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Explore Wikipedia's New Look

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Re: Explore Wikipedia's New Look

#171

Post by awepoiufjwaeoip »

65 wrote: post #170

If you hate it, it's probably because it's different . You'll get used to it. It's similar to how every time a company re-designs their logo, there's always a huge backlash solely because it's change, and people do not like change. It's a really nice improvement from the previous design.

> If you hate it, it's probably because it's different.

No, the only thing I actually hate is that the main page has plenty of space on the side to show the sidebar, yet I still have to click it in order to get it to open up and see "Current Events".

I don't dislike it because it's different, I dislike it because it is measurably slower to do something I used to do in one click. THERE IS NOTHING THERE WHEN THE SIDEBAR IS COLLAPSED.

Re: Explore Wikipedia's New Look

#172

Post by a1371 »

Never occurred to me how better it feels with the table of content on the side, even though that's a common thing in document processors. UX is the ultimate one-way function. Hard to make right, easy to judge.

Re: Explore Wikipedia's New Look

#173

Post by impalallama »

feels modern, but modern in a very web center way that i feel like very 2020s. it feels overly minimalist in a way that looks good in design sheets. love the table of contents on the side dont care for the modern trend of removing any and all color separation between distinct portions of the page.

Re: Explore Wikipedia's New Look

#174

Post by rising-sky »

> Research has shown that limiting the width of longform text leads to a more comfortable reading experience, and better retention of the content itself

Surprised they did not include a citation for this research...

Re: Explore Wikipedia's New Look

#175

Post by [deleted] »

542458 wrote: post #163
Night_Thastus wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For whatever reason, especially with a bigger screen, I find that wider text becomes uncomfortable and somewhat exhausting to read. I'm not sure what the right portions/ratio are, but with a 27in screen it's definitely noticeable.

This has been studied a lot in design. Most people prefer line lengths in the 50-60 character region. Some studies show lengths up to 75 to be appropriate, but that’s about the limit. Past that people have a hard time keeping track of where they are and find reading to take more effort.

[deleted]

Re: Explore Wikipedia's New Look

#176

Post by geokon »

ashton314 wrote: post #7

My initial take: I actually like this a lot. The body text is narrower which makes for easier reading. The sidebar with an updating highlight of current place in document is really nice too. I don't mind the "wasted space": Wikipedia is primarily about reading, and any well typeset book or web page should have generous margins so the line length is not too long.

Why not just have multiple columns of text instead of half a screen of emptyness and stuff users rarely interact with?

You could arrange the different wiki sections to be side by side.. in a dynamic responsive way depending on device/screen size

Re: Explore Wikipedia's New Look

#177

Post by PopePompus »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #156
ssnistfajen wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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]…

You can fix these errors if you want to. Anyone can edit Wikipedia.

Re: Explore Wikipedia's New Look

#178

Post by robertoandred »

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.

Books aren’t as big as monitors.

Long lines of text force you to move your eyes and/or head side to side every time you go from one line to the next.

Re: Explore Wikipedia's New Look

#179

Post by goldbattle »

rising-sky wrote: post #174

> Research has shown that limiting the width of longform text leads to a more comfortable reading experience, and better retention of the content itself Surprised they did not include a citation for this research...

It seems they link to a discussion page [1], which references this document (I can't find a published version):

    Computer text line lengths affect reading and learning 
    Peter Orton
    https://cdn.tc-library.org/Edlab/eye-tracking%20article.pdf
But it seems that Peter Orton has published quite a few works in this area [2], [3]. Specifically [3] seems to note that with a less wide text column width readers are not statistically significant faster (but are a bit), but do see that for difficult reading content, the shorter width requires less re-reading then a wider one along with significantly better retention of the contents of the document.

[1] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Reading/Web/Desktop_Improveme...

[2] https://www.scienceopen.com/document_file/671b2d53-73ce-4a91...

[3] https://sci-hub.se/https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007...

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