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

[Austin Hair]

On Sat, Jun 5, 2010 at 7:30 AM, David Levy <lifeisunfair at gmail.com> wrote:
> Howie Fung wrote:
>> 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.
>
> Said data indicated only that the interwiki links were used relatively
> infrequently.  Apparently, there is absolutely no data suggesting that
> the full list's display posed a problem.  Rather, this is a hunch
> based upon the application of a general design principle whose
> relevance has not been established.

I was searching for a way to exactly that, David, and you said it perfectly.

A usability principle may be universally accepted, but I can't think
of a single one that can be applied to absolutely every case.  What's
happening now is a vocal minority disputing the application of one
principle to one specific case, and with very little disagreement—we
just seem to differ on matters of degree.

And yes, I'll echo others when I question the original rationale and
suggest that the interpretation of what very little data was collected
is completely wrong, but I think I'll direct my focus toward a
practical fix, rather than just calling the usability team stupid.

Austin