[Foundation-l] Moving towards a more usable MediaWiki

[Gerard Meijssen]

Hoi,
There are indeed issues with the core MediaWiki software. There is existing
software that is build as an extension. The basic CreatePage extension can
easily be implemented, it does require no templates or buttons. These are
separate opportunities. Opportunities that take a bit more consideration.

When we are to learn what new functionality improves our core software, it
makes sense to first experience the results by tweaking the system with
extensions. When we are confident of the results, we can progress and
integrate it in the core.

When you consider changes to the usability, you do not fix bugs. The system
is not buggy in the sense that it works as per the specification. The issue
is that usability can only be improved with a different specification. There
will be projects who will be eager to experiment with the UNICEF extensions.
The Swahili wikipedia would be an obvious choice because they have already
localised the eight messages of the CreatePage extension.
Thanks,
      GerardM


2008/12/2 Chad <innocentkiller at gmail.com>

> On Tue, Dec 2, 2008 at 8:40 AM, Michael Peel <email at mikepeel.net> wrote:
>
> > Where did they fail? Did they fail to find a red link to create an
> > article? (those seem to be getting increasingly rare) Could they not
> > find a subject to start a new article on? Were they unable to type
> > text into the appropriate box and submit it? Were they unable to
> > structure the article well enough? Were they unable to wikify it?
> > Were they unable to categorize it? Did they fail to add an infobox or
> > a picture? Were they unable to get it to GA/FA status?
> >
> > There's lots of failure points; which ones caused the problems, and
> > are there simple tweaks that can be made to sort out the problems?
> >
> > Mike
> >
> >
> Exactly. It helps to know *what* is wrong before trying to set
> about fixing it. Saying they couldn't get from A to Z isn't enough,
> as (like you said) there's many places to stumble along the way.
>
> If these are general usability issues with the core MediaWiki
> (lack of titles for buttons, bad page layouts), then those need to
> be fixed in the software, not via extensions to circumvent the
> current process. If the process itself has problems, then either
> the process needs changing or an extension can supplement
> the usual way of doing things.
>
> Bugs can be fixed, we just need to know exactly what the bugs
> are :)
>
> -Chad
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>