Talk:Micro Design Improvements

Editing toolbar
There's a ton of stuff that needs to be cleaned up in the editing toolbar. I know the VEpocalypse will annul work on that to some extent, but just getting rid of all those terrible unreadable icons and only displaying "Help", "Cite", and "Advanced" would tremendously improve the usability of that tool for the time being. Maryana (WMF) (talk) 23:20, 17 August 2012 (UTC)
 * m:Help:Edit toolbar is a better link, there's a lot of en.wiki specific crap. --Nemo 10:56, 25 August 2012 (UTC)
 * And there is also the duplication of functionality of the Edittools mentioned on w:MediaWiki talk:Edittools/Archive 8 and commons:MediaWiki talk:Edittools. Helder 16:17, 25 August 2012 (UTC)

Annotations
This might be of interest: Helder 03:22, 22 August 2012 (UTC)
 * w:Wikipedia:Sticky notes
 * w:Wikipedia:Village pump (idea lab)/Archive 3
 * w:Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Archive 76
 * etc...

Back to Beginning
Links of interest: Helder 03:27, 22 August 2012 (UTC)
 * w:Wikipedia:Back to top
 * w:Wikipedia talk:WikiProject User scripts/Scripts
 * w:fr:Special:PrefixIndex/MediaWiki:Gadget-FlecheHaut

Move to rename
Renaming "Move" to "Rename" has been proposed many, many times, and it never got consensus, and it probably isn't going to. --Yair rand (talk) 05:43, 22 August 2012 (UTC)
 * Maybe that was not accepted on English Wikipedia, but there are plenty of other wikis out there. Helder 23:57, 22 August 2012 (UTC)
 * What English-language wiki did you have in mind? It wouldn't make any sense on Wiktionary, and anyway the move function is barely ever used there. Wikibooks, maybe? The proposal doesn't seem likely to get consensus anywhere... --Yair rand (talk) 02:19, 28 August 2012 (UTC)
 * Sorry, I was thinking about other languages, actually. Helder 03:29, 28 August 2012 (UTC)
 * Oh, I figured you meant specifically changing those that use the English word "move". Do other languages typically use translations of "Move"? I figure they just choose whatever wording fits the concept. French Wikipedia uses "Renommer" already, so clearly not all wikis use translations of "move". --Yair rand (talk) 03:56, 28 August 2012 (UTC)
 * Just like not all languages use actual translations of "history". I can also imagine the opposite, for instance "rinominare" in Italian is rather long and in this meaning either wrong or quite recent and technical (it's a semantical calque from English, normal meaning is re-nominate alias re-elect), so the translators could stick to "sposta" (move) or invent something else. --Nemo 07:28, 28 August 2012 (UTC)

Missing User Page Red Link
Redirecting feels icky. It seems that the best solution would be to simply not provide a user link across the wiki for users with non existent user pages. The red user link would be displayed as-is to the actual user, thus allowing them to learn about their user page and create it. Of course, for existing user pages the regular (blue) link would be shown for the username.

Low hanging
What's the definition of low hanging? "Edit Conflict Workflow", "Grouping for User Contributions" and "Annotations" seem quite hard. (Also the edit toolbar mentioned above was perhaps the main result of the Usability initiative which cost more than a million dollar, but I don't understand what change is being requested, so maybe it's cheaper than that.) --Nemo 11:46, 25 August 2012 (UTC)
 * At the moment we're just flinging ideas around: for now these should be considered "things which look small from a design and interaction perspective". We're going to run through and filter out the developmentally difficult stuff after we've finished this first test of the waters :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 07:12, 28 August 2012 (UTC)
 * Thank you. Makes sense, especially because only devs are actually able to tell us what's difficult and what's not. --Nemo 07:22, 28 August 2012 (UTC)
 * Agreed! So, ideally I'd like to see the team focus on things which are low cost in terms of development, fast to do and with a small community footprint in terms of backlash. The issue we've got at the moment is that the team is two weeks old :). We're still calibrating what is low cost, fast and has a small footprint, and while we'll exercise our best judgment I think it's going to be interesting to see what happens. We could underestimate or overestimate, and we'll adjust accordingly. But this will inevitably require developing something with a high development cost, slowly, that the community or loves, or something easy, fast and that the community doesn't. We are human and therefore fallible :). I think depending on the project that could be either a learning experience or a change that is justified despite the cost, but we'll see. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 10:04, 28 August 2012 (UTC)

Suggestions for current project, "Improve the organization of information in the edit mode"
Moved from the "possible future iterations" section:


 * The in-page AJAXy "preview" and "show changes" tabs that are an optional part of WikiEditor are pretty sweet, though they might make more sense underneath the edit box (because they happen after your changes and before your save in the workflow). Jdforrester (WMF) (talk) 22:48, 28 August 2012 (UTC)
 * A count-down in the save message box to show how many characters are left (like the save dialogue in VisualEditor). Jdforrester (WMF) (talk) 22:48, 28 August 2012 (UTC)
 * Moving the "Briefly describe the changes you have made" prompt into the save box as the default text, to disappear when people click into it. Jdforrester (WMF) (talk) 22:48, 28 August 2012 (UTC)