Re: Results of user testing, and space handling in links

Foster Schucker wrote:
> Murray Altheim wrote:
> 
>> In some recent user testing we found that there was considerable
>> confusion in space handling within wiki links, e.g., when
>>
>>    [Gary Snyder]
>>
>> is parsed and turned into a link to a new page, that new page will
>> incorporate the space character as "%20". This is both rather
>> counterintuitive, and created a situation where there were now two
>> pages, GarySnyder and Gary%20Snyder. The users were very confused
>> by this, it really screwed with their idea of the value of a
>> WikiWord. One said "why the hell would I want to use a WikiWord
>> then?" She was quite frustrated that after making the investment in
>> trying to understand WikiWords, thinking she did, then having the
>> system not work as she'd have thought. I have to agree.
> 
> I'm not sure when that became a feature.  In my Sandbox I created links
> to [Sam Spade] and [SamSpade].  I clicked on the ? mark and got to the
> edit page for SamSpade

I'm not either, seems in the last six months or so. I distinctly
remember it *not* being a "feature" as I remember being surprised
at the new behaviour. But we've gone over and over on the idea of
permitting whitespace in WikiNames, my opinion has been expressed
a few times on that one (i.e., the "%20" is *really* confusing to
users, and they *do* grok WikiNames rather quickly, most thinking
it's geeky cool, a "wiki thing", whereas "%20" is just something
they stare at with a "WTF?" look on their face).

>> I've been looking around but can't find out how to turn off this
>> behaviour. Isn't there a setting somewhere to automatically remove
>> whitespace from links?
>>
>> We also found that people had a great deal of difficulty understanding
>> how to create a new page. 
> 
> One of the skins has a box in the left nav bar that says
> Create New Page, pop a name in it and it takes you to a confirm page 
> that you wanted
> to create a new page.  It has a link to the edit page for the new document.
> 
> <div class="createbox">
> <form action="http://localhost/Edit.jsp" accept-charset="ISO-8859-1,UTF-8">
> <a class="wikipage" href="http://localhost/Wiki.jsp?page=CreateNewPage"> 
> Create New Page: </a>
>  <input name="page" size="20" type="text"> </form>
> </div>

Thanks, I'll take a look for this, but anything like this, and there's
a way of doing it from the search box too, but it creates islands. I
think really this is just a job for better documentation explaining
why things are the way they are. A large wiki with hundreds of
unlinked pages is really a mess... making a new page should be a
relatively considered action, not just something like clicking on a
New Page icon, especially since those pages can't easily be deleted.
This is a wiki of course, not a word processor, it just takes time for
people to get their heads around the differences...

Murray

...........................................................................
Murray Altheim <murray07 at altheim.com>                           ===  = =
http://www.altheim.com/murray/                                     = =  ===
SGML Grease Monkey, Banjo Player, Wantanabe Zen Monk               = =  = =

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