[Design] Media insertion labels

[Amir E. Aharoni]

Hi,

I somehow came into looking at labels of media insertion buttons in
different MediaWiki editiing environments.

In VisualEditor it's Insert -> Media. The dialog that appears allows
searching for any file.

In WikiEditor (2010) it's "Embedded file". The dialog that appears allows
typing any file name. This inserts a "[[File:..." link.

The vanilla wiki editor (a.k.a. 2006, with the "Enable enhanced editing
toolbar" preference disabled) has two buttons: "Embedded file" (with a
picture icon) and "File link" (with a trumpet icon). The former inserts
"[[File:Example.jpg]]", and the latter inserts [[Media:Example.ogg]].
AFAIK, this is actually quite wrong because "Media:" links are not for
audio and video, but for linking to files in a shared repo. I also know
that this editor is probably on its way to retirement, but I'm mentioning
it just in case.

So this is the current reality. Now some questions:

1. I feel that "Media" is not the optimal label. I understand that it's
supposed to include images, audio, and video, but I suspect that the way it
is now, it's equally unclear to many people for all the types of media. For
years, every time I was showing people in real life how to edit a page in
VE, they asked how to add an image, and I had to tell them how to find the
"Media" button. Many people had trouble finding it themselves. Perhaps
something like "Images and media" would be better? Was any focused user
testing done about this?

2. Should the 2010 WikiEditor label be the same as Visual Editor?
Functionally they are quite similar, and "Embedded file" is definitely not
optimal. Both "Embedded" and "file" say nothing about images, and are quite
technical.

3. Is it worth doing anything about the 2006 labels, or are they just going
to be completely removed from the code soon?

--
Amir Elisha Aharoni · א־מ֮י׹ אֱל֎ישׁ֞ע אַהֲךוֹנ֎י
http://aharoni.wordpress.com
‪“We're living in pieces,
I want to live in peace.” – T. Moore‬

[James Forrester]

Post by Amir E. Aharoni
1. I feel that "Media" is not the optimal label. I understand that it's
supposed to include images, audio, and video, but I suspect that the way it
is now, it's equally unclear to many people for all the types of media. For
years, every time I was showing people in real life how to edit a page in
VE, they asked how to add an image, and I had to tell them how to find the
"Media" button. Many people had trouble finding it themselves. Perhaps
something like "Images and media" would be better?

I believe that originally it said "Image", and people complained about it
being wrong, so we changed it to "Media", and haven't had any subsequent
complaints.

Post by Amir E. Aharoni
Was any focused user testing done about this?

Not about variations of the label itself; we asked brand-new users in our
regular user testing to insert an image and they succeeded, but that
doesn't mean that they wouldn't do better/be happier were the label to be
changed.

That said, "Image and other media" would be very clunky and lengthy, which
undermines a big point of there being a welcoming, intuitive toolbar. :-)

Back in 2012 there was talk of making "media" a first-level item in the
toolbar (*i.e.*, directly in the toolbar for most users, not in the Insert
menu) to encourage users to make richer, more pleasing experiences for
readers. That said, I don't think that's currently planned.


2. Should the 2010 WikiEditor label be the same as Visual Editor?

Post by Amir E. Aharoni
Functionally they are quite similar, and "Embedded file" is definitely not
optimal. Both "Embedded" and "file" say nothing about images, and are quite
technical.

We've been very wary of changing the 2010 wikitext editor experience to
avoid disrupting existing editors who are used to the current set-up. I'm
not sure this would be the place to start changing that stance, but if it's
a compelling change we could vary that.

Post by Amir E. Aharoni
3. Is it worth doing anything about the 2006 labels, or are they just
going to be completely removed from the code soon?

I don't think it's worth it, no.

J.