[Foundation-l] Vector, a year after

Rodan Bury bury.rodan at gmail.com
Sat Apr 2 17:07:29 UTC 2011


The analysis of the qualitative and quantitative results of the Usability
Initiative is not a question anybody can answer. Comments like "I personally
prefer monobook" (fictional example) does not help to make an analysis based
on facts.

Erik Möller's answer is professional and detailed in this regard.

I could add a little summary of the goals and priorities of the Usability
Initiative as I understand them, which will help us understand its result.
The Vector was a high priority change rated "easy to do", and as such they
focused on deploying it first. It is aimed at readers and editors, and the
result was new editors felt more comfortable when clicking on the edit link
and attempting to edit.
However, most proposals made to improve the editing process itself we not
deployed. The editing toolbar improved the situation too, but is not
sufficient in itself to make the huge difference in editing trends that was
expected. Wikipedia's editing interface is still way harder than modern
editing interfaces on the web, and so the situation did not change
significantly.

However, the Usability Initiative was going in the right direction. The
prototypes that improves significantly the editing process needs to be
brought to completion. Then it would be interesting to observe the
quantitative results on the editing trends.

The Multimedia Initiative - which also aims to improve usability and is made
with a similar process - will have its prototype deployed soon. This will
provide significant results in the number of uploads at commons for sure.
Rodan Bury

2011/4/2 Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net>

> On 04/01/11 8:29 AM, Sarah wrote:
> > On Fri, Apr 1, 2011 at 09:10, David Gerard<dgerard at gmail.com>  wrote:
> >> I've been using it on our work intranet for new wikis. It's gained
> >> unsolicited positive comment. Vector looks nice.
> > Do we know how many editors still use Monobook?
>
> I still use Classic, with Cologne Blue on my Wikisource page.  I find
> the small sans-serif type face in Vector more difficult to read and too
> condensed.
>
> Ray
>
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