On 12/19/2009 10:54 AM, David Goodman wrote:
On Sat, Dec 19, 2009 at 1:17 PM, William Pietriwilliam@scissor.com wrote:
As a software developer, I'm perfectly comfortable dealing with its dark mysteries. I've spent tens of thousands of hours typing mysterious codes into giant files interpreted by unforgiving machines. But for the 98% of humanity that doesn't have much technical background, our discussion system comes across as somewhere between perplexing and actively hostile.
mysterious codes? All that is needed is knowing how to indent and sign.
David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S.
For a person with a PhD in molecular biology, a master's degree in Library Science, and 3 years experience on Wikipedia, I'm sure it all seems pretty transparent. As somebody who played with punch card machines in kindergarten and was coding well before my voice changed, it sure looks that way to me. But we're pretty far out on a few different bell curves.
I haven't seen an actual usability study on our current discussion system, but I have seen and done plenty of other usability studies, and my guess is that you'd get a combined drop-out plus failure rate of over 80% for first-time users. Followed by predictable reactions: discouragement, feeling dumb, and taking both the system and our community as hostile or unwelcoming.
Whether we want to attract less technical and/or less persistent users is a reasonable question. (My view: we should.) But from the usability experts I've worked with, I think the nicest reaction they'd give to our current discussion system is politely disguised horror. If people are skeptical of that, I'd encourage them to reach out to our very sharp usability team; I'm sure they have opinions on this, and possibly some data.
William