[Foundation-l] Vector, a year after

[Amir E. Aharoni]

2011/4/2 Rodan Bury <bury.rodan at gmail.com>:
> 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.

Well, that was my original question: Did they? Because, frankly,
Erik's reply hardly answers this question. The most recent study he
cited was a study of 10 San Francisco residents. What about other
cities, other countries, other languages, other projects?

I understand that WMF's resources are limited, but the development and
the deployment of Vector did cost some money and also forced a lot of
volunteers in English and in all other language projects to make
adjustments to their sites. Measuring volunteer effort is harder to
measure than money, but it's certainly not negligible.

And i am wondering whether anybody measured how well these resources
were spent. It's not that i'm strongly against Vector; it's nice and
all, but for the last few weeks i switched back to Monobook and to the
old editing toolbar and i don't feel any difference. But since that's
just me, i might be wrong, so i am asking again: 10 people in San
Francisco? Is that all the measurement that was conducted after the
switch? And did anybody try to measure the influence of Monobook and
Vector on editor *retention*, another hot topic recently?

--
Amir Elisha Aharoni · אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי
http://aharoni.wordpress.com
"We're living in pieces,
 I want to live in peace." - T. Moore