Dark mode on Wikipedia would be so amazing!
Wikipedia is getting a new look
301–310 of 529 posts
Re: Wikipedia is getting a new look
#302Re: Wikipedia is getting a new look
#303Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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 Quali…
> How else do you know what they call carbon fiber in German? [0]
> [0] Kohlenstofffaserverstärkter Kunststoff, of course.
Well, it actually not that simple :)
Kohlenstofffaserverstärkter Kunststoff[1] is carbon fiber reinforced polymer[2]. But it seems like carbon fiber is also used as a short hand for carbon fiber reinforced polymer. Similarly, Germans often call Kohlenstofffaserverstärkter Kunststoff just Karbon.
But the translation of the technical term carbon fiber[3] is just Kohlenstofffaser[4] (which is quite a literal translation).
But indeed, it is really nice how transparent that is when looking that the wikipedia articles.
[1] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kohlenstofffaserverst%C3%A4rkt... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_fiber_reinforced_polyme... [3]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_fibers [4] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kohlenstofffaser
Re: Wikipedia is getting a new look
#304Earlier quoted context omitted.
The sole critique of the UX of Wikipedia that I have is that the normal version of Wikipedia redirects you to the mobile version when using a mobile device, and changes the URL while doing so. This is why we end up with all these m.wikipedia links. The mobile version, however, does not redirect you to the normal page when using a normal computer. So people like myself constantly have to edit the "m." from wikipedia l…
I honestly think they were exploring replacing the desktop version with mobile at some point and used desktop m. removal as a gauge of aversion to the change.
That can't be true because the mobile version doesn't allow access to all of Wikipedia's functionality, such as talk pages, unless they've made some serious changes. (More precisely, I don't remember there being any way to get from an article to the article's talk page without editing the URL in the mobile version.)
Re: Wikipedia is getting a new look
#305Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Okay but that's an issue with UX and discoverability which is very different from "language editions isn’t there at all". How would you solve this given the limited space? A label saying languages is the mosy obvious but real estate is a little limited. I'd hope that if the icon was prominent in desktop with a label that would reinforce its discoverability.
> How would you solve this given the limited space? A label saying languages is the mosy obvious but real estate is a little limited.
Try looking at a wikipedia page on your phone. You could replace the 文A button with one that said "antidisestablishmentarianism" and there would still be plenty of space. It's floating at the left of an empty row.
Re: Wikipedia is getting a new look
#306Wikiwand[1] is something I've been using for a while that makes Wikipedia a bit nicer to look at. The concerns others have voiced about the long line length are addressed by this plugin. It also has a great table of contents on the left. Other things, I think wikipedia.org does better. Excited to see the changes! [1] https://www.wikiwand.com/
Thank you. I've never seen wikiwand before but it is a big improvement. It is missing those pop over windows that wikipedia has when you hover over a link though.
Re: Wikipedia is getting a new look
#307Earlier 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 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 Heb…
> Wikipedia is difficult to read due to the small font and large column width.
Narrow columns make text hard to read due to the eye being unable to see whole sentences at once. It's like the "Dick and Jane" books of old: "See Spot! See Spot Run! Run Spot Run!" Books for adults aren't written like that (as print novels attest) and there's a good reason.
Re: Wikipedia is getting a new look
#308Great to see Wikipedia thinking about improving its design.
I've been working on a completely integrated Wikipedia/Wikidata/+more system for about a year now. Please check it out here: https://conze.pt
There are also screenshots of the development progress on Twitter: https://twitter.com/conzept__
Re: Wikipedia is getting a new look
#309Earlier quoted context omitted.
There is a setting to disable it. You're welcome.
Setting? Where?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Preferences#mw-prefsec...
Uncheck "Enable Media Viewer" and then click "Save" at the very bottom.
Re: Wikipedia is getting a new look
#310If 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…
Remember that Mediawiki (MW) is not just Wikipedia (WP and co.) I run several MW instances and the sitewide sidebar is fully customisable which is handy. Many users are used to the LHS holding "tools". You could also/instead put a hierarchy tree of say categories in it.
I'm not absolutely sure but I think you might even be able to create your own user version of the sidebar if you create a suitably named user page. I'm not sure what WP sites allow you to do but MW has a lot of user customisation options built in.