User blog comment:Yyp/New Wikia Skin:What we can expect?/@comment-1429792-20101004220801

Couple more staff replies. Even if the replies are not what people like, at least they are making an improved effort at explaining this. The problem is that they should have been saying this from the start.


 * "Universally, the feedback that we got from user testing on Monaco is that people didn't understand who created the pages. The MediaWiki Foundation saw exactly the same thing when they did user testing on Wikipedia -- the vast majority of people on the internet think that Wikipedia is written by a small group of people, and they can't or shouldn't participate.

When you walk through a parking lot, every car has a door handle and an ignition -- but you don't walk by a strange car and think that you're meant to open the door and put in your own key. In the same way, people have a blind spot about the edit button -- they see it, but they assume that it's meant for somebody else to use.

We asked people to look at a Monaco page and tell us who wrote the text. People just looked at it and said they didn't know. As far as they were concerned, a wiki was just another word for a content site with lots of information.

One of the top priorities for the new look is to have people understand immediately that a wiki is made by people -- and that they can be one of those people.

When we showed people the new design and asked who wrote the text, they pointed to the name listed on the history dropdown, and then to the names of the people under the photos -- and as they scrolled down a long page, they could see lots of different names scrolling by. The most common response was: "Wow, there are a lot of people working on this site! Who are these guys?" Then they would click on one of the user names under the photos, and go look at a user page. They saw real people -- those people's profiles and contributions and talk pages -- and they understood that a wiki was made by a community of people who all love the topic. By giving people an understanding that a wiki is made by a community we give them the permission they're looking for to click the edit link and become a contributor." --Susan

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 * "If the floating toolbar doesn't work for you and you'd rather have it stay stationary you can allow that via your personal CSS.

Popular blog posts will only appear on a wiki with blog posts enabled. While blogs can be used for other aspects they are by nature social and adding this module is a way to help people find the most interesting blogs. Blogs are not a compulsory feature and can be removed.

The edit button icon is actually in the process of changing, based in part on feedback we've heard here and during the beta. The word edit will be returned to section links and the icon will be noticeably changed to be more recognizable. (It's a pencil on a line right now, not a stapler, but we get that it's hard to tell. :))

Article comments are not mandatory - the article discussion page still exists. If you have a discussion page rather than comments the icon will take you there instead. The usefulness of wiki activity is a difference of opinion. If you prefer Recent Changes that's a good way to go for you. You can access Recent Changes from the Wiki Activity, among other places. We're also adding in your Followed Pages to Wiki Activity which may make this more useful for you or others." --Susan