On Fri, Aug 11, 2006 at 05:54:22PM +0200, Steve Bennett wrote:
On 8/11/06, Jay R. Ashworth jra@baylink.com wrote:
Ok; I just synthesized that now from things lots of other, smarter people than me have said. But it's still true. People have a tendency to try to make things easier for 'dummies' :-) while make much more important things much harder for 'smart people'.
In the context of Wikipedia, we don't so much have "dummies" as we
I *did* quote it. :-0
have "passers-by". You can't train someone who is only willing to spend 5 minutes of their life on your site. Your comments may be appropriate for contexts such as business wikis etc.
I'm not sure they're necessary on WP, either.
*What percentage* of our edits are from non-users?
I apologize, but I *still* am just not getting what's so damned difficult.
On balance, it's probably much better for the entire audience to *train the non-savvy users*. If they can't be bothered to learn, then they're not *entitled* to have everyone else's work made more difficult on their behalf.
That's kind of a commitment-heavy long-term approach. You're basically advocating forcing people to commit to your software for the long term before the software has done anything for them. You're more likely to succeed if the software gives them immediate warm fuzzy feelings.
Were the software *Interleaf*, yeah, I would understand that.
"Wow, I just clicked that, and that, and that, and look what I've got! I can't wait to find out how to other cool stuff!"
That's how *I* started on Wikipedia.
And to hark back to Jimbo's comments, and those of whomever suggested that our current position effectively self-selects for geeks -- Christiaan, I think -- that may not be as bad a thing as it appears on first blush either, to the extent that you believe that anoraks are more likely to *care about the quality of the information they put in* than 'civilians'.
Cause that the thing we *really* want to select for, right?
- FYI... I am a Mac user using FireFox. To make a break out link, all I
have to do is hover over the link, press lightly and choose "Open link in new window".
Mac mice have click-*pressure* sensors? Wow!
Time-sensitive.
"press lightly"
:-)
<pedant> "listserv" is a registered trademark of a mailing list software company whose products we aren't using. :-)
http://www.lsoft.com/corporate/legal.asp
</pedant>
I'm strongly in favour of abusing trademarks wherever possible. [[Trademark genericization]] is totally in the interests of the consumer. But noone seems to grasp the fact that it's only the company itself who stands to benefit by stamping TM or (R) around everything...
I disagree. I have no problem with flipping off companies who Try Too Hard (the Disney preschool incident being my favorite) -- Mark McCormack was right: never let the lawyers *run your company*.
But being able to distinguish the product you want from pretenders seems to me a useful capability.
Cheers, -- jra