On Mon, Aug 2, 2010 at 5:18 PM, Aryeh Gregor Simetrical+wikilist@gmail.com wrote:
On Mon, Aug 2, 2010 at 4:59 PM, Jason A. Spiro jasonspiro4@gmail.com wrote:
Has anyone ever done usability studies of newbies -- new Internet users, experienced Internet users who are non-editors, or new editors?
Yep, that's what the Usability Initiative does.
Ah, I just took a look at their website now: http://usability.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page
Have the study conductors watched how they play with the history tools?
That I don't know. I don't know if descriptions of the Usability Initiative's studies are all public, or what. Maybe one of them could fill us in. My personal guess is that the best usability for newbies would be to hide as many things as possible to make it less intimidating.
By the way, why does page history say "12,345 bytes" and not "12,345 characters"?
Because it's 12,345 bytes, not 12,345 characters. :)
Does the difference really matter so much that we must really use the more-obscure and more-technical term "bytes"?