IRC office hours/Office hours 2010-04-22

Apr 22 09:03:03 <cary> Hi, everyone!
Apr 22 09:03:06 <cary> Welcome to office hours!
Apr 22 09:03:42 * Jamesofur sends out an email to en-l
Apr 22 09:03:47 <Prodego> fun
Apr 22 09:03:57 <cary> Jamesofur, I sent one yesterday.
Apr 22 09:04:01 <cary> It's there.
Apr 22 09:04:02 <Jamesofur> did you?
Apr 22 09:04:02 <cary> It's there.
Apr 22 09:04:02 <Jamesofur> did you?
Apr 22 09:04:10 * Jamesofur checks his tag again
Apr 22 09:04:24 <cary> nkomura_officehr, say hi!
Apr 22 09:04:47 <nkomura_officehr> hi cary
Apr 22 09:05:01 <nkomura_officehr> thank you for inviting the user experience team to the office hours
Apr 22 09:05:04 <parutron> hi everyone!
Apr 22 09:05:05 <cary> nkomura_officehr, is Naoko Komura, head of User Experience programs
Apr 22 09:05:12 <cary> parutron, is Parul Vora, interaction designer
Apr 22 09:05:31 <Prodego> those are very vauge titles, aren't they
Apr 22 09:05:36 <parutron> hi all!
Apr 22 09:05:38 <nkomura_officehr> howie just joined the room too
Apr 22 09:05:40 <Prodego> vague*
Apr 22 09:05:41 <parutron> yes, very vague....
Apr 22 09:05:59 <nkomura_officehr> howief__: is product consultant
Apr 22 09:06:01 <howief__> hello!
Apr 22 09:06:08 <parutron> hi howief__ !
Apr 22 09:06:12 <howief__> hola!
Apr 22 09:06:14 <parutron> (are you in berlin?)
Apr 22 09:06:17 <cary> Yes, but since Howie is not on our staff page
Apr 22 09:06:29 <cary> He's the product consultant
Apr 22 09:06:34 <howief__> no i'm in philly now - was able to make it out of europe
Apr 22 09:06:43 <parutron> yay! good to hear.
Apr 22 09:06:58 <nkomura_officehr> trevor and adam are still stranded in berlin
Apr 22 09:07:02 <parutron> did adam miller make it out?
Apr 22 09:07:09 <nkomura_officehr> not yet
Apr 22 09:07:11 <howief__> i haven't heard from him
Apr 22 09:07:17 <cary> And Nimish is on vacation.
Apr 22 09:07:25 <nkomura_officehr> roan said he would join, but apparently he is tied up somewhere else
Apr 22 09:07:42 <nkomura_officehr> yeah he is on a long journey to neapl
Apr 22 09:07:44 <nkomura_officehr> nepal
Apr 22 09:07:50 <Prodego> on the usability note when does enwiki get vector as the default skin?
Apr 22 09:08:01 <parutron> don't worry all, we can answer all of your questions!
Apr 22 09:08:04 <cary> Prodego, we're not ready for questions
Apr 22 09:08:04 <nkomura_officehr> he must have reached Katmandu by now
Apr 22 09:08:13 <cary> Let me present the format first
Apr 22 09:08:13 <cary> Let me present the format first
Apr 22 09:08:17 <Prodego> cary: no need to be overly formal
Apr 22 09:08:20 <cary> I know you're eager.
Apr 22 09:08:34 <parutron> i saw nimish's update - he's in nepal and seems very wowed.
Apr 22 09:08:44 <cary> It's not a matter of formality. It can get confusing to the IRC noobs that are here.
Apr 22 09:08:56 <cary> nkomura_officehr, do you have some words of introduction?
Apr 22 09:09:03 <parutron> sad as it may be, i consider myself a relative IRC n00b.
Apr 22 09:09:04 <Prodego> I had no intention of being at the 'office hours', but with all these usability people here, I figure I'll ask, since I intend to go get lunch and then depart in about 2 minutes
Apr 22 09:09:16 <nkomura_officehr> yes
Apr 22 09:09:29 <nkomura_officehr> but let's hear Prodego's question as he is in a rush
Apr 22 09:10:18 <Prodego> not really a formal question, I was just wondering if the dates for switching enwiki to vector as default have shifted at all, and when they were
Apr 22 09:10:25 <Prodego> I recall it being something like near the end of the month?
Apr 22 09:10:31 <nkomura_officehr> right
Apr 22 09:10:40 <nkomura_officehr> so we were shooting for towards end of April
Apr 22 09:10:54 <nkomura_officehr> but after the switch of Commons, the tech ops team determined that
Apr 22 09:11:00 <nkomura_officehr> additional cache layer is needed
Apr 22 09:11:20 <nkomura_officehr> to assure the site is not impacted by the switch of en.wp
Apr 22 09:11:25 <nkomura_officehr> so we are shooting for mid-May
Apr 22 09:11:44 <nkomura_officehr> I am hoping to announce the exact date by early next week
Apr 22 09:11:55 <Prodego> great, thanks for the update, and have a good discussion guys - bye
Apr 22 09:12:12 <nkomura_officehr> you're welcome, have a good one
Apr 22 09:12:27 <nkomura_officehr> so let me give you some intro and we will take questions
Apr 22 09:12:28 <cary> okay, introductions
Apr 22 09:12:54 <nkomura_officehr> for the past twelve months or so, the user experience team has been introducing usability improvements
Apr 22 09:13:05 <nkomura_officehr> in two major releases and numerous updates
Apr 22 09:13:15 <nkomura_officehr> and these features have been available as beta
Apr 22 09:13:35 <nkomura_officehr> the main features are simplified and easy navigation aka vector
Apr 22 09:14:07 <nkomura_officehr> new enhanced toolbar, which is expandable and the cheatsheet is built in
Apr 22 09:14:31 <nkomura_officehr> and dialogs for links (wiki + external), tables and search and replace
Apr 22 09:14:57 <nkomura_officehr> the beta has been tried out by over half million users
Apr 22 09:15:10 <nkomura_officehr> and the acceptance has been around 80%
Apr 22 09:15:29 <nkomura_officehr> from earlier this month, we are making the default interface changes to WMF projects
Apr 22 09:15:36 <nkomura_officehr> the first one was Wikimedia Commons
Apr 22 09:15:56 <nkomura_officehr> and we are planning for the second phase which is for English Wikipedia
Apr 22 09:16:21 <nkomura_officehr> from the qualitative validation, parutron has been spearheading the research
Apr 22 09:17:05 <nkomura_officehr> we had total of three rounds of the usability study and she just concluded the third/last round
Apr 22 09:17:23 <nkomura_officehr> howief has been helping us on the beta survey analysis and improve language specific barriers
Apr 22 09:17:37 <nkomura_officehr> he also worked with sue and erik on exit survey
Apr 22 09:17:50 <nkomura_officehr> cary: so that's it for me
Apr 22 09:18:10 <nkomura_officehr> perhaps, parul can speak for the usability study for a few minutes?
Apr 22 09:18:27 <cary> that would be great. parutron ?
Apr 22 09:18:27 <parutron> sure thing.
Apr 22 09:18:47 <parutron> we conducted our final usability study about two weeks ago.
Apr 22 09:19:36 <parutron> we worked with a local firm called goto media to conduct 10 in person interviews and 8 remote interviews. the 10 in person interview subjects were located in the bay area and the 8 remote interview subjects were across the united states.
Apr 22 09:20:23 <parutron> ages ranged from 16 - 50+ with an equal mix of males and females and as mixed a socio-economic diversity we could achieve with a certain amount of wikipedia use and tech saaviness.
Apr 22 09:21:22 <parutron> the primary goal of the study was the evaluate all of our work (included in the releases naoko mentioned above) against from where we started. but we also took a closer look at some of the features that had been previously unstudied/evaluated.
Apr 22 09:21:45 <parutron> names: template folding, side by side preview, and a new left navigation interaction.
Apr 22 09:21:53 <parutron> namely, that is!
Apr 22 09:23:11 <parutron> is everyone interested in hearing some of the feedback on the evaluation of released features? or perhaps of the new features?
Apr 22 09:23:32 <Nihiltres> new features sounds good :)
Apr 22 09:23:33 <cary> I know I am!
Apr 22 09:23:51 <Nihiltres> but probably better to *start* with the feedback on existing stuff
Apr 22 09:23:58 <cary> To everyone: If you have questions, please phrase it in the form of QUESTION
Apr 22 09:24:00 <cary> Like this.
Apr 22 09:24:27 <cary> QUESTION: What sort of problems did you have with Commons when you switched to Vector?
Apr 22 09:24:29 <parutron> the left navigation interaction was a success - users used it intuitively without confusion or instruction.
Apr 22 09:24:55 <parutron> however, the contents and structure of the left navigation really need to be looked at closely and perhaps organized/structured per project.
Apr 22 09:25:16 <parutron> for en.wikipedia, while editing, people frequently look to the left navigation for editing-specific links and help.
Apr 22 09:26:14 <parutron> seeing users go to the "toolbox" thinking it can help them with editing or contains tools for editing was seen in a few users. most users look to the links there when they are lost or are looking for some particular information.
Apr 22 09:26:42 <parutron> the template collapsing (along with some iframe tweaks) were *VERY* successful in my opinion in improving the readability of an article within the editing interface.
Apr 22 09:27:31 <parutron> very successful. a funny story from the study: one user was having problems with firefox (the only browser, at the time of testing, that supported our new features) and had to use IE.
Apr 22 09:27:43 * nkomura_officehr provides a link to Nimishe's tech blog about template folding as it is only available in a lab
Apr 22 09:27:45 <nkomura_officehr> http://techblog.wikimedia.org/2010/04/template-folding/#comments
Apr 22 09:28:01 <parutron> eventually she switched back to firefox and said "wow, it's so much easier to read. i couldn't tell you why, but i can read this much better"
Apr 22 09:28:08 <nkomura_officehr> correction: http://techblog.wikimedia.org/2010/04/template-folding/
Apr 22 09:28:30 <parutron> but the template *interaction* was not successful at all.
Apr 22 09:29:20 <parutron> we were currently trying to support interactions for both novice and experienced users on the assumption that novice users would prefer to view and edit a template in graphic form, where as experience users would like to do so (or at least have the option to do so) in wiki syntax.
Apr 22 09:30:21 <parutron> novice users gravitated toward the experienced/advanced controls to access wiki text, but across the board, preferred a graphic pop up.
Apr 22 09:31:02 <parutron> we know that we can improve the controls, but are taking this time to consider if we might want to have a default control and offer others as opt-in or preferences.
Apr 22 09:31:28 <parutron> (sorry if this is a bit confusing, am hoping nkomura_officehr's pointer to the visuals might help)
Apr 22 09:32:24 <nkomura_officehr> parutron: shall we hear Nihiltres's comments about existing features?
Apr 22 09:32:35 <parutron> sounds great!
Apr 22 09:32:53 <parutron> Nihiltres, so glad you could join us. I always appreciate your comments and feedback on the Usability Wiki.
Apr 22 09:33:09 <nkomura_officehr> Nihiltres: it's great to meet you over IRC
Apr 22 09:33:29 <nkomura_officehr> thank you for your help and support in making the usability wiki usable :-)
Apr 22 09:34:15 <nkomura_officehr> and we'll get to cary's question next
Apr 22 09:34:25 <cary> ^_^
Apr 22 09:34:38 <nkomura_officehr> did we lose Nihiltres?
Apr 22 09:34:45 <Nihiltres> nope :)
Apr 22 09:34:51 <nkomura_officehr> hi
Apr 22 09:35:14 <Nihiltres> hehe
Apr 22 09:35:25 <Nihiltres> I'm enjoying Vector so far
Apr 22 09:35:48 <nkomura_officehr> great to hear that
Apr 22 09:37:22 <Nihiltres> One of my main interests and what's most relevant to this discussion would be template forms
Apr 22 09:37:26 <Nihiltres> so…
Apr 22 09:37:34 <Nihiltres> QUESTION: How is template forms going? :)
Apr 22 09:37:34 <emijrp> QUESTION: Usability Initiative is improving (so much) the usability to users who want to edit an article. But, what about users who don't have enough time to edit, and only want to report an error or suggest a change in the article? A link (at the bottom of the article) called "Report an error" linked to a "new topic" section in the talk, would be nice. Thanks.
Apr 22 09:37:34 <Nihiltres> QUESTION: How is template forms going? :)
Apr 22 09:37:35 <emijrp> QUESTION: Usability Initiative is improving (so much) the usability to users who want to edit an article. But, what about users who don't have enough time to edit, and only want to report an error or suggest a change in the article? A link (at the bottom of the article) called "Report an error" linked to a "new topic" section in the talk, would be nice. Thanks.
Apr 22 09:37:36 <Jamesofur> QUESTION:How much of the new features (template-folding etc) should work with skins other then Vector (i.e if you stayed with monobook how much would you miss out on those things)
Apr 22 09:38:00 <nkomura_officehr> Nihiltres: got it
Apr 22 09:38:04 <cary> okay, let's take the questions in this order
Apr 22 09:38:12 <cary> Nihiltres, emijrp and then Jamesofur
Apr 22 09:38:12 <cary> Nihiltres, emijrp and then Jamesofur
Apr 22 09:38:13 <nkomura_officehr> so template folding
Apr 22 09:38:18 <cary> and then me if there's time :)
Apr 22 09:38:54 <nkomura_officehr> as some of you may know already, we once introduced iframe element to support Navigable Table of Contents
Apr 22 09:38:55 <parutron> nkomura_officehr: do you want to answer Nihiltres question?
Apr 22 09:39:25 <nkomura_officehr> NTOC -> a quick way to navigate to through the long articles
Apr 22 09:39:40 <nkomura_officehr> template folding requires iFrame element as well
Apr 22 09:40:12 <nkomura_officehr> but it introduces editing errors such as inserting additional line breaks
Apr 22 09:40:33 <nkomura_officehr> and template collapsing itself still has technical challenges as nimish wrote in his tech blog
Apr 22 09:40:40 <nkomura_officehr> performance, binding and etc
Apr 22 09:40:49 <nkomura_officehr> so we are still heavily in development
Apr 22 09:41:06 <nkomura_officehr> and as parutron pointed out, template interaction needs to be revised
Apr 22 09:41:17 <nkomura_officehr> Nihiltres: did i answer your questions?
Apr 22 09:41:38 <Nihiltres> nkomura_officehr: yes :)
Apr 22 09:42:01 <nkomura_officehr> parutron: do you want to answer emijrp's question?
Apr 22 09:42:40 <parutron> sure.
Apr 22 09:43:27 <parutron> the short answer is: we're not doing much. a lot of our project scope and path was set early on and we chose to address the issues that could have the biggest impact across novice editors with our, er, nimble team and 1 year timeline.
Apr 22 09:43:29 <nkomura_officehr> Jamesofur: i'll answer your question next
Apr 22 09:44:17 <parutron> we have seen an interest and a need for such "lightweight" editing - a certain type of novice users feels most comfortable starting to edit with something such as a typo
Apr 22 09:44:20 <parutron> or small error.
Apr 22 09:44:49 <parutron> at the onset of the project, we considered a "quick edit" - in place editing directly from the article.
Apr 22 09:45:32 <parutron> we also briefly considered how messaging could encourage edit.
Apr 22 09:45:37 <nkomura_officehr> (we also heard from the study participants and surveys that they like to be suggested what articles need editing)
Apr 22 09:46:01 <parutron> i.e. people like to be asked or pointed to things that need or could be edited.
Apr 22 09:46:08 <parutron> exactly!
Apr 22 09:46:33 <parutron> because of time and resource constraints we had to limit ourselves, but we hope to address much of what we see and will continue to look at in the future!
Apr 22 09:46:38 * Jamesofur thinks about "edit this" links from the facebook thing.......
Apr 22 09:47:20 * nkomura_officehr thinks Jamesofur's idea is great (now that FB has publicly linked features)
Apr 22 09:48:01 <werdna> good luck convincing facebook :)
Apr 22 09:48:08 <Nihiltres> I'm a bit more reserved about promoting the facebook pages, but if people get into WP from FB, then… works for me
Apr 22 09:48:29 <cary> Nihiltres, I agree!
Apr 22 09:49:30 <Jamesofur> werdna: I believe they were going to be putting something like that on there already (I know someone said they had an edit button that led back to WP) but don't know how big it is, haven't seen it live yet
Apr 22 09:50:01 <Nihiltres> try http://www.facebook.com/pages/Cycling/114031331940797?v=wiki
Apr 22 09:50:19 <Jamesofur> oh that's not to bad actually
Apr 22 09:50:27 <Jamesofur> small but front and center
Apr 22 09:50:32 <Jamesofur> sorry I'm hijacking
Apr 22 09:50:40 <parutron> sorry, lost everyone there for a second.
Apr 22 09:50:41 <nkomura_officehr> cool
Apr 22 09:51:25 <emijrp> Only one link on the top for the whole article.
Apr 22 09:51:26 <nkomura_officehr> kul announced about this new feature in FB a few days ago
Apr 22 09:51:39 <nkomura_officehr> but i didn't see it in my account yet
Apr 22 09:51:52 <parutron> the facebook community pages?
Apr 22 09:52:02 <Nihiltres> emijrp: plus wikilinks leading back to Wikipedia, so far
Apr 22 09:52:05 <parutron> or are we talking about the "liking" feature?
Apr 22 09:52:16 <nkomura_officehr> parutron: it is supposed to suggest the topics of users interests
Apr 22 09:52:31 <howief> are we tracking these links in any way?
Apr 22 09:52:37 <parutron> right - has anyone seen it/played with it yet? i have not yet.
Apr 22 09:52:42 <nkomura_officehr> if i like cycling, FB will ask you to join the community or the topic
Apr 22 09:52:57 <emijrp> Nihiltres: and external links section included. Perhaps, we need more help with spamming from now.
Apr 22 09:53:05 <nkomura_officehr> howief: that would be a question to kul and tomasz
Apr 22 09:53:25 <Jamesofur> emijrp: I'm sure we will ;)
Apr 22 09:53:48 <nkomura_officehr> so i haven't answered Jamesofur's earlier question yet, may i?
Apr 22 09:53:48 <nkomura_officehr> so i haven't answered Jamesofur's earlier question yet, may i?
Apr 22 09:54:22 * cary can't find a page for "Bowling"
Apr 22 09:54:36 <cary> with a Wikipedia link :)
Apr 22 09:55:02 <cary> nkomura_officehr, please do.
Apr 22 09:55:22 <nkomura_officehr> Jamesofur: template folding only works with iFrame supported editor such as WikiEditor
Apr 22 09:55:28 <parutron> cary, would you mind pasting in the question. i remember it was about how template folding and other features work across skins (i.e. in monobook), but i lost it when my internet hiccupped.
Apr 22 09:55:38 <cary> <Jamesofur> QUESTION:How much of the new features (template-folding etc) should work with skins other then Vector (i.e if you stayed with monobook how much would you miss out on those things)
Apr 22 09:55:45 <nkomura_officehr> so it will not work in the editor (textarea) in monobook
Apr 22 09:56:18 <nkomura_officehr> the new toolbar and dialogs would work fine with monobook
Apr 22 09:56:48 <Nihiltres> that seems like a bug—and a relatively major one at that
Apr 22 09:56:57 <nkomura_officehr> navigable table of contents or dynamic table of contents requires iFrame
Apr 22 09:58:05 <nkomura_officehr> Nihiltres: can you elaborate what you mean?
Apr 22 09:59:41 <Nihiltres> Monobook ought to be supported for the new features, particularly given the number of users, particularly more established ones, who prefer it
Apr 22 10:00:12 <cary> Office hours is scheduled until 1700 UTC, which is right now. Are you able to go on, nkomura_officehr ?
Apr 22 10:00:24 <nkomura_officehr> cary: yes
Apr 22 10:00:55 <Nihiltres> it's a "bug" in the sense that it denies usability features to some of the people who ought to have them
Apr 22 10:01:28 <nkomura_officehr> Nihiltres: the features we developed was focused on new editors, and monobook tends to be kept by advanced users who mastered wiki syntax
Apr 22 10:01:37 <Nihiltres> true
Apr 22 10:01:59 <nkomura_officehr> for example, the full template text will not scare off advanced users
Apr 22 10:02:23 <nkomura_officehr> but novice users are very overwhelmed by seeing the amount of complex code from infobox for example
Apr 22 10:02:24 <Nihiltres> it's not an *urgent* concern, but I think it's an *important* one
Apr 22 10:02:41 <Nihiltres> just something that ought to be resolved in the longer term
Apr 22 10:02:46 <nkomura_officehr> i agree that we need to expand focus on the need for advanced users
Apr 22 10:02:52 <cary> Was Vector developed partly *in order* so these features can be used?
Apr 22 10:03:26 <nkomura_officehr> cary: not sure what you mean..
Apr 22 10:03:59 <cary> nkomura_officehr, please go on. I can't quite phrase it correctly.
Apr 22 10:04:08 <nkomura_officehr> k
Apr 22 10:04:21 <Jamesofur> did you develop vector and then say "oo we can do this" or did you say "oo we want to do this and need to have something "like vector" to be able to do it"
Apr 22 10:04:31 * Jamesofur isn't sure if that's better..........
Apr 22 10:04:39 <Nihiltres> that seems slightly clearer
Apr 22 10:05:12 <nkomura_officehr> we started off our project with the first usability study
Apr 22 10:05:25 <nkomura_officehr> and determined which step new editors fail at most
Apr 22 10:05:40 <Nihiltres> I'd say "Are there usability features that are predicated on (underlying code) features in Vector?"
Apr 22 10:05:48 <nkomura_officehr> at the first study, people couldn't find the article they want to edit and the tool bar was not interacted at all
Apr 22 10:06:02 <parutron> Yes, Vector was developed as a platform to afford forward-thinking features. With monobook, we had certain residual constrains that would not allow for the set of features we both planned on deploying and also sought to deploy in the future.
Apr 22 10:06:52 <nkomura_officehr> thanks parutron
Apr 22 10:07:00 <parutron> truthfully, i can't speak to these constraints, but our wonderful development team (currently stranded in europe) weighed these considerations.
Apr 22 10:08:04 <Jamesofur> yea I'll admit I've never really used the toolbar, even after being around a while it confuses .... I just type it instead
Apr 22 10:08:16 <parutron> it is part of our process to extend these features to all browsers in Vector and then all skins, and all projects, but it does take a lot of time. it's happened for the features we deployed early on but as for features that were recently tested, the features themselves have not be iterated enough to proliferate to all browswers and skins yet.
Apr 22 10:08:42 <parutron> (template folding, side by side preview, etc)
Apr 22 10:09:30 <GerardM-> is anything known about the usability of vector in right to left languages like Arabic, Urdu ..
Apr 22 10:09:35 <parutron> (i have to take off everyone - thanks so much for your thoughtful questions + concerns. you can usually find me in the usability chat room!)
Apr 22 10:09:50 <Nihiltres> cheers, nice talking, parutron :)
Apr 22 10:09:58 * Jamesofur waves thank ye!
Apr 22 10:10:09 <cary> Thanks parutron !
Apr 22 10:11:10 <nkomura_officehr> GerardM-: we are paying attentions to RTL languages, but it is a challenge as you know
Apr 22 10:11:32 <nkomura_officehr> we try out best to support RTL layout and navigation in Vector and dialogs
Apr 22 10:12:13 <nkomura_officehr> we should/can do more such as making tool icons RTL instead of using the same icons for LTR, for an example
Apr 22 10:12:37 <nkomura_officehr> cary: were there other questions aside from yours?
Apr 22 10:12:48 <cary> nkomura_officehr, not that I've seen
Apr 22 10:12:56 <cary> And you don't have to answer mine :)
Apr 22 10:13:25 <Nihiltres> cary: curious, have you said your question yet?
Apr 22 10:13:37 <cary> Nihiltres, when I gave the sample question
Apr 22 10:13:52 <Nihiltres> ah :)
Apr 22 10:14:14 <nkomura_officehr> cary: some answers to your answer can be found here
Apr 22 10:14:15 <nkomura_officehr> http://blog.wikimedia.org/2010/04/16/a-quick-update-on-vector-acceptance-by-commons-users/
Apr 22 10:14:21 <cary> Thanks nkomura_officehr :)
Apr 22 10:14:41 * howief est parti (Ping timeout: 245 seconds)
Apr 22 10:14:42 <nkomura_officehr> it was great to talk to you all
Apr 22 10:14:46 <cary> thank you!