Wikidot.com originated in the lovely Polish city of Torun, which is famous for its stunning brick architectures, and lively nightlife. Today, of course, Wikidot.com is a global community, with most members coming from English speaking countries, especially America. So the original quaint language and spelling has started to look unprofessional.
We've just finished one round of improvements to several hundred components, cleaning up error messages, prompts, labels and other texts. We'll do more of this later until Wikidot.com speaks perfect English. Mainly the site manager still has the old texts. Tell me if you like the changes - they are all through the application.
And of course the first one I tried hasn't been changed yet! :)
Community Admin
To be honest, I like the "Oooops!" messages ;-)
~ Leiger - Wikidot Community Admin - Volunteer
Wikidot: Official Documentation | Wikidot Discord server | NEW: Wikiroo, backup tool (in development)
Yes, I see it too. I suspect the cache needs to be flushed.
Portfolio
I take it the capitalization of button text is part of this? I personally liked the lowercase buttons. I do suggest that two-word button captions, like 'Site tools', 'Page source', 'Edit meta' be made uniform — i.e. every word should be capitalized. As I recall that's the usual convention (unless the word is three letters or less).
Agreed, I liked it when it was lowercase much better — but I think it's just a matter of getting used to it being different. It's not only lowercase that was changed. Instead of 'view source' it now says 'page source', for example.
~ Leiger - Wikidot Community Admin - Volunteer
Wikidot: Official Documentation | Wikidot Discord server | NEW: Wikiroo, backup tool (in development)
Yes, buttons should take header capitalization. It'll take another pass or two to get this all clean.
Portfolio
capitalization can always be changed with CSS :)
Yes, Matt is correct. You can change the capitalisation via CSS:
It is better to have the first character capitalised in the html, because you can't do this in CSS.
@ Pieter, the "discuss(x)" button has the first letter uncapitalised.
Thanks. Also reply | options in threads.
This was a really large set of changes, and we wanted to publish the first round even when it was not all complete.
Portfolio
Also, "save & continue" on normal pages needs to have the first letter capitalised :)
Ack.
Portfolio
i personally liked the Oooops! messages than the "Don't panic" ones…
I think an even better solution (for the this page already exists error) would be not to have an error message at all.
I'd replace the "New Page" button with a "Find/Create Page" button and then just go to the page if it already exists.
Wayne Eddy
Melbourne, Australia
LGAM Knowledge Base
Contact via Google+
Indeed. Anything we can do to streamline the user interface is good. You're referring to the button for the NewPage module, right?
Portfolio
Yes, that's right. The button for the NewPage module. I use it all the time to find pages, and it would be fantastic if it skipped to existing pages without the error message.
Wayne Eddy
Melbourne, Australia
LGAM Knowledge Base
Contact via Google+
I'd disagree. I use this error as part of my compatibility website: http://cyclods.ject.pro
If you enter a Game ID that is already being used, the message appears to tell you that the game has already been added — which is exactly the behaviour I want! :)
~ Leiger - Wikidot Community Admin - Volunteer
Wikidot: Official Documentation | Wikidot Discord server | NEW: Wikiroo, backup tool (in development)
If that's the case, I guess it would be nice if it was a configurable option for the "NewPage" module, or if there was a separate "find/create" module that could be used in its place.
Wayne Eddy
Melbourne, Australia
LGAM Knowledge Base
Contact via Google+
Wayne, feel free to discuss / edit here: http://blog.wikidot.com/design:8
Portfolio
This is Wikipedia system. If the page you are searching does not exist, then a possibility to create one with that name is offered, together with the other pages where this word (or words) appear…
If slaughterhouses had glass walls, everyone would be vegan. - Paul McCartney
Yes, that's true.
It is one of the few things I still like better about MediaWiki. (The other thing I can think of, off the top of my head is the automatic "noredirect/true" link back to a redirect page that MediaWiki inserts at the top of a page that has been redirected to.)
Wayne Eddy
Melbourne, Australia
LGAM Knowledge Base
Contact via Google+
Hm, this was a big bugger for me, but I found a solution. Each redirect I l
Therefore I have the list of them, and I am able to edit them if needed… (The tag преусмерење is added because I make redirects within the same category as other pages (art, art2, video, slika), and I don't want them to appear when listing pages in that category…)
If slaughterhouses had glass walls, everyone would be vegan. - Paul McCartney
I preferred the Ooops message. This one with Don't panic is (sorry for my frankness, but i have to say) sounds very stupid.
Why would anyone PANIC if cannot edit some page? I think that the best thing would be not to put anything. Just a plain mesage:
Simple and clear and above all, neutral.
If slaughterhouses had glass walls, everyone would be vegan. - Paul McCartney
I agree the "Don't Panic" title does not work in all cases. I do not like software saying "oops" or "sorry" to me as a user, that feels silly. It's not a person, it's a machine.
The slight difficulty is that the error messages need a title. We do not, internally, have different types of error (warning, panic, information), which is a problem but not something fixable immediately.
Anyhow, we're going to do another round of language improvements this week, and Don't Panic will go away.
Portfolio
I think that Warning would be ok.
If slaughterhouses had glass walls, everyone would be vegan. - Paul McCartney
Except it's not always a "Warning"… :-/ No problem, we'll look at it, and make it work better.
I appreciate the feedback. Every day, in little ways, Wikidot is getting better. Now, repeat after me…
Portfolio
How about
just a thought.
………… Apple ………… Email Me
Agreed. Sounds good, and is generic enough to apply to all error messages.
~ Leiger - Wikidot Community Admin - Volunteer
Wikidot: Official Documentation | Wikidot Discord server | NEW: Wikiroo, backup tool (in development)
I like it :-)
Nice proposal, we'll use that.
Portfolio
Meh, I like, "Don't panic!" It reminds me of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.