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Contributing to Wikipedia usability resources

Recently I contacted Frank Spillers (of experience dynamics) in order to update wikipedia with citations in an article he originally crafted.

In the article on progressive disclosure, I added two sources for Jakob Nielsen’s quotations. Frank had originally only provided one source for both quotations, and a Google search couldn’t even help me finding the other. Luckily, Frank replied almost instantly:

Jesper,

These two citation URL’s are here…(need to be added to Wikipedia)
“Good usability includes ideas like progressive disclosure where you show a small number of features to the less experienced user to lower the hurdle of getting started and yet have a larger number of features available for the expert to call up”.[citation needed]

http://www.sitepoint.com/article/interview-jakob-nielsen-ph-d/4

“Progressive disclosure is the best tool so far: show people the basics first, and once they understand that, allow them to get to the expert features. But don’t show everything all at once or you will only confuse people and they will waste endless time messing with features that they don’t need yet”.[citation needed]

http://developers.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/03/03/096223&mode=thread

I have also updated my blog with the references.

Thanks,
Frank

This is just a prefect example of community collaboration. Thats how the web makes it easy for us to collaborate and help each other out.

Man, it feels so good contributing and helping others! This is only the second time contribute to Wikipedia. My debut was back in March when I added that David Siegel invented the spacer gif.
In reality this is probably a very little step on the road to making this world a better place!

PS. I have to remember to ask Frank in the future when Google can’t help me. Frank! You’re my new favorite search engine! Could somebody please make me a search engine plugin for Frank Spillers in Firefox :)

More info:

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This entry was posted by Jesper Rønn-Jensen on Saturday, November 25th, 2006 at 14:37 (GMT-1) and is filed under justaddwater.dk. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

4 Responses to “Contributing to Wikipedia usability resources”

  1. Jesper Rønn-Jensen Says:
    November 25th, 2006 at 14:42 (GMT-1)

    By the way, finding the right page explaining how to make citations took me longer time than expected. I eventually ended at Wikipedia Citation templates where I found a usable explanation.

  2. Matthew Oliphant Says:
    November 25th, 2006 at 16:22 (GMT-1)

    And who was the last person to comment on Frank’s article? Small world. :)

  3. Jesper Rønn-Jensen Says:
    November 25th, 2006 at 20:28 (GMT-1)

    Matthew: I guess you always want the last say :)

  4. Jesper Rønn-Jensen Says:
    November 26th, 2006 at 13:35 (GMT-1)

    Amazing how fast it goes, but a wikipedia user called Fred Bradstadt has already edited my added citations in wikipedia to follow a format that looks much smarter.

    New link syntax:
    <ref name="Nielsen 2002">{{cite web
    | last = Nielsen
    | first = Jakob
    | authorlink = Jakob Nielsen
    | title = Interview – Jakob Nielsen, Ph.D.
    | publisher = Sitepoint
    | date = 2002-11-06
    | url = http://...
    | accessdate = 2006-11-24}}</ref>

    And in the bottom section added a references tag that holds all:

    ==References==
    <references/>