[Foundation-l] LiquidThreads almost ready for deployment

Sun Dec 20 06:36:30 UTC 2009

I did not write that, except for the final sentence--The rest was  an
earlier comment by someone who actually knows programming, not my
elementary awareness of html and the rudiments of regular expressions.
 The only software I've ever developed is some VBA macros for Excel.

I was saying that just the most elementary knowledge is enough for
talk pages. Of all the parts of Wikipedia syntax, it's the easiest.
The problems for users in learning things is elsewhere. Even things I
do know how to use, like the cite templates or tables, I find too
complicated to bother with. What I think the usability studies show to
be the hardest--and also my own experience teaching raw beginners--,
is figuring just how to edit in the first place.  We think we made it
easy, but they still don;t find it.

As for keeping track of discussions generally, the exchanges here show
the difficulties, and this one is as good an example as any for how
easily it is to get confused (in this case I think what did it is
other comments coming between what I was answering and my own
reply--the same problems  as caused by edit conflicts. I'm not sure
there is any way to sort it out when a number of people are talking
about the same thing at the same time.

David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG

On Sat, Dec 19, 2009 at 4:24 PM, William Pietri <william at scissor.com> wrote:
> On 12/19/2009 10:54 AM, David Goodman wrote:
>> On Sat, Dec 19, 2009 at 1:17 PM, William Pietri<william at scissor.com>  wrote:
>>
>>> As a software developer, I'm perfectly comfortable dealing with its dark
>>> mysteries. I've spent tens of thousands of hours typing mysterious codes
>>> into giant files interpreted by unforgiving machines. But for the 98% of
>>> humanity that doesn't have much technical background, our discussion
>>> system comes across as somewhere between perplexing and actively hostile.
>> mysterious codes? All that is needed is knowing how to indent and sign.
>>
>> David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S.
>>
>
> For a person with a PhD in molecular biology, a master's degree in
> Library Science, and 3 years experience on Wikipedia, I'm sure it all
> seems pretty transparent. As somebody who played with punch card
> machines in kindergarten and was coding well before my voice changed, it
> sure looks that way to me. But we're pretty far out on a few different
> bell curves.
>
> I haven't seen an actual usability study on our current discussion
> system, but I have seen and done plenty of other usability studies, and
> my guess is that you'd get a combined drop-out plus failure rate of over
> 80% for first-time users. Followed by predictable reactions:
> discouragement, feeling dumb, and taking both the system and our
> community as hostile or unwelcoming.
>
> Whether we want to attract less technical and/or less persistent users
> is a reasonable question. (My view: we should.) But from the usability
> experts I've worked with, I think the nicest reaction they'd give to our
> current discussion system is politely disguised horror. If people are
> skeptical of that, I'd encourage them to reach out to our very sharp
> usability team; I'm sure they have opinions on this, and possibly some data.
>
>
> William
>
>
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