[Foundation-l] Usability: Is our vocabulary SNAFU? - Wikimedia-l

Amir E. Aharoni

9 Dec 9 Dec

3:12 p.m.

2008/12/9 Ziko van Dijk <zvandijk(a)googlemail.com>om>:

About usability: I believe that one significant barrier for new Wikimedians is the jargon in the Wikimedia projects, mostly in discussions, but also in help pages: * Expressions from computer science: IP, bug, URL * Expressions from the Open Source movement: fork, stable version

Add to that "!vote". I program C and Perl, and it took me a while to understand it. -- Amir Elisha Aharoni heb: http://haharoni.wordpress.com | eng: http://aharoni.wordpress.com cat: http://aprenent.wordpress.com | rus: http://amire80.livejournal.com "We're living in pieces, I want to live in peace." - T. Moore

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Thomas Dalton

5:09 p.m.

2008/12/9 Ziko van Dijk <zvandijk(a)googlemail.com>om>:

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About usability: I believe that one significant barrier for new Wikimedians is the jargon in the Wikimedia projects, mostly in discussions, but also in help pages: * Expressions from computer science: IP, bug, URL * Expressions from the Open Source movement: fork, stable version * Expressions from the net culture: imho, :D, lol, @ (directed to a person in a discussion) * For non native speakers of English: SNAFU, dude Jargon (sometimes specialist's language) cannot be totally avoided, and it is good for community cohesion. But it would be a good step towards usability thinking before using jargon: is it really necessary here, is it comprehensive to everybody, even if "help:glossary" mentions it?

We can try and improve the jargon to make it easier to guess what is meant, but avoiding the jargon would make it take far too long to say anything. Wikipedia: pages should avoid jargon as much as possible, Talk: and Wikipedia_talk: pages (and those Wikipedia: pages that are actually talk pages by another name) need the jargon and there isn't much we can do about it.

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Thomas Dalton

6:36 p.m.

2008/12/9 Delirium <delirium(a)hackish.org>rg>:

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Ziko van Dijk wrote:

About usability: I believe that one significant barrier for new Wikimedians is the jargon in the Wikimedia projects, mostly in discussions, but also in help pages: * Expressions from computer science: IP, bug, URL * Expressions from the Open Source movement: fork, stable version * Expressions from the net culture: imho, :D, lol, @ (directed to a person in a discussion) * For non native speakers of English: SNAFU, dude

On the English Wikipedia, and occasionally Commons, I'd put Wikipedia-policy acronyms above all those in both frequency of use and likelihood of confusing or putting off newbies.

At least those are generally linked, though.

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Dennis During

8:37 p.m.

I am enormously skeptical that there is any realistic possibility of getting anyone let alone unpaid volunteers to forego the use of abbreviations or useful jargon. OTOH (LOL), I believe that there are MediaWiki software extensions (which I enjoy using at Wiktionary) that allow a window to pop up when a highlighted word is clicked. Inmy expereine the content is from Wiktionary. Wiktionary has all of the menioned terms and special characters defined (except for the open-source movement terms) and would be a possible source for definitions. (At present, it explicitly exclude terms that are solely WikiJargon from the main dictionary and relegate them to an Appendix page. ) Alternatively enwikt could be used as a source for a special-purpose glossary that served as the target for the extension. FWIW. On Tue, Dec 9, 2008 at 9:55 AM, Ziko van Dijk <zvandijk(a)googlemail.com>wrote;wrote:

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About usability: I believe that one significant barrier for new Wikimedians is the jargon in the Wikimedia projects, mostly in discussions, but also in help pages: * Expressions from computer science: IP, bug, URL * Expressions from the Open Source movement: fork, stable version * Expressions from the net culture: imho, :D, lol, @ (directed to a person in a discussion) * For non native speakers of English: SNAFU, dude Jargon (sometimes specialist's language) cannot be totally avoided, and it is good for community cohesion. But it would be a good step towards usability thinking before using jargon: is it really necessary here, is it comprehensive to everybody, even if "help:glossary" mentions it? Ziko -- Ziko van Dijk NL-Silvolde

-- Dennis C. During But then arises the doubt, can the mind of man, which has, as I fully believe, been developed from a mind as low as that possessed by the lowest animals, be trusted when it draws such grand conclusions ? -- Charles Darwin

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Milos Rancic

11 Dec 11 Dec

4:44 p.m.

On Wed, Dec 10, 2008 at 12:48 AM, Platonides <Platonides(a)gmail.com> wrote:

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It surprised me that the jargon didn't mention the really wikimedian terms: AGF, RFA, NPV, NOR, NLT, BLP, NPA, AFD, db... After IAR and BOLD, you're blocked for NPA and NLT on a BLP article where you didn't follow NPV, although the other part didn't AGF. OTOH, the article could have been deleted per G4 or G10. Maybe you should complain to ARBCOM, but wait, I better shut up per BEANS, DNFTT. I don't consider myself an outsider, still -as a contributor to different wikis- I don't know by heart what's an 'A3.1416 deletion' or the proper templates and pages to start a deletion procedure for an image with a disputable source. Acronyms may still be worked out, others are unrelated, unless you already know it. Worse, each wiki has its own [[WP:WP]] creating their dialect. Is it good, is it bad? Probably neither, but something to have really into account for usability.

It is good because it represents social development. And you are right about usability. Maybe all talk pages should have special words highlighted with "on mouse over" function which opens a small frame which explains its meaning.

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