[Foundation-l] Commons Usability

Wed Mar 31 15:34:21 UTC 2010

Hi.

If i understand correctly - and please correct me if i'm wrong - the current
big Usability project is essentially a rather cosmetic change of the default
skin. It is not really bad and i'm not really opposed to it, as many other
users are, but it seems that it doesn't address a very big usability problem
- the fact that Wikimedia Commons is hardly accessible for people who don't
English well.

Sure, it's possible to translate to translate templates and system messages
to other languages and set the default language in the preferences, but this
is very far from actually achieving the goal of making Commons the main
media repository for all other WMF projects in all languages.

And it's kinda symbolic that Commons will be the first project where the
default skin will be switched.

Now, before i start writing about the problems that i found in detail, this
is probably something that was already discussed. If it indeed was, please
point me to it (thanks in advance). If it was not discussed deeply, i'll
probably start a discussion page somewhere.

-- 
אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי
Amir Elisha Aharoni

http://aharoni.wordpress.com

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