Alain Desilets, Sebastien Paquet, Norman G. Vinson. "Are Wikis Usable?" \\Proceedings are available on {link:wikisym.org|http://www.wikisym.org/ws2005/proceedings/|img=none} and through the {link:ACM digital library|http://www.acm.org/dl/|img=none}. __Abstract__ Wikis are simple to use, asynchronous, Web-based collaborative hypertext authoring systems which are quickly gaining in popularity. In spite of much anecdotal evidence to the effect that wikis are usable by non technical experts, this has never been studied formally. In this paper, we studied the usability of a wiki through observation and problem-solving interaction with several children who used the tool to collaboratively author hypertext stories over several sessions. The children received a minimal amount of instruction, but were able to ask for help during their work sessions. Despite minimal instruction, 5 out of 6 teams were able to complete their story. Our data indicate that the major usability problems were related to hyperlink management. We report on this and other usability issues, and provide suggestions for improving the usability of wikis. Our analysis and conclusions also apply to hypertext authoring with non wiki-based tools. Dirk Riehle 2006-05-30 07:48:57.344 2005-09-06 16:03:55.648 comment-Alain Desilets, Sebastien Paquet, Norman G. Vinson. "Are Wikis Usable?"-1 Would it be possible to obtain a copy of your paper? I am part of a wiki group at the University of Maryland, and although I am committed already to another conference during wikisym, I would like very much to hear about your study. Thanks, Robin Farabaugh rfarabau@umbc.edu 2005-09-18 15:32:50.728 2005-09-18 15:32:56.984 comment-Alain Desilets, Sebastien Paquet, Norman G. Vinson. "Are Wikis Usable?"-2 Maybe this can also help increasing the usability of wikis: http://www.oddmuse.org/cgi-bin/wiki/Link_Type_Positioning_In_A_Wiki_Page 2005-10-16 02:58:46.8 2005-10-16 02:58:40.608 comment-Alain Desilets, Sebastien Paquet, Norman G. Vinson. "Are Wikis Usable?"-3 During the talk, I wondered to what extent the 16000+ registered users WikiPedia were "real users" as opposed to technology enthousiasts. As it turns out, from JimWales talk, it seems that more than 50% of the pages on WikiPedia are produced by a very small number of users (between 600 and 700). I think I can now confidently say that most pages on WikiPedia are most likely produced by technology enthousiasts as opposed to "real users". 2005-10-20 02:42:31.44 2005-10-20 02:42:30.64 comment-Alain Desilets, Sebastien Paquet, Norman G. Vinson. "Are Wikis Usable?"-4 Have a look at this paper: http://eprints.rclis.org/archive/00003610/ where I show that lotkas law also applies for Wikipedia users. I verified the rule in more detail for users with less than 50 edits in my masters thesis and the most active users are distributed by a skewed power law too. You can say that 90% of the action is done by 10% of the users - that's a natural phenomenon also known in scientometrics. If you argue with "real users" you can also argue that only little scientists are "real scientists" because they publish most of the papers and are beeing cited more frequently than the majority of "normal scientists" like you and me. 2005-10-27 11:27:29.216 2005-10-27 11:27:37.856 comment-Alain Desilets, Sebastien Paquet, Norman G. Vinson. "Are Wikis Usable?"-5 For usability issues also have a look at http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Wikimania05/Presentation-ZG1 2005-10-27 11:32:51.056 2005-10-27 11:32:49.76 comment-Alain Desilets, Sebastien Paquet, Norman G. Vinson. "Are Wikis Usable?"-6 Jakob, your point about 90% of edits being done by 10% of the people is correct and it would probably remain true even if we were to make Wiki as easy to use as say, a small GUI text editor (I don't count MS-Word as one ;-)). But the size and composition of that 10% top users and their contributions would probably change. Right now, the top 10% who contribute 90% of the material consist of those who: A) Have something worthwhile to say. B) Have sufficient patience and perseverence to learn the tool. Ideally, you would want the top 10% to be based ONLY ON A). There are lots of people out there who have something interesting to say, but would not put up with Wiki as it currently stands. Another effect of improving usability is that instead of having 1,600 users out of 16,000 contributing 10% of the content, you might have 8,000 users out of 80,000 who contribute 90% of the content. That's still 10% of the user, but it's 10% of a larger population. This in turn might mean that the 90% of the content would itself be larger in terms of number of pages. 2005-11-08 15:07:51.184 2005-11-08 15:07:50.344 comment-Alain Desilets, Sebastien Paquet, Norman G. Vinson. "Are Wikis Usable?"-7 Tony Armani (above) pointed out this interesting link: >>http://www.oddmuse.org/cgi-bin/wiki/Link_Type_Positioning_In_A_Wiki_Page I think this is a great idea. The kids I observed had a paper map of the web site they were trying to create, and they used it all the time for orienting themselves in the site. Having back links and children on a side bar on the wiki would probably achieve a similar effect without requiring a paper map (which has the disadvantage of not being shareable online). An extension to this idea would be to have a mini site map displayed, showing a graphical and clickable representation of the current page's "neighbourhood". 2005-11-08 16:29:54.608 2005-11-08 16:30:02.616 comment-Alain Desilets, Sebastien Paquet, Norman G. Vinson. "Are Wikis Usable?"-8 Alain, did you get the email I sent you just after wikisym ? 2005-11-15 14:28:18.52 2005-11-15 14:28:16.48 comment-Alain Desilets, Sebastien Paquet, Norman G. Vinson. "Are Wikis Usable?"-9 Michel, No, I didn't receive anhything from you after the conference. What was the message about? Try again at: alain dot desilets at nrc-cnrc dot gc dot ca 2005-11-15 22:50:56.512 2005-11-15 22:50:54.216 comment-Alain Desilets, Sebastien Paquet, Norman G. Vinson. "Are Wikis Usable?"-10 I also created some more explanation pages about the "link type positioning in a wiki page": http://www.oddmuse.org/cgi-bin/wiki/Hierarchic_Linking_Module_Proposal and its discussion is here: http://www.usemod.com/cgi-bin/mb.pl?TonyArmani 2005-12-03 13:42:55.136 2005-12-03 13:42:47.592