4 ms·

it still blows my mind that they haven't implemented a more user friendly editor.

by pclark 16y ago

tom_rath 16y ago
It's the unfriendliness of the editor_s_ which has been the problem in my experience. When someone goes through the trouble of creating a well-cited article only to have it deleted for being 'not notable', they're unlikely to bother again. If there's a Wikipedia issue to resolve, it's the deletionists and the strange environment which encourages their behaviour.
- tokenadult 16y ago
  Out of curiosity, what kind of topics are you writing about when you submit well-cited articles that are later deleted?
jacquesm 16y ago
In the announcement say they've tried to make things easier for the users, but most of the entries listed there are actually for editors. The FAQ entry linked ( http://usability.wikimedia.org/wiki/What%27s_new,_questions_and_answers http://usability.wikimedia.org/wiki/What%27s_new,_questions_... ) has a lot more info than the announcement, the primary entry there is: Why are you making these changes? Wikipedia and the other projects operated by the Wikimedia Foundation are written and edited by volunteers. When knowledgeable people cannot participate in editing Wikipedia because they find it too confusing or difficult to edit articles, it is a serious problem that undermines the potential quality, breadth and depth of the content that we can offer to you. In other words, even if you don't contribute content, the easier we can make it for knowledgeable people to join our projects, the more useful our resources become to you. So it seems they're really focusing on making the editor user friendly. They also say that this is only the beginning of a series of changes.
- nailer 16y ago
  > In the announcement say they've tried to make things easier for the users, but most of the entries listed there are actually for editors. Yes, they consider users to be potential contributors.
  - jacquesm 16y ago
    Sure, that's the whole idea behind wikipedia, but the reality is that the majority of the users are not contributing.
    - nailer 16y ago
      Yep, that's the problem they're hoping to fix by making it easier.
      - jacquesm 16y ago
        Where did you read that?
        nailer 16y ago
        The article constantly refers to users as being people who will benefit from making editing easier, so it's fairly clear they consider all users potential contributors. That usability of editing tools leaves something to be desired is implied by them improving it. That Wikipedia wants more contributors is implied by its mission.
        jacquesm 16y ago
        A few tweaks to the UI are not going to undo the cumulative effect of people having their articles axed because of 'non notoriety' and a very hostile attitude towards 'newbies'.
        nailer 16y ago
        That's a separate issue. Both need to be addressed, I'm personally glad they're doing something about usability. For what it's worth, personally my own edits seem to stick around - I write a lot about architecture (buildings), industrial design, and software. I've written about Ron Arad, Konstantin Grgic, Zaha Hadid, btrfs, SystemTap, Python, Django, Zed Shaw, and popular culture in Portland, and they've all still there. I appreciate you may have had different experiences.
neilk 16y ago
Hi there -- I work at the WMF on usability, but on a slightly different project. The lead on WikiEditor (Trevor Parscal) just did a presentation at PARC. If you want to learn more about the tradeoffs you can watch that video. http://www.parc.com/event/1108/how-wikimedia-is-scaling-open-source-innovation.html http://www.parc.com/event/1108/how-wikimedia-is-scaling-open... We know that it doesn't look that different, but there are several big reasons for that. The grant for this project was time limited, and the low-hanging fruit about usability turned out to be a lot more about organization and cleaner design. A lot of people just couldn't even find the edit button. In any case, despite looking more or less the same, there's a much, much better jQuery-based system under the hood now, and it's on a much better foundation for adding features. Years of cruft have been cleared out. The User Experience team is now a permanent aspect of the WMF, so we can start thinking about longer term ideas. WYSIWYG might be one of them. Stay tuned. Or, check us out -- our process is very, very open, and anyone can voice their concerns. http://usability.wikimedia.org/ http://usability.wikimedia.org/

it still blows my mind that they haven't implemented a more user friendly editor.

by pclark 16y ago

it still blows my mind that they haven't implemented a more user friendly editor.

It's the unfriendliness of the editor_s_ which has been the problem in my experience. When someone goes through the trouble of creating a well-cited article only to have it deleted for being 'not notable', they're unlikely to bother again. If there's a Wikipedia issue to resolve, it's the deletionists and the strange environment which encourages their behaviour.

tokenadult 16y ago
Out of curiosity, what kind of topics are you writing about when you submit well-cited articles that are later deleted?

jacquesm 16y ago

In the announcement say they've tried to make things easier for the users, but most of the entries listed there are actually for editors. The FAQ entry linked ( http://usability.wikimedia.org/wiki/What%27s_new,_questions_and_answers http://usability.wikimedia.org/wiki/What%27s_new,_questions_... ) has a lot more info than the announcement, the primary entry there is: Why are you making these changes? Wikipedia and the other projects operated by the Wikimedia Foundation are written and edited by volunteers. When knowledgeable people cannot participate in editing Wikipedia because they find it too confusing or difficult to edit articles, it is a serious problem that undermines the potential quality, breadth and depth of the content that we can offer to you. In other words, even if you don't contribute content, the easier we can make it for knowledgeable people to join our projects, the more useful our resources become to you. So it seems they're really focusing on making the editor user friendly. They also say that this is only the beginning of a series of changes.

nailer 16y ago
> In the announcement say they've tried to make things easier for the users, but most of the entries listed there are actually for editors. Yes, they consider users to be potential contributors.
- jacquesm 16y ago
  Sure, that's the whole idea behind wikipedia, but the reality is that the majority of the users are not contributing.
  - nailer 16y ago
    Yep, that's the problem they're hoping to fix by making it easier.
    - jacquesm 16y ago
      Where did you read that?
      - nailer 16y ago
        The article constantly refers to users as being people who will benefit from making editing easier, so it's fairly clear they consider all users potential contributors. That usability of editing tools leaves something to be desired is implied by them improving it. That Wikipedia wants more contributors is implied by its mission.
        jacquesm 16y ago
        A few tweaks to the UI are not going to undo the cumulative effect of people having their articles axed because of 'non notoriety' and a very hostile attitude towards 'newbies'.
        nailer 16y ago
        That's a separate issue. Both need to be addressed, I'm personally glad they're doing something about usability. For what it's worth, personally my own edits seem to stick around - I write a lot about architecture (buildings), industrial design, and software. I've written about Ron Arad, Konstantin Grgic, Zaha Hadid, btrfs, SystemTap, Python, Django, Zed Shaw, and popular culture in Portland, and they've all still there. I appreciate you may have had different experiences.

neilk 16y ago

Hi there -- I work at the WMF on usability, but on a slightly different project. The lead on WikiEditor (Trevor Parscal) just did a presentation at PARC. If you want to learn more about the tradeoffs you can watch that video. http://www.parc.com/event/1108/how-wikimedia-is-scaling-open-source-innovation.html http://www.parc.com/event/1108/how-wikimedia-is-scaling-open... We know that it doesn't look that different, but there are several big reasons for that. The grant for this project was time limited, and the low-hanging fruit about usability turned out to be a lot more about organization and cleaner design. A lot of people just couldn't even find the edit button. In any case, despite looking more or less the same, there's a much, much better jQuery-based system under the hood now, and it's on a much better foundation for adding features. Years of cruft have been cleared out. The User Experience team is now a permanent aspect of the WMF, so we can start thinking about longer term ideas. WYSIWYG might be one of them. Stay tuned. Or, check us out -- our process is very, very open, and anyone can voice their concerns. http://usability.wikimedia.org/ http://usability.wikimedia.org/