2009/3/10 Delphine Ménard <notafishz(a)gmail.com>om>: Presumable the "remote tests" mentioned will be non-North American, otherwise I'm not sure the point of remote tests (is there really that big a difference between the SF area and the rest of the continent?). It does seem it will be all English speaking, though, which is unfortunate.

On Tue, Mar 10, 2009 at 7:02 PM, Naoko Komura <nkomura(a)wikimedia.org> wrote: Purely out of interest: Was this a restriction of the Stanton grant or was it a decision by the WMF (usability team)? Michael -- Michael Bimmler mbimmler(a)gmail.com

On Mar 10, 2009, at 1:36 PM, Naoko Komura wrote: Is there a restriction on the use of the research? I mean, is there any reason why the eventual outcomes can't be shared with the other projects, or is the propogation of that research confined to the english 'pedia? I'm fairly certain I know the answer (knowledge for ALL!) but would like to confirm that. Philippe

On Mar 10, 2009, at 3:01 PM, Naoko Komura wrote: Perfectly, thank yoU! Philippe

2009/3/10 Michael Bimmler <mbimmler(a)gmail.com>om>: I've been thinking about this as well. There is a strong tradition of confidentiality in these processes but I really would like to get some approved grant applications out there for discussion and review. I plan to raise the issue with some of our funders, especially where we have long-standing relationships, to feel it out a bit. I am comfortable sharing some guiding principles which we include in every tech grant application (begin quote): * “Release early, release often.” This key concept, which is common to both open source development and agile software development methodologies, simply means that changes are made iteratively, openly, and transparently, encouraging continuing review by peers, volunteer developers and user groups. Designs and tests are revisited and revised as iterative milestones are accomplished. * Openness to outside collaboration. All development will happen in the Wikimedia Foundation's public code repository. Progress reports will be published in blogs, and outside contributions will be explicitly encouraged. * Building on the work of others. An environmental scan will identify existing open source solutions which can be refined and built upon to meet defined requirements. As above, external contributors will be invited to collaborate. * Building on the knowledge of others. When possible, we will try to hire developers with existing MediaWiki development experience. But, to the extent that this is not possible, we will facilitate face-to-face workshops with paid and volunteer developers to share and document knowledge about the MediaWiki architecture. * Readiness for internationalization. Code contributions, whether from volunteer developers or paid developers, will be made in line with Wikimedia's internationalization architecture to allow user interface messages to be localized into all languages. * Consultation of stakeholders. While our goal is to encourage and broaden participation in Wikipedia, we will strive to do so in consultation with the existing community of contributors, in order to help foster their understanding and acceptance of changes to the user interface. (end quote) As you can see, internationalization is one of our core principles which we consider to be non-negotiable. (And Gerard will rightly point out that we can do a better job supporting i18n initiatives like BetaWiki.) That said, in this particular case, the funder's interest is specifically to increase the number of contributors to the English Wikipedia, and that places some limitations on what we can use the grant funds for. We are committed to sharing recommendations, usability videos, methodologies, etc. - Naoko will post more on this as the process plays out. While there are definitely strong cultural components to usability, many of the core issues we're going to try to resolve are shared across all languages. For example, complex pages accumulate syntax creep everywhere, not just in the English Wikipedia. Roughly speaking, I think 80% of the work we're going to do is going to be generally useful, and 20% is going to be specific to the English Wikipedia. Hopefully we can contribute to processes both in communities and chapters to think more systematically about addressing usability issues that are specific to a certain language or culture. -- Erik Möller Deputy Director, Wikimedia Foundation Support Free Knowledge: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate

On Tue, Mar 24, 2009 at 9:28 PM, Naoko Komura <nkomura(a)wikimedia.org> wrote: This is brilliant - you could automate the testing and reporting in addition to having a virtually unlimited number of subjects.

Dear Aphaia, I'm really excited to get the result of this study since one of the common input that I got from newbie contributors either online or during workshops are that it's harder for them to write Wikipedia than to write blogs :) Though I still don't get it why they think that way ;) Good luck and success for the effort. -- Ivan Lanin | Wikimedia Indonesia | http://wikimedia.or.id Sent from my BlackBerry® -----Original Message----- From: Naoko Komura <nkomura(a)wikimedia.org> Date: Tue, 24 Mar 2009 20:28:45 To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List<foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>rg>; <wikien-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org> Subject: [Foundation-l] Usability study in progress Howdy. (adding wikien-l folks to this thread. my apology for not including wikien-l with my initial email.) The usability study has started today as scheduled. The usability team is monitoring the interviews and how ten test participants interact with Wikipedia when they are asked to edit an article at the lab facility in San Francisco today and tomorrow. The remote usability study on Thursday (March 26 PDT) will be done remotely, which means we recruit participants from Wikipedia through the site notice, and connect with them through web conferencing. Therefore the site notice for recruitment will appear again on Thursday. We expect to compile the results in a few weeks and the findings with you. Naoko Komura Program Manager, Wikimedia Foundation Naoko Komura wrote: -- Support Free Knowledge: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

Wikipedians should not be used to asses usabillity problems with Wikipedia, this is rule number one if you want to get information about why a newbie has problems with a system. A typical wikipedian is simply not a valid newbie. Ten participants are not nearly enough, they can only give you some clue about the real problem. John Naoko Komura skrev:

One additional note, in Norway a lot of the newspapers used a layout like Monobook (sort of) but has lately dismissed the solution in favor of radically much simpler designs. Especially the list of links in a left bar has been abandoned in favor of more directed approaches with horizontal menus in the top of the pages. Some of the newspapers has reported instantaneous increase in click rates. It is thought provocative as most of the left bar is for wikipediams, and therefore is usable to only a small percentile of the total users (in page views). The rest of the users need navigational aids for the main space. John Hay (Husky) skrev:

There are about 100 times more page views than edits, sometimes even more. John Gerard Meijssen skrev:

On Wed, Mar 25, 2009 at 7:48 AM, Hay (Husky) &lt;huskyr(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: As far as I know, *this* grant has to do with the English Wikipedia as its focus (that doesn't mean what they find can't be applied to other projects -- quite the opposite). However, I do recall Erik saying something about a grant that is being worked on for Commons, see <http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Case_for_Commons> -- Casey Brown Cbrown1023 --- Note: This e-mail address is used for mailing lists. Personal emails sent to this address will probably get lost.

2009/3/25 Casey Brown &lt;cbrown1023.ml(a)gmail.com&gt;om>: Yep, that's correct. We've submitted a grant proposal specifically with regard to uploading usability (which also involves the complexity of licensing templates and such), and hope to hear back soon. Uploading is not included in these first user tests. -- Erik Möller Deputy Director, Wikimedia Foundation Support Free Knowledge: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate

2009/3/25 John at Darkstar &lt;vacuum(a)jeb.no&gt;no>: I'm not sure about your definition of "Wikipedians" above, but the recruiting procedure uses a screening process to recruit _readers_ of Wikipedia with no editing experience. Our goal here is to at the end of the day make improvements to convert more readers to editors. There are different philosophies of usability, including a philosophy of agile testing with few test subjects ( http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20000319.html ). There's general agreement that with these kinds of tests, you'll quickly see diminishing returns - adding many more people doesn't actually help you discover many more problems. Moreover, resources are not infinite: finding a good balance in terms of the number of testers allows you to conduct more tests later, with the goal of validating whether the changes you've made actually have had the intended effect. Erik -- Erik Möller Deputy Director, Wikimedia Foundation Support Free Knowledge: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate