[WikiEN-l] Fwd: [Foundation-l] Along with Vector, a new look for changes to the Wikipedia identity

[Liam Wyatt]

On 14 May 2010 21:19, Casey Brown <lists at caseybrown.org> wrote:

> On Fri, May 14, 2010 at 4:52 PM, AGK <wikiagk at googlemail.com> wrote:
> > Ooh, that's nifty. I didn't know it existed either. Will they be
> > testing FlaggedRevs on the site,
> >
>
> Most new extensions are tested on their own "labs" site or on
> testwiki, the Usability initiative is special because it has tons of
> different improvements and has its own domain. :-)
>
> Here's a list of the current "labs" wikis:
> * http://de.labs.wikimedia.org/ -- I'm pretty sure this was for
> testing FlaggedRevs for dewiki
> * http://en.labs.wikimedia.org/ -- general testing platform
> * http://flaggedrevs.labs.wikimedia.org/ -- FlaggedRevs for enwiki
> * http://liquidthreads.labs.wikimedia.org/ -- LiquidThreads
> * http://readerfeedback.labs.wikimedia.org/ -- ReaderFeedback
>
> > now that it's not needed for vector?
>
> It's important to note that although Vector has been deployed, that
> doesn't mean that the Usability Initiative is done.  The Usability
> team still has quite a few releases prepared, like code collapsing, a
> TOC in the editing window, and more.  The "releases" page on Usability
> wiki <http://usability.wikimedia.org/wiki/Releases> lists a lot of
> these changes, but I'm not sure how up-to-date the timeline is.
>
> --

Casey Brown
> Cbrown1023
>
>
And can I just add how awesome those forthcoming usability releases look! I
am so very much looking forward to the "content folding" and "form based
editing" features that they've got in the pipelines.

Check out how the article "san francisco" will look when those features are
fully-baked:
http://prototype.wikimedia.org/s-6/index.php?title=San_Francisco&action=edit(takes
a while to load because it's very alpha software). This collapses the
most difficult part of editing for newbies - the infoboxes - into a neat
little casing that can be expanded to show the full code or expanded to show
an easy-to-edit form (respectively: by clicking on the arrow in the left of
the case, or the squares on the right of the case). As I'm sure anyone who
has tried to help a friend learn how to edit has experienced, seeing the
infobox wiki-code in the edit window is a major turn-off for newbies to try
to get involved in wikimedia.  (for comparison, try looking at the same
article in Wikipedia now -
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=San_Francisco&action=edit ).

I realise this is straying a bit from the original purpose of this thread,
but I thought I'd just put that in there as an exemplification of Casey's
point that the UX team are not yet finished :-)

-Liam [[witty lama]]

wittylama.com/blog
Peace, love & metadata


>