[WikiEN-l] Upcoming Changes to the User Interface
Everyone, As many of you already know, the Wikimedia Foundation's User Experience team has been running a beta program focused on improving the user interface for over six months now. More details may be found here http://usability.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_Usability_Initiative [a], but our main goal has been to reduce the barriers to participation in Wikipedia by making it easier for new contributors to edit. Since the start of the program, over 635,000 users across all Wikimedia projects have participated in this beta program - testing and providing feedback on the new interface. Roughly 80% of the test users who tried the beta are still using it (view details http://usability.wikimedia.org/wiki/Beta_Feedback_Survey [b]). On the English Wikipedia, almost 270,000 users have tried the test interface and about 84% of those users continue to use it. On April 5, the beta features became the default experience for users of Wikimedia Commons, a wiki similar to Wikipedia that hosts the millions of free image and media files within our projects. The summary of feedback from Commons users may be found here http://blog.wikimedia.org/2010/04/16/a-quick-update-on-vector-acceptance-by-commons-users/ [c]. The WMF blog http://blog.wikimedia.org/2010/03/25/wikimedia-gets-ready-for-some-big-changes/ [d] and the tech blog http://techblog.wikimedia.org/2010/03/the-change-in-interface-is-coming/ [e] also provide more information on this project. This new user interface will become the default for users of the English Wikipedia during the second week of May. We are currently scheduled to make the switch at 5:00am UTC on May 13. Once we make the switch, all users will begin to see the new features [1]. These features include an enhanced toolbar, a new skin (which we named 'Vector'), and a number of other features we're very excited about (FAQs may be found here http://usability.wikimedia.org/wiki/What%27s_new,_questions_and_answers [f]). If you prefer not to make the change, there will be 'Take me back' link to restore the original features. Those who would like to experience the new interface sooner may do so via the 'Try Beta' link at the top of the page. We understand that the English Wikipedia relies heavily on custom user scripts and site-specific JavaScript. Information on how to test gadgets is included in the FAQs http://usability.wikimedia.org/wiki/What%27s_new,_questions_and_answers page. If you encounter issues using the new skin, please share your feedback [http://usability.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:What%27s_new,_questions_and_answers [g]. We're looking forward to rolling out the new features next week. In the meantime, if you have any questions/comments, please share them here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:User_experience_feedback [h] -- we're trying to consolidate feedback as much as we can. Howie Wikimedia Usability Experience Team [1] Users that have opted out of the beta will still get the new features. We apologize in advance for this inconvenience, but these users may restore their features via the Take Me Back link. [a] http://usability.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_Usability_Initiative [b] http://usability.wikimedia.org/wiki/Beta_Feedback_Survey [c] http://blog.wikimedia.org/2010/04/16/a-quick-update-on-vector-acceptance-by-commons-users/ [d] http://blog.wikimedia.org/2010/03/25/wikimedia-gets-ready-for-some-big-changes/ [e] http://techblog.wikimedia.org/2010/03/the-change-in-interface-is-coming/ [f] http://usability.wikimedia.org/wiki/What%27s_new,_questions_and_answers [g] [http://usability.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:What%27s_new,_questions_and_answers [h] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:User_experience_feedback ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Flagged protection and patrolled revisions
On Fri, May 7, 2010 at 10:25 AM, Aryeh Gregor simetrical+wikil...@gmail.comsimetrical%2bwikil...@gmail.com wrote: How about this. No message on the edit page itself. When they save the edit, they're redirected to the draft page of that article, with a message at the top saying something like This is a publicly-viewable draft, and will be shown to all viewers by default after review. There's no need to mention it *before* the edit, is there? Hi Aryeh, I think this an idea worth discussing more, but I think the idea may get lost if it stays solely on this mailing list, so here's what I'm going to recommend: 1. File a bug on bugzilla.wikimedia.org. 2. Let me know that you've done that. 3. I'll add further consideration to our backlog I'm pretty doubtful that we'll be able to get to this before launch. My understanding here (based on what I heard in the WMF meeting, but I may have misheard) is that what is being requested is how the German Wikipedia used to work, and they switched it to the current behavior. That means that, at a minimum, we'll need some more time to think about the proposed change than we'd like to let delay the initial trial. That's not to say that we won't get to it, but getting more experience with the feature would be best before tinkering with this aspect of it. Make sense? Rob ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
[WikiEN-l] Fwd: Ramping up the Flagged Revs trial
Hi folks, As we've gotten down to brass tacks in planning the deployment of Flagged Revisions on en.wikipedia.org, it's become obvious that we'll probably need to limit the number of articles put under Flagged Protection at first. A couple of reasons for doing this: a) Performance - we know already from de.wikipedia.org and from watching flaggedrevs.labs.wikimedia.org that this feature can impact performance. So, we'd like to start small and build up from there b) Community norm development - we'd like to give the community a chance to use this in production in a limited way to start with to get a feel for the feature in the wild. We suspect many people will appreciate the opportunity to see this in action and get a better sense of the policy implications without having to worry about finding that half of English Wikipedia is under Flagged Protection. So, we're planning on putting an upper bound of 2000 articles when we start the trial. We'll then see how this plays out. If performance takes a severe hit, we'll need to work with the admin community for a plan to back down from that number (in lieu of total reverting the feature). If things are going well on all fronts, we can possibly bump things up. I've outlined this here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Flagged_protection_and_patrolled_revisions/Trialhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Flagged_protection_and_patrolled_revisions/Trial What would be useful for this group to figure out is: 1. What articles would be the best candidates to start off with? From a technical perspective, it'd be really handy to have a representative sample of traffic characteristics (e.g. high traffic and low traffic articles), since caching is one of the big areas of performance hit. 2. If we need to start weeding out articles to get the total count down, what order should we go in? Please leave your thoughts on the talk page, and/or flesh out the portions of the main article that still need love (that page in particular needs some help). Thanks! Rob ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Upcoming Changes to the User Interface
I know this was discussed a little while ago but do we have anything set up in the way of global notices etc? Obviously a large portion of our userbase (especially readers) don't see the mailing lists and we probably want to warn them and give them some subtle pokes to learn about some of the new features BEFORE the switch is made. James Alexander james.alexan...@rochester.edu jameso...@gmail.com 100 gmail invites and no one to give them to :( let me know if you want one :) On Fri, May 7, 2010 at 3:10 PM, Howie Fung hf...@wikimedia.org wrote: Everyone, As many of you already know, the Wikimedia Foundation's User Experience team has been running a beta program focused on improving the user interface for over six months now. More details may be found here http://usability.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_Usability_Initiative [a], but our main goal has been to reduce the barriers to participation in Wikipedia by making it easier for new contributors to edit. Since the start of the program, over 635,000 users across all Wikimedia projects have participated in this beta program - testing and providing feedback on the new interface. Roughly 80% of the test users who tried the beta are still using it (view details http://usability.wikimedia.org/wiki/Beta_Feedback_Survey [b]). On the English Wikipedia, almost 270,000 users have tried the test interface and about 84% of those users continue to use it. On April 5, the beta features became the default experience for users of Wikimedia Commons, a wiki similar to Wikipedia that hosts the millions of free image and media files within our projects. The summary of feedback from Commons users may be found here http://blog.wikimedia.org/2010/04/16/a-quick-update-on-vector-acceptance-by-commons-users/ [c]. The WMF blog http://blog.wikimedia.org/2010/03/25/wikimedia-gets-ready-for-some-big-changes/ [d] and the tech blog http://techblog.wikimedia.org/2010/03/the-change-in-interface-is-coming/ [e] also provide more information on this project. This new user interface will become the default for users of the English Wikipedia during the second week of May. We are currently scheduled to make the switch at 5:00am UTC on May 13. Once we make the switch, all users will begin to see the new features [1]. These features include an enhanced toolbar, a new skin (which we named 'Vector'), and a number of other features we're very excited about (FAQs may be found here http://usability.wikimedia.org/wiki/What%27s_new,_questions_and_answers [f]). If you prefer not to make the change, there will be 'Take me back' link to restore the original features. Those who would like to experience the new interface sooner may do so via the 'Try Beta' link at the top of the page. We understand that the English Wikipedia relies heavily on custom user scripts and site-specific JavaScript. Information on how to test gadgets is included in the FAQs http://usability.wikimedia.org/wiki/What%27s_new,_questions_and_answers page. If you encounter issues using the new skin, please share your feedback [ http://usability.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:What%27s_new,_questions_and_answers [g]. We're looking forward to rolling out the new features next week. In the meantime, if you have any questions/comments, please share them here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:User_experience_feedback [h] -- we're trying to consolidate feedback as much as we can. Howie Wikimedia Usability Experience Team [1] Users that have opted out of the beta will still get the new features. We apologize in advance for this inconvenience, but these users may restore their features via the Take Me Back link. [a] http://usability.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_Usability_Initiative [b] http://usability.wikimedia.org/wiki/Beta_Feedback_Survey [c] http://blog.wikimedia.org/2010/04/16/a-quick-update-on-vector-acceptance-by-commons-users/ [d] http://blog.wikimedia.org/2010/03/25/wikimedia-gets-ready-for-some-big-changes/ [e] http://techblog.wikimedia.org/2010/03/the-change-in-interface-is-coming/ [f] http://usability.wikimedia.org/wiki/What%27s_new,_questions_and_answers [g] [ http://usability.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:What%27s_new,_questions_and_answers [h] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:User_experience_feedback ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Upcoming Changes to the User Interface
On Sat, May 8, 2010 at 9:01 PM, James Alexander jameso...@gmail.com wrote: I know this was discussed a little while ago but do we have anything set up in the way of global notices etc? Obviously a large portion of our userbase (especially readers) don't see the mailing lists and we probably want to warn them and give them some subtle pokes to learn about some of the new features BEFORE the switch is made. James Alexander [[MediaWiki:Sitenotice]] and [[Wikipedia:Watchlist notices]] ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Upcoming Changes to the User Interface
I want the vector skin but not the new toolbar. (I prefer to do my wikimarkup by hand.) Is there a way to use the new interface but the old edit box? AGK ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Re: [WikiEN-l] Upcoming Changes to the User Interface
On Sat, May 8, 2010 at 10:34 AM, AGK wiki...@googlemail.com wrote: I want the vector skin but not the new toolbar. (I prefer to do my wikimarkup by hand.) Is there a way to use the new interface but the old edit box? Everything should be customizable from Special:Preferences. See Editing = Beta features. -- Casey Brown Cbrown1023 ___ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
