[Foundation-l] Commons Usability

[Guillaume Paumier]

Greetings,

Amir E. Aharoni a écrit :*
> 
> If i understand correctly - and please correct me if i'm wrong - the current
> big Usability project is essentially a rather cosmetic change of the default
> skin. It is not really bad and i'm not really opposed to it, as many other
> users are, but it seems that it doesn't address a very big usability problem
> - the fact that Wikimedia Commons is hardly accessible for people who don't
> English well.

The "current big Usability project" you're talking about is mainly about 
improving the *editing* experience of users. There is a separate team 
working specifically about the User experience related to multimedia 
participation, and focusing on Wikimedia Commons. I invite you to read 
http://usability.wikimedia.org/wiki/Multimedia:About for a summary. All 
the documentation is published on the usability wiki, so you can dive as 
deep as you like from the Multimedia hub: 
http://usability.wikimedia.org/wiki/Multimedia:Hub

> Sure, it's possible to translate to translate templates and system messages
> to other languages and set the default language in the preferences, but this
> is very far from actually achieving the goal of making Commons the main
> media repository for all other WMF projects in all languages.

Yes. Improving the user experience to address the multilingual nature of 
Wikimedia Commons is on the list of high priority issues we want to try 
and resolve.

> And it's kinda symbolic that Commons will be the first project where the
> default skin will be switched.

The choice of Commons was made in agreement with the Operations team, 
who didn't want to switch to the new skin on a very high-traffic website 
such as Wikipedia. Turning the switch on Commons first provides more 
flexibility and allows things to be fixed before the Interwebs explode.

> Now, before i start writing about the problems that i found in detail, this
> is probably something that was already discussed. If it indeed was, please
> point me to it (thanks in advance). If it was not discussed deeply, i'll
> probably start a discussion page somewhere.

I think we have already extensively listed the main issues during the 
preliminary research phase, but we may of course have missed something. 
If your problems aren't already in the documentation I linked above, 
feel free to add a new item to 
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Usability_issues_and_ideas

-- 
Guillaume Paumier
Product Manager, Multimedia Usability
Wikimedia Foundation
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