[WikiEN-l] Usability Study Results (Sneak Preview)

[Thomas Dalton]

Cross posting to wikitech-l

2009/5/8 Ian Woollard <ian.woollard at gmail.com>:
> Well, the wikipedia is big... google is big also.
>
> One of the tricks google use is they try stuff out on victims... I
> mean users. They pick a small percentage of the internet and do
> something slightly different for them, and see if it works or not. The
> advantage of only doing it for a small number is that it means you can
> write the test with prototyping tools, rather than having to make it
> run fast, and you'll have a lot less complaints if it doesn't work
> very well. It also means you can do back-back comparisons stuff like:
> 'we tried this, and it showed a 23% improvement in referencing'.
>
> I think if at all practical, the wikipedia needs to start doing stuff like that.

That sounds like an excellent idea to me. Is it achievable?