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Explore Wikipedia's New Look

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Re: Explore Wikipedia's New Look

#151

Post by userbinator »

slimginz wrote: post #8

For people who don't like the new look, you can go to preferences->Appearance and select 'Vector (Legacy)'. It does require you to login first which is annoying but at least you can easily go back to the old look. Edit: You can also have it take up the entire width by hitting the button in the bottom right. Doesn't seem to remember the change for me though so hopefully they add that in soon.

Or you can just use custom CSS, which works not only here but on every site, and has been my preferred way of fixing/reverting horrible decisions.

Re: Explore Wikipedia's New Look

#152

Post by maxbond »

debesyla wrote: post #112
nsajko wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Text width is important, but this is not a solution, zooming and changing browser window geometry is.

I'm sorry, but zooming is just... dumb... at least for me, sorry. Having a giant text doesn't help the readability - at least for me :( And it's not like changing window size only when visting Wiki is a good solution too - it's nuisance to change window size when you came for a quick 30 second read. At least for me.

Accessibility is individual. I'll be reading Wikipedia articles at 200% now, like I do for virtually all one-column layouts. And this Wikipedia layout has good responsiveness, so no worries.

Re: Explore Wikipedia's New Look

#154

Post by pyth0 »

autoexec wrote: post #150
Willish42 wrote: post #76

> Research has shown that limiting the width of longform text leads to a more comfortable reading experience, and better retention of the content itself. Is this actually true? I'm curious if anybody has sources for this and if it's a common UX practice. I tend to use wider windows than traditional 8:9 half-screens and this max-width practice drives me nuts.

I guess it depends on the person. I'm happy to accept that I'm strange, but I'd much rather read lines that mostly fill my screen with normal margins on each side than short lines in a long narrow column surrounded by an ocean of empty whitespace. I can't be the only one who feels this way. I have yet to buy a book where 90% of each page is blank and there's just a tiny column of words down the middle of the page.

To be fair, the book example isn't really a 1:1 comparison because white space on a page translates to wasted $$.

Re: Explore Wikipedia's New Look

#155

Post by nayuki »

yellowapple wrote: post #101

This is all fine and dandy, but it baffles me that in the Year of Our Lord 2023 Wikipedia still insists on separate domains/URLs for mobile v. everything else.

Agreed so much with this. The "mobile version" should be triggered by the viewport size, not by the subdomain. I was hoping this site redesign would have unified the mobile and desktop sites.

Re: Explore Wikipedia's New Look

#156

Post by thaumasiotes »

ssnistfajen wrote: post #59
xeyownt wrote: post #55

Wikipedia is really becoming awesome, and for me is really a Wonder of the modern world. Combined with tools like ChatGPT (or improved variants) for high quality translation of any article in any language, or combining submissions in several languages, or to get summaries or interactive explanations on some subject, this will become the most powerful tool of knowledge in history.

Lots of Wikipedia articles have become well-cited but that façade begins to break down as we dive into more niche topics. Editor wars are real and impossible to resolve most of the time due to how obsessive the involved parties are. Some of them are rather damaging to what narrative is being shaped on some of these articles. The power to control edit access rests in a small group of administrators/moderators who are…

> Lots of Wikipedia articles have become well-cited but that façade begins to break down as we dive into more niche topics.

A lot of the time they're just making the citation up. Wikipedia's page on French toast says this:

> The earliest known reference to French toast is in the Apicius, a collection of Latin recipes dating to the 1st century CE, where it is described as simply aliter dulcia 'another sweet dish.'[8] The recipe says to "Break [slice] fine white bread, crust removed, into rather large pieces which soak in milk [and beaten eggs] fry in oil, cover with honey and serve".[9]

The problem is that the reference to eggs doesn't exist in the Apicius. It comes from an "augmented translation" that was written in 1936; the eggs are original content from that "translation". The sidebar's claim that French toast originates in the Roman empire is a lie, and so is the claim that French toast appears in the Apicius.

This has been noted on the associated talk page forever, but (apparently) so what?

More on the obscure end of things, I'm also annoyed by the page on Chen Shimei ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chen_Shimei_and_Qin_Xianglian ). It claims that Chen Shimei, a stock dramatic character which the page itself dates to 1594, is represents an attempt at character assassination against an official of the Qing dynasty, which began in the mid-17th century.

The claim (that the fictional character is based on a historical person) used to be cited to a newspaper article which did not itself cite anything. That citation has since been removed, but the claim lives on in the page without even a fig leaf citation.

Re: Explore Wikipedia's New Look

#157

Post by l- »

dangus wrote: post #40
wolpoli wrote: post #37

I don't like the extra padding that every designer is adding into every web site and application. I need to keep multiple sites/apps on my screen as I need to look at references, work on my tasks, and communicate with others. but every designer thinks I should maximize their site/app. It's forcing me to resize and move windows all the time.

The article addresses this by mentioning that they referenced research demonstrating text that is too wide causes people to read less comfortably and retain less information. The page gets much less padded when you reduce the size of the window, because the padding isn't there to make blank space, it's there to enforce a maximum line width.

> text that is too wide causes people to read less comfortably and retain less information.

This seems like an excuse to force JS to enable ads & what should be the default that is toggled with the fullscreen button in the bottom right. It does not justify wasted width as the user can more easily set the text to the appropriate zoom than applying some custom CSS:

  .mw-page-container {
    max-width: none !important;
  }
  .mw-content-container {
    max-width: none !important;
  }
Zooming in now decreases the padding on the right, but has an offsetting increase in the wasted padding on the left contents until it completely disappears with huge text.

Re: Explore Wikipedia's New Look

#158

Post by SECProto »

maxbond wrote: post #152
debesyla wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sorry, but zooming is just... dumb... at least for me, sorry. Having a giant text doesn't help the readability - at least for me :( And it's not like changing window size only when visting Wiki is a good solution too - it's nuisance to change window size when you came for a quick 30 second read. At least for me.

Accessibility is individual. I'll be reading Wikipedia articles at 200% now, like I do for virtually all one-column layouts. And this Wikipedia layout has good responsiveness, so no worries.

You could also just log in to an account and set your own theme. My account is still one the 2005 theme as it works best for me.

Re: Explore Wikipedia's New Look

#159

Post by dotnet00 »

Ewww what's with this terrible trend of wasting the majority of the screen space on a 16:9 monitor like this. Let it fit the window width, if someone needs it to be narrow let it adjust itself appropriately.
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