On 2/15/07, William Pietri william@scissor.com wrote:
Interesting. Is that a conscious choice? Or more a historical habit?
Probably a natural result of the developmental process. Usability testing normally happens when a corporation decides that there is a financial benefit in having usable software. They spend money on it. MediaWiki development happens when people find an interesting problem to solve, and code a solution to it. There aren't many people who would be sufficiently motivated to study the problem, come up with a solution and actually code it. I would certainly be interested in helping with usability, but I don't have the technical (php mainly, but also knowledge of the mediawiki framework) skills to implement it.
Oh, also, there is generally great resistance on the part of users to change, particularly highly visual change. For almost *every* change that would improve usability, there are a couple of people that argue vigorously against it. That can be depressing.
Steve