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Wikipedia is getting a new look

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Re: Wikipedia is getting a new look

#101

Post by FpUser »

Uehreka wrote: post #19

If someone asked me to critique the UX of Wikipedia, the first two things I’d point out would be that I almost never use the left hand side bar (and I have a feel almost no one does) and that when paragraphs are that wide they become harder to read (especially when they snake around floated images). Not changing for 10 years, watching as some trends fade and others become law-of-the-land, and then making two changes…

"Not changing for 10 years..."

I absolutely love that part about Wikipedia.

Re: Wikipedia is getting a new look

#102

Post by buovjaga »

Uehreka wrote: post #19

If someone asked me to critique the UX of Wikipedia, the first two things I’d point out would be that I almost never use the left hand side bar (and I have a feel almost no one does) and that when paragraphs are that wide they become harder to read (especially when they snake around floated images). Not changing for 10 years, watching as some trends fade and others become law-of-the-land, and then making two changes…

The article refers to this: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Reading/Web/Desktop_Improveme...

From what I can see, this particular change is already live in https://fr.wikipedia.org/

Re: Wikipedia is getting a new look

#103

Post by jbay808 »

jrochkind1 wrote: post #36

The detail page for the first feature they mention, limiting line-width [1], makes me think: Wow, it sure takes a lot of analysis and discussion to make what is a pretty straightforward and simple change. (Recall, too, this has been in the works for at least a year? And still isn't deployed to English wikipedia?) Which makes me realize there's sort of an ironic situation. When a site is beginning and small, you don't…

That might be in part because survivorship bias substitutes (in a good way!) for consideration.

For example, if a hundred new bakeries open each year, each one baking bread according to a recipe that the baker just kind of randomly put together without much thought, and ten years on, one of those bakeries is now drawing customers far and wide and five-star reviews, it makes sense to carefully consider any changes to the recipe even though it was only randomly thrown together in the first place. It might just be a winning formula that is the secret underlying their success.

Of course it might be their customer service, their casual atmosphere, or their good location that has driven that success, not the bread recipe. But it's hard to know for sure. So changes need to be done very carefully if at all!

Re: Wikipedia is getting a new look

#104

Post by G4BB3R »

Uehreka wrote: post #19

If someone asked me to critique the UX of Wikipedia, the first two things I’d point out would be that I almost never use the left hand side bar (and I have a feel almost no one does) and that when paragraphs are that wide they become harder to read (especially when they snake around floated images). Not changing for 10 years, watching as some trends fade and others become law-of-the-land, and then making two changes…

I use a lot to switch between portuguese, esperanto and english. Portuguese to read national/local articles, esperanto for every other and english when the other two have incomplete articles.

Re: Wikipedia is getting a new look

#105

Post by Macha »

SusAnnie wrote: post #52

While there might be a lot of current users who feel like “if it’s not broke why fit it?”, there are a lot of whys it can be improved (some previous commenters have already linked some great research to how line length improves readability). As someone who is very dyslexic, I can say that Wikipedia is incredibly difficult to read, navigate and use effectively as a resource. It is not organized in a way that is easy t…

I think given the historical overlap between Wikimedia and Fandom (formerly Wikia) execs and the overlap between Wikimedia and Fandom editors, there's not a lot of trust for anyone announcing a wiki redesign

Re: Wikipedia is getting a new look

#106

Post by rmetzler »

cuddlybacon wrote: post #89
thibran wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I almost never use the left hand side bar (and I have a feel almost no one does) If you speak different languages, the left hand bar is very useful to switch between different language versions of an article.

True. But the gif in the article indicates they intend to move the language selector to a more prominent location.

While the language selection on mobile Wikipedia is in a very prominent spot, I often struggle to find it, because it’s just some Asian sign I can’t make sense of. I hope they don’t do this on desktop too.

Re: Wikipedia is getting a new look

#107

Post by jbay808 »

tomtheelder wrote: post #31
tspike wrote: post #10

> the wide range of functionality on the site can feel overwhelming and difficult to understand I guess it must just be my lengthy history with the web, but this line is like nails on a blackboard to me. It's OK to have to learn how to use powerful tools!

Having to learn how to use powerful tools is absolutely fine when the tool is a specific one designed to be used by power users. For something like Wikipedia for whom the bulk of the audience visits briefly and occasionally to grab information, it's not a good thing. I think a lot of us are scarred by changes like these to our "power tools," which can be incredibly frustrating, but Wikipedia is a different beast. You…

That seems obvious but it's not necessarily true. It seems to be an increasingly popular philosophy in this data-driven era of telemetry though, so I'd like to offer a counterpoint.

I want Wikipedia to be as convenient as possible for the editors/authors, even if most users are readers. The authors -- even as a small minority of users -- create the content that, in turn, attracts the readers.

It's possible that alienating authors to prioritize the reader experience ends up driving away readers through the second-order effect of driving away authors.

(I'm not saying that these particular Wikimedia changes are an example of this, just illustrating a mechanism by which prioritizing the experience of the majority of users can end up harming them in the long run, because second order effects are important too. Wikimedia seems to have thought carefully here, which is good).

An extreme example of this philosophy would be noticing that the vast majority of your users never touch the edit button, and so getting rid of it entirely to streamline the interface for everyone else.

Re: Wikipedia is getting a new look

#109

Post by mrguyorama »

DanBC wrote: post #14
Thaxll wrote: post #6

I don't know why they did that, now we have empty space on the left and right, it's really useless, why is it better than using the full screen? "Our second change introduces a maximum line width to our content on pages where reading is the focus, such as article pages and discussion pages. Research has shown that limiting the width can lead to better retention of the content itself, as well as a decrease in eye stra…

> why is it better than using the full screen? Are you saying you only have one window open at a time?

Modern operating systems only give you one mouse cursor and one focus at a time. What are you doing in the other windows when you are trying to read wikipedia?

Re: Wikipedia is getting a new look

#110

Post by pmachinery »

Uehreka wrote: post #19

If someone asked me to critique the UX of Wikipedia, the first two things I’d point out would be that I almost never use the left hand side bar (and I have a feel almost no one does) and that when paragraphs are that wide they become harder to read (especially when they snake around floated images). Not changing for 10 years, watching as some trends fade and others become law-of-the-land, and then making two changes…

> I’ll also note that they definitely have changed some UX stuff over the past 10 years.

The mouseover popup/tooltip for links showing a brief snippet of other articles is so great that I find it irritating when other sites don't have it.

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