Wikipedia:WikiProject Usability/Future projects
Rough ideas that the Wikipedia Usability Project could tackle next.
History pages
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.
Both have similar issues to history pages, but are even more crowded in places.
- Design similar to 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
- Special:Preferences
- Already had a bit of a redesign, but preferences need better sorting.
Edit forms
- Too many buttons, options and text below edit box.
- Just scattered together, not designed.
- Too easy to choose the wrong button.
Introduction/Tutorial
- While the Wikipedia:Introduction does its job, the overall guidance pages for new users is scattered and doesn't flow well.
- Continuing in the style of the Introduction is the redesign of the Tutorial.
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)