Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 13:11, 1 August 2014

@Jimbo Wales: Hi Jimbo, here is what I consider to be a neutral interpretation of the recent conflict:

1. MV seems to have been implemented prematurely as a default viewer for everybody (numerous bugs, some violent protests);
2. MV is not appropriate for editing work; many editors have considered the tool as a "nuisance" ;
3. A vast majority of the editor’s community does not consider MV useful. That is demonstrated by the poll made by WMF in June;
4. A vast majority of the editor’s community considers that MV should not be implemented by default. That was demonstrated in a recent RfC, whose results are in line with the WMF poll;
5. No effective fruitful dialogue has occurred between the editor's community and the MV team immediatly before and after the RfC. The two main arguments from each side seem to be: no RfC can produce a significant consensus of the user's community, which goes well beyond the universe of regular editors (WMF); according to Misplaced Pages's culture the outcome of a RfC is to be respected. Thus no dialogue seems possible while MV is kept as the default viewer for everybody (editors)

I hope this start is useful. Please note that English is not my mother language and that my knowledge of Wikimedia's world is quite narrow. Hopefully other people will come here and say what I intended to say much better than me. :-) Alvesgaspar (talk) 19:16, 25 July 2014 (UTC)

I've had extensive, effective dialogue with the editing community over the past nine months while Media Viewer has been under development through on-wiki interaction across dozens of projects, by email, face-to-face discussions, video roundtables, IRC office hours and discussions, etc., in the shaping, development, and carefully documented release process for Media Viewer. Fabrice and the developers of Media Viewer have participated extensively in these conversations as well. I've even had productive conversations with you, Alvesgaspar, and conversations with the editing communities about Media Viewer continue even during this period. I'm not 100% certain this is a neutral point of view, though I do know you honestly intend it that way. I think it's fair to say I don't have a neutral point on the topic either, which is why this will be my only participation in the discussion :) Keegan (WMF) (talk) 22:16, 25 July 2014 (UTC)

You (multimedia team and WMF engineering) ignored the vast majority of editors and the majority of everyone else who have asked that Media Viewer be disabled by default. The only dialog the WMF is willing to have on Media Viewer is about how it can be improved, discounting any feedback that it isn't ready for release (and thus should be rolled back) or feedback that perhaps the concept itself is flawed. So from my perspective, there has been no productive dialog here. You've (the multimedia team and WMF engineering) decided, a priori, that Media Viewer needs to be rolled out and you are unwilling to reconsider this decision, overwhelming negative feedback be damned. Instead of imposing your "multimedia vision" from above, perhaps you could actually have some dialog about what users of Misplaced Pages want instead of pretending that the silent majority likes your ugly baby? --98.207.91.246 (talk) 02:52, 26 July 2014 (UTC)

@Keegan (WMF): Regarding your "extensive" dialogue: You've made just 225 edits on this wiki under this WMF account. Your first edit involving MV was as recently as April 28, and was to "clean up" (er, delete) content that I just looked at and found to be interesting. Prior to that date, your focus was on Visual Editor. On that page just prior to your cleanup, I found a link to mw:Multimedia/Media Viewer/Usability testing, and I viewed this recording of "User 1". I chuckled a few times at how she did some tasks. Did you, by chance, have this same user do the same tasks using our existing legacy file namespace system? I would be curious to see whether she found that easier than MV to navigate and answer the questions. And I would really like to know whether she preferred MV or our current system. Your second edit about MV (May 16) was to announce on Village Pump (technical) that it was launching on May 22. By then it was a fait accompli. Wbm1058 (talk) 03:55, 26 July 2014 (UTC)

I think the problems with MV can be simply summarized as the interface being the antithesis of what information producers need. It's pretty much the Windows 8 UI fiasco transplanted to Misplaced Pages. Relevant quote from : "The idea of hiding the controls to give priority to content may make sense on mobile, where screen space is so limited, but it doesn’t make that much sense on a large screen, especially if users have to work harder to access hidden features." The aspects of an image which are normally useful to information producers on Misplaced Pages, like:

• categories
• which articles this image appears in
• copyright status
• other versions of this image or derived images

are hidden behind a mysterious interface in MV that has no self-explanatory way of giving you that info. The MV may useful to some information consumers like to a dude who wants to fap to male porn on Commons or, stated in less lurid terms, some guy who wants to use wikipedia/commons for some kind of virtual tour. But that's not what information producers do. So MV—as designed—will always be a hindrance to the editing community. Did I mention that the disable link for MV is shown to IP/not-logged-in users even though it doesn't work for them, and no explanation is provided in the MV UI that/why the disable link/button doesn't work unless you are logged in? That violates a core UI design principle; the MV architects should be able to tell you what it is called, if they took a HCI class in school. 188.27.81.64 (talk) 15:46, 28 July 2014 (UTC)

As for WMF's focus on improving MV by fixing bugs here and there, this quote from Douglas Adams (as adapted in a HCI book) is relevant: "It is very easy to be blinded to the essential uselessness of by the sense of achievement you get from getting them to work at all. In other words... their fundamental design flaws are completely hidden by their superficial design flaws." 188.27.81.64 (talk) 18:02, 28 July 2014 (UTC)

Summary so far of specific problems with MV —

• Useful information about an image is not easily accessible. For example: categories; which articles this image appears in; copyright status; other versions of this image or derived images.

--Bob K31416 (talk) 13:11, 1 August 2014 (UTC)

Questions to help us think through what an NPOV statement will be like

1. "MV seems to have been implemented prematurely as a default viewer for everybody (numerous bugs, some violent protests)". This is clearly at least in part an overstatement as there appears to have been no actual "violent protests" (bricks through windows? snipers on rooftops?). Is it possible to restate this as something like "In a poll, 83 people, which is 92% of the participants, felt that the default viewer had been released prematurely and that numerous bugs should have been fixed first." With a link to that poll, if it exists?

This is relevant because "released too early due to bugs" means that there is an actionable thing to do which is fix those bugs pronto. A prioritized listing would be ideal.

2. "MV is not appropriate for editing work; many editors have considered the tool as a "nuisance" - stated this way there is at least the suggestion that no possible version of MV could ever be appropriate for editing work, leading people to a path which involves having a separate user experience for readers and editors which I think we can all agree is not ideal. This also doesn't raise any actionable fixes for the developers. Can we explain the key 3 or 4 reasons (if there are that many) why MV is not appropriate for editing work and suggest how to fix it while maintaining the increased usability for readers?

3. Further down on the page, there is an extended and persuasive argument that a big problem with MV in its current form is that key information such as categories, which articles use the image, copyright status, and other versions are hidden behind a "mysterious" interface. Could we have a concrete proposal to the Foundation about how to fix this? Would it be sufficient to have a big obvious link to "Full info" which *instantly* (through the magic of javascript) unhides that information? Would it be better to have the information directly on the page when you scroll down? What are the plausible objections to or problems with these two solutions?--Jimbo Wales (talk) 10:55, 1 August 2014 (UTC)