I was rooting for a full WYSIWYG editor, but it doesn't look like they'll be doing that. I wonder how the new edit toolbar does in real world usability testing.
Hi there. I happen to be on the Wikimedia Usability team, but on a separate project from the ones discussed here.
The team did their latest formal usability test just last week. Those results will be posted soon. In the meantime, the results of the October 2009 usability testing are here:
As for a WYSIWYG editor -- I can't speak for that team, but pretty much everyone agrees that this is required if we're going to achieve the goal of an encyclopedia that anyone can edit.
The WMF has recently instituted some permanent positions related to user experience, so stay tuned, or, get involved.
Oh, sounds cool. I'm a MediaWiki developer, but I haven't been terribly active lately. I'm going to get back into it soon, and I want to focus on usability because I believe that usability (or lack thereof) is the number one blocker to the adoption of wikis to people not familiar with them.
I don’t care so much about WYSIWYG (I’d personally leave it off), but if it were possible to do some syntax highlighting in the editor boxes I think that would be tremendously useful.
Not sure where the best place to send feedback is, but one concern I have is that the text box used for entry breaks/removes Safari’s neat bottom-right-corner box resizer widget that usually shows up for textarea elements. Anyone here know what causes it to show up/disappear?
Wikipedia has still this cutesy olden times feel to it. A skin with gradients can’t change that. I kinda like it, but sometimes I wonder whether a optically sleek Wikipedia would be even better.
The “skin” is not just appearance. It changes how the editing boxes work. In particular, it adds a bunch of buttons for common tasks. It also moves interface elements to new locations (search box, etc.).
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[ 4.7 ms ] story [ 34.2 ms ] threadThe team did their latest formal usability test just last week. Those results will be posted soon. In the meantime, the results of the October 2009 usability testing are here:
http://usability.wikimedia.org/wiki/Usability,_Experience,_a...
In addition, they've been tracking the retention rates of people who try the beta:
http://usability.wikimedia.org/wiki/Beta_Feedback_Survey
As for a WYSIWYG editor -- I can't speak for that team, but pretty much everyone agrees that this is required if we're going to achieve the goal of an encyclopedia that anyone can edit.
The WMF has recently instituted some permanent positions related to user experience, so stay tuned, or, get involved.
Not sure where the best place to send feedback is, but one concern I have is that the text box used for entry breaks/removes Safari’s neat bottom-right-corner box resizer widget that usually shows up for textarea elements. Anyone here know what causes it to show up/disappear?
Go try editing http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Sandbox to see how it works.