- are the times a user changed something (2x) really worth
being displayed?
We need this, in some form. The original version didn't have it, and it was very hard to keep track of who edited what (many people make two or more changes before saving, but they do not remember this, so when they see "3 changes", they don't know if these are 3 changes by them, in which case they do not have to review them, or changes by someone else). We ended up expanding changes a lot when we really shouldn't have, and Magnus decided to provide an edit summary to avoid this. So this was actually a change that grew out of a real need :-).
The information could probably be better presented, though.
- how many people use/need/like the history link on recentchanges? I just
realized I never use it. I use "diff" to see the modifications or I read the article and eventually go from there to the history if I am interested in it. I dare to say that the history is only of interest if one has already read the article.
Hmm, good point. I never used it either.
- use the tool tips to display something useful, pleeaaase!
Agree, but the tooltips should not be an excuse for bad link titles.
-use the same names for the same things (older version=hist, changes=cur=diff)
Absolutely, but before we can do this, we need to change the layout to allow long link titles. Or use icons, which saves us translation work :-)
Regarding diff, we also need to think about which kind of diffs we really need in RC. Most likely, only the "diff to last" and the "changes" link for a summary diff.
- provide a link from Special:Preferences to the explanation of all the
settings at: http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia%3AUser_preferences_help and http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia%3AHandbuch_-_Einstellungen it is necessary, really...
Hopefully, we can make it unnecessary. But yes, we need a good design *and* prominent help links.
I really like the lots of functions the wikipedia software provides but I fear we steer too much away from the original wiki concept of "keeping it simple".
Yeah, RC has gotten somewhat out of control. For the old hands all the links are nice to have, but for a newbie it's really overwhelming. I'm afraid our RC layout might even have driven some people away already.
Regards,
Erik