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Wikipedia is getting a new look

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Re: Wikipedia is getting a new look

#151

Post by tasogare »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #132
jdlrobson wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The language button is right at the top of the page. If anything its more accessible on mobile?

Well, it's secret on mobile. I had the same problem - I wanted to switch languages on mobile wikipedia, but the page appears to provide no way to do that. Functionality that has been carefully designed so you won't find it isn't really an improvement over functionality that isn't there.

> Functionality that has been carefully designed so you won't find it

The button is labeled 文A, which is quite common for translation service, and is just under an article title so it’s literally the most visible UI element. It’s difficult to make it more accessible than that...

Re: Wikipedia is getting a new look

#152

Post by blewboarwastake »

amirkdv wrote: post #135
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 almost never use the left hand side bar (and I have a feel almost no one does) The left sidebar has two killer features for me: 1. Finding canonical translations for technical terms. You need to know what the standard way to translate "hardware acceleration" or "differentiable manifold" is in French? Go to the wikipedia page and hover over the language switcher link in the left sidebar. Done. This has become one…

I second using Wikipedia for translating, most of the time is better than using a translator or using a dictionary and sometimes is the only option for more technical or specific terms.

I don't use it for comparing between languages much because I'm bilingual and my native tongue Wikipedia is not that big, but sometimes is really interesting to see the different perspectives.

Re: Wikipedia is getting a new look

#153

Post by thoughtleader31 »

amirkdv wrote: post #135
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 almost never use the left hand side bar (and I have a feel almost no one does) The left sidebar has two killer features for me: 1. Finding canonical translations for technical terms. You need to know what the standard way to translate "hardware acceleration" or "differentiable manifold" is in French? Go to the wikipedia page and hover over the language switcher link in the left sidebar. Done. This has become one…

I look at the different language wikis all the time for that reason (and because I'm a native Spanish speaker who prefers the English Wikipedia), but it's just routine to scroll to the language selection list completely ignoring the controls of the left pane, that I may have used twice in the last 10 years merely out of curiosity.

Re: Wikipedia is getting a new look

#154

Post by trynewideas »

WilTimSon wrote: post #62
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 think the only times I use it is to go to random articles, which can be quite fun if you're in the mood to discover new things. However,I couldn't tell you a single other function they have on that side bar even with a gun to my head. Just went to check it and apparently they let you print pages out as PDF, news to me. Wikipedia really doesn't advertise its features much.

Like almost every MediaWiki feature, there's a massive pile of Wikimedia drama behind it. They went through at least three major iterations, almost all behind the scenes, for exporting content for offline viewing, including PDF at all stages, and eventually kind of gave up.[1][2][3][4]

This also encompassed the mostly ill-fated PediaPress system to get printed books of wiki content collections, the Collections MediaWiki extension,[5] and various back-end rendering engines that came and went (some without ever being fully deployed in production).

All to have a link that, in the span from OCG to Proton, was made mostly redundant by browsers implementing "Print to PDF".

[1] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Offline_content_generator

[2] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:ElectronPdfService

[3] https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/tag/proton/

[4] Confusion over knowing who owns or maintains the PDF service: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T247310

[5] https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T256071

Re: Wikipedia is getting a new look

#156

Post by Eiriksmal »

amirkdv wrote: post #135
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 almost never use the left hand side bar (and I have a feel almost no one does) The left sidebar has two killer features for me: 1. Finding canonical translations for technical terms. You need to know what the standard way to translate "hardware acceleration" or "differentiable manifold" is in French? Go to the wikipedia page and hover over the language switcher link in the left sidebar. Done. This has become one…

I also find your first point to be a truly indispensable tool. How else do you know what they call carbon fiber in German? [0]

But the second is a touchy area. In fact, Wikipedia's co-founder recently wrote a blog post detailing how its neutral point-of-view policy has flopped, in the name of fighting false balance. [1] His examples are pretty embarrassing, but more important in that Google points human "Search Quality Raters" to Wikipedia to understand "reputation" and maintain a supposedly even political bias. [2]

[0] Kohlenstofffaserverstärkter Kunststoff, of course.

[1] https://larrysanger.org/2020/05/wikipedia-is-badly-biased/

[2] https://static.googleusercontent.com/media/guidelines.raterh... Pages 16-18

Re: Wikipedia is getting a new look

#157

Post by pityJuke »

drng wrote: post #86

If you have an account (and stay logged in) you can get some of the benefits described in the article with an alternative skin (collapsed menu, limited line width, maybe a better font). Check out the options in the Appearance section of your user preferences. I like MinervaNeue (sample page here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Anglo-Saxon_England... )

Wait, that's the Wikipedia Mobile layout, except with a lot more desktop functionality (and changes such as Talk Pages not being collapsed). They had this lying around the whole time?

Re: Wikipedia is getting a new look

#158

Post by Symbiote »

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…

The web/CSS is supposed to empower the user to make modifications to fit their own needs.

I have a Javascript bookmarklet to restyle a page if necessary. If I always needed it, I would set a user style sheet, or different default fonts.

Re: Wikipedia is getting a new look

#159

Post by Robotbeat »

jrochkind1 wrote: post #40
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!

I think ideally there might be powerful features of the tool that take some time learning, and that's okay. But the tool itself should have simple features that can be used by a newcomer too. The tool itself should not be "overwhelming and difficult to understand" -- I mean "overwhelming" is never a plus, is it? The power-user features should be designed in such a way they don't scare off or interfere with more basic…

So I think Wikipedia's bar for use is pretty low. To bring it much lower (i.e. to Twitter or Facebook levels) might reduce quality because people will be more willing to make changes while requiring even less time investment.

Wikipedia has wildly succeeded and mostly avoided the fate of other social media sites. We must tread very carefully to keep Wikipedia for future generations.

Re: Wikipedia is getting a new look

#160

Post by Robotbeat »

drchopchop wrote: post #51
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!

Wikipedia already contains a huge amount of "powerful" tools in the sidebar, that most casual users would never want to interact with. Upload file, recent changes, what links here, etc - pretty much all of these are irrelevant for people who aren't editors.

Except the whole point of Wikipedia is that everyone is potential an editor...
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