Wikipedia:WikiProject Usability/Future projects

Rough ideas that the Wikipedia Usability Project could tackle next.

Village Pump

The Village Pump is an ugly, incomprehensible mess of tables and too much information.

  • Proposals
  • Split it out to contain more info on if this forum is the place for you...
  • Add helpful Images to assist in navigation.
  • Put the "I want to..." section beneath the actual forum navigation.

History pages

[http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia&action=history History pages] don't exactly have the clearest interface in the world.

= Problems =

  • "cur" and "last" are not self-evident, and users have complained about them.
  • Not obvious date links to the revision.
  • Design falls apart when edit summaries wrap.
  • Compare selected versions could probably have a better design.
  • Paging is very poor.

= Ideas =

  • Use a table format.

Recent changes and watchlists

  • Recent changes and watchlists
  • Both have similar issues to history pages, but are even more crowded in places.
  • Design similar to [http://moinmoin.wikiwikiweb.de/RecentChanges MoinMoin's RecentChanges]?

Upload form

  • Special:Upload
  • Eep! Information overload (but has recently got better).
  • A wizard-like UI for users to establish the correct license?

Preferences

Edit forms

  • MediaWiki:Edittools
  • Too many buttons, options and text below edit box.
  • Just scattered together, not designed.
  • Too easy to choose the wrong button.

Specialpages

  • Special:Specialpages, a page linked everywhere has now become almost completely unusable. Usability guidelines recommend to order long lists in topics. Specialpages themselves sometimes explain what they do, but not all (see Special:MIMEsearch f.e.).
  • Proposal: New design of Special:Specialpages, add explanations to all specialpages (software change necessary), add a link to related manual page if necessary, rethink content of the toolbox (necessary software change: make it configurable like MediaWiki:Sidebar)

Help pages

Portal redesign