On jargon, I still think "Neutral point of view" was a terrible name that confused neutrality with lack of bias. You cannot sum up a policy like NPOV in a single phrase, so in that case, I think NPOV is better than saying "neutral" something. Sometimes a Wikipedia "term of art" can be misleading and the abbreviation is *less* misleading.
On interfaces, I think the main improvements will probably be in the realm of templates and how references are added. At least that is what I am hoping for. Talking of other interface things, what do people think of LiquidThreads, which looks like it is in use on some wikis now, from what I can see. Carcharoth On Wed, Dec 22, 2010 at 10:55 AM, Tony Sidaway <tonysida...@gmail.com> wrote: > The single best way to improve usability of Wikipedia would be to > scale back the use of jargon. > > if you look at early discussions in those days they were usually held > in plain English, with very little jargon. I've tried to keep up that > style, but it is now quite rare. > > I don't see why this should be. Our policies have perfectly good > English language names, "Neutral point of view", "What Wikipedia is > Not", "Verifiability", and so on. There's absolutely no need to > replace these English phrases with gobbledygook. > > We have no strictures against this exclusive practice, mainly because > it was seen as obviously undesirable in the early days. But > communities inevitably acquire exclusive practices as they > develop--it's seen as one way to identify yourself to other people as > a member of the "in" group. And so now when I discuss matters on > Wikipedia talk pages even I, an editor since 2004, find myself > shuddering inwardly at the impact of all the alphabet soup. If the > damage this practice does to the openness of the community were more > widely recognised it would be possible for us to agree to scale it > back, but it just isn't on the map. > > in all conscience I cannot see anything wrong with our user interface. > It's exemplary, and its having changed so little in all this time is > good evidence of that. If we were to try to emulate monstrosities like > the ever-changing Facebook it would be a step backwards from our > unflinching commitment to a good, clean, simple interface. > > _______________________________________________ > 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