[Wikimedia-l] The Wikipedia Adventure, alpha testers needed

[Katherine Casey]

Some thoughts upon running through this (roughly in the order I am
experiencing them):

   - This is actually pretty cool. Cooler than I expected it to be!
   - Instructions sometimes tell me to click "edit source" and sometimes to
   click "edit", even though it always means that I should click "edit
   source". Since the VE button says "edit", this is potentially pretty
   confusing.
   - At the end of missions, the button says "Congrats me!". That's pretty
   jarring English - more natural would be either, "Congrats, me!" or
   "Congrats to me!"
   - The "select how you would reply to this person" challenges
   are...patronizing? That's not quite the right word, but I don't think
   they're modelling anything useful by basically pointing out "hey, you
   shouldn't be a rude jackass" as if it's someone's going to read those
   options and go "yes! this is clearly how I should act!". More useful would
   be modelling interaction strategies and tricks, like how to engage with
   some who's left you a rude message or even just what information is useful
   to provide to other users.
   - Galactic challenges keep launching new tabs for me when they don't
   seem like they ought to (i.e. there's no reason I need to have the results
   of that challenge preserved in one firefox tab while I move on in another)
   - The "watchlist" module has instructions that are a little bit
   confusing - it instructs you on *how *to watchlist (blue star, etc), but
   then tells you to *click *on watchlist on the "top right". Since both
   the star and the actual watchlist link are on the top right, it's likely
   going to be unclear to newbies whether you want them to click on the star
   you just explained, or the link you didn't.
   - In general when you're telling people to "click X above", it might be
   useful to use quotes so they know you're telling to click on something that
   literally says that - tell them to *click "contributions" above *rather
   than to *click contributions above*
   - When doing spelling corrections, the hover box listing what I needed
   to correct obscured part of the text that needed correcting. I couldn't
   correct that until I closed the box. Once I did that, I was bumped out of
   the lesson entirely. Couldn't figure out how to the mission to pick back up
   there, so I had to stop. Why can't we either minimize the instructions box,
   or have it resurrect when we complete a step (that is, if I did what it
   wanted me to do, it should pick back up smoothly when I save the page with
   its next instruction, rather than just disappearing forever because I had
   to click the X)

In short: really very cool, but in the parts I managed to get through
(Missions 1-2 and part of 3) there are some small interface issues that
need work, and one *glaring *one that short-circuited my attempt to get
through a mission and, I guess, the entire adventure.

-Fluffernutter


On Wed, Oct 16, 2013 at 5:56 PM, Jake Orlowitz <jorlowitz at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi folks! I've been working for the past 7 months on an interactive guided
> tour for new editors called '''The Wikipedia Adventure''', as part of a WMF
> Individual Engagement Grant.  The game is an experiment in teaching our
> aspiring future editors in an educational but playful way.
>
> *This week I need some '''alpha-testers''' to kick the tires and basically
> try to break it.  I'm interested in general impressions and suggestions of
> course, but I'm really looking for gnarly, unexpected browser issues,
> layout problems, workflow bugs, and other sundry errors that would prevent
> people from playing through and having a positive experience.
>
> *If you're able to spend 1-3 hours doing some quality assurance work this
> week, you would have: a) my sincere gratitude b), a sparkly TWA barnstar,
> c) special thanks in the game credits, and d) a chance to leave your mark
> on Wikipedia's outreach puzzle and new editor engagement efforts.
>
> *Please note that the game automatically sends edits to your own userspace
> and it lets you know when that will happen.  If you want, you can register
> a new testing account just for the game, but it won't work properly unless
> you're logged-in by step 8 of mission 1 (when it lets you register on the
> fly).
>
> You can try it out at http://enwp.org/WP:TWA and leave feedback at
> http://enwp.org/WP:TWA/Feedback]].
>
> Thanks much and cheers!
>
> --Jake Orlowitz (Ocaasi)
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