Mobile is experimenting with showing a small banner at the top of the main page that prompts logged in editors to help a page in need of new links: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page?mobileaction=beta
I think this is _great_ and started playing with it on the train with nothing to do.
Two improvements need to be made though: 1) It's difficult to know what to link to. I wrap words which I feel should be existing wiki pages but I pretty much have to guess or open a new window to check those. Some kind of search interface or link validation tool/corrector would be useful. 2) Since red links are turned off in the editor preview it can be tricky to know whether I caused a typo or linked correctly if new to wiki text. This is a bad first time user experience. Some kind of validation step or feedback when I create red links in the editor itself would be useful. We should at very least enable red links in the editor preview.
On a side note: I really think we should give more priority to enabling new page creation on enwiki to help those sort of experiences before continuing down this path of encouraging new editors. People could start drafts, start pages with photos. This seems like a really useful focus of time.
Jon Robson, 05/02/2014 07:29:
- It's difficult to know what to link to. I wrap words which I feel
should be existing wiki pages but I pretty much have to guess or open a new window to check those. Some kind of search interface or link validation tool/corrector would be useful.
Doesn't the Vector/WikiEditor/UsabilityInitiative link dialog (with autocompletion) work? I see* the mobile editing window is completely bare, feels like editing on UseModWiki. :)
On the call to action: I found it quite unclear, the "Improve this page" button is huge and I initially thought it really was about *this* page: Gertie the dinosaur? ah, no, I'm on the main page... wait, impossible! oh, there's a tiny title above there, must be it. Either 1) the button is connected more clearly to the title and/or made smaller, or 2) the call to action box needs to be more clearly separated from the rest of the page (there's only some hint of a border in a couple corners).
After clicking the button: I'm landed on a page and I have no idea why. Did the editing window fail opening? No, seems to work. Uh, "This page has some issues", maybe there was an error loading the application. *click* Ah, it's just where the tags are hidden. Yay instructions, found them at last! "Please introduce links to this page from related articles; try the Find links tool for suggestions"
Nemo
(*) On Chromium; in Firefox the edit buttons didn't do anything when clicked, perhaps due to NoScript even though the site is whitelisted.
Nemo try opting into beta mode via settings on left hand side menu and then revisit the main page and click the link - the beta mode is dropped when you follow the link . You'll see we __do__ give instructions on how to edit links - a big overlay at the bottom. Sorry I should have made this clearer in my original email. On 8 Feb 2014 03:52, "Federico Leva (Nemo)" nemowiki@gmail.com wrote:
Jon Robson, 05/02/2014 07:29:
- It's difficult to know what to link to. I wrap words which I feel
should be existing wiki pages but I pretty much have to guess or open a new window to check those. Some kind of search interface or link validation tool/corrector would be useful.
Doesn't the Vector/WikiEditor/UsabilityInitiative link dialog (with autocompletion) work? I see* the mobile editing window is completely bare, feels like editing on UseModWiki. :)
On the call to action: I found it quite unclear, the "Improve this page" button is huge and I initially thought it really was about *this* page: Gertie the dinosaur? ah, no, I'm on the main page... wait, impossible! oh, there's a tiny title above there, must be it. Either
- the button is connected more clearly to the title and/or made smaller,
or 2) the call to action box needs to be more clearly separated from the rest of the page (there's only some hint of a border in a couple corners).
After clicking the button: I'm landed on a page and I have no idea why. Did the editing window fail opening? No, seems to work. Uh, "This page has some issues", maybe there was an error loading the application. *click* Ah, it's just where the tags are hidden. Yay instructions, found them at last! "Please introduce links to this page from related articles; try the Find links tool for suggestions"
Nemo
(*) On Chromium; in Firefox the edit buttons didn't do anything when clicked, perhaps due to NoScript even though the site is whitelisted.
I tried again and I landed on a page actually containing {{Underlinked}} (the first one didn't).
Jon Robson, 09/02/2014 05:26:
Nemo try opting into beta mode via settings on left hand side menu and then revisit the main page and click the link - the beta mode is dropped when you follow the link . You'll see we __do__ give instructions on how to edit links - a big overlay at the bottom. Sorry I should have made this clearer in my original email.
I remember adding the parameter manually, maybe it was for another page or I wasn't watching the bottom of the screen attentively.
Find more words that could be links. Add double brackets around the word. e.g. [[guitar]] becomes guitar
Not "could", but "should". Every single word "could" be a link, but in most cases it shouldn't. If the official instructions "adding links that are relevant to the context within the existing text" is considered too wordy/complex, I suggest to use something like
Where the title of an existing article is mentioned, enclose it in double brackets: [[guitar]] becomes guitar
(5 characters more). The rest of my comments still applies; in particular I'm quite sad that we invite people to a task for which we offer a 2003-like experience (toolbar was introduced in 1.2.0, 2004-03-24).
Nemo
Nemo, sorry for late reply but I agree we should use the word "Should" here and I like your revised message. If I don't get round to it please feel free to submit a patch.
That aside what can we do to make this experience better? (We are working on enabling red links so problem 1 seems to be the main issue here) On 9 Feb 2014 01:13, "Federico Leva (Nemo)" nemowiki@gmail.com wrote:
I tried again and I landed on a page actually containing {{Underlinked}} (the first one didn't).
Jon Robson, 09/02/2014 05:26:
Nemo try opting into beta mode via settings on left hand side menu and then revisit the main page and click the link - the beta mode is dropped when you follow the link . You'll see we __do__ give instructions on how to edit links - a big overlay at the bottom. Sorry I should have made this clearer in my original email.
I remember adding the parameter manually, maybe it was for another page or I wasn't watching the bottom of the screen attentively.
Find more words that could be links. Add double brackets aroundthe word. e.g. [[guitar]] becomes guitar
Not "could", but "should". Every single word "could" be a link, but in most cases it shouldn't. If the official instructions "adding links that are relevant to the context within the existing text" is considered too wordy/complex, I suggest to use something like
Where the title of an existing article is mentioned, enclose it indouble brackets: [[guitar]] becomes guitar
(5 characters more). The rest of my comments still applies; in particular I'm quite sad that we invite people to a task for which we offer a 2003-like experience (toolbar was introduced in 1.2.0, 2004-03-24).
Nemo
Jon Robson, 11/03/2014 17:57:
Nemo, sorry for late reply but I agree we should use the word "Should" here and I like your revised message. If I don't get round to it please feel free to submit a patch.
Done with proposal below otherwise I'd certainly forget: https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/118103. We can nitpick over wording and commas there.
That aside what can we do to make this experience better? (We are working on enabling red links so problem 1 seems to be the main issue here)
I don't know, the question gets too hard. :) MobileFrontend is a world of things I can help little with, like overriding local wikis' templates with custom wordings.
Nemo