[Foundation-l] Usability grant

[Michael Snow]

Gregory Maxwell wrote:
> On Wed, Dec 3, 2008 at 4:58 AM, Gerard Meijssen
> <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
>   
>> Hoi,
>> I had a look. It is based on templates. What templates do wonderfully is
>> create a proof of concept.
>>     
> I agree. My concern is that we should not jump first into writing
> software unless a proof of concept is not possible.  We will not get
> the software right the first time, fewer people have the skills needed
> to change the software, etc.
>   
I expect we all recognize that software is not the solution to every 
problem. As far as improving the learning experience for new 
contributors, I certainly hope this doesn't cause anyone to give up 
working on other avenues and tackling any cultural challenges that 
should be addressed.

The purpose of this grant, however, goes beyond just simplifying a 
particular process, so from that perspective it's not a question of 
whether software is the best way to do that. Rather, we're treating the 
MediaWiki software as a critical aspect of the overall environment for 
our projects, and one that can and should be improved. "Best-of-breed" 
it may be, but I think it's apparent that sometimes it hinders efforts 
that need help, so I consider it worthwhile to reduce the obstacles it 
introduces to our environment. Indeed we have not gotten it right the 
first time, which is why we have accepted this grant, as we keep trying 
to get it right.
> The first priority is obtaining a good
> understanding of what works through prototyping, but we fail at that.
> The possibility of future software is used as an argument against any
> prototyping.
I believe that's the logical fallacy known as "argument from vaporware". 
Just because software might change how things work in the future doesn't 
mean we should avoid working on other improvements in the meantime. 
Unless we know that a specific feature is in the works and will conflict 
with the proposed solution, there's no reason to forbid experiments. 
Otherwise, I think I'd happily start nuking unsightly infobox markup on 
the theory that some future software can be counted on to automatically 
generate the information from article prose. It is just prototyping for 
the Semantic Web, after all.

--Michael Snow