Hi Kerry,
I agree that this discussion is happening among a small group of
exprerienced people, and research with newbies about their preferred
communication tools would be valuable.
However, I feel that Kiwi offers a friendlier experience than we have now,
is an incremental improvement to the user experience, and poses little risk
of making the new user experience more challenging. There might be
technical challenges, and I hope we will hear about any of those from the
devs either on Freenode's side or Wikimedia's side. If anyone has
alternative suggestions to Kiwi or knows reasons to stick with the status
quo, I hope they will speak up.
I appreciate how you are thinking about this issue from the point of view
of the people we would like to help. In this case I feel the risk is low so
an extensive user study is not needed. However if you still feel
differently I would welcome hearing your views. Please let me know if I
have addressed your concerns.
Thanks,
Pine
On Aug 11, 2014 12:02 AM, "Kerry Raymond" <kerry.raymond(a)gmail.com>
wrote:
Pine, with respect, I think you are looking at this
in terms of “how do
we shoehorn these users into our way of doing things” instead of asking
“what should the user experience be like?”.
In the scenario we are discussing, we have a new user (or even not-so-new
user) sitting in front of a Wikipedia edit window presumably feeling dazed
and confused by some aspect of it (or all of it). So they click the
friendly “get help” button (or whatever it is) and we take them to
IRC-plus-or-minus-Kiwi with which they probably have no experience. I feel
it will just reinforce the sensation of “I don’t understand any of this”
and make it less likely they will seek help and more likely that they will
cease editing. So much of Wikipedia is built for by developers for
developers (or at least designed by experienced users for experienced
users) and this seems to be an entirely unconscious process.
I know WMF employs at least one user experience person. I think that
person should be doing the user studies (or whatever it is that they do) to
find out what might work best. Anyone taking part in this conversation in
this mailing list is presumably an existing editor of some experience; we
are probably not the people to decide how best to deliver help to the new
user. If there is one thing the existing “community” should not decide, it
is the new user experience, or else we condemn ourselves to a user
experience that only works for the kinds of editors we currently have (a
community that has a massive gendergap and a declining active editor base).
Kerry
------------------------------
*From:* gendergap-bounces(a)lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:
gendergap-bounces(a)lists.wikimedia.org] *On Behalf Of *Pine W
*Sent:* Monday, 11 August 2014 3:18 PM
*To:* ee(a)lists.wikimedia.org; Addressing gender equity and exploring ways
to increase theparticipation of women within Wikimedia projects.;
wikitech-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
*Subject:* [Gendergap] IRC web client for Wikipedia help
Hi,
Following up on a conversation on the gendergap email list, I am
discussing with Freenode the possibility of changing the default web client
to one that is friendlier and has a less technical feel, primarily for the
benefit of new users who access #wikipedia-en-help by clicking on a link.
The likely candidate for a new IRC client is Kiwi. If Freenode wants to
maintain their current default web client we can still use Kiwi if we run
it on Wikimedia pages. Would WMF or the volunteer dev community be willing
to implement this? If so, is filing a Bugzilla bug the best way to get the
wheels of progress to turn?
Pine
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