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

[phoebe ayers]

On Sat, Jun 5, 2010 at 1:00 PM, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sat, Jun 5, 2010 at 2:03 PM,  <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, 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.)
>
> Sue, you appear to be making the assumption that the folks here are
> writing from a position of their personal preferences while the
> usability team is working on the behalf of the best interests of the
> project.
>
> I don't believe this comparison to be accurate.
>
> The interlanguage links can be easily unhidden by anyone who knows
> about them. The site remembers that you clicked to expand them.  That
> memory is short, but it wouldn't take any real effort to override with
> personal settings... or people can disable Vector (which is what I've
> done, because Vector is slow, even though I like it a lot overall).
> In short, there is little reason for a sophisticated user to complain
> about this for their own benefit.
>
> I think the people here are speaking up for the sake of the readers,
> and for the sake of preserving the best of the existing design
> principles used on the site.  I know I am.
>
> Non-agreement on personal preferences is an entirely different matter
> than non-agreement about how to best help our readers and how to best
> express the values and principles behind the operation of our sites.
>
> I was alarmed when I heard the click rates: 1%.  That's an enormous
> number of clicks, considerably higher than I expected with the large
> number of things available for folks to click on.  To hear that it
> went down considerably with Vector—well, if nothing else, it is a
> possible objective indication that the change has reduced the
> usability of the site. It is absolutely clear evidence that this
> change has made a material impact on how we express ourselves to the
> world.  I think it's clear from my earlier messages, before I knew the
> actual number, that I would have regarded figures like this as
> evidence of a clear mistake.
>
>
>
> There is a clear attitude from the foundation staff that I, and
> others, are perceiving in these discussions.  The notion that the
> community of contributors is a particularly whiny batch of customers
> who must be 'managed', that they express demands unconnected from the
> needs of the readers... and that it is more meaningful when a couple
> of office staff retreat to some meeting room and say "we reached a
> decision".  Sadly, this attitude appears to be the worst from the
> former volunteers on the staff—they are not afraid to speak up in
> community discussion, and feel a need to distinguish themselves from
> all the volunteers.
>
> This needs to stop and a point needs to be made clear:
>
> This community is who made the sites. I don't just mean the articles.
> I mean the user interfaces, the PR statements, the fundraiser
> material, _everything_. The success rates for companies trying to
> build large and popular websites is miserable. Every successful one is
> a fluke, and all the successful ones have a staff and budget orders of
> magnitude larger than yours.
>
> We have an existence proof that the community is able to manage the
> operation of the sites at a world class level. Certainly there are
> many things which could have been done better, more uniformly, more
> completely, or with better planning... but the community has a proven
> competence in virtually every area that the foundation is now
> attempting to be directly involved in.  Not every member of the
> community, of course, but the aggregate.
>
> Wikimedia's ability to do these things is an unknown, but the (lack
> of) successes of other closed companies running websites—even ones
> staffed by brilliant people—suggests that it is most likely that you
> will also be unsuccessful. I don't mean this as a comment on the
> competence of anyone involved (as I know many of them to be rather
> fantastic people), it's just the most likely outcome.
>
> Imagine a resume for the community as a unit:
> * Expertise in every imaginable subject.
> * Simultaneous background in almost every human culture.
> * Speaks hundreds of languages.
> * Wrote the world's largest encyclopedia.
> * Built one of the world's most popular websites, from the ground up.
> * Managed to make an encyclopedia somehow interesting enough to be a
> popular website.
> * Managed the fundraising campaigns to support the entire operating
> cost of the above mentioned Top-N website on charitable contributions
> for many years.
> * On and on, etc.
>
> (Like all resumes, this does not highlight the negatives--just
> proclaims what it's been able to accomplish in spite of them.)
>
> Somehow, the community knows how to take the ragtag assembly of its
> members: the whining, the warped personal preferences, the inspired
> motivations of individuals and small groups, the collective voice of
> the uninformed, and a smattering of contributions from world class
> experts the likes of which we'd never be able to hire and retain, the
> good and the bad—and fuse it into something which can build output
> with broad appeal and generally consistent, if somewhat strange,
> performance.
>
> I've personally been quick to dismiss people who wax philosophic about
> "the wisdom of crowds"... all of the great community work I've seen is
> mostly an effort from dedicated individuals and small groups, not some
> 'crowd'. And yet there clearly is something there, because the
> community delivers results superior to that of most other small groups
> and individuals.  I guess the real power comes from that fact that
> every issue can be attacked by a custom small group from a nearly
> infinite set, plus a little crowd input.  Whatever it is, it clearly
> works.
>
> If Wikimedia itself can't learn how to either develop the same
> coalition-building skills, participate within the existing community
> process, or stand out of the way—we'll lose something great.
>
> I think it's unfortunate that the foundation has an apparent
> difficulty in _contributing_ without _commanding_.  There are areas
> where the community's coverage is inadequate or inconsistent, and I
> think that dedicated staff acting as gap-fillers could greatly improve
> the results. But not if the price of those contributions is to exclude
> or pigeonhole the great work done by the broad community, either
> directly by "we reached a decision"-type edicts, or indirectly by
> removing the personal pride and responsibility that people feel for
> the complete site.

+ 1,000,000.

On a day to day level, the Wikimedia community has a challenge to
solve: what are those gaps, how to fill them, and how to make those
solutions part of the community process. And this is really the entire
community's challenge, whether there's a specific Foundation involved
or not.

-- phoebe