On 3 June 2014 12:25, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 3 June 2014 16:37, Risker risker.wp@gmail.com wrote:
Okay, further to what I've said above....I think that before having an
RFC,
we should seek community assistance to carry out a small-scale study so that there is some evidence on which people can base their decisions.
This
is what I would suggest.
[snip a possible user test scenario]
+1. Some sort of user testing like this would be fantastic.
We might even be able to set it up so the Internet will do it for us, which will save WMF paying testers ... could do some serious A/B work too. There must be frameworks for this sort of thing ...
VE team (cc James): so. How do you think this thing is now, getting to a year later? Performance? Robustness? Stability of code?
David, one of the most important features of this proposed test is that people who *know* what the results ought to look like are carrying out the testing. It is probably a good idea to have parallel testing with new or inexperienced users, but at the end of the day, it's experienced Wikipedians who are going to make the decision whether or not to open up availability of VisualEditor to an expanded user group, and they are the ones who have to believe that it is fit for purpose, at least for basic editing skills required by new users. I suspect that most Wikipedians will give much more regard to the documented experiences of editors whose reputations they know as compared to those who are brand new - and I include myself in that group. I've seen ringers sent in too often in different kinds of user tests (not necessarily Wikimedia-specific) to fully assume good faith.
Risker/Anne