[Foundation-l] LiquidThreads almost ready for deployment

[William Pietri]

On 12/19/2009 10:36 PM, David Goodman wrote:
> I did not write that, except for the final sentence [...]
>    

Sorry; that was my editing error. I was trying to reply while providing 
more of the context; specifically the part of my message I thought you 
were replying to. That clearly didn't work!

> I was saying that just the most elementary knowledge is enough for
> talk pages. Of all the parts of Wikipedia syntax, it's the easiest.
> The problems for users in learning things is elsewhere.
>    

I agree that there are big problems elsewhere; I'm just trying to say 
there are also significant usability problems with discussions.

My broad point is that although the talk page may only use the most 
elementary parts of Mediawiki, and therefore seem easy to us, it still 
has very low usability compared with typical discussion systems on the 
Internet. In placing a much smaller burden on the software, we have 
placed a much larger burden on the user.

Even if our current discussion system were somehow superior, it's still 
very different than other systems, which is in itself a design mistake. 
Indeed, it's one of the most common mistakes in web design, appearing at 
#8 on Jakob Nielsen's top 10 list of design mistakes:

http://www.useit.com/alertbox/9605.html

If we want broad participation, we have to accept it in a way that most 
people are familiar with. Whether we want broad participation is a 
reasonable question, as is what to do with that participation when we 
get it.

William