User blog comment:Sarah Manley/Test the Expanded Wiki Navigation/@comment-3450419-20111009002707

I don't understand why the "on the wiki" tab is necessary. WikiActivity and random page can be returned to the top-right corner where they were happily situated. That contribute button that's there only contains duplicates of buttons already on the side rail, but if you guys are really keen on keeping it, why not just replace the "add a page" button beside the .WikiaPagesOnWikiModule with it? Even if you're not moving back the WikiActivity and random page buttons, there's at least space for an extra tab or two freed up.

If you just look at Alexa rankings for top traffic pages, none of them have buttons with duplicate functions arranged like this - not Google, not Yahoo!, Youtube, Facebook, and certainly not Wikipedia. That should say something about intuitive user interface design for pages catering to all sorts of users looking for all sorts of things - design choices which I personally don't see in certain aspects in this limited / beta release of this feature.

As I read, that navigation system is not touch-screen friendly - having the first generic staff-controlled tab open by default effectively hides the rest of the nav from users using such devices (iPhones, iPads - the high-end mobile and tablet market), otherwise they can at least see the first and most important tab on every wiki. Wikis have unique content that's their core, they're not about WikiActivity, random page, new photos, and chat, and whatnot. I'm not sure everybody would agree with design decisions of the feature development team with a first tab that presents (what's worse,) duplicate buttons which are already on the page.

Also, as suggested by Rappy4187, the buttons on the nav can also have drop-down arrows on the condition that they have a drop-down list assigned to them when hovered over, since all such menus on the Oasis skin has chevrons to indicate that they have drop-downs. Consistency in style, yes?

Otherwise IMO this update is one of the more helpful ones, as it would aid in navigating large wikis without having to resort to riffling through category trees. Smaller wikis could probably get by without the third-order lists altogether with full tabs to make the nav touch-screen friendly if and only if that first tab is fixed.

And please, address users' concerns properly, no matter how badly-formulated or angst-ridden or unreasonably-seeming their criticism is - we criticize because we care for our wikis. Sound design choices can and should always be defended with clarity, even if it's a link to a past post or a well-formulated boilerplate response to the same question, not by brushing it aside with a response like "No we will be keeping it for now". To a user who took their own time to comment on the feature to help improve it, that's nothing less than insulting.