[Foundation-l] hiding interlanguage links by default is a Bad Idea, part 2

[teun spaans]

A minimalist design is a good goal to strive for. As many people do mot use
them, it may be a good cleanup of the interface. Howver, for its
afficionados the developers might create an option in the user preferences
to show all interwiki links directly instead of hiding them. Personally I
find them very useful when i got to translate things, much better then
wiktionary, both by the size of the wikis and by the accompanying text which
helps sorting out any homonym problems.

On Sat, Jun 5, 2010 at 2:55 AM, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:

> On 5 June 2010 01:03, Howie Fung <hfung at wikimedia.org> wrote:
>
> > First, some background on the problem we're addressing and the design
> > principle that we used.  Every situation is unique, but in the case of
> > the interwikilinks, we believe the sheer number of language links,
> > especially within the context of an information-heavy page, makes users
> > "numb" to the list.  When people see large collections of things, they
> > tend to group them all together as one object and not identify the
> > individual parts that make the whole.
>
>
> "We believe" = no data, then?
>
> In a list of language links, people will immediately notice the one
> that they can read: their own language, i.e. the one they're looking
> for.
>
>
> >  While we did not explicitly test for this
> > during our usability studies (e.g., it wasn't included as a major design
> > question), we did exercise judgement in identifying this as a problem,
> > based partly on the applying the above design principle to the site,
> > partly on the data.
>
>
> You've just said it was on "judgement" and *not at all* on any data.
>
>
> > Thank you for your input.
>
>
> This is implemented in each wiki's [[MediaWiki:vector.css]]. As such,
> if a wiki votes to reverse this interface change, and your proposed
> "compromise" solution - will they be able to do so, or will the
> Foundation impose the change upon them regardless? i.e., is this
> content control by the WMF? I ask based on the preremptory tone used
> by Trevor Parscal in reverting the original change.
>
>
> - d.
>
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