Hey folks, another interview, probably my last before moving on to
usability testing the TWA script. This one also includes some feedback on
Getting Started. --Jake (Ocaasi)
You can edit: "I learned that is was a community based effort. It's that
site every one can edit. I think is great...with many people looking at the
same subject, you have a better change to get the length and breadth of the
subject...the opportunity to look from various vantage points. It does
credibility issues, but I notice there are checks and balances. It's a mild
concern, a mild risk, not so much a concern for general information
gathering--as a source I'd have more concern and want to verify it.
Go to Wikipedia: Types in Wikipedia.org. "I'm Happy that it's high up in
Google search results."
Sign up for an account: "I would 'eyeball' the login info. I glanced at the
username policy... I get that. Not going to add email now, maybe later. I
am kind of protective about my email address. I'm concerned about Hacking
and Phishing, through no fault of Wikipedia's, but I'm concerned Wikipedia
could be a target. Captcha is not a concern, but it's an inconvenience, and
we'll get past it one day with technology.
Getting started page: "It's clean and clear on 3 points with color-coded
icons. If I'm editing, these are functions of contributing... Honesty, I'm
a little confused. It tells me that as of having an account I have
established that these are three things that I can do, but I don't know
what the 3 things under the icons are [the article links]. I still don't
know what the [article titles] are. I would have to click, I assume they're
blue so I can click on them." Clicked through to MC
Shan<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MC_Shan> article.
"I forgot what I was supposed to do and the articles had changed in the
list Getting Started list when I went back." Used browser forward button to
return to MC Shan article. "Now I see that these are articles that have the
copyediting tag. It appears to me now like it's randomly giving pages that
have a need for the heading [fix grammar & spelling, but the link is not
clear. I wish the green pencil link was also present on the article [but
the citation template does not use that icon]. The graphics and the
language don't match between Getting Started and the article cleanup
templates. I want to see the same icon and language. I don't want to have
to keep clicking back and forth to the getting started page. I want to
participate but make the edit button more inviting. I'm kind of shy, but
I'm close. If you just give me a little push I might participate. The
Getting Started icons I like, they're great map markers. Make the 'you can
assist by editing it' be green and have the same Getting started green
pencil icon, maybe at a 45 degree angle like 'here, take it, try it'.
Further suggestions: Have the user sandbox upfront on the Getting Stared
page, and also the watchlist. "Those are engaging. Make them very easily
accessible."
Clicked edit on the MC Shan <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MC_Shan> article
[recommended by Getting Started], saw the editing page: "Oh god, you just
scared me. Yikes, goodbye. Looks a little too code-y and like I might break
something. Also, I'm not very connected to MC Shan. The curly brackets
[header templates] are intimidating. I'm concerned about these double
brackets, too. Do I need to know how to edit to contribute? I feel like I
could copy and paste without breaking something, and that I might actually
succeed. I feel like I could contribute to the [infobox] without breaking
it. I want to make a contribution but I absolutely don't want to break
something in a public space--it's like the motto, first, do no harm. It
feels like there's limited places I might feel ok contributing: after =
signs [in infoboxes], that seems really easy, next level is adding to a
list by copying and pasting, and then, getting into the paragraphs--not so
sure about that. I don't know what those double brackets are. I would have
to commit my time to a learning curve that I'm not so passionate about,
would determine whether or not I'd invest in learning it. I don't think
they would set something up that was too easy to break, but I would expect
that lacking double brackets wouldn't have the functionality. I don't know
what all the apostrophe's are."
Create your userpage: "I see I don't have a userpage, but it's giving me
the option to start one. It's got this sort of blank text editor. Am I
creating an actual article-like page, am I going to be indexed in the
search? It says userpage but it's mildly confusing. I dont know what
belongs on a userpage, maybe optionally qualifying yourself (as in
credentials), more information about you and what your background is. I
don't know what 'watch this page' means, and I don't want to get lots of
alerts. "Oh, can somebody else make a change to my userpage... maybe I have
to watch this page. So now I'm making a commitment, someone could write
something about me. Made word bold, "Oh good grief. I wanted it to be
WYSIWYG, I wanted it to turn bold. "I'm feeling like it's not very
userfriendly, it's kind of geeky. I would be willing to overlook it if I
was compelled about the information... I would overcome it." Tried to undo
italics, instead it inserted double italics, then quadruple italics.
Manually deleted the quotations. "It seemed a little 'literal'".
Leave me a message: "I expect the talk page to have comments at the bottom,
like an online article. I don't see a chat or message something. 'Talk' I
would think... I don't know what that is. Talking is usually done over the
phone, or in person. It doesn't feel like it has to do with written
messages. I see conversation threads, I would expect to have an 'add' or a
'comment' function underneath the table of contents. I'm a little
befuddled, a little lost. I'm looking for something that gives me an
indication to Add something. I probably would go to the Help at this point.
All it feels like I can do is edit an existing section....I don't think I
want to add a new section... Edit is for something already existing." Told
her New Section was the way. "I would change from 'New section' to 'New
Talk'; 'section' makes it feel like I'm creating a whole new section.
Creating a new talk page makes sense to me. Stick with the word 'Talk'....
I feel ok about signing my own post, but it would be a little more useful
if it said 'sign your posts' near the signature button. I'm curious if it
would prompt me to add a signature, but it doesn't prompt me. Hmmm... I
wonder if in the preview it should indicate that the comment is unsigned.
If signing is good practice, is there a reason you don't do it by default?"
Add a sentence with a reference in your sandbox: Found 'Cite', then clicked
[named reference]. "I'm feeling like I need a url". Even with a url named
reference doesn't work. Had to do a captcha so it saved. Told her to use
the template dropdown menu. Reference worked.
Received a welcome message (unplanned): "I like it, I feel like it was
standard issue, but I appreciate it." Informed it was an actual editor who
did it.
What would you change: "The obvious WYSIWYG. All the fundamentals are
there. No more 'confetti of apostrophes'. It feels like to be a contributor
you have to be a geek. It's just polishing stuff. I want to see more
consistency and leveraging common terminology. There's a very inconsistent
use of Create.Read.Update. and Delete [database functions you're trying to
control]]. I see different function words like 'dismiss'. That's not a huge
technological thing, just consistency about the tools you already are
using, renaming, repositioning--bringing them to the forefront. You have to
manage real estate, find the priority functions and present different ways
to execute it (links, words, icons, tabs) in multiple different ways."
--Female database designer from Philadelphia area, BS in communications, in
her 40's, on April 11 2013.
--
Jake Orlowitz
Wikipedia: Ocaasi <http://enwp.org/User:Ocaasi>
Facebook: Jake Orlowitz <http://www.facebook.com/jorlowitz>
Twitter: JakeOrlowitz <https://twitter.com/JakeOrlowitz>
LinkedIn: Jake Orlowitz<http://www.linkedin.com/profile/view?id=197604531>
Email: jorlowitz(a)yahoo.com
Skype: jorlowitz
Cell: (484) 684-2104
Home: (484) 380-3940
Hi all,
Today E3 pushed the following two changes of note:
1. With help from Reedy and others, Extension:ClickTracking, the legacy
data collection tool now replaced by EventLogging, is officially deprecated
and is no longer present on Wikimedia sites.
2. We added a filter to GettingStarted, so that we're not serving
biographies of living people to new editors. This was a community request
from back in February, and a wise one. There are plenty of interesting
pages that need simple clean up which aren't such sensitive biographies, so
it was an easy choice to add this check.
--
Steven Walling
https://wikimediafoundation.org/
Hi all,
Today, using the "lightening deploy" window for relatively small, quick
updates, Ori added <https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/c/57178/> the PostEdit
feedback extension to seven more Wikipedias.
This means that, with addition of Chinese Wikipedia as of today, the
feature is on all of the top ten projects except Russian Wikipedia. :-)
Long term we're still considering adding this to MediaWiki core, especially
since the backend which detects the fact that a page is load is after
having saved an edit is technically in core, and this is just a wrapper
around that at this point.
--
Steven Walling
https://wikimediafoundation.org/
> On Thursday, April 4, 2013 at 5:21 PM, Matthew Flaschen wrote:
>
>> https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/c/56545/ (commit to
>> mediawiki/tools/release) set it so E3Experiments and LastModified were
>> not included in future branches (i.e. 1.22wmf1).
>>
>> However, it was not removed from extensions-list (until just now):
>>
>> https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/c/57687/
>>
>> In between, this caused downtime on 1.22wmf1 sites which TimStarling had
>> to help me resolve.
>>
>> So make sure to remove any extensions from both these places simultaneously.
I added this to a revised
<https://wikitech.wikimedia.org/wiki/How_to_deploy_code#Add_new_extension_to…>.
Please edit away with some info on what happens if you forget to
remove.
--
=S Page software engineer on E3
Hi, we are organizing an ACUX testing actitivity right now:
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/QA/WTA_ACUX_Test_Plan_Apr_6http://piramido.wmflabs.org/wiki/Special:UserLogin?useAgora=1 was
supposed to be the default destination, but it's down [1]
We still have http://toro.wmflabs.org/wiki/Special:UserLogin?useAgora=1
but if this one goes down as well we will be in trouble. If someone with
permissions happens to see this message and know how to fix the
problem... Thank you.
[1]
Could not acquire 'testwiki:messages:en:status' lock.
Backtrace:
#0 /mnt/mediawiki-piramido/includes/cache/MessageCache.php(714):
MessageCache->load('en')
#1 /mnt/mediawiki-piramido/includes/cache/MessageCache.php(650):
MessageCache->getMsgFromNamespace('Userlogin', 'en')
#2 /mnt/mediawiki-piramido/includes/Message.php(720):
MessageCache->get('userlogin', true, Object(Language))
#3 /mnt/mediawiki-piramido/includes/Message.php(464):
Message->fetchMessage()
#4 /mnt/mediawiki-piramido/includes/Message.php(553): Message->toString()
#5 /mnt/mediawiki-piramido/includes/specials/SpecialUserlogin.php(156):
Message->text()
#6 /mnt/mediawiki-piramido/includes/SpecialPage.php(591):
LoginForm->getDescription()
#7 /mnt/mediawiki-piramido/includes/specials/SpecialUserlogin.php(166):
SpecialPage->setHeaders()
#8 /mnt/mediawiki-piramido/includes/SpecialPage.php(613):
LoginForm->execute(NULL)
#9 /mnt/mediawiki-piramido/includes/SpecialPageFactory.php(486):
SpecialPage->run(NULL)
#10 /mnt/mediawiki-piramido/includes/Wiki.php(291):
SpecialPageFactory::executePath(Object(Title), Object(RequestContext))
#11 /mnt/mediawiki-piramido/includes/Wiki.php(565):
MediaWiki->performRequest()
#12 /mnt/mediawiki-piramido/includes/Wiki.php(458): MediaWiki->main()
#13 /mnt/mediawiki-piramido/index.php(59): MediaWiki->run()
#14 {main}
--
Quim Gil
Technical Contributor Coordinator @ Wikimedia Foundation
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User:Qgil
Hey, thanks for the feedback everyone. Interview 1was conducted last week,
and interview 2 was yesterday. In the future I'll record the dates and
also try to approximate the user's educational level and technological
sophistication.
Steven, I'd love to talk about your EE usability structure and see what I
can glean from it.
I'm conducting some usability testing for TWA, as part of an IEG grant and
also for a Coursera course on Human-Computer Interaction Design. I thought
I'd share the highlights with this list. The second interview has some
feedback on the new Getting Started flow. --Jake (Ocaasi)
INTERVIEW ONE
Thoughts on vandalism in articles: "You know it's going to be fixed
eventually."
If you edit: "I'm kind of old, using Wikipedia for a long time, not like I
can interact with it...It's like an encyclopedia for me. I know I can edit
it, but..."
What you'd fix: Wouldn't fix a joke (vandalism) but would fix an error
Sign-up: "Creating an account annoys me"
Userpage: "Creating a userpage is confusing"
First impression: "I could totally get obsessed with this. This could
definitely suck me in. This could be bad."
Reliability: "If you look it up [the citation] you find out--it's real. My
little sister and brother can use Wikipedia [in school]
Likelihood you'd edit in the next week knowing what you know now (1-10): 8
Could you figure it out on your own: "I'm not that tech savvy. I'm not a
computer person. I'm not that confident...I feel like I'm smart enough to
edit it. Unsure what would happen if I clicked edit...uncertainty."
-25 year old male from Philadelphia suburbs
INTERVIEW TWO
How you knew you could edit: "Because it's Wikipedia"
Would you edit: "A huge amount of motivation would be needed to edit it"
Not a typo, not an incomplete section, not an incorrect fact, not bias
about a subject or about a topic of interest. "Only an article that
impacted me personally, my company or product...something I'm
personally invested
in. "I'm generally a lurker."
Expectations: "I would hope that it's easy to edit."
Register an account: "I wouldn't read the sign-up instructions. I'd read as
little as necessary." Username was already taken but no warning was given.
"Captcha is annoying. I've seen better login flows."
Getting started tour: It doesn't mention the word edit, or 'here's how you
can help'. Doesn't feel like an invitation to edit or participate.
Creating a userpage: Clicked the [start userpage link]. "Legal jargon" at
the top, looks like "nothing vulgar or obscene and anything you put on
Wikipedia is up for grabs for anyone". Notice the 'html' tags when bolding
a word. Would prefer a WYSIWY editor. "It feels like it could reassure me a
little bit along the way. I'm not confused but I'm more engaged than I want
to be. It's forcing me to pay attention and to read directions. I'm mildly
disappointed in the interface. It's not the worst thing in the world. It's
eh, meh. It's not like I'm going to break up with you, but... I'm not sure
how long this is going to last."
Searching for a user's talk page: Search for username leads to articles not
userpages. Forced to explore the navigation options. "At this point I'm
lost in the abyss. This is stupid."
Leaving a message on a user talk page: "Again I'm becoming confused. I
expect a "message button or a send button or a compose button." Tried the
[edit] link leading to the full page markup: "I don't feel welcome here.
This feels insane." Went back to talk page. "I would like to redesign this
thing. 'New section' is not working for me. Put a 'send' button near the
username, or at the bottom. I'm comparing this to an email model but I want
this to operate like a blog comments section."
Signing a post: "In a million years would never have found the [~~~~]
instructions. Tried to sign using markup format with ~~~~ on both sides of
the text. Previewed to see that it led to a double signature and removed
one. "Having to sign your own posts is ne more thing that you'd say, 'Why
hasn't [Wikipedia] figured that out yet."
Article talk pages: "The talk page header makes me feel like something went
wrong....I see that this is not a discussion about content but about
*improving* the content. But getting that out of this was like pulling
teeth". "I have no idea what 'no original research means'... oh, it's
giving me instructions, guidelines."
On NPOV policy page: "I would go for the nutshell... 'objectivity' should
be the goal.
How feasible would it be to do this without a guide: "Someone would have to
pay me to get as far as I did. Makes me thing this is some sort of
non-profit thing that doesn't have resources to dive deeply into their UX.
On lack of advertisements: Prefer banner donations to "super annoying ads
watching me and tracking me. Non-profit makes it a more "trustworthy
'brand'".
-20 to 30 year old male from New York