On 6/25/07, Simetrical <Simetrical+wikilist(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Why do you think that, given the usability study's result?
What the usability study found, to my understanding, was that MediaWiki was
not particularly newbie-friendly; that is, its usability among new users was
low. That said, MediaWiki surely has a steeper learning curve than most
webware; however, it has a large group of power users who have found the
various "oddities" of the software that confuse new users to be quite useful
in increasing their productivity. By analogy, the modality of vim often
confuses the hell out of new users to that software, yet it has become a
feature that experienced users simply could not live without. Vim is never
going to do away with its modal editing to become more "user-friendly";
similarly, I do not favor the idea of sacrificing the expert usability of
MediaWiki to make the software more friendly to new users. Such a change, I
fear, would certainly do just that--confuse expert users and hinder their
productivity with the software.
Furthermore, editing should truly always be second to the content produced
through that editing--that is, _readability_ should take precedence over
_usability_ (in the sense of its usability to editors). I would find this to
be a change that, though it may make certain elements of editing more clear
to users, would cause a major aesthetic "hiccup" in the appearance and flow
of pages, lending nothing more than a distraction from the content. Such a
problem is avoided relatively well by the current placement of the link, and
any other proposed placement would certainly have to consider and address
this problem
I personally would object to such a change, and I do not feel any change to
be necessary; however, I'm more than willing to discuss and experiment with
this and other options. If you could perchance provide some samples of this
change, preferably on complex pages with multiple images, tables, and
templates intermingled with text, that could certainly help to gauge the
degree of my objection. I would, however, strongly caution against making
large, breaking changes on the basis of this single usability study without
considering the possible repercussions of such changes outside the context
of the points addressed by the study.
--
Daniel Cannon (AmiDaniel)
http://amidaniel.com
cannon.danielc(a)gmail.com