Mailing List Archive: Optimizing default prefs

Optimizing default prefs

erik_moeller at gmx

May 23, 2003, 12:57 AM

Post #1 of 19 (728 views)

We should try to find the most reasonable default user options possible.
Here's some data from the English Wikipedia (11474 users) on the number of
users who have changed each option from the default:

-----------------------------

skin=1 (nostalgia): 403
skin=2 (cologne): 991

hover=0: 52
underline=0: 2332
highlightbroken=0: 580
justify=1: 417
hideminor=1: 226
usenewrc=1: 362
numberheadings=1: 202
rememberpassword=1: 4735
editondblclick: 147
watchdefault: 213
minordefault: 160
previewontop: 831
nocache: 4

-----------------------------

Regarding the skins, I think Cologne Blue *could* become the standard with
some design fixes, but we should stick with Standard for now.

Considering that previewontop was recently changed to be the default,
there remain two strikingly popular options: rememberpassword=1 and
underline=0. Since most users never change their preferences, these
numbers are quite high, even if they are not the majority.

I therefore think it would make sense to make these options defaults, that
is, to make links non-underlined by default even for anonymous users, and
to remember passwords by default.

Underlining:

Users who like their links underlined can still turn on this option, but
extrapolating from the above, I would guess that non-underlined links are
more popular. Note that we are a very link-heavy page, so the high amount
of underlining on a page can get quite distracting. Links are reasonably
easy to distinguish from normal text when non-underlined.

Remember password:

This option needs to be distinguished from underlining, as it can also be
accessed on the login screen, not just on the preferences screen, and is
thus likely to be noticed by more people. However, I still think this
should be the default. There are users at places where they do not want
their password remembered, such as cafes and changing terminals at work.
What is the standard case and what the exception, though? My guess is that
most people log in to Wikipedia from one or two machines, and that the
browser on that machine is reasonably secure from access by others.
Other users should be security aware enough to tick off the "Remember"
checkbox during login.

Thoughts?

Regards,

Erik

Re: Optimizing default prefs [ In reply to ]

May 23, 2003, 1:17 AM

Post #2 of 19 (722 views)

Erik Moeller wrote:
> We should try to find the most reasonable default user options possible.
> Here's some data from the English Wikipedia (11474 users) on the number of
> users who have changed each option from the default:
>
> -----------------------------
>
> skin=1 (nostalgia): 403
> skin=2 (cologne): 991
>

Which means most useres uses the default? or is there another group with
"skin=0" ?

I think you have the sql-queries at you fingertips: can you give me the
stats (for the skins only) for german wikipedia, or the queries?

Smurf
--
--- Anthill Inside! ---

Re: Optimizing default prefs [ In reply to ]

erik_moeller at gmx

May 23, 2003, 1:39 AM

Post #3 of 19 (722 views)

Smurf-
>> We should try to find the most reasonable default user options possible.
>> Here's some data from the English Wikipedia (11474 users) on the number of
>> users who have changed each option from the default:
>>
>> -----------------------------
>>
>> skin=1 (nostalgia): 403
>> skin=2 (cologne): 991
>>

> Which means most useres uses the default? or is there another group with
> "skin=0" ?

skin=0 is the default, and the remaining users (of the ~11500 total) use
that one.

> I think you have the sql-queries at you fingertips: can you give me the
> stats (for the skins only) for german wikipedia, or the queries?

select count(*) from user where user_options like "%optionname=1%"

Do this for any option you want to check, and substitute optionname and 1
or 0 depending on what you want to know. Let me know if the results are
substantially different.

And I wish more people would use editondblclick. It's cool! ;-)

Regards,

Erik

Re: Optimizing default prefs [ In reply to ]

May 23, 2003, 1:41 AM

Post #4 of 19 (722 views)

Je Vendredo 23 Majo 2003 00:57, Erik Moeller skribis:
> Underlining:

We should just get rid of this option and not specify anything about
underlining in our style sheet. Every browser has an option to set
this, and people turn underlining off in the site just because we
override their browser settings.

> Remember password:

This should absolutely *not* *not* *not* be on by default.

> Other users should be security aware enough to tick off the "Remember"
> checkbox during login.

I might wish the same, but I don't believe it. :)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

Re: Optimizing default prefs [ In reply to ]

erik_moeller at gmx

May 23, 2003, 2:18 AM

Post #5 of 19 (719 views)

Brion-

I thought you were going to bed :-)

>> Underlining:

> We should just get rid of this option and not specify anything about
> underlining in our style sheet. Every browser has an option to set
> this, and people turn underlining off in the site just because we
> override their browser settings.

Most people are not even aware of this browser setting, and even if they
are, it is useful to be able to set it on a per-site basis, for the
following reasons:

1) If a site sets the link color, but not the link style, that means the
browser setting is not overridden (at least in Mozi). So if a site decides
to use black underlined text for its links, this would then become black
non-underlined text. This is one reason to have this option turned on in
general, but for specific sites/themes, a user may wish to turn it off. I
for one would be very displeased if I would have to turn off underlining
for all websites just to view Wikipedia in non-underlined text.

2) Our site is a particularly link-intensive one. The main page alone
includes 127 links. Underlined text is ugly and hard on the eyes (which is
why it is almost never used in print), but with just a few links, easy to
locate on the page. It is quite obvious that the higher the link/text
ratio, the bigger the negative impact of underlined links. Most users who
surf with the default setting (the vast majority) will probably prefer
surfing Wikipedia without underlined links.

Of the options in preferences, "underline" is the one which our users
disable most often ("rememberpassword" doesn't count because it's also on
a different screen). I think it would be a good idea to change the
default.

Regards,

Erik

Re: Optimizing default prefs [ In reply to ]

May 23, 2003, 2:30 AM

Post #6 of 19 (722 views)

Erik Moeller wrote:

>>>skin=1 (nostalgia): 403
>>>skin=2 (cologne): 991

German : 0: 1233
1: 50
2: 304

Is there a posibility to include a "last_login" (user_touched, I think)
in that query (touched last 3 or 5 month), to exclude inactive users? A
field user_created not exists, as far as I know. I'm not fit enought to
do so, and experimental sql-queries on the live DB I'm not willing to
do. My test-system is unfortunaly not reachable form work.

Smurf
--
--- Anthill Inside! ---

Re: Optimizing default prefs [ In reply to ]

May 23, 2003, 2:52 AM

Post #7 of 19 (721 views)

Thomas Corell wrote:

> Is there a posibility to include a "last_login" (user_touched, I think)
> in that query (touched last 3 or 5 month), to exclude inactive users? A
> field user_created not exists, as far as I know. I'm not fit enought to
> do so, and experimental sql-queries on the live DB I'm not willing to
> do. My test-system is unfortunaly not reachable form work.

or possibly better: nummer of changed pages of the users > 5 or so

Smurf
--
--- Anthill Inside! ---

Re: Optimizing default prefs [ In reply to ]

maveric149 at yahoo

May 23, 2003, 3:04 AM

Post #8 of 19 (721 views)

Erik Moeller wrote:
> Regarding the skins, I think Cologne Blue *could* become the standard with
> some design fixes, but we should stick with Standard for now.

IMO Colonge Blue is nearly as bad as Nostalgia as far as usability is
concerned. The emphasis of that design seems to be concentrated on making
things look pretty and not on making things easy to use or find.

It would probably be better to just add a bit of color to our logo and the
Standard Header.

> Underlining:
>
> Users who like their links underlined can still turn on this option, but
> extrapolating from the above, I would guess that non-underlined links are
> more popular. Note that we are a very link-heavy page, so the high amount
> of underlining on a page can get quite distracting. Links are reasonably
> easy to distinguish from normal text when non-underlined.

I agree. At one time underlining was the standard way to mark hyperlinks but
most websites don't do this anymore. One of the first settings I changed was
this one (IMO all the hyperlink underlining is really really ugly ; right
along with the even older web "standard" of having all non-bgcolor filled
backgrounds display as gray).

> Remember password:
>
> This option needs to be distinguished from underlining, as it can also be
> accessed on the login screen, not just on the preferences screen, and is
> thus likely to be noticed by more people. However, I still think this
> should be the default. There are users at places where they do not want
> their password remembered, such as cafes and changing terminals at work.
> What is the standard case and what the exception, though? My guess is that
> most people log in to Wikipedia from one or two machines, and that the
> browser on that machine is reasonably secure from access by others. Other
> users should be security aware enough to tick off the "Remember" checkbox
> during login.

Hm. Since this is more of a security issue I think the current behavior is
best. I for one often use my school's computer lab to get a quick check of my
watchlist. So the last thing I would want is for the school computer to
remember my login and allow somebody to run amok with my sysop-enabled
account (actually I always explicitly log-out, and clear the history and the
cache of any public computer after I use it - but most people don't do this).

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

Re: Optimizing default prefs [ In reply to ]

May 23, 2003, 3:32 AM

Post #9 of 19 (722 views)

On Fri, May 23, 2003 at 09:57:00AM +0200, Erik Moeller wrote:
> Thoughts?

skin = Cologne Blue (current standard is too ugly)
underline = off
remember password = off (security must be our absolute priority)
default recent changes size = much bigger than now

Re: Optimizing default prefs [ In reply to ]

May 23, 2003, 5:00 AM

Post #10 of 19 (722 views)

Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:
> On Fri, May 23, 2003 at 09:57:00AM +0200, Erik Moeller wrote:
>>Thoughts?
> skin = Cologne Blue (current standard is too ugly)
> underline = off
> remember password = off (security must be our absolute priority)
> default recent changes size = much bigger than now

SQL:
select count(user_options)as Number, user_options from user group by
user_options order by diff desc LIMIT 20

shows the top twenty of the mosed used configs. Possibly you need more
than top twenty on english wikipedia to get a propper result.

On german DB (that's what I can access) this shows that 382 has changed
rememberpassword=0 and 167 changed to rememberpassword=1, and thats the
only change they made, the rest is at default.

Smurf
--
Only trust a statistic you faked yourself.
--- Anthill Inside! ---

Re: Optimizing default prefs [ In reply to ]

Paul-Ebermann at gmx

May 23, 2003, 7:18 PM

Post #11 of 19 (723 views)

"Erik Moeller" skribis:

> >> Underlining:
>
> > We should just get rid of this option and not specify anything about
> > underlining in our style sheet. Every browser has an option to set
> > this, and people turn underlining off in the site just because we
> > override their browser settings.
>
> Most people are not even aware of this browser setting, and even if they
> are, it is useful to be able to set it on a per-site basis, for the
> following reasons:

What about these three options?

( ) underline links
( ) use browser default
( ) not underline links

Which one to be the default is
another question.

Paul

Re: Re: Optimizing default prefs [ In reply to ]

lists at dramatic

May 23, 2003, 8:36 PM

Post #12 of 19 (720 views)

On Fri, 23 May 2003 03:04:06 -0700, Daniel Mayer <maveric149@yahoo.com>
gave utterance to the following:

> Erik Moeller wrote:
>> Regarding the skins, I think Cologne Blue *could* become the standard
>> with
>> some design fixes, but we should stick with Standard for now.
>
> IMO Colonge Blue is nearly as bad as Nostalgia as far as usability is
> concerned. The emphasis of that design seems to be concentrated on making
> things look pretty and not on making things easy to use or find.
>
> It would probably be better to just add a bit of color to our logo and
> the Standard Header.
>
Or implementing my proposal (in cvs) of storing in the user database the
URL of the user's own wikipedia stylesheet. I would keep mine on my
webserver, saving W the cost of ever serving me a stylesheet.
--
Richard Grevers
If teenagers dress to express individuality why do they all look alike?

Re: Optimizing default prefs [ In reply to ]

May 26, 2003, 8:41 AM

Post #13 of 19 (725 views)

Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:
> On Fri, May 23, 2003 at 09:57:00AM +0200, Erik Moeller wrote:
>>Thoughts?
> skin = Cologne Blue (current standard is too ugly)
> underline = off
> remember password = off (security must be our absolute priority)
> default recent changes size = much bigger than now

I like underlining links:
1) I see the difference between "[[foo]] [[bar]]" and "[[foo bar]]".
2) I see typos like this: "[[foo ]] bar"

Smurf
--
--- Anthill Inside! ---

Re: Optimizing default prefs [ In reply to ]

May 26, 2003, 9:03 AM

Post #14 of 19 (721 views)

On Mon, May 26, 2003 at 05:41:32PM +0200, Thomas Corell wrote:
> Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:
> >On Fri, May 23, 2003 at 09:57:00AM +0200, Erik Moeller wrote:
> >>Thoughts?
> >skin = Cologne Blue (current standard is too ugly)
> >underline = off
> >remember password = off (security must be our absolute priority)
> >default recent changes size = much bigger than now
>
> I like underlining links:
> 1) I see the difference between "[[foo]] [[bar]]" and "[[foo bar]]".
> 2) I see typos like this: "[[foo ]] bar"

You can see that by moving mouse over link anyway.
And of course nobody's going to take away your right to see links,
we just want more sensible defaults.

Re: Optimizing default prefs [ In reply to ]

toby+wikipedia at math

May 26, 2003, 5:18 PM

Post #15 of 19 (722 views)

Erik Moeller wrote:

>Users who like their links underlined can still turn on this option, but
>extrapolating from the above, I would guess that non-underlined links are
>more popular. Note that we are a very link-heavy page, so the high amount
>of underlining on a page can get quite distracting. Links are reasonably
>easy to distinguish from normal text when non-underlined.

I worry about accessibility to colourblind users (specifically,
new anonymous readers that don't know about the preferences page).
I don't know enough about the matter to know if this worry is reasonable;
if not, then I'll agree with you.

>This option needs to be distinguished from underlining, as it can also be
>accessed on the login screen, not just on the preferences screen, and is
>thus likely to be noticed by more people. However, I still think this
>should be the default. There are users at places where they do not want
>their password remembered, such as cafes and changing terminals at work.
>What is the standard case and what the exception, though? My guess is that
>most people log in to Wikipedia from one or two machines, and that the
>browser on that machine is reasonably secure from access by others.
>Other users should be security aware enough to tick off the "Remember"
>checkbox during login.

For purposes of security, I don't think that we should change the default.
If we change the underlining of links, then presumably this would become
the one preference not set by default to the majority preference.
As such, we ought to give people extra opportunity to change it --
which we already do, having a checkbox for that on the login page.
So I think that it's all OK now.

-- Toby

Re: Re: Optimizing default prefs [ In reply to ]

toby+wikipedia at math

May 26, 2003, 5:20 PM

Post #16 of 19 (724 views)

Paul Ebermann wrote:

>What about these three options?
> ( ) underline links
> ( ) use browser default
> ( ) not underline links
>Which one to be the default is
>another question.

If my worry about colourblind readers does turn out to be reasonable,
then we should make "use browser default" the default,
since hopefully a lot of people that like nude links
will already have set their browser defaults that way.
(Not Erik, however.)

-- Toby

Re: Re: Optimizing default prefs [ In reply to ]

May 26, 2003, 10:54 PM

Post #17 of 19 (722 views)

On Mon, May 26, 2003 at 05:20:22PM -0700, Toby Bartels wrote:
> Paul Ebermann wrote:
>
> >What about these three options?
> > ( ) underline links
> > ( ) use browser default
> > ( ) not underline links
> >Which one to be the default is
> >another question.
>
> If my worry about colourblind readers does turn out to be reasonable,
> then we should make "use browser default" the default,
> since hopefully a lot of people that like nude links
> will already have set their browser defaults that way.
> (Not Erik, however.)

Stop that ! There is no such thing as browser defaults.

And anyway, colorblind people should be able to tell the difference
between black and non-black on computer screen quite easily.

Re: Re: Optimizing default prefs [ In reply to ]

toby+wikipedia at math

May 27, 2003, 6:50 AM

Post #18 of 19 (722 views)

Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:

>Stop that ! There is no such thing as browser defaults.

I can tell my browser whether to underline links or not.
CSS overrides this (unless I tell me browser not to let it).

>And anyway, colorblind people should be able to tell the difference
>between black and non-black on computer screen quite easily.

OK, that sounds fair.

-- Toby

Re: Re: Optimizing default prefs [ In reply to ]

May 27, 2003, 10:29 AM

Post #19 of 19 (720 views)

> (Tomasz Wegrzanowski <taw@users.sourceforge.net>):
> >
> > >What about these three options?
> > > ( ) underline links
> > > ( ) use browser default
> > > ( ) not underline links
> > >Which one to be the default is
> > >another question.
> >
> > If my worry about colourblind readers does turn out to be reasonable,
> > then we should make "use browser default" the default,
> > since hopefully a lot of people that like nude links
> > will already have set their browser defaults that way.
> > (Not Erik, however.)
>
> Stop that ! There is no such thing as browser defaults.
>
> And anyway, colorblind people should be able to tell the difference
> between black and non-black on computer screen quite easily.

I don't know what the hell Taw is thinking: of course there are
browser defaults, and of course that's the right thing to do in
many cases, because people can and do configure their browsers the
way they like. That doesn't mean we can't make some other setting
/our/ default, but using the browsers default should certainly be
an option.

--
Lee Daniel Crocker <lee@piclab.com> <http://www.piclab.com/lee/>
"All inventions or works of authorship original to me, herein and past,
are placed irrevocably in the public domain, and may be used or modified
for any purpose, without permission, attribution, or notification."--LDC