On 2/9/07, David Gerard <dgerard(a)gmail.com> wrote: Well here's my 2 cents: Main page: scrap it, it's redundant. That's what clicking on the ball does. Community portal: Worst name ever Featured content: Keep, but possibly rename Current events: Weird, never even noticed this before. Do people actually click it? Recent changes: Scrap it. Good for tiny wikis. Useless at WP. Move to toolbox if it must be kept. About Wikipedia: Good addition. Contact us: Keep Make a donation: Keep Help: Something tells me people look for help in the top right hand corner. But keep. In the toolbox: What links here: Keep, very useful Related changes: Somewhat useful Upload file: Scrap it. Nuke from space. Haven't we been saying this for years? Special pages: Keep, very useful (but consider renaming) Printable version: Keep, but perhaps this would work better as a tab (like discussion, edit this page etc - it's a different view of the same page, right?) Permanent link: Yeah, I guess. Never used it. But for a newbie... Steve

On 2/9/07, William Pietri <william(a)scissor.com> wrote: Same thing happened on Flickr's redesign; they ended up putting a 'Home' link back in their top-bar, even though the logo worked to get back to the site's top page. Seasoned web users know this convention; newbies don't. -Matt

Steve Bennett wrote: Heh. That required seriously thinking about each one, rather than just posting the one I happened to know about. :-) I think they're all plausible suggestions, and I like most of them, especially renaming the community portal and making the printable version a tab or something else up at the top. I personally would keep "Recent changes", as it demonstrates to newbies that people can make things happen. At least in my professional life, I'd user-test all of the suggestions to see how they play in Peoria. Then the ones that passed that I'd to A/B testing with a modest percent of the traffic to see which ones were clearly better by the numbers. Historically, are either of those things done with Wikipedia? Thanks,

On 14/02/07, Steve Bennett <stevagewp(a)gmail.com> wrote: There has been a bit on de:wp, which someone posted to wikitech-l about. In particular, the image page format and the process for uploading an image both need to be taken out and shot. - d.

On 2/15/07, William Pietri <william(a)scissor.com> wrote: Probably a natural result of the developmental process. Usability testing normally happens when a corporation decides that there is a financial benefit in having usable software. They spend money on it. MediaWiki development happens when people find an interesting problem to solve, and code a solution to it. There aren't many people who would be sufficiently motivated to study the problem, come up with a solution and actually code it. I would certainly be interested in helping with usability, but I don't have the technical (php mainly, but also knowledge of the mediawiki framework) skills to implement it. Oh, also, there is generally great resistance on the part of users to change, particularly highly visual change. For almost *every* change that would improve usability, there are a couple of people that argue vigorously against it. That can be depressing. Steve

Steve Bennett wrote: Yes, it's always been one of our most popular pages. http://hemlock.knams.wikimedia.org/~leon/stats/wikicharts/index.php?lang=en… 5th if you don't count the special pages. -- Tim Starling

Tim Starling wrote: It's good to know that Saddam Hussein is more popular than sex. :-) Ec