My vote would be for working on an
>>> easier referencing system, which has also been discussed many times).
>>>
>>> Is there a current page on Meta or elsewhere for this list of
>>> potential usability projects, adding suggestions, and discussion of
>>> them?
>>>
>>> -- Phoebe
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> foundation-l mailing list
>>> foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
>>> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>>>
>>>
>> Yes there is: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Usability
>>
>> Ting
>>
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>> foundation-l mailing list
>> foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
>> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>>
>>
>>
>
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2008/12/3 Marcus Buck <me@marcusbuck.org>:
> Mark Wagner hett schreven:
>> You're still missing the point: *HOW* did they fail? What step in the
>> process of creating an article did not happen? Once this is known, it
>> becomes possible to devise a solution; conversely, as long as it it
>> unknown, any attempts at solving the problem will fail.
> They were placed in front of a opened wiki and got told to create an
> article, start a new page (I guess, it was _not_ the English wikipedia,
> if you assumed that, but more likely a UNICEF wiki).

Did this experiment the motivation to create a page? Or did the UNICEF
guys just asked the testees to create a page?

For most people the first and last thought about such an experiment
would be: "Why on Earth would i *want* to create a page on the UNICEF
wiki"?

Wikipedia is completely different. Did you ever give a thought to the
fact that the first sentence of nearly every WP article is "X is Y".
Thousands of people created millions of pages in Wikipedia, because
they had the motivation to tell that their favorite subject IS
something.

(I invite everyone here to take a look at [[Predication]] and
[[E-Prime]] to get an idea about the importance of the "is" in "X is
Y".)

--
Amir Elisha Aharoni

heb: http://haharoni.wordpress.com | eng: http://aharoni.wordpress.com
cat: http://aprenent.wordpress.com | rus: http://amire80.livejournal.com

"We're living in pieces,
I want to live in peace." - T. Moore

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Hello,

I wanted to point out that there're way more directions where
usability efforts can go to benefit not only small-slow-projects, but
also the major ones.
Better tools for communication (talk pages!), in-place/paragraph
editing, etc - community building isn't just "write an article", it is
way more about "collaborate on it".

And better collaboration tools we need (though MediaWiki even now is
the industry darling for anything like that ;-)

--
Domas Mituzas -- http://dammit.lt/ -- [[user:midom]]



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