Hi,
I somehow came into looking at labels of media insertion buttons in
different MediaWiki editiing environments.
In VisualEditor it's Insert -> Media. The dialog that appears allows
searching for any file.
In WikiEditor (2010) it's "Embedded file". The dialog that appears allows
typing any file name. This inserts a "[[File:..." link.
The vanilla wiki editor (a.k.a. 2006, with the "Enable enhanced editing
toolbar" preference disabled) has two buttons: "Embedded file" (with a
picture icon) and "File link" (with a trumpet icon). The former inserts
"[[File:Example.jpg]]", and the latter inserts [[Media:Example.ogg]].
AFAIK, this is actually quite wrong because "Media:" links are not for
audio and video, but for linking to files in a shared repo. I also know
that this editor is probably on its way to retirement, but I'm mentioning
it just in case.
So this is the current reality. Now some questions:
1. I feel that "Media" is not the optimal label. I understand that it's
supposed to include images, audio, and video, but I suspect that the way it
is now, it's equally unclear to many people for all the types of media. For
years, every time I was showing people in real life how to edit a page in
VE, they asked how to add an image, and I had to tell them how to find the
"Media" button. Many people had trouble finding it themselves. Perhaps
something like "Images and media" would be better? Was any focused user
testing done about this?
2. Should the 2010 WikiEditor label be the same as Visual Editor?
Functionally they are quite similar, and "Embedded file" is definitely not
optimal. Both "Embedded" and "file" say nothing about images, and are quite
technical.
3. Is it worth doing anything about the 2006 labels, or are they just going
to be completely removed from the code soon?
--
Amir Elisha Aharoni · אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי
http://aharoni.wordpress.com
“We're living in pieces,
I want to live in peace.” – T. Moore