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

>
> 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.

Your users are right - the point is that you no longer need to use  
WikiWords.

> 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?

You need to modify MarkupParser.ALLOWED_CHARS.

> We also found that people had a great deal of difficulty understanding
> how to create a new page. It wasn't that (once they understood the

This is very common.  Most people expect to find a "New page" link  
somewhere.  How about creating an automatic link *on the page* that  
the user happens to be on?  That way there would be a trail.

> This could probably be fixed by improving the documentation, but in
> my own over-the-shoulder experiences I noted that few people actually
> stop long enough to actually read a paragraph of text, even when it's
> right in front of them -- they've been trained to look for menu
> commands or buttons. If there's going to be documentation it should
> be extremely terse, not written for geeks, i.e., no tech language. I
> think a How To page for common actions as part of the normal distro
> would be a good idea, with a link on the sidebar where users *might*
> see it.

Agreed. Wikis should be intuitive.  We may be failing in that regard  
by offering too much functionality.

It should be easy to create a page, modify a page, add a file, edit  
the file which is on the page, search for information, and link to  
other pages.  Advanced users might want to be able to view the  
modification history and be WikiGardeners by creating structure.

It also needs to look nice and friendly and have nice basic  
navigation, just like any regular website.

/Janne