Re: [Foundation-l] Communication
Okay, so from my perspective, here's where we are:
The WMF staff cares about the projects and we respect the work that they do.
Additionally, they do a much better job than the other top...well, one
hundred websites in the world in communicating with their volunteers and
their userbase. The flip-side is that this is the reason that most
organizations put up a wall between administration and staff. Not that this
is healthy, and I certainly don't encourage it, but this is what a thread
like the ones we've had recently fosters: Damned if you do, damned if you
don't.
1. MediaWiki software support
Damned if you don't: Volunteers won't necessarily jump on fixing the
software patches/extensions if they are to hard and there is not enough
time or energy to go around.
Damned if you do: You didn't listen to the community and implemented
these changes without review.
2. Project support:
Damned if you do: We demand that the office intervene in pushing
through community requested enhancements, and we will complain about them
when you do.
Damned if you don't: Why do we pay these people?
3. Takedown notices/other staff or founder actions:
Damned if you don't: The Wikimedia Foundation does not care about its
userbase, and requests that all issues about content being directed at the
uploader (at their own legal expense).
Damned if you do: GET OFF MY LAWN
I'm sorry if this seems terse. Well, actually I'm not. The Foundation is
as actively engaged as it can be and hands off as it can be. Say an
"engine" as it was put doesn't like vector. Well, I don't either. But what
do you want? Polls? Noticeboards? Even more discussion than we already
have now?
I'm a big fan of discussions, I'll talk about most anything endlessly. This
is talking about running a business, and sometimes that requires stifling
discussion until the appropriate time for ideas and reforms have come about
as well as {{sofixit}}. Criticism is what should build a business model,
and I'm certain that the WMF takes this to heart because, as mentioned, they
don't have the steel heart wall that most major websites do.
Long story short: chasing+tail=killing time.
Just my opinion.
--
~Keegan
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Keegan
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Re: [Foundation-l] hiding interlanguage links by default is a Bad Idea, part 2
Greg, This makes two home runs in one month -- you get a prize. On Sat, Jun 5, 2010 at 4:00 PM, Gregory Maxwell wrote: > On Sat, Jun 5, 2010 at 2:03 PM, wrote: >> Austin, think about who "everyone" is. The folks here on foundation-l are >> not representative of readers. > > I think the people here are speaking up for the sake of the readers, > and for the sake of preserving the best of the existing design > principles used on the site. I know I am. Yes. We are skilled at these trade-offs as a community (by which I mean, those who care to do the work that must be done -- build up all parts of the sites, tell the world about them, greet the folks who join in, plan for the needs of those who read, write, draw, film, code, tag, and share). We may not yet have a deep bench of UI gods, but we have much to be proud of, and care a lot about such things. And we do not fear change -- we love new points of view. This list and those like it are some of the best groups I know of to vet and smooth such work once it is done. > a point needs to be made clear: > > This community is who made the sites. I don't just mean the articles. > I mean the user interfaces, the PR statements, the fundraiser > material, _everything_. ... Just so. And the community runs the sites each day, and sees to most change that hits the site. Case in point: the new skin is one part of UI work, and a big chunk rolled out all at once, but much more is done each week step by step, niche by niche, with no fuss. > We have an existence proof that the community is able to manage the > operation of the sites at a world class level. Certainly there are > many things which could have been done better, more uniformly, more > completely, or with better planning... but the community has a proven > competence in virtually every area that the foundation is now > attempting to be directly involved in. The foundation can serve as a sure core of work and a hub for large tasks, but it is small next to the community as a whole. More raw work still gets done (in press and grants and style-work and thoughts on how to reach new groups) through the community and chapters. > I guess the real power comes from that fact that > every issue can be attacked by a custom small group from a nearly > infinite set, plus a little crowd input. Whatever it is, it clearly works. It works as long as those small groups feel they can/should dive in and claim that work as their own. This takes love, trust (for the skills new groups bring, and for their own lore and views and sense of the world), and the will to share (a call to share the joy of work on a big task, not just to "say one's piece" and move on). > I think it's unfortunate that the foundation has an apparent > difficulty in _contributing_ without _commanding_. It seems to be hard at times, and a cinch at times. We talk most about the times when it is hard -- as we should; they need the most work. But we can learn from both. > There are areas > where the community's coverage is inadequate or inconsistent, and I > think that dedicated staff acting as gap-fillers could greatly improve > the results. But not if the price of those contributions is to exclude > or pigeonhole the great work done by the broad community, either > directly by "we reached a decision"-type edicts, or indirectly by > removing the personal pride and responsibility that people feel for > the complete site. Right. Erik writes: > I would suggest the following approach: < 1) That we return to the default-expanded state for now... < 2) That we prototype the system above... > < by implementing 1), we can do 2) on a timeline that makes sense without a false urgency. +1 SJ -- Samuel Kleinidenti.ca:sjw:user:sjKat: tag, you're it ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
[Foundation-l] Translation Memory wikiprojects
With all of the translations of Wikipedia content happening through
Google's Translation Toolkit, we are building up a nice set of
{strings and their translations} in many languages. The data that
comes from translatin Wikimedia content is all theoretically available
under our free license... but I don't believe it is available yet in
practice. This sort of "translation memory" is useful to any
translator working on their own projects, and should be made available
for them to use. It would also be good to have a global project where
translators can upload their personal TM data.
Siebrand / Nike / Sabine / Gerard and others who work with
translatewiki and OmegaT: what are the current sources OmegaT uses for
TM information? Is there currently a freely licensed TM database? If
so, we should make sure they are able to access the new translation
links we are generating. If not, we should consider starting one.
SJ
--
Samuel Kleintwitter:metasj w:user:sj
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Re: [Foundation-l] hiding interlanguage links by default is a Bad Idea, part 2
On Sat, Jun 5, 2010 at 6:46 PM, Samuel Klein wrote: > > Yes, this. > > The list of available languages is a key part of a page, not a > navigation nicety. > > They used to be available at the top of an article by default, until > that started taking up a few inches of screen space across the board. > We could still use a small bit of text reading "also in N other > languages" that is similarly prominent: above-the-fold, near the top > of the page. > > SJ > > ___ > foundation-l mailing list > foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l > I'm lost in this sea of emails. Is anybody arguing that showing interwikis expanded by default is hurtful? I understand that one dev said roughly: "revert, this was designed so and any change must be authorized by howie" and that (Sue?) said : "we had a meeting and decided that hiding the interwikis wasn't really bad". And sprinkled over there I read a couple "we hid them since they were cluttering". Now what is the argument about *that specific "clutter"* is bad? Who else besides UX opinion and staff supporting UX has an argument about showing interwikis being hurtful so much that the problems overshadow the benefits of showing them? ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] hiding interlanguage links by default is a Bad Idea, part 2
On Thu, Jun 3, 2010 at 10:20 PM, John Vandenberg wrote: > On Thu, Jun 3, 2010 at 5:48 AM, Aryeh Gregor > wrote: >> On Wed, Jun 2, 2010 at 2:50 PM, Gregory Maxwell wrote: >>> Who cares if people click them a lot? The space they formally >>> occupied is filled with nothing now. >> >> Interface clutter is not psychologically free. Empty space is better >> than space filled with mostly-useless controls. Whether these >> particular controls are worth it I don't know, but the general >> principle of hiding seldom-used things is sound. > > They are not "mostly-useless controls"; they are there because > _building_ content _in every language_ is our mission. > > http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Our_projects > > Missing interwikis are a valuable cue that a block is missing. Yes, this. The list of available languages is a key part of a page, not a navigation nicety. They used to be available at the top of an article by default, until that started taking up a few inches of screen space across the board. We could still use a small bit of text reading "also in N other languages" that is similarly prominent: above-the-fold, near the top of the page. SJ ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] hiding interlanguage links by default is a BadIdea, part 2
Gregory Maxwell writes: >> Imagine that someone cleaning your office took your important >> paperwork and dumped it in a bin. You complain— "Hey we need that >> stuff to be accessible!" and they retort "Thank you for your >> _feedback_. We'll consider it during our future cleaning plans". >> >> We're not just providing feedback here. We're collectively making a >> decision, as we've always done, thank you very much. Well put. It's great to see new things being tried. It seems to me this sort of change (any big change) might work out more smoothly if the final implementation of any major change was separated from its development. That implementation can be handled by people who have long experience specifically with collective decisions, rolling out changes, identifying and isolating controversial bits, &c. We're not bad at that within community discussions -- and the "line-item rollback" ability for people to simply undo specific changes that irk them makes this much, much easier to manage. Any time a central process becomes a bottleneck to "considering feedback" it becomes harder to swiftly reach a harmonious conclusion. On Sat, Jun 5, 2010 at 5:20 PM, Mark Williamson wrote: > I am convinced that the unique organizational structure of our > organization, in which the community has historically been given a > very high level of authority in the decision-making process, is one of > the key elements of our success. Almost certainly. > Have we entered a new chapter in our history as > a community in which we, the people who have helped build this > project, no longer get to help make the important decisions by > contributing our ideas and venting our frustrations? Absolutely not. SJ PS - as one more data point on the interlang links specifically: I also use the rollover text of interlanguage links for translation - even when I have other good translation resources handy. That is one of our great accomplishments, and we should make more noise about it, not less. :-) ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Archivage down?
6 message on the mailinglist, could we make a announcement or something? -- Huib "Abigor" Laurens Tech team www.wikiweet.nl - www.llamadawiki.nl - www.forgotten-beauty.com - www.huiblaurens.nl - www.wikiweet.org ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] hiding interlanguage links by default is a Bad Idea, part 2
I used the interwiki links all the time in this manner at work, and still do. It was one of the things that turned me on to Wikipedia and caused me to start contributing, and eventually to register an account. As others have said, if the interwiki links had not been visible by default, I likely would not have discovered the feature, or discovered it only much later. An interesting thing is that even if the interwiki articles were poor, or incomplete, there was usually enough context provided to pick out the key terms in the field in the relevant languages, providing a starting point for further research and confirmation in and outside of Wikipedia. Extremely useful. Even today the articles that are of the most practical benefit to me are very often C-Class or stubs. Andreas --- On Fri, 4/6/10, J Alexandr Ledbury-Romanov wrote: > From: J Alexandr Ledbury-Romanov > Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] hiding interlanguage links by default is a Bad > Idea, part 2 > To: "Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List" > Date: Friday, 4 June, 2010, 9:27 > Me three for using the interwiki > links as a way of finding the word or > phrase I'm looking for in another language (along with > Wiktionary). Not only > do they assist me in finding translations of the words or > phrases I am > looking for, they also give me context and relevant > material for languages > I'm comfortable using. They are also particularly useful > for languages where > I am not at all comfortable (e.g. Modern Standard Arabic) > where I get > results with images of the subject that confirm that I have > found the right > noun I need. > > Sometimes I get false positives, but unlike with my various > dictionaries > which I now rarely use, I can usually figure out pretty > quickly that I have > not got the translation I need. > > I'd be interested to know what the default languages I > would get based > computer profiling. Geolocating would put in me in Morocco > (official > language Modern Standard Arabic, though French is commonly > used), browser > configuration would give French, and Wikimedia system user > preferences are > set in English, simply because I predominantly use the > English Wikipedia and > English Wikinews; I'm far too lazy to have to translate the > Wikimedia > terminology in my head when navigating in French, German or > Russian. > > AD > > > > 2010/6/4 phoebe ayers > > > On Fri, Jun 4, 2010 at 12:10 AM, Gregory Maxwell > > > wrote: > > > > > > Sort of tangentially, ... am I really the only > one that frequently > > > uses the Wikipedia inter-language links as a big > translating > > > dictionary? I've found it to be much more > useful than automatic > > > translation engines for mathematical terms (both > more comprehensive > > > but also in that it makes it easy to find the > translations for many > > > related terms). The hiding doesn't make > this any harder for me, but > > > it would make me a lot less likely to discover > this useful feature. > > > > Of course not, I do this all the time (I even > wrote about it), but I > > don't have any idea how many non-wikipedians use the > interwiki links > > in this manner. On the list of research projects I > wish someone would > > get around to: I would love to know more about > unexpected/atypical > > uses of the projects like this... I guess the > reference desk is a > > similar feature, an unexpected service cropping up in > the middle of > > the encyclopedia. I wonder what others there are. > > > > -- phoebe > > > > ___ > > foundation-l mailing list > > foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org > > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l > > > ___ > foundation-l mailing list > foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l > ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] hiding interlanguage links by default is a Bad Idea, part 2
On Sat, Jun 5, 2010 at 4:00 PM, Gregory Maxwell wrote: > In this discussion we don't merely have personal preferences, we're > arguing principles of design and hypothesizing benefit for the > readers. And, excluding the foundation staff, we appear to have a > broad, if not complete, consensus that the inter-language links should > come back. In the community-operated model this would already be done > by now. > I'd like to echo Phoebe's +1,000,000 first of all. I agree with everything you've said. I'd like to touch on this one particular point. The community HAS spoken and clearly wants it back the way it was. A volunteer even did so [0] but was reverted [1] with the message that UI changes to Vector are off-limits without some sort of prior discussion and approval. This sits with me _very_ badly. I don't disagree (in principle) that changes to our user experience should be discussed and not implemented via fiat. But when you've got overwhelming consensus that this is the right course of action, reverting the change and declaring it off-limits to our committers is just wrong. Our volunteer developers do a pretty good job of judging and implementing community consensus, and saying that some things aren't negotiable sets a bad precedence. Of course I don't suggest we start a revert war in SVN over it, but I do think that Trevor's revert should be backed out and the full list restored until a better long term solution is thought out (per Erik's e-mail). -Chad [0] http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Special:Code/MediaWiki/67281 [1] http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Special:Code/MediaWiki/67299 ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Archivage down?
On Sat, Jun 5, 2010 at 1:25 PM, Yann Forget wrote: > Hello, > > http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2010-June/ > Why is there no message after Thu Jun 3 06:59:53 UTC 2010? > > Thanks, > > Yann > See http://article.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.technical/48380 -Chad ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] hiding interlanguage links by default is a Bad Idea, part 2
The foundation's programmers have the technical power to define the experience of all aspects of the site however they please. They cannot be prevented from having this power, but they nonetheless must not use it, except for the most mundane details of day to day maintenance. Their role is to carry out the wishes of the community to the extent it is feasible. They will obviously need to figure out how to accommodate different and conflicting wishes, but it is not up to them to establish the priorities. This is true also of the specialists, such as the interface team: their role is to advise the community, not determine the results, and they should accept that their advice however excellent will nonetheless not always be followed. This is especially true for the specialists who do not have prior experience with WP, and can therefore not be expected to know the customs and way of thinking that prevails, and that sets the limits for what any individual can do by their own decision. Certainly they can be expected to learn it, but they must expect their understanding of it to be always corrected by the actual community. For example, they seem to have operated on the assumption that 1% use of a feature, or the use of an uncommon platform, is something that can be ignored. This may be a common assumption in many settings, including some I am quite familiar with, but it is not in WP. On Sat, Jun 5, 2010 at 5:10 PM, Austin Hair wrote: > On Sat, Jun 5, 2010 at 10:00 PM, Gregory Maxwell wrote: >> In short, there is little reason for a sophisticated user to complain >> about this for their own benefit. >> >> I think the people here are speaking up for the sake of the readers, >> and for the sake of preserving the best of the existing design >> principles used on the site. I know I am. > > I don't mean to detract from Greg's truly excellent e-mail by replying > to just part of it, but I know that this is the case for me—I still > use the Classic theme, restyled with my own CSS and Javascript, and > all of the interwiki links are right where they were before. Vector > doesn't affect me personally, but I see its impact on people around me > all day. > > For the love of all that is virtuous, please at least read everything > this man says. > > Austin > > ___ > foundation-l mailing list > foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l > -- David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] hiding interlanguage links by default is a BadIdea, part 2
+1. I must admit I have been a bit surprised/shocked/irritated by the tone of the comments from some of those involved with the usability initiative. I always thought that Wikimedia valued community decision-making, but now I'm being told that my "feedback" is greatly appreciated and will be taken into consideration. That kind of attitude is what I was referring to earlier in this thread when I wondered to myself if Wikipedia had "jumped the shark"[1]. I am convinced that the unique organizational structure of our organization, in which the community has historically been given a very high level of authority in the decision-making process, is one of the key elements of our success. Are we going to let that go over the issue of UI usability? Have we entered a new chapter in our history as a community in which we, the people who have helped build this project, no longer get to help make the important decisions by contributing our ideas and venting our frustrations? Let me be the first to say that I am extraordinarily saddened at this thought. -m. [1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jumping_the_shark On Sat, Jun 5, 2010 at 1:14 PM, Gregory Maxwell wrote: > On Sat, Jun 5, 2010 at 3:37 PM, David Levy wrote: >> Sue Gardner wrote: >>> Feedback is great, but it irritates me when people start using words >>> like "stupid" -- that's what I was responding to. >> >> Perhaps you misread the context. Austin wrote the word "stupid" as a >> hypothetical example of nonconstructive commentary that should be >> avoided. No one has hurled an insult. > > Moreover "feedback" can itself be perceived as an insult. > > Imagine that someone cleaning your office took your important > paperwork and dumped it in a bin. You complain— "Hey we need that > stuff to be accessible!" and they retort "Thank you for your > _feedback_. We'll consider it during our future cleaning plans". > > We're not just providing feedback here. We're collectively making a > decision, as we've always done, thank you very much. > > ___ > foundation-l mailing list > foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l > ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] hiding interlanguage links by default is a Bad Idea, part 2
On Sat, Jun 5, 2010 at 10:00 PM, Gregory Maxwell wrote: > In short, there is little reason for a sophisticated user to complain > about this for their own benefit. > > I think the people here are speaking up for the sake of the readers, > and for the sake of preserving the best of the existing design > principles used on the site. I know I am. I don't mean to detract from Greg's truly excellent e-mail by replying to just part of it, but I know that this is the case for me—I still use the Classic theme, restyled with my own CSS and Javascript, and all of the interwiki links are right where they were before. Vector doesn't affect me personally, but I see its impact on people around me all day. For the love of all that is virtuous, please at least read everything this man says. Austin ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] hiding interlanguage links by default is a Bad Idea, part 2
The original intent of the UX team, as I understand it, was to help readers find essential (frequently clicked) elements in the navigation more easily by collapsing less essential ones. It has been legitimately argued that the language links are essential for many users, even if the click rate is lower than that of some other elements, and that they are also key to surfacing our value of language diversity. The reasonable hypothesis has also been presented that the click rates are higher in other languages than English. The legitimate counterargument is that the naïve link list does not necessarily do the best job at this: by presenting the one or two links that may be relevant to the user within a potentially (and hopefully) very long column of foreign words in sometimes foreign scripts, it's a reasonable hypothesis that users will not in fact discover or understand the availability of -their- language, but rather simply glance over the list. Howie has presented the outlines of a new compromise approach: that by presenting a limited number of links by default, we increase the discoverability of the feature, while also limiting overall page clutter. That's also just a hypothesis. I would suggest the following approach: 1) That we return to the default-expanded state for now. If we want to default-collapse again, we'll need some more compelling metrics that demonstrate the actual benefits of doing so. 2) That we prototype the system above, or some variant thereof, define key metrics of success, and A/B test it against the existing one, provided the idea doesn't turn out to be obviously flawed. I agree that this isn't the highest priority issue on the list of UX fixes and changes, so by implementing 1), we can do 2) on a timeline that makes sense without a false urgency. The BlackBerry issue is indeed of greater importance. It only affects a subset of BB models, apparently older ones from what I've seen. Hampton, Tomasz and Ryan Lane have been working on getting VMs with the BB simulators set up, so that we can a) debug Vector on different BB versions, b) test the mobile redirect and mobile site on BB before we enable a redirect. This was delayed by ops issues on the mobile site, but I hope we'll get It sorted out next week. For the record, I agree entirely that read-breakage of this type is a critical, high priority bug. Erik On 6/5/10, Gregory Maxwell wrote: > On Sat, Jun 5, 2010 at 3:37 PM, David Levy wrote: >> Sue Gardner wrote: >>> Feedback is great, but it irritates me when people start using words >>> like "stupid" -- that's what I was responding to. >> >> Perhaps you misread the context. Austin wrote the word "stupid" as a >> hypothetical example of nonconstructive commentary that should be >> avoided. No one has hurled an insult. > > Moreover "feedback" can itself be perceived as an insult. > > Imagine that someone cleaning your office took your important > paperwork and dumped it in a bin. You complain— "Hey we need that > stuff to be accessible!" and they retort "Thank you for your > _feedback_. We'll consider it during our future cleaning plans". > > We're not just providing feedback here. We're collectively making a > decision, as we've always done, thank you very much. > > ___ > foundation-l mailing list > foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l > -- Sent from my mobile device Erik Möller Deputy Director, Wikimedia Foundation Support Free Knowledge: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] hiding interlanguage links by default is a Bad Idea, part 2
Gregory Maxwell wrote: > I was alarmed when I heard the click rates: 1%. That's an enormous > number of clicks, considerably higher than I expected with the large > number of things available for folks to click on. To hear that it > went down considerably with Vector—well, if nothing else, it is a > possible objective indication that the change has reduced the > usability of the site. To clarify, no current statistics have been released. The "0.28%" figure refers to use of Vector before the official roll-out (when the interwiki links became collapsed by default, if I'm not mistaken). The disparity is attributable to the fact that most Vector users were participants in an opt-in, English-language beta test. For the record, I agree with everything else that you wrote. David Levy ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] hiding interlanguage links by default is a Bad Idea, part 2
On Sat, Jun 5, 2010 at 1:00 PM, Gregory Maxwell wrote: > On Sat, Jun 5, 2010 at 2:03 PM, wrote: >> Sorry for top-posting. >> >> Austin, think about who "everyone" is. The folks here on foundation-l are >> not representative of readers. The job of the user experience team is to >> try to balance all readers' needs, which is not easy, and will sometimes >> involve making decisions that not everyone agrees with. People here have >> given some useful input, but I think it's far from obvious that the user >> experience team has made a "mistake.". (I'm not really intending to weigh in >> on this particular issue -- I'm speaking generally.) > > Sue, you appear to be making the assumption that the folks here are > writing from a position of their personal preferences while the > usability team is working on the behalf of the best interests of the > project. > > I don't believe this comparison to be accurate. > > The interlanguage links can be easily unhidden by anyone who knows > about them. The site remembers that you clicked to expand them. That > memory is short, but it wouldn't take any real effort to override with > personal settings... or people can disable Vector (which is what I've > done, because Vector is slow, even though I like it a lot overall). > In short, there is little reason for a sophisticated user to complain > about this for their own benefit. > > I think the people here are speaking up for the sake of the readers, > and for the sake of preserving the best of the existing design > principles used on the site. I know I am. > > Non-agreement on personal preferences is an entirely different matter > than non-agreement about how to best help our readers and how to best > express the values and principles behind the operation of our sites. > > I was alarmed when I heard the click rates: 1%. That's an enormous > number of clicks, considerably higher than I expected with the large > number of things available for folks to click on. To hear that it > went down considerably with Vector—well, if nothing else, it is a > possible objective indication that the change has reduced the > usability of the site. It is absolutely clear evidence that this > change has made a material impact on how we express ourselves to the > world. I think it's clear from my earlier messages, before I knew the > actual number, that I would have regarded figures like this as > evidence of a clear mistake. > > > > There is a clear attitude from the foundation staff that I, and > others, are perceiving in these discussions. The notion that the > community of contributors is a particularly whiny batch of customers > who must be 'managed', that they express demands unconnected from the > needs of the readers... and that it is more meaningful when a couple > of office staff retreat to some meeting room and say "we reached a > decision". Sadly, this attitude appears to be the worst from the > former volunteers on the staff—they are not afraid to speak up in > community discussion, and feel a need to distinguish themselves from > all the volunteers. > > This needs to stop and a point needs to be made clear: > > This community is who made the sites. I don't just mean the articles. > I mean the user interfaces, the PR statements, the fundraiser > material, _everything_. The success rates for companies trying to > build large and popular websites is miserable. Every successful one is > a fluke, and all the successful ones have a staff and budget orders of > magnitude larger than yours. > > We have an existence proof that the community is able to manage the > operation of the sites at a world class level. Certainly there are > many things which could have been done better, more uniformly, more > completely, or with better planning... but the community has a proven > competence in virtually every area that the foundation is now > attempting to be directly involved in. Not every member of the > community, of course, but the aggregate. > > Wikimedia's ability to do these things is an unknown, but the (lack > of) successes of other closed companies running websites—even ones > staffed by brilliant people—suggests that it is most likely that you > will also be unsuccessful. I don't mean this as a comment on the > competence of anyone involved (as I know many of them to be rather > fantastic people), it's just the most likely outcome. > > Imagine a resume for the community as a unit: > * Expertise in every imaginable subject. > * Simultaneous background in almost every human culture. > * Speaks hundreds of languages. > * Wrote the world's largest encyclopedia. > * Built one of the world's most popular websites, from the ground up. > * Managed to make an encyclopedia somehow interesting enough to be a > popular website. > * Managed the fundraising campaigns to support the entire operating > cost of the above mentioned Top-N website on charitable contributions > for many years. > * On and on, etc. > > (Like all resumes, this doe
Re: [Foundation-l] hiding interlanguage links by default is a BadIdea, part 2
On Sat, Jun 5, 2010 at 3:37 PM, David Levy wrote: > Sue Gardner wrote: >> Feedback is great, but it irritates me when people start using words >> like "stupid" -- that's what I was responding to. > > Perhaps you misread the context. Austin wrote the word "stupid" as a > hypothetical example of nonconstructive commentary that should be > avoided. No one has hurled an insult. Moreover "feedback" can itself be perceived as an insult. Imagine that someone cleaning your office took your important paperwork and dumped it in a bin. You complain— "Hey we need that stuff to be accessible!" and they retort "Thank you for your _feedback_. We'll consider it during our future cleaning plans". We're not just providing feedback here. We're collectively making a decision, as we've always done, thank you very much. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] hiding interlanguage links by default is a Bad Idea, part 2
On Sat, Jun 5, 2010 at 2:03 PM, wrote: > Sorry for top-posting. > > Austin, think about who "everyone" is. The folks here on foundation-l are > not representative of readers. The job of the user experience team is to try > to balance all readers' needs, which is not easy, and will sometimes involve > making decisions that not everyone agrees with. People here have given some > useful input, but I think it's far from obvious that the user experience team > has made a "mistake.". (I'm not really intending to weigh in on this > particular issue -- I'm speaking generally.) Sue, you appear to be making the assumption that the folks here are writing from a position of their personal preferences while the usability team is working on the behalf of the best interests of the project. I don't believe this comparison to be accurate. The interlanguage links can be easily unhidden by anyone who knows about them. The site remembers that you clicked to expand them. That memory is short, but it wouldn't take any real effort to override with personal settings... or people can disable Vector (which is what I've done, because Vector is slow, even though I like it a lot overall). In short, there is little reason for a sophisticated user to complain about this for their own benefit. I think the people here are speaking up for the sake of the readers, and for the sake of preserving the best of the existing design principles used on the site. I know I am. Non-agreement on personal preferences is an entirely different matter than non-agreement about how to best help our readers and how to best express the values and principles behind the operation of our sites. I was alarmed when I heard the click rates: 1%. That's an enormous number of clicks, considerably higher than I expected with the large number of things available for folks to click on. To hear that it went down considerably with Vector—well, if nothing else, it is a possible objective indication that the change has reduced the usability of the site. It is absolutely clear evidence that this change has made a material impact on how we express ourselves to the world. I think it's clear from my earlier messages, before I knew the actual number, that I would have regarded figures like this as evidence of a clear mistake. There is a clear attitude from the foundation staff that I, and others, are perceiving in these discussions. The notion that the community of contributors is a particularly whiny batch of customers who must be 'managed', that they express demands unconnected from the needs of the readers... and that it is more meaningful when a couple of office staff retreat to some meeting room and say "we reached a decision". Sadly, this attitude appears to be the worst from the former volunteers on the staff—they are not afraid to speak up in community discussion, and feel a need to distinguish themselves from all the volunteers. This needs to stop and a point needs to be made clear: This community is who made the sites. I don't just mean the articles. I mean the user interfaces, the PR statements, the fundraiser material, _everything_. The success rates for companies trying to build large and popular websites is miserable. Every successful one is a fluke, and all the successful ones have a staff and budget orders of magnitude larger than yours. We have an existence proof that the community is able to manage the operation of the sites at a world class level. Certainly there are many things which could have been done better, more uniformly, more completely, or with better planning... but the community has a proven competence in virtually every area that the foundation is now attempting to be directly involved in. Not every member of the community, of course, but the aggregate. Wikimedia's ability to do these things is an unknown, but the (lack of) successes of other closed companies running websites—even ones staffed by brilliant people—suggests that it is most likely that you will also be unsuccessful. I don't mean this as a comment on the competence of anyone involved (as I know many of them to be rather fantastic people), it's just the most likely outcome. Imagine a resume for the community as a unit: * Expertise in every imaginable subject. * Simultaneous background in almost every human culture. * Speaks hundreds of languages. * Wrote the world's largest encyclopedia. * Built one of the world's most popular websites, from the ground up. * Managed to make an encyclopedia somehow interesting enough to be a popular website. * Managed the fundraising campaigns to support the entire operating cost of the above mentioned Top-N website on charitable contributions for many years. * On and on, etc. (Like all resumes, this does not highlight the negatives--just proclaims what it's been able to accomplish in spite of them.) Somehow, the community knows how to take the ragtag assembly of its members: the whining, the warped personal preferences, t
Re: [Foundation-l] hiding interlanguage links by default is a BadIdea, part 2
On Sat, Jun 5, 2010 at 11:47 AM, David Gerard wrote: > On 5 June 2010 19:40, Aphaia wrote: > >> What is the good reason usability team thought data from English >> Wikipedia visitors' behaviors and alone were enough to design for all >> other 200+ languages' readership? It looks me an obvious mistake in >> opposition of your statement. > > > Indeed. There appears to be *no* community or reader groundswell in > favour of hiding the interwiki links by default. > > Where are the fans? So far I see Aryeh in favour. Is there anyone > else? On foundation-l or the blog? > > If this is such a good idea, where are the voices in favour, outside > the Foundation staff? To be fair, it's not like there's a real good mechanism for giving such opinions on discrete aspects of the skin (or anything else). I'd imagine about all there is besides listening to us whinge is clickthrough data (like reading tea leaves), the small usability studies, and the feedback from the Vector Beta. Let me repeat: On all of these questions that have been hotly debated this month: the logo, the search box, the other languages links, flaggedrevs we don't have a good way of figuring out what the users think. Hell, we don't even have a good way of figuring out what *we* think. Sue's right, Foundation-l is a tiny vocal minority and those of us commenting may or may not represent anyone other than ourselves. Same goes for the blog readers/commenters, who one expects may care more about Wikipedia than most of the casual readers out there. And I sure wouldn't presume to be able to magically synthesize the internet, read all of the comments about wikipedia out there, and give you an answer to such a (rhetorical?) question as "where are the voices in favour"? (and I do know enough about formal usability to know that usability studies can be more useful than they seem at first glance, but this problem of synthesizing widely held opinions & figuring out their relative weight is something all large communities & sites have). But even given all that, we all have valid opinions and points to make too. We have a tradition in this community of making decisions based on the quality of arguments made, not the sheer numbers of people involved in voting for one option or another, and I think to lose sight of that -- whether in usability or anything else -- would be bad. At the end of the day, I deeply respect the usability team for *trying new things*, even if we change it back later, and for trying to make good decisions with the arguments and data at hand. I see no bad faith here. Just a lively debate about what to do to make the best possible Wikipedia experience for everyone concerned, even when everyone concerned may use the site in wildly varying ways. -- phoebe ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] hiding interlanguage links by default is a BadIdea, part 2
Thanks for your clarification, Sue. I see it irritates to hear words in such a tone to the team your office is expected to support, and expect therefore you understand people on the list, who get deeply involved into this cause and donate their time and works, irritate on bad communication and lack of scientific information which can relieve their worries. And thank you for responding in prompt; I confess you reminded me on yourself who I first met - it was in Taipei and you were busy to text on blackberry, it brought me a smile in midst of this heated discussion. Hope to see you and many other on this list, soon in Gdansk and elsewhere On Sun, Jun 6, 2010 at 4:15 AM, wrote: > I'm not weighing in on the specific issue Aphaia, and I'm sure Howie will say > more next week. My point is just what I said: the UX team is trying to > balance all users' needs, which may or may not be the same as the extremely > committed super-users who post here. Feedback is great, but it irritates me > when people start using words like "stupid" -- that's what I was responding > to. > > Thanks, > Sue > -Original Message- > From: Aphaia > Date: Sun, 6 Jun 2010 03:40:22 > To: ; Wikimedia Foundation Mailing > List > Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] hiding interlanguage links by default is a > BadIdea, part 2 > > On Sun, Jun 6, 2010 at 3:03 AM, wrote: >> Sorry for top-posting. >> >> Austin, think about who "everyone" is. The folks here on foundation-l are >> not representative of readers. The job of the user experience team is to >> try to balance all readers' needs, > > > Sue, not personal, but I think here I say, joining to the choir which > Jon and Eia began: > while English Wikipedia is the most visited websites of the Wikimedia, > it is only 50% and most of its readers are English Speaking. They have > no good reasons I believe to representative the rest of us non-English > speaking people who are 2/60 of this planet. > > What is the good reason usability team thought data from English > Wikipedia visitors' behaviors and alone were enough to design for all > other 200+ languages' readership? It looks me an obvious mistake in > opposition of your statement. > > which is not easy, and will sometimes involve making decisions that > not everyone agrees with. People here have given some useful input, > but I think it's far from obvious that the user experience team has > made a "mistake.". (I'm not really intending to weigh in on this > particular issue -- I'm speaking generally.) >> >> Aryeh Gregor has said a couple of very smart things in this thread, >> particularly this bit I'll quote below: >> >> "Users don't explicitly complain about small things. They >> especially don't complain about things like clutter, because the >> negative effect that has is barely perceptible -- extra effort >> required to find things. But if you take away a feature that's >> important to a small number of users, or that's well established and >> people are used to it, you'll get lots of complaints from a tiny >> minority of users. Basing development decisions on who complains the >> loudest is what results in software packed with tons of useless and >> confusing features and lousy UI. Like most open-source software, >> including MediaWiki. Good design requires systematic analysis, >> ignoring user complaints if the evidence indicates they're not >> representative." >> >> Thanks, >> Sue >> >> -Original Message- >> From: Austin Hair >> Date: Sat, 5 Jun 2010 15:56:26 >> To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List >> Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] hiding interlanguage links by default is a Bad >> Idea, part 2 >> >> On Sat, Jun 5, 2010 at 3:47 PM, David Levy wrote: >>> Austin Hair wrote: >>> And yes, I'll echo others when I question the original rationale and suggest that the interpretation of what very little data was collected is completely wrong, but I think I'll direct my focus toward a practical fix, rather than just calling the usability team stupid. >>> >>> Your last sentence surprised me, as I haven't seen anyone opine that >>> the usability team is stupid (and I certainly am not suggesting >>> anything of the sort). Everyone makes mistakes, and we believe that >>> one has been made in this instance. As for a practical fix, one >>> actually was implemented (and quickly undone). >> >> Sorry if that wasn't clear—I didn't mean to indict you or anyone else >> for doing that; all I meant was that although I, personally, could >> easily focus on mistakes the usability team made, the way forward is >> to simply fix it to everyone's satisfaction. >> >> Austin >> >>___ >> foundation-l mailing list >> foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org >> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l >>___ >> foundation-l mailing list >> foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org >> Unsubscribe: https://lists.
Re: [Foundation-l] hiding interlanguage links by default is a BadIdea, part 2
Sue Gardner wrote: > Feedback is great, but it irritates me when people start using words > like "stupid" -- that's what I was responding to. Perhaps you misread the context. Austin wrote the word "stupid" as a hypothetical example of nonconstructive commentary that should be avoided. No one has hurled an insult. David Levy ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] hiding interlanguage links by default is a BadIdea, part 2
On Sat, Jun 5, 2010 at 8:03 PM, wrote: > Austin, think about who "everyone" is. The folks here on foundation-l are > not representative of readers. The job of the user experience team is to try > to balance all readers' needs, which is not easy, and will sometimes involve > making decisions that not everyone agrees with. People here have given some > useful input, but I think it's far from obvious that the user experience team > has made a "mistake.". (I'm not really intending to weigh in on this > particular issue -- I'm speaking generally.) Regarding calling it a mistake, I'm making this judgment based not on my personal opinion—which is by now abundantly clear—but on the scientific basis that forming a conclusion without data makes for a bad conclusion. It's true that I wouldn't bother to weigh in on the process if I agreed with the outcome. I think that's true for most of us. But since I'm bothering anyway, I may as well say that the process is flawed, and the decision doesn't logically follow the facts—since we haven't measured (scientific jargon, here) the facts in the first place. Austin ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] hiding interlanguage links by default is a BadIdea, part 2
I'm not weighing in on the specific issue Aphaia, and I'm sure Howie will say more next week. My point is just what I said: the UX team is trying to balance all users' needs, which may or may not be the same as the extremely committed super-users who post here. Feedback is great, but it irritates me when people start using words like "stupid" -- that's what I was responding to. Thanks, Sue -Original Message- From: Aphaia Date: Sun, 6 Jun 2010 03:40:22 To: ; Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] hiding interlanguage links by default is a BadIdea, part 2 On Sun, Jun 6, 2010 at 3:03 AM, wrote: > Sorry for top-posting. > > Austin, think about who "everyone" is. The folks here on foundation-l are > not representative of readers. The job of the user experience team is to try > to balance all readers' needs, Sue, not personal, but I think here I say, joining to the choir which Jon and Eia began: while English Wikipedia is the most visited websites of the Wikimedia, it is only 50% and most of its readers are English Speaking. They have no good reasons I believe to representative the rest of us non-English speaking people who are 2/60 of this planet. What is the good reason usability team thought data from English Wikipedia visitors' behaviors and alone were enough to design for all other 200+ languages' readership? It looks me an obvious mistake in opposition of your statement. which is not easy, and will sometimes involve making decisions that not everyone agrees with. People here have given some useful input, but I think it's far from obvious that the user experience team has made a "mistake.". (I'm not really intending to weigh in on this particular issue -- I'm speaking generally.) > > Aryeh Gregor has said a couple of very smart things in this thread, > particularly this bit I'll quote below: > > "Users don't explicitly complain about small things. They > especially don't complain about things like clutter, because the > negative effect that has is barely perceptible -- extra effort > required to find things. But if you take away a feature that's > important to a small number of users, or that's well established and > people are used to it, you'll get lots of complaints from a tiny > minority of users. Basing development decisions on who complains the > loudest is what results in software packed with tons of useless and > confusing features and lousy UI. Like most open-source software, > including MediaWiki. Good design requires systematic analysis, > ignoring user complaints if the evidence indicates they're not > representative." > > Thanks, > Sue > > -Original Message- > From: Austin Hair > Date: Sat, 5 Jun 2010 15:56:26 > To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List > Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] hiding interlanguage links by default is a Bad > Idea, part 2 > > On Sat, Jun 5, 2010 at 3:47 PM, David Levy wrote: >> Austin Hair wrote: >> >>> And yes, I'll echo others when I question the original rationale and >>> suggest that the interpretation of what very little data was collected >>> is completely wrong, but I think I'll direct my focus toward a >>> practical fix, rather than just calling the usability team stupid. >> >> Your last sentence surprised me, as I haven't seen anyone opine that >> the usability team is stupid (and I certainly am not suggesting >> anything of the sort). Everyone makes mistakes, and we believe that >> one has been made in this instance. As for a practical fix, one >> actually was implemented (and quickly undone). > > Sorry if that wasn't clear—I didn't mean to indict you or anyone else > for doing that; all I meant was that although I, personally, could > easily focus on mistakes the usability team made, the way forward is > to simply fix it to everyone's satisfaction. > > Austin > >___ > foundation-l mailing list > foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l >___ > foundation-l mailing list > foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l > -- KIZU Naoko http://d.hatena.ne.jp/Britty (in Japanese) Quote of the Day (English): http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/WQ:QOTD ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] hiding interlanguage links by default is a BadIdea, part 2
Wikipedia is a multilingual reference work. The visibility of the interwiki links made that plain. Please restore them. A. --- On Sat, 5/6/10, David Gerard wrote: > From: David Gerard > Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] hiding interlanguage links by default is a > BadIdea, part 2 > To: "Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List" > Date: Saturday, 5 June, 2010, 19:47 > On 5 June 2010 19:40, Aphaia > wrote: > > > What is the good reason usability team thought data > from English > > Wikipedia visitors' behaviors and alone were enough to > design for all > > other 200+ languages' readership? It looks me an > obvious mistake in > > opposition of your statement. > > > Indeed. There appears to be *no* community or reader > groundswell in > favour of hiding the interwiki links by default. > > Where are the fans? So far I see Aryeh in favour. Is there > anyone > else? On foundation-l or the blog? > > If this is such a good idea, where are the voices in > favour, outside > the Foundation staff? > > For a decision that directly contradicts the words of the > mission > statement, by hampering the process of people finding > knowlege in > their own language, this really does not appear good > enough. > > Where is the communtiy or reader groundswell *in favour* of > this move? > It appears nonexistent. > > > - d. > > ___ > foundation-l mailing list > foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l > ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] hiding interlanguage links by default is a BadIdea, part 2
I wrote: > I also wait the answers to these questions. wait = await David Levy ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] hiding interlanguage links by default is a BadIdea, part 2
Sue Gardner wrote: > The folks here on foundation-l are not representative of readers. Many novice users have expressed confusion, frustration and disapproval. This isn't a representative sample either, but it's the only reader feedback that we have (to weigh against the user experience team's hunch). > The job of the user experience team is to try to balance all readers' > needs, which is not easy, and will sometimes involve making decisions > that not everyone agrees with. Agreed. But we've established that the usability study did not include this issue. So while it's difficult to determine the extent to which users have been adversely affected, there is no evidence that *any* users were adversely affected by the previous setup or benefited from the change. This is not to say that no improvement is possible. We simply don't know at this juncture. What's so unreasonable about the request to restore the longstanding behavior (with the additional option to collapse the links) until evidence of an actual problem (and net benefit of the change) exists? > People here have given some useful input, but I think it's far from > obvious that the user experience team has made a "mistake.". Setting aside the issue of whether the change was beneficial (which would require formal research to accurately assess), I strongly believe that implementing it on the basis of speculation (with no advance consultation with or notification to the community, despite the existence of a beta test program) was a mistake. I also find it extremely troubling that the team has interpreted interwiki link usage data from the English Wikipedia as applicable to all Wikimedia wikis (given the intention to deploy this setup across the board). I would be shocked to learn that the interwiki links don't receive substantially more use within other Wikipedias (particularly the smaller ones, whose articles often contain less information). David Gerard wrote: > I notice that Howie Fung avoided answering my question: What would it > take for this decision to be reversed? > > Also, you may be able to answer the question of what would happen if a > wiki showed community conensus to remove this. Would the foundation > forcibly keep it in place? I also wait the answers to these questions. David Levy ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] hiding interlanguage links by default is a BadIdea, part 2
On 5 June 2010 19:40, Aphaia wrote: > What is the good reason usability team thought data from English > Wikipedia visitors' behaviors and alone were enough to design for all > other 200+ languages' readership? It looks me an obvious mistake in > opposition of your statement. Indeed. There appears to be *no* community or reader groundswell in favour of hiding the interwiki links by default. Where are the fans? So far I see Aryeh in favour. Is there anyone else? On foundation-l or the blog? If this is such a good idea, where are the voices in favour, outside the Foundation staff? For a decision that directly contradicts the words of the mission statement, by hampering the process of people finding knowlege in their own language, this really does not appear good enough. Where is the communtiy or reader groundswell *in favour* of this move? It appears nonexistent. - d. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] hiding interlanguage links by default is a BadIdea, part 2
Well, I would have liked to mean, English speaking people is only 2/60 global population, it would be obvious though, I'd like to give a stat collection. Cheers, On Sun, Jun 6, 2010 at 3:40 AM, Aphaia wrote: > On Sun, Jun 6, 2010 at 3:03 AM, wrote: >> Sorry for top-posting. >> >> Austin, think about who "everyone" is. The folks here on foundation-l are >> not representative of readers. The job of the user experience team is to >> try to balance all readers' needs, > > > Sue, not personal, but I think here I say, joining to the choir which > Jon and Eia began: > while English Wikipedia is the most visited websites of the Wikimedia, > it is only 50% and most of its readers are English Speaking. They have > no good reasons I believe to representative the rest of us non-English > speaking people who are 2/60 of this planet. > > What is the good reason usability team thought data from English > Wikipedia visitors' behaviors and alone were enough to design for all > other 200+ languages' readership? It looks me an obvious mistake in > opposition of your statement. > > which is not easy, and will sometimes involve making decisions that > not everyone agrees with. People here have given some useful input, > but I think it's far from obvious that the user experience team has > made a "mistake.". (I'm not really intending to weigh in on this > particular issue -- I'm speaking generally.) >> >> Aryeh Gregor has said a couple of very smart things in this thread, >> particularly this bit I'll quote below: >> >> "Users don't explicitly complain about small things. They >> especially don't complain about things like clutter, because the >> negative effect that has is barely perceptible -- extra effort >> required to find things. But if you take away a feature that's >> important to a small number of users, or that's well established and >> people are used to it, you'll get lots of complaints from a tiny >> minority of users. Basing development decisions on who complains the >> loudest is what results in software packed with tons of useless and >> confusing features and lousy UI. Like most open-source software, >> including MediaWiki. Good design requires systematic analysis, >> ignoring user complaints if the evidence indicates they're not >> representative." >> >> Thanks, >> Sue >> >> -Original Message- >> From: Austin Hair >> Date: Sat, 5 Jun 2010 15:56:26 >> To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List >> Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] hiding interlanguage links by default is a Bad >> Idea, part 2 >> >> On Sat, Jun 5, 2010 at 3:47 PM, David Levy wrote: >>> Austin Hair wrote: >>> And yes, I'll echo others when I question the original rationale and suggest that the interpretation of what very little data was collected is completely wrong, but I think I'll direct my focus toward a practical fix, rather than just calling the usability team stupid. >>> >>> Your last sentence surprised me, as I haven't seen anyone opine that >>> the usability team is stupid (and I certainly am not suggesting >>> anything of the sort). Everyone makes mistakes, and we believe that >>> one has been made in this instance. As for a practical fix, one >>> actually was implemented (and quickly undone). >> >> Sorry if that wasn't clear—I didn't mean to indict you or anyone else >> for doing that; all I meant was that although I, personally, could >> easily focus on mistakes the usability team made, the way forward is >> to simply fix it to everyone's satisfaction. >> >> Austin >> >> ___ >> foundation-l mailing list >> foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org >> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l >> ___ >> foundation-l mailing list >> foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org >> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l >> > > > > -- > KIZU Naoko > http://d.hatena.ne.jp/Britty (in Japanese) > Quote of the Day (English): http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/WQ:QOTD > -- KIZU Naoko http://d.hatena.ne.jp/Britty (in Japanese) Quote of the Day (English): http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/WQ:QOTD ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] hiding interlanguage links by default is a BadIdea, part 2
On Sun, Jun 6, 2010 at 3:03 AM, wrote: > Sorry for top-posting. > > Austin, think about who "everyone" is. The folks here on foundation-l are > not representative of readers. The job of the user experience team is to try > to balance all readers' needs, Sue, not personal, but I think here I say, joining to the choir which Jon and Eia began: while English Wikipedia is the most visited websites of the Wikimedia, it is only 50% and most of its readers are English Speaking. They have no good reasons I believe to representative the rest of us non-English speaking people who are 2/60 of this planet. What is the good reason usability team thought data from English Wikipedia visitors' behaviors and alone were enough to design for all other 200+ languages' readership? It looks me an obvious mistake in opposition of your statement. which is not easy, and will sometimes involve making decisions that not everyone agrees with. People here have given some useful input, but I think it's far from obvious that the user experience team has made a "mistake.". (I'm not really intending to weigh in on this particular issue -- I'm speaking generally.) > > Aryeh Gregor has said a couple of very smart things in this thread, > particularly this bit I'll quote below: > > "Users don't explicitly complain about small things. They > especially don't complain about things like clutter, because the > negative effect that has is barely perceptible -- extra effort > required to find things. But if you take away a feature that's > important to a small number of users, or that's well established and > people are used to it, you'll get lots of complaints from a tiny > minority of users. Basing development decisions on who complains the > loudest is what results in software packed with tons of useless and > confusing features and lousy UI. Like most open-source software, > including MediaWiki. Good design requires systematic analysis, > ignoring user complaints if the evidence indicates they're not > representative." > > Thanks, > Sue > > -Original Message- > From: Austin Hair > Date: Sat, 5 Jun 2010 15:56:26 > To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List > Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] hiding interlanguage links by default is a Bad > Idea, part 2 > > On Sat, Jun 5, 2010 at 3:47 PM, David Levy wrote: >> Austin Hair wrote: >> >>> And yes, I'll echo others when I question the original rationale and >>> suggest that the interpretation of what very little data was collected >>> is completely wrong, but I think I'll direct my focus toward a >>> practical fix, rather than just calling the usability team stupid. >> >> Your last sentence surprised me, as I haven't seen anyone opine that >> the usability team is stupid (and I certainly am not suggesting >> anything of the sort). Everyone makes mistakes, and we believe that >> one has been made in this instance. As for a practical fix, one >> actually was implemented (and quickly undone). > > Sorry if that wasn't clear—I didn't mean to indict you or anyone else > for doing that; all I meant was that although I, personally, could > easily focus on mistakes the usability team made, the way forward is > to simply fix it to everyone's satisfaction. > > Austin > > ___ > foundation-l mailing list > foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l > ___ > foundation-l mailing list > foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l > -- KIZU Naoko http://d.hatena.ne.jp/Britty (in Japanese) Quote of the Day (English): http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/WQ:QOTD ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] hiding interlanguage links by default is a BadIdea, part 2
On 5 June 2010 19:03, wrote: > Austin, think about who "everyone" is. The folks here on foundation-l are > not representative of readers. The job of the user experience team is to try > to balance all readers' needs, which is not easy, and will sometimes involve > making decisions that not everyone agrees with. People here have given some > useful input, but I think it's far from obvious that the user experience team > has made a "mistake.". (I'm not really intending to weigh in on this > particular issue -- I'm speaking generally.) The readers are not objecting on foundation-l. They are objecting on the blog. I notice that Howie Fung avoided answering my question: What would it take for this decision to be reversed? Also, you may be able to answer the question of what would happen if a wiki showed community conensus to remove this. Would the foundation forcibly keep it in place? - d. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] hiding interlanguage links by default is a BadIdea, part 2
Sorry for top-posting. Austin, think about who "everyone" is. The folks here on foundation-l are not representative of readers. The job of the user experience team is to try to balance all readers' needs, which is not easy, and will sometimes involve making decisions that not everyone agrees with. People here have given some useful input, but I think it's far from obvious that the user experience team has made a "mistake.". (I'm not really intending to weigh in on this particular issue -- I'm speaking generally.) Aryeh Gregor has said a couple of very smart things in this thread, particularly this bit I'll quote below: "Users don't explicitly complain about small things. They especially don't complain about things like clutter, because the negative effect that has is barely perceptible -- extra effort required to find things. But if you take away a feature that's important to a small number of users, or that's well established and people are used to it, you'll get lots of complaints from a tiny minority of users. Basing development decisions on who complains the loudest is what results in software packed with tons of useless and confusing features and lousy UI. Like most open-source software, including MediaWiki. Good design requires systematic analysis, ignoring user complaints if the evidence indicates they're not representative." Thanks, Sue -Original Message- From: Austin Hair Date: Sat, 5 Jun 2010 15:56:26 To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] hiding interlanguage links by default is a Bad Idea, part 2 On Sat, Jun 5, 2010 at 3:47 PM, David Levy wrote: > Austin Hair wrote: > >> And yes, I'll echo others when I question the original rationale and >> suggest that the interpretation of what very little data was collected >> is completely wrong, but I think I'll direct my focus toward a >> practical fix, rather than just calling the usability team stupid. > > Your last sentence surprised me, as I haven't seen anyone opine that > the usability team is stupid (and I certainly am not suggesting > anything of the sort). Everyone makes mistakes, and we believe that > one has been made in this instance. As for a practical fix, one > actually was implemented (and quickly undone). Sorry if that wasn't clear—I didn't mean to indict you or anyone else for doing that; all I meant was that although I, personally, could easily focus on mistakes the usability team made, the way forward is to simply fix it to everyone's satisfaction. Austin ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
[Foundation-l] Archivage down?
Hello, http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2010-June/ Why is there no message after Thu Jun 3 06:59:53 UTC 2010? Thanks, Yann ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Texts deleted on French Wikisource
Here's my attempt at trying to answer these. Yann Forget wrote: > Hello, > > Could someone please explain the following from this page: > http://www.chillingeffects.org/dmca/counter512.pdf > > 1. What does it mean that "I consent to accept service of process from > the party who submitted the take-down notice"? > Since a counterclaim involves the possibility that the rights claimant may go to court, this simply means that you agree to receive any legal paperwork in connection with such a case. The claimant could then send it directly to you without going through WMF. > 2. In the phrase "Each of those works were removed in error and I > believe my posting them does not infringe anyone else's rights." Does > it mean "does not infringe anyone else's rights _in USA_"? or > everywhere in the world? > This would be as determined by US law since you are giving jurisdiction to US courts. The claimant can make that claim from anywhere in the world. Foreign rights could be protected to whatever extent they are recognized by US law. Ray ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Texts deleted on French Wikisource
On Sat, Jun 5, 2010 at 6:33 AM, Yann Forget wrote: > Hello, > > Could someone please explain the following from this page: > http://www.chillingeffects.org/dmca/counter512.pdf > > 1. What does it mean that "I consent to accept service of process from > the party who submitted the take-down notice"? > > 2. In the phrase "Each of those works were removed in error and I > believe my posting them does not infringe anyone else's rights." Does > it mean "does not infringe anyone else's rights _in USA_"? or > everywhere in the world? > > Thanks, > > Yann Process service is when you are given notification of a suit or legal action. If you've ever heard the phrase "you've been served" - that's what this refers to. In some situations, you have to be notified of the existence of a legal action in order for it to proceed against you. As for the second part, I'd imagine it means "anyone else's rights" as written - not specific to those that originate in the U.S. ~Nathan ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] hiding interlanguage links by default is a Bad Idea, part 2
On Sat, Jun 5, 2010 at 13:19, Lodewijk wrote: > Hi all, > > thank you for your summary, Guillaume. I would like to add to this a > question based on Jon's insightful email: > > the research you did on clicks etc, was apparently only on the English > Wikipedia. Would it be an option to first do more research on how the links > are used on the other projects? Out of the >700 projects to choose from, > you > unfortunately picked one where the clicking is most likely to be very > different from all the other projects. Usually that is not a good basis to > build decisions for all 700 projects on. Besides that, it seems you > measured > logged in users (since you mention comparing monobook vs vector, it seems > that you measured people who switched before the Big Switch?) Perhaps you > want to actually do research on how anonymous users work. > > There's a few other things that would be interesting: * comparing with country as well (to account for # languages people likely know, wether they're likely to be browsing their own language wikipedia) * effect of a long list of interwiki (altho you'd need to correct for wether there's likely a language they know well/better then the version they're currently reading) - I wonder if a long list makes it less likely for people to click on something * size of the article - do long articles interwikilinks get used less or not? henna ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] hiding interlanguage links by default is a Bad Idea, part 2
On Sat, Jun 5, 2010 at 3:47 PM, David Levy wrote: > Austin Hair wrote: > >> And yes, I'll echo others when I question the original rationale and >> suggest that the interpretation of what very little data was collected >> is completely wrong, but I think I'll direct my focus toward a >> practical fix, rather than just calling the usability team stupid. > > Your last sentence surprised me, as I haven't seen anyone opine that > the usability team is stupid (and I certainly am not suggesting > anything of the sort). Everyone makes mistakes, and we believe that > one has been made in this instance. As for a practical fix, one > actually was implemented (and quickly undone). Sorry if that wasn't clear—I didn't mean to indict you or anyone else for doing that; all I meant was that although I, personally, could easily focus on mistakes the usability team made, the way forward is to simply fix it to everyone's satisfaction. Austin ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] hiding interlanguage links by default is a Bad Idea, part 2
Austin Hair wrote: > And yes, I'll echo others when I question the original rationale and > suggest that the interpretation of what very little data was collected > is completely wrong, but I think I'll direct my focus toward a > practical fix, rather than just calling the usability team stupid. Your last sentence surprised me, as I haven't seen anyone opine that the usability team is stupid (and I certainly am not suggesting anything of the sort). Everyone makes mistakes, and we believe that one has been made in this instance. As for a practical fix, one actually was implemented (and quickly undone). David Levy ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] hiding interlanguage links by default is a Bad Idea, part 2
On Sat, Jun 5, 2010 at 7:30 AM, David Levy wrote: > Howie Fung wrote: >> While we did not explicitly test for this during our usability studies >> (e.g., it wasn't included as a major design question), we did exercise >> judgement in identifying this as a problem, based partly on the applying >> the above design principle to the site, partly on the data. > > Said data indicated only that the interwiki links were used relatively > infrequently. Apparently, there is absolutely no data suggesting that > the full list's display posed a problem. Rather, this is a hunch > based upon the application of a general design principle whose > relevance has not been established. I was searching for a way to exactly that, David, and you said it perfectly. A usability principle may be universally accepted, but I can't think of a single one that can be applied to absolutely every case. What's happening now is a vocal minority disputing the application of one principle to one specific case, and with very little disagreement—we just seem to differ on matters of degree. And yes, I'll echo others when I question the original rationale and suggest that the interpretation of what very little data was collected is completely wrong, but I think I'll direct my focus toward a practical fix, rather than just calling the usability team stupid. Austin ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Communication
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 Thank you for your opinions. I'd like to clarify my criticism. What Mike has done and is doing is honorable; he's dedicating efforts and patience to the community. He has nothing to do with my questioning. What I see is that WMF doesn't always publish the problems they're addressing, not in time, not entirely and not in a defined and known place. It seems that the WMF feels it is the correct way to communicate their actions once they're done, synthesizing briefly why to a selected (or random?) sample of the community. Some answers here even suggest that secrecy is necessary, that informing the community about what and why the Board is doing is not feasible or desirable as a norm and as a duty, and that communicating about the situation, intentions and actions of the WMF should be exceptional and under the community pressure, pressure that should be channeled and controlled through trusted community members. I'm not trying to accuse but to put in relief a certain vision of WMF: an enterprise that must survive legally and economically, like any other enterprise. The community is some sort of public, clients and users that one must manage through public relations at best or indifference. In summary, this seems a vision of little accountability towards the community. In contrast, I think the community has other expectations. They feel they own the projects because they made them, they're making them, they will make them. They're not consumers. They're the engine. They identify with the project. They share (more or less) a vision and they search for an ethic together. I think that in their minds, though they owe a lot to the founders, they now are the main part of this adventure. The WMF is paid by them to address what they will tell them to address. According to this vision, the accountability towards the community is total. My words are not good and my vision short. I beg someone with better eloquence and diplomatic skills, with more experience and insight to develop the idea. What I propose is to create a public space where the WMF would announce immediately the claims and pressures they receive, and how they will respond. (just a copy/paste of mails for example). People who want to follow, comment or act upon these kind of news would subscribe to a RSS feed, maybe with a filter for chapters. Correctly set up, this channel between the WMF and the community could be synergetic. It could avoid triggering anger, edit wars and demissions. It could be used as a brain tank to collect data and ideas about the problems that the WMF is facing, even when the WMF is doomed to act on short terms. If the WMF accepts to feed the community with its problems and intentions and listens to the corresponding feedback, most of the communication problems would be defused, in my opinion. I think it is worth an experimental try at least. If it yields positively constructive results, then maybe there should be such a page for each big category of problems that the WMF usually deals with. Oh well, just a (badly expressed) idea. On 05/06/2010 11:29, Bod Notbod wrote: > On Fri, Jun 4, 2010 at 8:04 PM, Mike Godwin wrote: > >> I think if you look at what we did with regard to the Gallimard takedowns... > > Going back to the original issue regarding communication, the > appearance of Mike on this thread shows me that this mailing list is > one good way to get the Board's attention. > > If Mike hadn't been able to deal with an issue and he felt it was > important he would just walk across to or email someone who is better > placed to respond. > > On that basis I would say there isn't a communication issue. It might > be hard for a newbie to know where to go, but in a way that protects > the staff from being overwhelmed by the many millions who visit the > site and have a query. I actually think it's a good thing to have > barriers to communicating with WMF staff. In that way, we the > community become sort of receptionists for them; we can either deal > with a complaint or question ourselves or, if it so warrants, bump it > up here or directly email the WMF. > > User:Bodnotbod > > ___ > foundation-l mailing list > foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.4.9 (MingW32) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org/ iQEcBAEBAgAGBQJMCjbtAAoJEHCAuDvx9Z6LDUcH/jv3bi/kkrOnSmIMS4eSbVA6 L79gd/+TVFY9Nk6+B1XkhyMfrc9Q6sZeZ/iv+CQBPEZqRer/ghR7brouTqAhZAL7 7wvTV9Z14OxmHzVCAtEKC8TwsvmwZ8hrBuHbOmP1B9qKmfC16TPuYwJLhRFb+Cd0 1mrftXOvB9sGjWPYoaaBZJuSSTT4bgH0dBN/sdVp9rkNUtjk/Zh/Vyz4pSQJM5gz 0vll3WBhlIiGSb9CAdU6SUN12dicxPB698XZXrWD1ThzHP7WaFkQSwSwfsqWr1xj Fdt9nyKdeH+32hHF9cs0ikEN8iBVf7ROHjX5OfWY8h87FujD39hyjmLwXRFuuGI= =rFAs -END PGP SIGNATURE- ___ foundation-l mailing l
Re: [Foundation-l] hiding interlanguage links by default is a Bad Idea, part 2
Hi all, thank you for your summary, Guillaume. I would like to add to this a question based on Jon's insightful email: the research you did on clicks etc, was apparently only on the English Wikipedia. Would it be an option to first do more research on how the links are used on the other projects? Out of the >700 projects to choose from, you unfortunately picked one where the clicking is most likely to be very different from all the other projects. Usually that is not a good basis to build decisions for all 700 projects on. Besides that, it seems you measured logged in users (since you mention comparing monobook vs vector, it seems that you measured people who switched before the Big Switch?) Perhaps you want to actually do research on how anonymous users work. And to be honest, I find ~1% actually quite a *lot* for this kind of links. Considering the huge number of people who do not speak a language besides English, or who rather stay there because they started there for a reason (and why would you then go to the German article on Pocahontas if the English Wikipedia suits you well). Would it be an option to put the language links back to as they were for now, and then do some more research first on how people outside the English language behave, how anonymous users behave and have a discussion about that in the community first? Because I strongly believe this topic is *so* important to all the smaller languages (they draw their community from these links, after all), that we should involve that as well into the discussion. The links are not just there to help the specific visitors of the English Wikipedia, but they are there as well to help the tswana Wikipedia to develop over time to a serious size. Please remember that our mission is to bring the sum of human knowledge to *all* people in the whole world. Not just the readers of major languages. I do however recognize that linking the whole huge list might not be an optimal way of helping these communities, but I am not sure either that focusing on large and to the reader relevant languages will be. best regards, Lodewijk 2010/6/5 Guillaume Paumier > Howie, > > Thanks for your detailed message. I appreciate your efforts of trying > to listen to the feedback from the community. However, even after > listening to the discussion in the office today, and after reading > your message, I still fail to understand the logic behind these > decisions. I'm going to try and summarize your paragraphs into a few > sentences; please tell me if I got something wrong > > In a paragraph, you explain it is your belief that in Monobook, the > long list of languages made it difficult for the user to identify this > area as "a list of languages". > > In the following paragraph, you say you tracked the clicks in the > sidebar in Monobook, and found that less than 1% of users clicked on a > language link. You then explain you hid the list of languages because > this number showed it wasn't used. > > Perhaps I'm just beating a dead horse, but, looking at these two > arguments, a fairly reasonable hypothesis to make is that users don't > click on the languages links *because* they don't realize it's there. > A fairly reasonable design decision would be to try and make it more > discoverable, and you could measure the impact easily by seeing if > more users click on the language links. > > Instead, you chose to hide the list completely. I still fail to see > how this decision could be an attempt at fixing the issue you had > discovered. > > Maybe users don't think of a traffic jam as "a list of cars". But > showing an empty road hardly makes things better. > > -- > Guillaume Paumier > [[m:User:guillom]] > http://www.gpaumier.org > > ___ > foundation-l mailing list > foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l > ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] hiding interlanguage links by default is a Bad Idea, part 2
On 4 June 2010 21:21, David Levy wrote: >> They especially don't complain about things like clutter, because the >> negative effect that has is barely perceptible -- extra effort >> required to find things. > > I've encountered many complaints about clutter at the English > Wikipedia (pertaining to articles, our main page and other pages), but > not one complaint that the interwiki links caused clutter. FWIW, the only time I've heard a complaint about the visual effect of the interwikis is where we have a very short article on an internationally popular topic, such as: http://pdc.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afrikaa ...here, 90% of the page "area" is blank space, as the article has stopped but the interwikis keep on going, and it feels as though the page is a very weirdly laid-out way of referring people to different languages. (This is quite rare on enwiki these days because due to sheer numbers, it's unusual to find a topic covered in ten or more languages which is a mere stub on en. But there's still plenty of cases out there.) Interestingly, even with the full list of languages, the page above looks better in Vector than in Monobook: http://pdc.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afrikaa?useskin=vector http://pdc.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afrikaa?useskin=monobook - dropping the "solid boxes" from the left-hand column means that it doesn't look so dominant when expanded. -- - Andrew Gray andrew.g...@dunelm.org.uk ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] hiding interlanguage links by default is a Bad Idea, part 2
Thirded. Waerth >> Or you could simply restore the one-line code modification that >> provided the default behavior requested by the community (pending >> evidence that an alternative setup is beneficial). >> > > Seconded. Just bring them back already. This is an imaginary problem > you've come up with here. The community is pretty much literally > begging for their return and I think we've offered a lot of very good > arguments. Is this going to be the day that Wikipedia jumped the shark > and users' opinions stopped counting? Please don't let it be. > > M. > > ___ > foundation-l mailing list > foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l > > > > ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Texts deleted on French Wikisource
Hello, Could someone please explain the following from this page: http://www.chillingeffects.org/dmca/counter512.pdf 1. What does it mean that "I consent to accept service of process from the party who submitted the take-down notice"? 2. In the phrase "Each of those works were removed in error and I believe my posting them does not infringe anyone else's rights." Does it mean "does not infringe anyone else's rights _in USA_"? or everywhere in the world? Thanks, Yann ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Communication
On Fri, Jun 4, 2010 at 8:04 PM, Mike Godwin wrote: > I think if you look at what we did with regard to the Gallimard takedowns... Going back to the original issue regarding communication, the appearance of Mike on this thread shows me that this mailing list is one good way to get the Board's attention. If Mike hadn't been able to deal with an issue and he felt it was important he would just walk across to or email someone who is better placed to respond. On that basis I would say there isn't a communication issue. It might be hard for a newbie to know where to go, but in a way that protects the staff from being overwhelmed by the many millions who visit the site and have a query. I actually think it's a good thing to have barriers to communicating with WMF staff. In that way, we the community become sort of receptionists for them; we can either deal with a complaint or question ourselves or, if it so warrants, bump it up here or directly email the WMF. User:Bodnotbod ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] hiding interlanguage links by default is a Bad Idea, part 2
On 5 June 2010 02:03, Howie Fung wrote: > The Usability team discussed this issue at length this afternoon. We > listened closely to the feedback and have come up with solution which we > hope will work for everyone. It's not a perfect solution, but we think > it's a reasonable compromise. > > From your response it seems to me that the usability team looks at the iw-list as user interface. To me it is not primarily a user interface, it is information about the subject similar to e.g. the categories. By one glance at the list I can see that the theme has not been written about in many languages yet, or I can see that a huge number of languages have an article about the current theme. I can discover that a language, even one where I cannot read the letters, have found this theme important enough to write about it. Neither of these pieces of information require me to click on the links to be discovered, nor do they invite me to click any more than the edit links that are present at each section heading. (And the latter are pure user interface, no information). I have a feeling that the group of users that were observed were probably native english speakers using their native language Wikipedia, which by chance happens to be the largest in size. That is the Wikipedia that receives approximately 50% of the total visits. That leaves just under 50% for other languages. However, even part of the visits to the largest are from speakers of other languages. My interpretation of your data is thus that it comes from less than half the total numbers of users. A special half at that, especially when it comes to the iw-list. There are some suggestions that the geolocation could be used to customize this. To anyone with such ideas, I would just suggest first getting on a plane to a place with a script you dont understand, go to a internet cafe and attempt to make an advanced search using google. I would be surprised if you still felt it was a good idea. An important point about the iw-links is that they might be important to use as links just for a minority, but that to that minority they are of vital importance. Your compromise is not good enough for that minority. You might as well remove the edit links because just a minority of visitors to this site actually uses them. Hans A. Rosbach (User Haros with no as home wiki) ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
