[Foundation-l] Usability grant

[Gerard Meijssen]

Hoi,
I had a look. It is based on templates. What templates do wonderfully is
create a proof of concept. When you have a look at the UNICEF
implementation, you will learn that the same idea is implemented by them. On
their wikis they do have templates for particular types of content. So I
agree, it is a great idea.

When you mention the "taboo" of rejection by a community, I can tell you
that this is one thing that I talk about quite often. Now rejection should
be based on arguments and it is important to understand the arguments WHY
things are proposed and the arguments WHY proposals are rejected. When
people just vote, there is nothing that helps in understanding the reasons
why, there is no handle on the argument that will help with preventing the
negative effects of a proposal. When one community rejects a proposal, new
functionality does not need to be rejected by other communities. Extensions
do not need to be enabled. However, when Brion in his role as chief
technical officer and architect of MediaWiki decides that somethig should go
in regardless. This would be the case when functionality needs to be part of
the MediaWiki core.

When you are talking about "inflexible" solutions, you have to appreciate
that you are capable of creating the most wonderful templates. These same
templates scare many people away. So where you see a wonderful template I
find projects like the Neapolitan Wikipedia reject them because they scare
people away (it does work for them). So you are completely correct that
social issues play a part in accepting solutions. The solutions that come
with templates are rejected by many just for comming as a template, will
this prevent you from using them? Templates are great for proto typing, they
are however a help and a hinder. If anything we need to find a way to
overcome the problems people have with templates because they do provide
value.
Thanks,
      GerardM



2008/12/3 Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com>

> On Wed, Dec 3, 2008 at 2:02 AM, Michael Snow <wikipedia at verizon.net>
> wrote:
> [snip]
> > improve the MediaWiki software and the experience for new contributors.
> > Not that this is a direct result of recent discussions here, plenty of
> > people have mentioned the issue before, including Delphine as Ting
> [snip]
>
> Sadly most of the discussions on these lists run on without mention of
> the efforts that have come before, in this case see:
> http://en.wikipedia.or/wiki/Wikipedia:Article_wizard
>
> When people discuss enhancements it seems that it is taboo to discuss
> the question of what happens when the communities reject these
> efforts.
>
> Too often we blame technical issues as limiting factors for usability
> when with a little creativity a 90% solution is available without
> waiting for inflexible technical solutions which never seem to come.
> Unfortunately, interest, project politics, and other social factors
> are ready to stand in the way of progress even when there are no
> technical roadblocks at all.
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>