[Foundation-l] Personal Image Filter results announced

[Risker]

On 8 September 2011 01:57, John Vandenberg <jayvdb at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Thu, Sep 8, 2011 at 2:43 PM, Risker <risker.wp at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 7 September 2011 17:32, John Vandenberg <jayvdb at gmail.com> wrote:
> >> Every version of Mozilla has included the "Dont load images" option.
> >> And it is simple to find.
> >
> > John, you made me laugh out loud when I read that - it reminded me of how
> > incredibly non-techie I was before I started hanging out with
> Wikimedians,
> > because a few years ago it never would have occurred to me that it was
> > possible. As it was,   It took me 15 minutes to find the two ways to do
> that
> > (without looking at the help page that I doubt anyone would find without
> > knowing a lot about the project).
>
> http://www.google.com/search?q=firefox+disable+images
>
> (our help page turns up on the first page of results, for me)
>
> > I do think David Gerard's suggestion is probably both (a) quite workable
> and
> > (b) more likely to create user satisfaction, especially if it's a
> > straightforward toggle.
>
> We should be helping users use their existing tools better, not
> creating new tools to do the same job, less well.
> people on dialup need to learn how to use these tools because it isnt
> just Wikipedia which is slow to load - the entire internet is full of
> sites which are a nightmare on dialup.
>
> If we want to improve Wikipedia for dialup, our developer resources
> are better spent on a skin which emits less HTML, selects smaller or
> less images, etc.
>
>

John, we can't fix the whole internet. We can't insist that users do a
google search to find pages in our own project (you've made an argument for
improving our search function further). And we shouldn't treat people who
don't want to muck about in their browser software ("oh geez, now what have
I done!")  as too uneducated to be shown courtesy. Yes, the internet is full
of sites that are a pain on dialup. But we can be a leader in giving people
the opportunity to find out about Leonardo da Vinci without using up their
bandwidth.

We already know that changing editorial practices is like herding cats, and
getting people to use smaller images when clearly a large one is appropriate
to the page, or using fewer to illustrate articles, is a particularly
challenging one. The use of overlinking and massive templates at the bottom
of articles is also problematic, as are the ever-increasing expectations for
referencing. A toggle to turn off images, right over there on the top of the
toolbox, is only one small step in the constant evolution of ways that can
make our projects an easier place to be for those who aren't as
well-informed or clever as the average Wikimedian. Education is best
digested when it is actively sought; I'd rather feed the reader an article
on a topic he wants to know about than insist that he learn how to reprogram
his browser before he can open the article he wants without having enough
time to take a shower before the page finishes loading.

Risker/Anne