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

[susanpgardner at gmail.com]

I'm not weighing in on the specific issue Aphaia, and I'm sure Howie will say more next week. My point is just what I said: the UX team is trying to balance all users' needs, which may or may not be the same as the extremely committed super-users who post here.  Feedback is great, but it irritates me when people start using words like "stupid" -- that's what I was responding to.

Thanks,
Sue
-----Original Message-----
From: Aphaia <aphaia at gmail.com>
Date: Sun, 6 Jun 2010 03:40:22 
To: <susanpgardner at gmail.com>; Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List<foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org>
Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] hiding interlanguage links by default is a 
	BadIdea, part 2

On Sun, Jun 6, 2010 at 3:03 AM,  <susanpgardner at gmail.com> wrote:
> Sorry for top-posting.
>
> Austin, think about who "everyone" is.  The folks here on foundation-l are not representative of readers.  The job of the user experience team is to try to balance all readers' needs,


Sue, not personal, but I think here I say, joining to the choir which
Jon and Eia began:
while English Wikipedia is the most visited websites of the Wikimedia,
it is only 50% and most of its readers are English Speaking. They have
no good reasons I believe to representative the rest of us non-English
speaking people who are 2/60 of this planet.

What is the good reason usability team thought data from English
Wikipedia visitors' behaviors and alone were enough to design for all
other 200+ languages' readership? It looks me an obvious mistake in
opposition of your statement.

 which is not easy, and will sometimes involve making decisions that
not everyone agrees with. People here have given some useful input,
but I think it's far from obvious that the user experience team has
made a "mistake.". (I'm not really intending to weigh in on this
particular issue -- I'm speaking generally.)
>
> Aryeh Gregor has said a couple of very smart things in this thread, particularly this bit I'll quote below:
>
> "Users don't explicitly complain about small things.  They
> especially don't complain about things like clutter, because the
> negative effect that has is barely perceptible -- extra effort
> required to find things.  But if you take away a feature that's
> important to a small number of users, or that's well established and
> people are used to it, you'll get lots of complaints from a tiny
> minority of users.  Basing development decisions on who complains the
> loudest is what results in software packed with tons of useless and
> confusing features and lousy UI.  Like most open-source software,
> including MediaWiki.  Good design requires systematic analysis,
> ignoring user complaints if the evidence indicates they're not
> representative."
>
> Thanks,
> Sue
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Austin Hair <adhair at gmail.com>
> Date: Sat, 5 Jun 2010 15:56:26
> To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List<foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org>
> Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] hiding interlanguage links by default is a Bad
>        Idea, part 2
>
> On Sat, Jun 5, 2010 at 3:47 PM, David Levy <lifeisunfair at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Austin Hair wrote:
>>
>>> 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.
>>
>> Your last sentence surprised me, as I haven't seen anyone opine that
>> the usability team is stupid (and I certainly am not suggesting
>> anything of the sort).  Everyone makes mistakes, and we believe that
>> one has been made in this instance.  As for a practical fix, one
>> actually was implemented (and quickly undone).
>
> Sorry if that wasn't clear—I didn't mean to indict you or anyone else
> for doing that; all I meant was that although I, personally, could
> easily focus on mistakes the usability team made, the way forward is
> to simply fix it to everyone's satisfaction.
>
> Austin
>
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KIZU Naoko
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