Introduction

I have asked two persons (one male and another one female) to help me with my MoinMoin "Thinking Aloud" task by using the MoinMoin wiki and telling me any thoughts they have. I have prepared 14 tasks for them. The tasks included creating a user account, creating a homepage with some information about themselves, trying different formatting ways, searching etc.

These two persons are my friends, so they have gladly agreed to perform these easy tasks in the MoinMoin wiki. I have to mention that they are newbies in wikis, but not in IT. Well, I think this is more an advantage than a disadvantage.

Experience of the First User

General Impression

Let's talk about the first person. The first task was to open moinmo.in in the browser and take a look around, visit a few wiki pages and tell his opinion about the general impression of the page. The task is very easy, but also very informative.

After the first visit to the moinmo.in my friend said that it seems a bit tacky: the design is too simple, the font is standard and too large. Then he scrolled down the text and when noticed links at the bottom of the front page (comments, info, subscribe etc), he said that nobody would use them as they are almost invisible: they are too small compared to the rest of the text. He mentioned that there could be more colors – now it seems quite boring.

After looking at the front page, my friend went to FindPage. He noticed that for unexperienced user it might be too difficult to use this search page.

Then he went to RecentChanges. His comment was that it is not needed there – common users will not look there. He clicked on Comments (in RecentChanges) and... and he did not notice anything interesting. He thought that it even misbehaves and therefore is not needed. As you could predict it, he then clicked on the Attachments tab (in the same RecentChanges page) link. It was an even bigger surprise for him: he was not allowed to do anything there. His comment was "not needed" again. "If users do not have appropriate rights to create an attachment, why the link "Attachments" is given to them? It should be removed at least on this page."

Problems With TextChas and Passwords

Another task for him was to create a wiki user account. He found out how to do that very quickly.

He entered all the needed information and tried to register, but he failed. The reason was obvious: he entered a wrong TextCha answer. He could not figure out what was wrong until I pointed to the green note about TextChas. My mate read about TextChas and said that he did not even look to that green box (hm, strange, it is on the top of every page) and mentioned that it is not the right place for it.

Later he used to solve other TextChas and wondered why answers are not obvious enough. He had to search through the whole wiki to find out, for example, what is the last name of one of MoinMoin developers, on what operating system does it work or how is MoinMoin licenced. Those questions surely are not for MoinMoin newbies (I could not disagree with him). He thought that TextChas would frighten away new MoinMoin wiki users.

Another problem he faced was associated with his password. It was too simple, so he still could not proceed with his registration. He said: "it is even more annoying". I could see him getting a bit nervous. He said: "Developers should give some examples on what password is good enough if they think mine is too simple". Then he finally registered.

The friend wondered why his mail wasn't checked (i.e. why you do not send any e-mail to check a provided e-mail address for validity like most of others do).

Creating a Homepage

The next task was to create a homepage. He could not find out how to do that for a long time.

My friend started browsing various Help pages, but did not find any information on how to create a homepage. He also thought that help pages are not very informative. He said that he did not understand a few of them at all.

English is not his native language, so he has asked me to translate some parts of help pages to Lithuanian (this is his native language). He finally understood them but he said that it would be better if those help pages would be translated into Lithuanian. He also explained that this may be one of reasons why MoinMoin wiki is not very popular among Lithuanian Internet users (I would like to say that it is totally unknown to all my mates too, even those who are interested in IT or programming).

When he finally found out how to create own homepage in the wiki, he said that it was very easy to do that, but he had to do a lot of searching. The mate tried to change his homepage and assigned it's category to CategoryHomepage. The page was already assigned to this category, so CategoryHomepage showed twice in his newly created page. He wondered why it is duplicated.

He repeated his notice about the default text font again. "It is really too large", my helpmate said. He manually made it smaller. When he was editing his page (in the GUI mode), he said that it is very similar to Microsoft Word, therefore very easy.

He tried to create a simple table and repeated his last comment once again. I asked him to try to edit the page in the Text mode and to compare it with the GUI mode. He thought that the Text mode is too simple and the GUI mode is much more usable. My friend kept repeating that those repetitious TextChas are very nerve-wracking.

Opinion About Themes

At the end of his monologue he tried different available themes. After trying them he said: „They are not very impressive and the right sidebar could be on the left (rightsidebar theme)".

He also took a look at other web pages which were using MoinMoin. He liked Ubuntu theme most of all. Finally, I asked him if he would use this wiki for his personal purposes. He answered that he would not use it because it's design is too simple.

Experience of the Second User

General Impression

Now let's talk about another person. She was more satisfied with the MoinMoin wiki than the first one, but there were some criticism too. I should also mention that she knows English better than the first person, so it is easier for her to understand everything.

The first task for her was the same as for the first person: open moinmo.in in the browser and take a look around. She thought that the setout of wiki's parts is usable enough. She said that explanations are not too extended, but also they are understandable and not very difficult. She appreciated that everything is in one place and she did not have to do a lot of searching.

Like my first helpmate, she also noticed that wiki's design is too simple and looks quite boring. She wanted it to be more colorful and she thought that it would look better if there would be a few colored images. "They would brighten the wiki up and would improve the sight“, she said.

She noticed that the News section was at the bottom of the front page. She suggested to put them at the top after the Overview section. "The overall impression is quite good. Concentrated and handily put information is an advantage", she said in summary.

Then she started browsing through various wiki pages. Her opinion about them was like about the front page: "Pages are loading very fast, the navigation is convenient. The setout is similar to the setout of the front page. Everything is concrete and easily understandable."

Problems With Passwords

After this task she tried to create a new user account. She easily found out how to do that but then she experienced the same problem with her password like the first person.

She got a message saying it's too simple. She said that you should put a note about how long password should be and what symbols to use, because it took some time to figure out what kind of password she should use. It would be better to know this before setting the password so as a user would not have to repeat the process again and again.

She did not have any difficulties in setting other preferences, but she mentioned that other preferences could be better explained too.

Creating a Homepage

It took lots of time for her to find out how to create a new wiki page (homepage). She got quite nervous during this task like my first friend.

She said that it would be better to put a note how to create a new page or a link to the corresponding help page on the front page or in the user preferences or anywhere it is visible for new users so that they do not have to spend a lot of time to find out how to do that.

Editing the Homepage in GUI and Text Modes

Another task was to enter some more information into own home page and try different editing modes (Text and GUI).

"It is easy to enter some text, but it becomes more difficult when it comes to inserting URL's or images etc.", she said after trying to enter different kinds of information on her homepage. She had to search through help pages for that. She liked help pages because they are very informative and easily understandable.

When she was trying different editing modes about the Text and GUI modes she said "The Text mode seems more flexible than GUI, but it requires more experience, while the GUI mode is simpler to use and provides shortcuts for main commands, so it makes the work faster and easier, so the user do not have to spend a lot of time to read help pages."

She found entering URLs a bit tricky at first, but it became clear after a while.

Opinion About WikiSandBox

She easily found WikiSandBox which was needed for another task.

She said that it is not needed, because a user could use any other page for experiments but without saving them. And if the user would find his changes useful, he could immediately save them without doing any additional work (copying, pasting etc.).

But she also agreed that for an inexperienced user it might be better to try out editing WikiSandBox.

TextChas are Annoying

Her last note was about TextChas. She thought that it might be a good and effective anti-spam measure, but when you have to edit a lot of pages it is annoying.

She also agreed that the questions might be too difficult for new users, but they could easily find them in the wiki.

Conclusion

In conclusion, I would like to say that both my friends thought that the design of the MoinMoin wiki is too simple and it could be more colorful.

They also found that TextChas are annoying and the questions sometimes might be too hard to answer. Both of them liked the GUI editing mode more than the Text mode.

The opinions of my friends separated on most of other aspects of the page. The second one liked this wiki much more than the first one.