Forum:Is this wiki too complicated ?

Forums: Accueil des forums → Coordination des efforts → Is this wiki too complicated ?

A bit of talking on the Cental wikia forum.

At the end of that page, Danny say our wiki is too complicated, even after comparing it to GuildWiki (wich has far more users than us and has been around a few years sooner). — Tulip Vorlax 31 août 2009 à 03:52 (UTC)

A question to Danny : How comes so many french users dont even understand why red links bring them to an edit window ? — Tulip Vorlax 31 août 2009 à 05:25 (UTC)

I don't think it's just French users -- I think every new person has a hard time learning how to use wikis.

We've made a lot of changes over the last couple years to try to help new people understand how wikis work. I notice that you guys have decided to change some of them, like the colorful save bar at the bottom of the edit window, and the Wysiwyg editor. We've found that both of those features have helped new people a lot. We track the number of times people click "edit" and then "save" -- and we found that people were more likely to save a successful edit after we launched those features. You guys don't have to use them, but that may be something that's limiting your success.

I've also noticed that most of your pages are made up of templates and nothing else. I just hit random page a few times, and all of the pages I saw were like this one: Reng Ku. When you click edit, you see two things: {{ {{PAGENAME}} }} and {{Ébauche|de personnage}}.

When I saw that, I thought: where's the content on this page? How do I edit this? Then I realized that I needed to go to Template:Reng Ku in order to edit it. But I'm a very experienced wiki editor, so I can figure out why there's a magic word inside a template. New people will simply open the edit window, see that there's nothing there, and not know what to do. The same thing is true on pages like Aphonie, and Scribe infecté has six different templates on it.

So my suggestion is to look at some of the common page types, and think about what they look like to someone who's never worked on a wiki before. In general, people can figure out some basic formatting on their own, just by looking at the edit window -- bold, italics, links, headings and bulleted lists. It's possible for a new person to see ===Objets===, recognize that that's the name of a heading, and understand that you use three === to make a heading. (This is even easier if you use the Rich Text Editor.)

But templates and magic words are a mystery. If you see {{ {{PAGENAME}} }}, you don't realize that you're supposed to go to Modèle:Reng_Ku. There aren't enough clues there to help you figure it out. You wouldn't know unless someone told you.

If you think about this like it's a game -- new people start out at Level 1. Computer games give you simple tasks to do at Level 1 -- lots of clues -- easy monsters to fight. You're not expected to do the complicated and difficult things until you've spent a lot of time leveling up, and you're ready to take on a bigger challenge.

The colorful save bar and the Rich Text Editor are the tutorial levels; adding text and uploading images are the easy monsters. You're expecting people to go straight to Level 5 without giving them the fun experience of leveling up. The game should be more fun for new people to play. -- Danny (talk) 31 août 2009 à 14:03 (UTC)

The savebar wasn't remove by me. You could put it back, i wouldn't mind but i dont know about Alkinor Discuter and Jaxom Discuter.

The use of {{ {{PAGENAME}} }} is because the french translation of the Guild Wars game is always changing without any warning and doing that way permit to keep a functionnal page when we "renamme" (move) it.

The reason why infos are stored in a template this because this permit to call that infos using different templates. GuildWiki and Anet Official wiki do it that way too. On thoses english wikis, as well as here, each skills of the game has it's own template that can be called using {{skill name|parameter}} and the template skill name will call a template named skill parameter. I used the same system on fr.3d for softwares pages.

The reason why most pages doesn't include any text aside the templates calls is that, except Jaxom Discuter, nobody can know everyting there's to know about every PnJ, objets in a game that include thousand of them.

That is why i encourage people to translate from the Official wiki wich is also in GFDL (and the reason why we had to stay in GFDL; Guildwiki is fun, usefull, but we can't do anything with it's content).

But, many bits of text that should be placed in ours page can't be translated from any sources because we need the actual in game text. That mean that people who wishes to contribute here need to take many screenshots of ingame texts while playing. That is what they do on english wikis.

But, when translating from the Official wiki, do we really need to put {{source wiki officiel}} on the page ?

I had some thinking since our last discussion, i've remove the css code that was hiding the create page link. And i put a searchbox and big bolden text above the edit windows of this wiki. We'll see if that will help. — Tulip Vorlax 1 septembre 2009 à 02:51 (UTC)

Well, I'm glad you're thinking about it. I think any changes that encourage people to contribute in a small way will help them to feel more comfortable here. -- Danny (talk) 1 septembre 2009 à 06:20 (UTC)

This wikia has been architectured around templates from start for several reasons:

From a previous wiki experience (a private Guild Wars wiki that predates this wikia), we do know that Guild Wars' translation may change without warning sometimes because they may fix mistranslation, sometime for other reasons (the translator may have been unhappy with his original one may have taken a second pass at it), so we needed a way to carry out and propagate translation change very fast and with reasonable efforts (see 3rd point).
The same applies for skill balancing: when this wikia started ArenaNet did skill rebalance very often in the game. It happens that editing such a huge volume of information just by ourself is A PAIN (again see 3rd point). Nowadays it's a bit more easy on this part because the skill rebalancing does not happen that often any more.
We WERE NOT and ARE still NOT many people that edit and put content in the wikia. At most we had 4 regular contributors and currently we have only one (and it's not even me). This means that on top of translation issues in the game, we needed to find a way to have some kind of automation for things such as categorization, interwiki links, common article layout, images, icons, names of locations, skills, items or bosses that are included or referenced in other article. This lead to the use of lots of templates and DPL as well.

Again doing the usual way, we would not have been able to put AND maintain so great amount of information in that wiki with so few people. The english wikia on the other hand has LOTS of contributors.
As for the French Guild Wars community, from my own experience, so far it's mostly architectured around a couple of fansite and forums. They are not really interrested in participating in a French wikia and they prefer to directly use information on the official wiki or both wikia (the Guild Wars wikia GWiki and the Guild Wars Build repository wikia PvXWiki), all of them being in english (and Google translate does marvel these days). If they have information readily available in French, they'll be happy, but very few of them is interrested in actively participating in extending a wiki/wikia. Its a bit of ArenaNet's fault as well because they did not started a French official wiki at the same time they started the english official one.
We may face the EXACT same issue when it's time to start putting content on the Guild Wars 2 wiki.
Jaxom septembre 18, 2009 à 09:21 (UTC)

I'm ok to the reasons that justified the template architecture.

About ergonomics needs, Jaxom, don't kill the movement please. When we sarted we were 4. Now there is only Alkinor remaining truely active. This is normal that not all the people keep on the wiki during years. Yet there should be a roll with new great contributors comming. Each great contributor have to start as an occasional contributor and discover the wiki. But if he discovers that he has a lot of things to learn just for making a few contributions he may discourage and he will not stay. Then not become a great contributor.

I don't think all the people think there is no need for a french wiki. Many people don't speak english very well or are just tired to have to put the game in english each time they search for something to have the english correspondance.

Furthermore, there is people always people that are interested to invest in a french project, just beacause they are interested to build something as a team and it is easier to do it in them native language. I am one of them.

Now the architecture is in place. What's remain to do is to continue to put game content. We can make it easier for the newbees and this will open doors to new contributors.

As I told there is almost two ways. One is complicated and means to think about great architectural modifications. One is easy and mean we have to renforce the existing help and automatic template creation layer.

If we think together in way to enhance it. Doing it in the way wich fits the best to what we want and the amount of time we want to spend. We will be able to make it greatly and to open the door to new people comming. One more contributor is a victory. You know as me that we don't need thousand of people since we achieved so much with 4 people.

Thanks.

--Ttibot septembre 19, 2009 à 19:26 (UTC)

User Experience & Communities[]

Hi Danny,

I'm currently in a master thesis about 2.0 tools UX design. As an early contributor of this wiki I'm really worried of Wikias actions about them existing wikis. "Simplfiying by cutting" is good for new wikis but it does not always work for existing wikis (not always possible). Also, for example, the WYSIWYG editor design does not take in account thoose existing wikis that are structured among templates. I agree to say that this wiki could have been more simple with a better UX reflexion. But do you really think it is thing to sugest to solve this by modifying the structure now that there is 10 000 pages ? It is just impossible.

Mediawiki has always been a complexe tool and a part of the community user experience and dynamics base on this complexity. Some had no choice, other had fun with complexity. There is so many cases...

This wiki stucture, like many others, is mainly based on automatisation of pages layout by filling templates. The idea can be to identify what are the lacks of its structure and to propose innovative solutions and renforce existing good management axis.

Examples of renforce good management axis :

Use of inputboxes to create easily forms pages.
Having a very clear documentation about the templates.
For next pages types if possible: use less templates and more organic content with fullfiled page structure. (depending on keeping single structure orientation)

Examples of innovating solutions :

Use in context page creation with links to inputboxes. For example a link "creae an new character page" on the character pages.
Display information on how filling the templates directly in the inputboxes' generated pages. So that this would avoid readig many help pages. (Yet I dont see a technical solution for it)
Make clear which are the "advanced" and "classical" parameters in templates. Or don't display the advanced parameters.
Best would be to have advanced WYSIWYG support on templates for this type of wikis only. You may have a look to this design.

If Wikia want them communities work on enhancing UX, plese considere existing comminities dynamics and structure. Also you may try to show the example by working on the UI and the structure... Is setteling this bunch of functionalities really a priority ? Maybe the prority is to hide them and to make the UI as clean as possible. People may be able to activate options such as blogs, widgets, etc... only if needed. Here admins that want a clear wiki would have to unactivate a bunch of links evrywhere.

As usual I made a short version and a long version of my message. This is the short version. You will find the long version on this open letter. It has a detailled UX analysis of my experience of communities dynamics linked to he resulting complexity. Hopping this can help.

Have a nice day.

--Ttibot septembre 7, 2009 à 03:47 (UTC)

Ttibot, I agree with a lot of what you say. This wiki uses a lot of complex templates, and the group of people that have built the site like it that way. That's fine with me, and it's fine with Wikia; you guys can build up the wiki however you like.

This wiki currently has five active contributors. You can be very happy with this size community -- together, you've built more than 10,000 pages, so obviously the community is happy and productive.

TulipVorlax asked me for some advice about getting more people to contribute, and my advice is -- Make it simpler for new people to get involved. You're right, it's possible for someone to treat this as a complex game, spending lots of time learning how to use a wiki. If you make that game difficult, fewer people will play; if you make the game easier, more people will play.

So it's really up to the community here to decide what you want to do. Getting more people involved, or keeping the site the way it is -- which one is more important to you? -- Danny (talk) septembre 7, 2009 à 23:07 (UTC)

Thanks Danny. Well this is absolutly not what I mean. I guess I have been too confuse to make me understood.

"Getting more people involved, or keeping the site the way it is" is not the question. Tulip, Akinor and the other may confirm : I think evryone wants more people involved in the wiki and evryone understood that it means to enhance the newbies-adoption UX by making things more simple for them.

What I say is that it may be truely hard now to come back in the standards of good-simple UX. This would mean updating a lot of page to change the templates. Well, may this can be made by bots I don't know. If someone is courageous enough to program the bots I willing to help him on the UX design of the new templates. For example we can settle a dev wiki to experiment the new structure, one will make the bot and this revert this wiki back to a good ux. The dev wiki could be keeped as an example of newbie-adoption UX design for new Wikias.

Yet, unless this dream can realize the only option I see is imo Getting more people involved, AND keeping the site the way it is. Simplely playing on the current way the wiki try to enhance the newbie-adoption wich is auto-creation of filled-with-templates pages and documentation. What I propose to make it even better is just like Wikipédia Usability Initiative found as spare solution about the fact it is impossible to use a WYSIWYG editor : making in place documentation. I add making in place page creation to make it more fluent among the user usage chaine.

I only spoke about the UX dynamics that lead to complexity to make you understand in an easier way what happened to existing communities. So Wikia may try to understand the situation of his communities to make them good suggestions of best ways to enhance newbies-adoption UX according to each one special nowdays situation.

Saying "your wiki is too complicated, here are the defaults" is not a a good approache. By pointing defaults that can diffcultly be corrected and not proposing solutions you may only give people sentiment that they are condamned. I would love Wikia take the time to analyse the situation of them current wikis and to work with them communities to enhance UX in spite of inputing solutions that can be used only on new wikis and complicate even more the life of existing communities.

Yet I dindn't know you were been asked, to be honnest I was a little bit chocked by yours tells because I was thinking that you came here by yourself to give lessons without solutions. So please excuse me. I think we have to work together on solutions now.

This is my contribution for this Wiki. Please excuse me for my roughness and may this help.

Thanks.

--Ttibot septembre 7, 2009 à 23:53 (UTC)

I totally understand that it's difficult to make big changes. When I say that you guys need to make decisions, I'm not condemning you or pointing out flaws -- I'm just trying to say that you have the power to make decisions, and to make changes if you think they're necessary.

I don't think that Wysiwyg has anything to do with the complexity of this wiki. As I said above, the Reng Ku page has this in the edit field:

{{ {{PAGENAME}} }}

You can't edit that page in the Wysiwyg editor -- it automatically defaults to the MediaWiki editor -- so Wysiwyg isn't an issue.

The problem with that page for a new editor is that they don't know what {{ {{PAGENAME}} }} means. They can't try to edit the template -- they don't even know where that template is. You do have a (modifier) link on the template, so that's one way to find it, but I think that might be easy for people to miss.

So one way to make things easier would be to find all the pages that use that structure, and copy the templates from Modèle:Reng_Ku to the Reng Ku page. It might also help to have some placeholder text that would show people what kind of information you want them to add -- for example, put some text on that page that says "Please add a description of Reng Ku here!"

You're right -- it's hard to make changes like that on a big wiki. But I work on a big wiki too -- Muppet Wiki has more than 19,000 pages -- and we've made many changes to the structure. For example, we came up with a new policy two months ago that completely changes whether we link to a date or not. The people on the wiki who care about that policy have had to go through all 19,000 pages and fix the dates by hand. It's been two months so far, and we're still not finished with it -- but it's our wiki, it's our decision, and it's up to us to make the changes. If it's important to us, we'll do the work.

So I think that this wiki can make changes like the ones I mentioned. You can do it by hand, or you can figure out how to do it by bot -- or you can decide that it's not worth the trouble, and not do it at all. It's really up to you. You designed the site the way that you wanted it. If you don't feel happy with the decisions that you've made, then you have the power to change it. -- Danny (talk) septembre 8, 2009 à 00:30 (UTC)

My bad, i didn't make it clear enough that Dany came here on my request. I requested this because, even though this community is very productive (mainly Jaxom and Alkinor), the people that contribute the most mostly never engage in this sort of discussion. Now, Jaxom has troubles comming on Wikia because of where he live (New-Caledonia) and it's sad because i think that his opinions are the most valuables because i know so much about this game, it's compexity and what the devs of the game udapte and change.

I think i have a fraction of his knowlege. Like i said, GuildWars is a pretty complicated game. So new contributors have to learn both the game and the wiki. I had some thinking about this. Now i understand that a player that has just got the game can't contribute much.

One thing i now wishes that i would have think of doing earlier is a compilation, on some page, of the comments we get from users that pass by. I remember one in perticular where the visitor was saying "i'll comme back when the site will be finished", i've replied "why dont you help us". But i think he never got that message.

One last thing. About the WYSIWYG editor, the Mediawiki:Editintro and MediaWiki:Newarticletext doesn't show up. I think this is bad because that is the best place we can redirect users to help pages. I'm not asking for any change about this unless Wikia is absolutely willing too. My last question, is there a way to specify a list of templates for the template drop down list on the WYSIWYG editor ? — Tulip Vorlax septembre 8, 2009 à 00:46 (UTC)

I made a clean space for propsitions and working on solutions on this page. It is in english so that Wikia staff can read and contribute. --Ttibot septembre 8, 2009 à 00:50 (UTC)