Topic on Talk:Page Previews/Flow

We are trying to better understand the usage of the original gadget. Specifically - 1. Investigate which actions from the original gadget are useful 2. How do editors use the navigation popup - Do they read the extract and the statistics?

If you used the original gadget, please add your comments with explanation here.

The actions I use most are

• Diffs (from watchlist, history, contribs, etc; including from other popups)
• History
• User contribs (including from history popups)
• Multi-level popups (article popups from other article popups

I sometimes look at the statistics on user popups. I do not feel the last-edited statistics on hovercards are useful.

Vibhabamba: first and foremost, diffs. for diffs, i'd rather see the whole diff, with scrollbar if needed, rather than truncated beginning of diff (navpop shows the whole diff, but it does not create a scrollbar, and instead, the navpop box can grow arbitrarily tall).

second, the fact that navpop understands anchors: if the link is "Page#Section" rather than "Page", navpop will show the opening paragraphs of the section, while hovercards shows the opening of the article.

this works for real links in the article, and also the link of "→ <section>" in history, watchlist and recent changes pages etc.

peace.

Vibhabamba: The navigation popups are far more useful than the hovercards. I assume you already know this. That said, I very much use the popups to examine users for their edit count and which hats they collected. (I like knowing to whom I'm speaking.) I also like getting a quick look at their edit history and talk pages. This is especially useful on vandal IPs. On articles I like getting the lede as well as the age and size of the article. I also use the link to see the page's history tab and talk page. Navigation popups are probably the best gadget second only to Twinkle.

Chris troutman:Totally agree that the gadget is super useful. Are many editors un-aware of this gadget? We looked up some numbers. As of December 1 2013, only 2.7% of all registered users with at least one edit had the navigation popups gadget enabled. And the total registered users was about 120K.

Vibhabamba: I mainly use it for viewing diffs and histories on my watchlist. While the popups diff display is arguably atrocious, it mostly gives a decent first impression (but takes 'trained' eye). After that, I use it to peek to other articles. And I occasionally use it to revert to a specific revision.

Edokter: thats interesting. Currently hovercards is only addressing links within main article area - blue links for other articles, references and wiktionary items. We haven't included diff's and histories. Both really good points for us to think about in the future. Thank you for responding.

For all pages:

• Read Preview (recursive)
• Watch/Unwatch
• View History (recursive)
• Open Talkpage in new tab
• Viewing diffs - Particularly from my Watchlist page, or a History/UserContributions page, I'll mouseover dozens of these difflinks every day

For Users:

• View Contributions (recursive) - to check specific contribs, and to check recent activity levels
• Open Talkpage in new tab
• "Space" - Search Subpages (Special:Prefixindex)
• User stats (groups, editcount, first join date)
  • I wish it included a "last edited" time.
• I wish it included a link to Special:CentralAuth or SUL Info

Custom-additions:

• popupFixDabs=true; (this lets us fix links-to-disambiguation-pages with 1-click)
• popupDelay=0.3; popupHideDelay=0.3; (this is slightly faster than the default. I left notes on timing at the archived page which I think warrants research.)

Note: There are already a few layout options for Navpopups, en:Wikipedia:Popups/Structure examples, though I'm not sure how widely these are used. I'd suggest asking the Research dept to put together stats on how much each of those, and the other en:Wikipedia:NAVPOP#Options are used, if possible. That options list is well worth reading, to get a sense of its power/complexity.

1. Quick navigation (mostly edit/history/talk/pagelog, user contribs, leave a comment, user log). I know where i'm going, don't need the inbetweenspot of the page.
2. Getting stats: 31.7kB, 114 wikiLinks, 0 images, 2 categories, 20 hours old (big or small article?), sysop, 35176 edits since: 2005-04-21 (new or seasoned editor)
3. Fixing links (redirects, disambiguations).
4. Viewing diffs

How can I invite more community members to participate in this audit?

Vibhabamba: By asking people on wikis with actual user traffic. Your best bet is the Technical Village Pump on the English Wikipedia.

Thats a great Idea! Ill work with Dan and Nick to work on a quick post. Thanks for pointing to this.

Personally, for articles I've only ever used:

• View history
• Most recent edit
• Talk

and for Users:

• Contributions
• Talk

I don't really see much of a reason to include the Move/Edit functionality in Hovercards, as I've never seen a real reason to edit an article based on the preview given in a Hovercard. Perhaps other users have reasons to include the feature, though.

Hovercards: I tried but disabled. I found the emphasis on images more distracting than useful.

Popups: I've enabled for a while now and certainly like the idea in principle. As a reader, I primarily use them to preview articles (although as often as not, I read Wikipedia on a tablet). But as an editor, I find myself clicking through most of the time to the underlying content, though I find them useful for examining reference numbers. Popups would be especially useful to me if the feature could shortcut "Watchlist checking": viewing changes made on a given article since my last visit. At present, that's a cumbersome, multi-click process.