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Wikipedia is getting a new look

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Re: Wikipedia is getting a new look

#211

Post by systemvoltage »

userbinator wrote: post #189
systemvoltage wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Design should not be trendy. It is not fashion. I hope we don't bloat up wikipedia pages with too much whitespace. Getting of borders, "minimal" looks bother me so much because they're sacrificing layout for aesthetics. There is a reason why borders exist. It is a line segment that separates logically laid out content into groups. I want Wikipedia to stay the same even if it is not ideal. There is a lot of legacy and…

I don't understand why people complain about line length when that really means you should just resize the window to your preference. On the other hand, pages that stay in a narrow column in the middle when I widen the window really infuriate me, because I explicitly asked for wider columns and am not getting it.

I thought about resizing the window, but then most websites slap you with a hamburger menu and neuter the interface.

The web is such a shit place in terms of design. This is probably why I like reading books and magazines in print. At least the lay out is done by a professional who doesn't have a title "UX/UI" designer and doesn't have a Behance/Dribble portfolio. These people are professionals and they conduct themselves as such.

Re: Wikipedia is getting a new look

#212

Post by baby »

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 the left side bars to switch languages all the time

Re: Wikipedia is getting a new look

#213

Post by bernulli »

anyfoo wrote: post #202
Eiriksmal wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 Quali…

Though that’s a rather technical term for carbon fiber that I suspect nobody uses when speaking or even writing to each other in a less formal context. I’ve heard it being called just “Carbon”, pronounced with a long “o”, frequently. Since the translation for the generic element, carbon, is “Kohlenstoff”, and that word is very commonly used, the opportunities for confusion between carbon and carbon fiber is less than…

In my experience 'Kohlefaser' is a pretty common technical term, I've only ever encountered 'Karbon' w.r.t. bicycles (but that just be my limited view).

Re: Wikipedia is getting a new look

#214

Post by jeromegv »

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've never realized how often I do both scenarios but now that you said it, that's exactly right, it is very useful. Being multi-lingual myself, the benefit of the switching language is not just for bias but also because some topics are just more expanded in other languages. I keep Google in English so obviously English wikipedia articles are the ones showing up, but let's say I look at some francophone music artist, i'm more likely to get a longer wikipedia page once I switch to French.

Re: Wikipedia is getting a new look

#215

Post by grumple »

systemvoltage wrote: post #77
andrepd wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree very much in principle. The wikipedia desktop site is beautiful, functional, fast, and doesn't change every 6 months to chase trends (unlike every god-damn website today it seems). That being said I don't understand why the sidebar should be collapsible (and collapsed by default). It's just an extra click to access functionality with some people rely on (languages, for example, being probably one of the most…

Design should not be trendy. It is not fashion. I hope we don't bloat up wikipedia pages with too much whitespace. Getting of borders, "minimal" looks bother me so much because they're sacrificing layout for aesthetics. There is a reason why borders exist. It is a line segment that separates logically laid out content into groups. I want Wikipedia to stay the same even if it is not ideal. There is a lot of legacy and…

> I hope we don't bloat up wikipedia pages with too much whitespace. Getting of borders, "minimal" looks bother me so much because they're sacrificing layout for aesthetics. There is a reason why borders exist. It is a line segment that separates logically laid out content into groups.

Wikipedia is difficult to read due to the small font and large column width. Even with the updated versions (I checked French and Hebrew since I can read them) - the column width is in the acceptable range, but the font is too small to be comfortable on a 4k screen. 14px font is a thing of the past. I see Medium, with their thinner columns and 21px font as much more readable.

Re: Wikipedia is getting a new look

#216

Post by StillBored »

Please, since someone from wikipedia is probably reading this: Keep the JavaScript to a minimum. The plans aren't clear to me, but given what sites like reddit/etc have done during their "updates" the new UI's are terrible on anything that isn't a top of the line device with a screaming fast internet connection. Wikipedia (and a few other "older" sites) is such a pleasure to use as is, don't ruin it.

AKA round-tripping 1000 times sucks on high latency connections, and my little atom based tablets/a53 based phones/etc choke on those sites and its absolutely miserable trying to use them.

So, put some effort into measuring the before/after and making sure that the download/render times remain in the same ballpark on older devices/connections.

Re: Wikipedia is getting a new look

#217

Post by cxr »

exacube wrote: post #161
krick wrote: post #147

I'm pretty confident I don't want this. I'd like to be proven wrong, but there was maybe a couple of cases among hundreds when perfectly working UI was actually improved instead of fucking broken by "getting a new look". What I actually would like to be improved is how the data is represented internally. Let's face it, it has been a long time since Wikipedia has become the largest and most accessible knowledge base i…

Friend, they are using data and research to improve their UI. Thinking that "other products didnt do it well so you shouldn't try" is extremely unproductive. It's also not productive to argue for a vastly more difficult and different area, like their data model, during a topic of refreshing UI..

Data representation is UI.

Re: Wikipedia is getting a new look

#218

Post by webmaven »

kossTKR wrote: post #178
tasogare wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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...

Pretty sure 99 out of a 100 don't know what "文A" means. I've had the same complaint, - never once did it occurs to me that "文A" meant translation. This to me is a testament to the fact that most buttons should actually be text unless extremely common like the hamburger menu, but even that's debatable.

> This to me is a testament to the fact that most buttons should actually be text unless extremely common like the hamburger menu, but even that's debatable.

I agree, especially on mobile (even in 2020, many users — who often just got used to the hamburger menu — don't realize that the vertical ellipsis is a symbol for "menu" or "more options", it often just looks like a random decoration to them), although on a desktop website or app you (hopefully) have the option of hovering the mouse pointer (even accidentally) over any unfamiliar bit of UI gubbins to get a clue.

I'll note though that the specific example of "文A" is, in fact, a text label. The first Chinese glyph even translates as "text".

Re: Wikipedia is getting a new look

#220

Post by MayeulC »

kossTKR wrote: post #178
tasogare wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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...

Pretty sure 99 out of a 100 don't know what "文A" means. I've had the same complaint, - never once did it occurs to me that "文A" meant translation. This to me is a testament to the fact that most buttons should actually be text unless extremely common like the hamburger menu, but even that's debatable.

Well, it has one merit at the very least: regardless of the interface language, you will find that button.
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