[Foundation-l] Usability: page weight

[Ryan Lomonaco]

Forwarded.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Yann Forget <yannfo at gmail.com>
Date: Tue, Jun 15, 2010 at 6:57 AM
Subject: Usability: page weight
To: foundation-l-owner at lists.wikimedia.org


Hello,

While we are talking about usability issues, I would like to mention
an issue which was not mentioned up to now : page weight.

I am now surfing most of time with a 3G key with a bandwidth of 16
KB/s maximum, and often less.
My experience of Wikimedia sites compared with the other websites I am
using regularly, GMail and Facebook,
shows that these load much faster than Wikimedia pages, even if the
page is mostly empty.
It seems that these sites use some fancy caching for that.

Page weight is a major hurdle for working on any Wikimedia sites
affecting users who do not enjoy a broadband connection.
And I believe that small wikis with non-European languages are more
affected than others (a study would be interesting here).
For improving outreach of Wikimedia outside of the Western world,
improving the page weight should be a priority.

What can be done?

Regards,

Yann