Talk:Movement Strategy/Recommendations/Iteration 3/Improve User Experience

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Improve User Experience?

Really? Four items under the headline of Improve UX and three of them are diversity? What is this? Does anyone believe that diversity is a UX issue? Or the other way round: that the most pressing issues with UX are related to diversity? You gotta be kiddin ... --h-stt !? 20:57, 20 January 2020 (UTC)

It's a user experience issue if your users can't use your stuff, right? :) Are there any particular points of the recommendations that are not clear? CKoerner (WMF) (talk) 21:04, 20 January 2020 (UTC)

I was looking at Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2018-20/Recommendations/Community_input/Improve_User_Experience. But your link isn't much better. While no one opposes UX improvements, you should not focus that much on diversity. So far most UX proposals from WMF died a painful and prolonged death. And it was justified, because the designers never looked at all the functions that our current system fulfills. Every tiny little piece of code is necessary for at least one function. So you will never get anywhere by removing and adding code, icons, symbols, buttons, bells and whistles. The only way to a new surface is a clean hart cut that beginns with the functions, that are necessary and those that can be dropped. --h-stt !? 23:09, 20 January 2020 (UTC)

BTW: the 3D-Matrix-content navigation is a nightmare from an UX perspective. Only now I find at least some structure in it. And I realized that the issue has been raised at Talk:Strategy/Wikimedia movement/2018-20/Recommendations#Navigability. --h-stt !? 23:09, 20 January 2020 (UTC)

@H-stt: Of course diversity is a UX issue. You need to have some level of familiarity with the user groups you are designing for. Without intentionally expending extra effort, you'd end up with Bay Area urbanites writing software that's easy for them to use but confusing in many other parts of the world, for many other demographies, people with disabilities etc.

Anyway, it seems like your comment is not really about diversity. WMF UX proposals so far have not been particularly focused on diversity. (They have not been unsuccessful either, by and large. E.g. the last annual plan of WMF Audiences (the department most involved in UX) involves improving the new editor experience, designing the future of talk pages through a community consultation, adding more contributor features/capabilities to the mobile web experience, iOS editing improvements, Android microcontributions, better VisualEditor support on mobile, and a better cross-wiki translation interface. All of those have been well-received. You might be the victim of availability bias there - you hear less about the things that go well, for obvious reasons.) You say no one opposes UX improvements, but you seem to be opposed to something in this recommendation; but it's hard for me to tell what. (full disclosure: I work in WMF Audiences but participate in this process as a volunteer. No doubt I have my own biases.) --Tgr (talk) 07:57, 21 January 2020 (UTC)

Hasn't someone noted that a request to make the interface usable for blind users has sat ignored in the phabricator queue for years? That should be a P1 task, not Visual Editor improvements. I'm surprised that issue isn't explicitly mentioned in the proposal. (And we don't need to talk about "diversity" to address that bug; we're talking about addressing the basic needs of all our users.) -- Llywrch (talk) 19:23, 21 January 2020 (UTC)

@Llywrch: Accessibility is explicitly mentioned: Ensure our platforms comply with the most advanced accessibility guidelines (WCAG for web, W3C mobile web best practices, etc.), such as through diverse font sizes for the visually impaired or video subtitles for the auditory impaired. Achieving that outcome would make the interface usable for blind users, and a number of other groups. Specific details are not called out; this document is just too high level for that. (Prioritization is, as always, hard. What's more important, the ~3% of readers who are blind, or the large fraction of potential new editors who cannot use the current editor? And then there are the people who think organizations are a cancer growing on the wikis, and should be reduced to keeping the servers running, because surely WCAG-compatible websites can just come into existence from nothing by quantum fluctuation...) --Tgr (talk) 05:21, 22 January 2020 (UTC)

Apples & oranges. While I'll admit that there are issues with Wikitext, for the vast majority of cases Wikitext is about as difficult to learn to use as the bones of HTML is. Which is only punctuation on steroids -- except for the parts that cover tables & CSS. (CSS should not be part of HTML.) Something like Visual Editor (if it worked as expected) would at best make the difficult part of Wikitext easy. (If it helped with templates, which is the CSS of Wikitext.) On the other hand, the issues facing not only blind but deaf users of Wikipedia were either insurmountable, & when they weren't led to much newbie anguish. (I had to deal with one deaf user who faced so much trouble with editing Wikipedia he ended up getting banned.) So either you're making life a little more comfortable for lots of people (definitely some multiple of 3%) or opening up our knowledge to a group that has been denied. You might as well be saying, "Who cares about providing access to this African country? They're only 3% of our audience." -- Llywrch (talk) 21:22, 22 January 2020 (UTC)

UX improvemnts can help diversity (more visually impaired users might be attracted, for instance); but UX is not the solution to all, or indeed most, diversity issues. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 09:07, 21 January 2020 (UTC)

Certainly not, and this recommendation is not the only one where diversity issues are discussed. (Unsurprisingly, since diversity was a major part of the strategic direction, and the mandate for the authors of these recommendations was to make suggestions on how to achieve that direction.) --Tgr (talk) 09:16, 21 January 2020 (UTC)

@H-stt: It seems be based on very strange assumption, specified as "If diversity works well in the community, it is likely that everything else works well". Very unlikely, especially regarding poor technical features (like Wiki search engine). But maybe focus on new interfaces based on AR browsers or IoT Glasses will automatically improve such bottlenecks as well? IOIOI (talk) 10:22, 21 January 2020 (UTC)

The design or characteristics of the user interfaces are very related to the user experience. However, the level of conflict in discussions, the degree of complexity in rules, the positive/negative/lack of social communication, the interpretation of which topics are notable, cultural biases, among others, also matter to the user experience. Some of these factors affect more intensely certain kinds of users than others (that may continue in the project or leave at the very beginning, after few days, months or later), and this is why we can say that user experience affects diversity. --Marcmiquel (talk) 12:22, 26 January 2020 (UTC)

"advanced user" and "longtime user"

The recommendation mentions newcomers more. Meanwhile, it mentions "advanced user roles", but I can't tell whether it means "advanced users". Also, I don't see "longtime user" (or similar) anywhere. Have the current teams differentiate between advanced and longtime users? I mean, a newcomer can be more advanced than any other average newcomer, don't you think? George Ho (talk) 02:39, 21 January 2020 (UTC)

@George Ho: advanced role means workflows that are typically done by longtime users and are fundamentally different. Say, recent changes patrolling or template maintenance are advanced roles - people typically assume them only after having spent some time in more basic roles. ("Basic" might not be the best word here, it's not like adding new content to articles for example is less important; it's just that certain roles require a lot of complex knowledge about how the wiki works, or how wikitext works, or how the community works. In the past it has been a pain point that the WMF did not have enough internal knowledge about these roles, and made changes that affected them negatively - e.g. focusing and making uploading quick and easy, without considering the effect on image metadata quality and thus new image patroller workflows.) --Tgr (talk) 03:45, 21 January 2020 (UTC)

Queries

Hi, a couple of queries:

1. Apparently every change is to require that user security and privacy be provided. This seems to be an attempt to sneak in IP masking without mentioning IP masking. IP Masking was proposed in two ways, who weren't aware of each other until I notified them (once by a non-communicative WG, and once by @NKohli (WMF):), who has communicated actively. However, despite NKohli's active efforts, the editors who have engaged have said that the current proposals (such as limiting IP visiblity to admins, even with tools that provide some of that information) are unwise. With 4 editors in favour against 84. Can it be confirmed that this recommendation set is not to be taken as support for IP masking in its current proposal form (or any other form with specific consensus), given the clear indication on that axis?
2. Provide easily accessible pathways for users to report incidents, either technical or human, and have them addressed effectively, and with appropriate urgency, regardless of language or location, while respecting privacy, asking about non-traditional WMF areas, the last aspect of this twigs an antenna, as it was one of the things that caused the FRAM saga. Currently there's still an unresolved issue on en-wiki about how ARBCOM can provide absolute privacy for certain purely on-wiki disputes, without placing any hinderance on an accused's ability to defend themselves. So, with regard to the privacy component of this, what exactly is being recommended? - a discrete limit is needed.@Gergő Tisza, Amir Aharoni, and Daria Cybulska: Nosebagbear (talk) 11:35, 21 January 2020 (UTC)

Providing absolute privacy for on-wiki disputes is impossible, & always will be. Consider the FRAM saga mentioned above: due to a lack of information about the reasons why FRAM was sanctioned, Wikipedians spent the time & effort to find it, & it appeared another Wikipedian had come into a conflict with FRAM. (I'll call them Q because that letter is not in their username, & their identity is irrelevant to my point here.) Q was suspected of being the cause of the sanctions, & as a result Q left en.wikipedia. This attempt at privacy failed in these ways:

1. Assume Q actually had nothing to do with these sanctions. (Maybe Q had a conflict with FRAM at one time, but it was resolved, & the complaint acted on was something unrelated.) By keeping information private, an uninvolved person suffered harm due to this policy.
2. Assume Q did have a conflict with FRAM, but someone other than Q complained to T&S about FRAM. In this case, Q was harmed as an innocent bystander while the person who caused the conflict (for reasons good or bad) escaped responsibility, & en.wikipedia lost a contributor for no good reason.
3. Assume Q actually reported the reason why FRAM was sanctioned. Keeping information private in this case made no difference: the fact that the information is openly available to all would reveal Q was involved. If they would have been forced to leave had they openly reported the issue (say to ArbCom), the only difference keeping this information private made was to anger those who would otherwise have no opinion about the original dispute, thinking that the Foundation was overreaching. Privacy only made things worse.

I'm amazed that people at the Foundation don't understand this is how Wikipedia works. The only way this instance can be made worse is by refusing to learn from the mistakes made. Or even acknowledging mistakes were made. -- Llywrch (talk) 19:43, 21 January 2020 (UTC)

• @Abbad (WMF) and KVaidla (WMF): - is either of you in a position to answer either or both of my original queries above, clearly? Discussions held outside these recommendations on the first one have given vague answers at best, and I've not seen anything on the second. Please feel free to ping alternate WMF accounts if you think an alternate viewpoint is preferable and would be provided and I then know who is in a position to answer rapidly. Cheers. Nosebagbear (talk) 15:34, 6 February 2020 (UTC)

Dear Nosebagbear, thanks for the ping and sorry for the late acknowledgement of the issue you have raised. Responses below:

* I believe IP masking would be more a topic of the recommendation Provide for Safety and Security, but it was not touched upon in detail during the drafting of these consolidated recommendations. We are well aware of the discussion regarding this here, here and here. Current recommendations do not imply directly implementation of the IP masking, but it might come up again as a topic in the future and in the framework of movement strategy discussions. That especially in conversations around safety of contributors in certain socio-political contexts, which relates to moving towards the goal of 'knowledge equity'. As there are significant aspects of possible negative impact on project governance and day-to-day maintenance that IP masking could cause, there needs to be further inquiry into other means of protecting the contributors, as well as further development of anti-vandalism tooling.

* I presume that it is quite clear that the first part of the recommendation is about creating clarity on how to report technical or human incidents, and ensuring responsiveness in dealing with them. As a result, I understand that the real question was what is meant by respecting privacy. I believe the key reason for this addition is related to ensuring that efficiency in reporting the issues does not intervene with common practices regarding privacy. I believe that the privacy can be guaranteed for offwiki aspects, see recommendation: In the event of an emergency, we need to have a clear, rapid response and support infrastructure ready and easily accessible, so that editors have available resources to mitigate harm, such as psychological support (e.g., psychologists, mediators), legal assistance (e.g., list of partner lawyers, facilitation of legal representation at a local level), or a fast-track escalation path in life-threatening situations. Sufficient level of privacy will ensure that people reach out and get the support that they need. In online environment, of course, absolute privacy is impossible to achieve. Could you link us to the ArbCom privacy discussion, so we can ensure that is being well considered when the more concrete plans are being worked out?

Thank you, Llywrch, for mapping out the risks / negative scenarios in a really clear way. That is helpful!

I hope my response helped to clarify some of the aspects of this recommendation! --KVaidla (WMF) (talk) 18:11, 6 February 2020 (UTC)

Take your own advice

This proposal contains the following: Provide training to avoid conflicts, processes for mediation and conflict resolution when they occur, and follow-up best practices to apply in the aftermath of the conflict to avoid future recurrences. If you'd actually done that, you would note that there has been one overwhelming cause of conflict between the WMF and the communities: The WMF sticks its nose in where it's unwanted, and/or The WMF attempts to overrule the community. Even the most rudimentary analysis of these conflicts would show you that, in a hot minute. So, by all means, WMF: See what you did wrong, and then stop doing it! These are attempts to do it again, and it'll have the same outcome! Seraphimblade (talk) 01:15, 22 January 2020 (UTC)

This particular outcome includes different actions: training, mediation processes and follow-up best practices (which is quite open). While training can be offered to community members and it can either be accepted or rejected (just like technological advances the WMF provides), introducing processes is a bit more sensitive as you point out, as dealing with conflict or mediating it is not neutral. This should be taken into account when this is implemented. To your point, I would say that it is not clear how these mediation processes would be implemented, as the actors behind it could either be the WMF, the affiliates, a new global governance body or new regional emergent structures. --Marcmiquel (talk) 12:05, 26 January 2020 (UTC)

Highlights from the Arabic Speaking Conversations - Improve User Experience

On the first week of community conversations, 12 members of the Online Arabic speaking community discussed the third recommendation "Improve User Experience " on the Arabic Wikipedia Facebook group. The recommendation is unanimely supported and endorsed by the participants. However, two editors mentioned that "Improving User Experience have been mentioned many times earlier at different occasions: How do we know that this time it will really happen? And who is accountable for that?". -- ASedrati (WMF) (talk) 13:04, 26 January 2020 (UTC)

ASedrati (WMF) Could you post a link to that conversation please? Thanks, Vexations (talk) 13:29, 26 January 2020 (UTC)

Yes of course. It is a discussion on the Facebook Group of Arabic Wikipedia (over 8000 members), and is (without surprise) in Arabic! You can follow it through this link. I hope this helps. -- ASedrati (WMF) (talk) 18:15, 26 January 2020 (UTC)

Thanks. It's a pity that it's a closed group. Vexations (talk) 20:49, 26 January 2020 (UTC)

Yes, but you are very welcome to join if you speak Arabic. Otherwise, let me know if you are interested about any specific post and I can screenshot/email it yo you :) Cheers -- ASedrati (WMF) (talk) 22:14, 4 February 2020 (UTC)

Well, ASedrati (WMF) I'd have to create a Facebook account, and that's something I refuse to do. That it has become necessary to subject myself to corporate surveillance and literally the worst case of epistemic inequality in the world (Facebook) to participate in a discussion about knowledge equity is particularly painful. Surveillance barely gets a mention in the strategy discussions. And yet: isn't: "Would you like to look up an illness without us telling your insurance company what you were looking up? Wikipedia is the only place where you can do that safely" a great proposition that gives people epistemic equality? You bet it is. But we cave: "Facebook is so convenient, so easy to use, and wikitext is so hard." So we let people. And that's how these companies come in. Before we know it Facebook is a stakeholder, or a partner, or the platform. We shouldn't let that happen. We should say: You're gonna be on Facebook? Good for you, but we're going to ignore you. If you can't have a conversation on-wiki, in plain sight, where everyone can participate, then it's not a conversation, it's a cabal. And that is why we should never use social media. Vexations (talk) 02:49, 5 February 2020 (UTC)

Dear Vexations, my mission as a Strategy liaison is to collect Feedback from Wikipedians wherever they are. I am engaged in discussions on and off Wiki for the best convenience of everyone. You can follow the Strategical discusion on Arabic Wikipedia on this link. Everything that is mentioned on Social Media is reported here on Meta as you could see through this report. I hope that this clarifies. All the best - ASedrati (WMF) (talk) 14:48, 5 February 2020 (UTC)

--Camillo Cavalcanti (talk) 15:31, 11 February 2020 (UTC)See my campaign KNOWLEDGE AS UNIQUE CRITERIA--Camillo Cavalcanti (talk) 15:31, 11 February 2020 (UTC)

Feedback from French-speaking Wikimedians

• one user feels the content of this recommendation is too obvious and doesn't go far enough
• there is specific interest to learn more about this recommendation (Twitter survey)
• general support for this recommendation on Twitter

See feedback links and context here.

DRanville (WMF) (talk) 16:27, 28 January 2020 (UTC) - French Strategy Liaison

--Camillo Cavalcanti (talk) 15:30, 11 February 2020 (UTC)See my campaign KNOWLEDGE AS UNIQUE CRITERIA--Camillo Cavalcanti (talk) 15:30, 11 February 2020 (UTC)

"space free of conflict"

Strategy/Wikimedia movement/2018-20/Recommendations/Provide for Safety and Security is linked here from the phrase "space free of conflict," but that page says nothing of the sort. It refers to having "viable structures for conflict resolution," a very different thing. I cannot imagine being able to create any collaborative work in a "space free of conflict." At the risk of Godwin-ing myself, the very notion makes me think of the cartoon of Hitler addressing a rally and saying, "And think I can say without fear of contradiction…"

I strongly urge that we lose that particular wording. - Jmabel (talk) 04:48, 29 January 2020 (UTC)

Further, there seems to be an unexamined premise here that all conflict is bad (e.g. "…best practices to apply in the aftermath of … conflict to avoid future recurrences"). You are not (for example) going to develop an encyclopedia article on Abortion in the United States the History of Gdansk without conflict. The only way you don't have conflict there is to not have diversity. I could give 100 other examples, but I hope my point is clear from these two. - Jmabel (talk) 05:14, 29 January 2020 (UTC)

--Camillo Cavalcanti (talk) 15:29, 11 February 2020 (UTC)See my campaign KNOWLEDGE AS UNIQUE CRITERIA.--Camillo Cavalcanti (talk) 15:29, 11 February 2020 (UTC)

New users vs. old

"Feedback from newcomers is particularly valuable for evaluating best practices, as experienced contributors may have already developed workarounds for system limitations." But, conversely, feedback from existing users is also very valuable because they've already shown their willingness to participate, and they constitute the proverbial "bird in the hand." We need to be wary of making changes that make things difficult for the people who are already working on our projects.

Both new and old users are important. I have strong doubts about saying that one group of stakeholders (new users) are more capable than another of judging the usefulness of features. In my experience as a software developer, new users are very good for determining whether you've kept easy things easy, but it's only your experienced users who can tell you if you've made difficult things possible. - Jmabel (talk) 04:55, 29 January 2020 (UTC)

Well said, @Jmabel: - not least, because regardless of the software-use difficulty, some things are not generally touched by new editors, whether by priorities, or, rarely, direct enforcement (Arb secret ballot elections comes to mind). Nosebagbear (talk) 20:12, 2 February 2020 (UTC)

Spoken-word (and other auditory) content

I'm surprised to see almost nothing here about spoken-word (and other auditory) content. Presumably there are places in the world where smartphones have become more accessible than full-blown literacy. Shouldn't we be thinking about that? Most likely there are cultures whose knowledge is not going to be brought in if we center too completely on written language.

Even in literate cultures, something of the same consideration can apply. There is probably enormous potential for WMF (or someone else, but why not us?) to facilitate an archive of content related to Native American/First Nations traditions and culture. Even though the vast majority of the people in question are literate, many or most highly so, they do not generally present this material in writing. There would be an enormous potential to facilitate getting a lot of audiovisual content online, but not if we are centered on the written-word aspect.

More generally, the same consideration applies in a lot of other groups: with reference to almost any culture, oral historians always can get at a ton of material that is not accessible to people who work primarily with the written word. - Jmabel (talk) 05:06, 29 January 2020 (UTC)

The idea of "Wiki Oral" has been brought up in the Diversity recommendations and is currently addressed in the recommendation #11 (Innovate in Free Knowledge). Perhaps you'll find this discussion relevant to your suggestions? Your feedback will be very helpful to consider in the final version of that recommendation --Abbad (WMF) (talk) 13:30, 31 January 2020 (UTC).

Hello, I think that there is sometimes confusion about several notions that start with "oral..." in the recent discussions. Oral history, oral knowledge, oral traditions, oral citations. There is not much input by professional historians, by the way.

Also, I wonder that we don't read in the document more details about a possible new wiki (or wikis) for "oral knowledge". If it is only about recording and publishing audio/video files, you can alreday do that on Wikimedia Commons. It would be interesting to think about a wiki in which audio/video is really curated in a wiki way. Ziko (talk) 21:56, 31 January 2020 (UTC)

If there were an easier way to add spoken versions of the written articles I'd be happy to do that. I've created and added spoken versions of each article I made and both of those things were a major learning experience in their own right (if I'd done the first in a less good mood, I'd have said "hassle"). Audible/spoken content has worth completely separately from the whole oral history/referencing disagreement. Nosebagbear (talk) 20:14, 2 February 2020 (UTC)

The Wikimedia Wrong Concepts, topic 3 according official list

3. Improve User Experience

Improve user experience MEANS Equity of rights: everyone is a writer/editor. For Equit, we need a criteria. So after c.2010 "PAY AUTHORS NOW", I stamp my new campaign: KNOWLEDGE AS UNIQUE CRITERIA.

If we agree about the knowledge as criteria is the guarantee of rights for good experience, so some consequences come to us:

1 - knowledge as unique criteria is the unique valid criteria on Knowledge Ecosystem;

2 - Knowledge as unique criteria keeps the freedom of expressive;

3 - Knowledge as unique criteria stops blockers (exception: vandalism);

4 - knowledge as unique criteria is a free dynamis;

5 - knowledge as unique criteria is a guarantee of minority rights;

6 - knowledge as unique criteria asks for qualified board: specialists college on each language per area, in order to explain the user why he/she is wrong by proves and argumments;

7 - knowledge as unique criteria fixes the problem of payments: the type-and-payment rule;

8 - knowledge as unique criteria defines vandalism as unique banned expression;

9 - knowledge as unique criteris is the guarantee of the peace of community;

10 - knowledge as unique criteria installs the meritocratic system, what it means, fair system.--Camillo Cavalcanti (talk) 15:26, 11 February 2020 (UTC)

Highlights from the Spanish Speaking Conversations - Improve User Experience

About 70-80 present in conversations at different degrees (not everyone said something, of course). People is positive with this recommendation.

"We should have this (recommendation) as a default. Should have already been done". The only oposition comes from a user in Village Pump, who believes that WMF should spend less money paying studios in redesigning things, but start implenementing new desgins.

It is sugested that sister projects do not rely in the same technology as Wikipedia. Mediawiki / php 5.7 is seen as obsolete. Eye catching-platform for Commons and more gamification are also suggested.

Some users feel the text should include a mention to the need of gaining young editors.

There are also concerns on the possible use of intrusive non privacy-friendly methods to gather data for usability.--FFort (WMF) (talk) 12:20, 13 February 2020 (UTC)

Dear God, please no "gamification". Seraphimblade (talk) 22:53, 15 February 2020 (UTC)

Highlights from the Catalan Speaking (Valencian) Conversations - Improve User Experience

Generates no rejection and even approval, probably because there is no mention of "making money" on it.

It is noticed that most of the recommendations are intended for editors, but most editors had interpreted to be mostly directed to readers. Except for that, it generates a surprising consensus in favor. The “thing” is to see what things are prioritized over others. (And UX, in general, should be a priority).--FFort (WMF) (talk) 12:23, 13 February 2020 (UTC)

Feedback from Hindi Community members for Improve User Experience

Seven users supported the recommendation. It was stated that user interfaces could have better design for a wide range of devices, such as from mobile phones and computers. This could promote inclusion by ensuring users can contribute in diverse contexts. It was mentioned that more user friendly features can help users, especially in India where there are more than two fifty million mobile user base. Better mobile interface for Wikimedia projects can attract more mobile users. Another user added that most community editors edit from mobile phones and new gadgets and tools from the community can facilitate the contribution for them. It was mentioned that advanced visual features on Wikimedia projects such as Wikipedia and Wikisource can make a big impact on User Base for both knowledge consumers and knowledge producers. Additionally, if readers and editors can understand the features easily with better UX experience, then they will also be able to add more improvements for the missing features. Another user mentioned that this will promote inclusion by ensuring users can contribute in diverse contexts. It was suggested that the current support for safety and security is not adequate and there should be more resources and support structure established to help people from different regions. One suggestion included, local staff or committees focused on region based support for individuals from a certain region. RSharma (WMF) (talk) 14:58, 14 February 2020 (UTC)

Production is more important then consumption

Writing With the increasing diversity of devices, interfaces, and interactions with all sorts of intelligent virtual assistants, we must pay attention to both the information of knowledge and how it is consumed seems to reflect the wrong focus. The focus should be on knowledge production and not on knowledge consumption. If we produce valuable knowledge people will consume it. If we don't produce valuable knowledge there's nothing to consume even with amazing UX. ChristianKl ❪✉❫ 16:43, 15 February 2020 (UTC)

Valuable knowledge might be hard to access without a good UX. In the last decade, as far as I'm aware, there has been one significant appearance/interface change globally implemented into Wikimedia projects that directly impacts readers. Would it not help, in your opinion, to consider how this might affect knowledge consumers in addition to the knowledge itself? --Abbad (WMF) (talk) 23:51, 17 February 2020 (UTC).

That isn't really true, though. I can ask a question of my smart speaker, and there's a better-than-even chance that factual information is going to be sourced to Wikipedia. That's something that took very little donor money to accomplish, also. The editing experience has to be good, since being able to collaborate on-wiki to create the knowledge is important. But there's no reason information consumers have to use a Wikimedia-hosted server to access Wikipedia or the other projects. TomDotGov (talk) 00:25, 18 February 2020 (UTC)

Exactly this. It's open content. It's free for anyone to present any way they like. We should be focusing on quality content; if someone else wants to make it whatever their version of pretty is, great for them. Wikimedia projects neither need to be, nor should be, the next TwitFaceTube. Seraphimblade (talk) 04:20, 19 February 2020 (UTC)

These days, it is more likely that a smart speaker will source that information from Wikidata − a project that took significant donor money to develop (for good use if you ask me :).

As far as I can see, no-one is suggesting to make the next TwitFaceTube (so that comes across a bit as a straw man tbh).

Sure, the content is freely reusable ; but eventually, if we end up in a situation where people access our content through third-partys, and never land on the Wikimedia projects, then the thinking usually goes that 1/ they won’t donate to Wikimedia projects anymore and 2/ they don’t have the opportunity to become editors − two potential issues for our long-term sustainability (the latter more than the former in my opinion). Also, if there’s a new Wikipedia front-end that everyone uses (because ours is rubbish), it would likely be from a big commercial player (ala Google) − are we really happy in a world where people would access our content through the prism (pun intended ;-þ) of BigTech (who may do all kind of tracking or truth-fixing or else)?

Jean-Fred (talk) 10:48, 19 February 2020 (UTC)

But it’s not either/or, is it? literally on the first page of the recommendations is The production of high-quality content has always been our focus and will continue to be. (I suppose though that this particular recommendation could make explicit state that the UX for knowledge production is also important, sure). Jean-Fred (talk)

AB tests should be in the strategy

Doing hallway testing with potential new contributors and existing stakeholders isn't enough. New user experience changes should always come with AB tests that test whether they make it more likely that users edit content. ChristianKl ❪✉❫ 16:45, 15 February 2020 (UTC)

Feedback from Office Hours from 2 February and 9th February with members from Emerging communities from South Asian and Africa

Anass Sedrati (Strategy Liaison - Arabic) and Rupika Sharma (Strategy Liaison - Hindi) hosted Office hours on two Sundays (February 2nd and 9th) to discuss with members of Emerging communities from South Asia and Africa. Overall, around 50 people in total participated in either of the calls, representing various areas and regions.

Regarding recommendation2, there was an overall support on improvement of user experience for community in wiki projects. It was mentioned that more support is needed to make Wiki platform more flexible in terms of design. Additionally, it was expressed that easy-to-find and easy-to-understand resources should be made available in a different format to cater for differently-abled people. There was support for making the creation of new Wikimedia projects in incubator more simple and accessible for communities. It was suggested that the technical side of things needs to be scrapped. Currently, volunteers need to translate huge amounts of technical content from English to the local language Wiki. That is a burden for volunteers which can be reduced by the Foundation by hiring people. Mediawiki part of this process can be outsourced. It was suggested that the technical side of things needs to be scrapped. Currently, volunteers need to translate huge amounts of technical content from English to the local language Wiki. That is a burden for volunteers which can be reduced by the Foundation by hiring people. Mediawiki part of this process can be outsourced. Feasibility of the project in terms of need and the number of users should be accessed before making that investment. It was mentioned that applications should be processed faster to make this process time efficient. It was proposed that WMF should provide technical help to volunteers for setting up Wiki projects in Incubator. Another user commented that we should also focus on making projects sustainable and having enough resources along with increasing the number of new projects. RSharma (WMF) (talk) 20:00, 16 February 2020 (UTC)

Feedback from Portuguese-speaking community

A member of Wikimedia Portugal mentions that “space free of conflict” as can be seen on “Why” section is not realistic. He says that conflicts based on facts may have a positive value. What we need is the capability of solving conflicts with benefits to the content and the projects.

He mentions the phrase: “Participation affects not only the quality of our work, but also the continuity of the project, which often relies on communities whose core editors — both in terms of number of edits and the functional role they occupy — are still the same ones as five to ten years ago.” - according to him, it conflicts with the need of user retention. It seems to imply that it would be hard for new users to assume these positions. It should be more explicit that it’s not the intention and other users are welcome to join.

Suggestion of clarification: “In the current Wikimedia structural reality, content is central with all the processes, tools, platforms, and even communication channels orbiting around it. Though this structure has been successful in achieving popularity and replication across communities, it has also become an obstacle for engaging with other knowledge communities.” - it’s not clear here what is missing, nor what are these communities. LTeles (WMF) (talk) 02:48, 20 February 2020 (UTC)

Feedback from Wikimedia UK

One of our volunteers noted the lack of documentation, which affects more experienced users as well as newcomers - particularly for Wikidata, but also for Commons and Wikisource. Addressing this could be more explicit within this recommendation.

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The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.