Hi,
Following up on a conversation on the gendergap email list, I am discussing with Freenode the possibility of changing the default web client to one that is friendlier and has a less technical feel, primarily for the benefit of new users who access #wikipedia-en-help by clicking on a link. The likely candidate for a new IRC client is Kiwi. If Freenode wants to maintain their current default web client we can still use Kiwi if we run it on Wikimedia pages. Would WMF or the volunteer dev community be willing to implement this? If so, is filing a Bugzilla bug the best way to get the wheels of progress to turn?
Pine
On Mon, 11 Aug 2014, at 15:17, Pine W wrote:
Following up on a conversation on the gendergap email list, I am discussing with Freenode the possibility of changing the default web client to one that is friendlier and has a less technical feel, primarily for the benefit of new users who access #wikipedia-en-help by clicking on a link. The likely candidate for a new IRC client is Kiwi.
Personal view: Use nirc. Everything else looks retarded on mobile.
On Mon, 11 Aug 2014, at 15:17, Pine W wrote:
If Freenode wants to maintain their current default web client we can still use Kiwi if we run it on Wikimedia pages. Would WMF or the volunteer dev community be willing to implement this? If so, is filing a Bugzilla bug the best way to get the wheels of progress to turn?
Or just edit Template:IRC on the relevant wiki?
On 08/11/2014 01:17 AM, Pine W wrote:
Would WMF or the volunteer dev community be willing to implement
this? If so, is filing a
Bugzilla bug the best way to get the wheels of progress to turn?
It could potentially be installed on Wikimedia Labs. There are instructions at https://kiwiirc.com/docs/installing .
I agree not every new users is going to be comfortable with IRC. However, I also think Kiwi is more user-friendly than Freenode's WebChat.
For users who are not comfortable with chat, there are other options, including teahouses (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Teahouse) help desks (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Help_desk) and such.
Matt Flaschen
Le Mon, 11 Aug 2014 18:55:22 +0100, Matthew Flaschen mflaschen@wikimedia.org a écrit:
On 08/11/2014 01:17 AM, Pine W wrote:
Would WMF or the volunteer dev community be willing to implement
this? If so, is filing a
Bugzilla bug the best way to get the wheels of progress to turn?
It could potentially be installed on Wikimedia Labs. There are instructions at https://kiwiirc.com/docs/installing .
I agree not every new users is going to be comfortable with IRC. However, I also think Kiwi is more user-friendly than Freenode's WebChat.
For users who are not comfortable with chat, there are other options, including teahouses (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Teahouse) help desks (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Help_desk) and such.
Matt Flaschen
I once thought about an integrated and simple chat for newbies, with a design similar to the Facebook chat in the bottom right of all pages. The newbie will only see her/his conversation, and a "new users support IRC team" will see all conversations with all newbies, where each newbie would be attributed some nick (username or a random one for IPs).
Beyond this idea there are a lot of details to address: web interface for the support team? should be there a log? underlying IRC protocol or an other? legal status of the conversations (offwiki or onwiki)? how to deal with unanswered requests? how to deal with spam? how should it be integrated with Flow? is it possible to build an automatic FAQ with this? or a tool to curate questions and answers?
Does such a feature would make sense?
~ Seb35
Newbies are going to fail hard at IRC. Pretty much all of the questions Seb poses for a built-in newbie chat still exist with a built-in Freenode interface, with the addition of a complicated and often difficult (not to mention culturally... unique) environment. Much better to think along the lines of the Teahouse, but live. You can jump into a chat queue, and people who want to help chat with you, and you can close the chat whenever you want, and you can't contact people outside of the queue using chat.
That proposal could be considered in the long term, but right now we have plenty of people who seek and get help on IRC, and we can make incremental improvements to their experience faster than we can build a new tool from scratch. Few newbies fail hard at IRC. The basics are similar to texting and private instant messaging software. Let's improve the newbie user experience.
Pine On Aug 11, 2014 1:48 PM, "Nathan" nawrich@gmail.com wrote:
Newbies are going to fail hard at IRC. Pretty much all of the questions Seb poses for a built-in newbie chat still exist with a built-in Freenode interface, with the addition of a complicated and often difficult (not to mention culturally... unique) environment. Much better to think along the lines of the Teahouse, but live. You can jump into a chat queue, and people who want to help chat with you, and you can close the chat whenever you want, and you can't contact people outside of the queue using chat. _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org