"We hope you will find it interesting."
Why the guillotine on these guys? I think they contributed something meaningful to the discussion. You don't have to like it to be respectful.
Wikipedia Redefined
101–110 of 305 posts
Re: Wikipedia Redefined
#102Agghhh, it's like they're making it web-3.0-y with all the giant logos/buttons and a massive toolbar. I already hate sites enough that cram a whole load of fat things above the actual content. Especially sharing buttons. I KNOW HOW TO COPY A URL DAMMIT!
Re: Wikipedia Redefined
#103I work at Wikia, which means I work with MediaWiki every day. I was kind of offended by how naive New is New is being. I don't think they have any grasp on the sort of massive scope changes like this would require. Wikipedia is not MediaWiki's only consumer. A lot of communities that use MediaWiki are extremely conservative about the UI, so some of the conservatism is by design. The WikiMedia Foundation is working on…
I don't think they're proposing changes to Mediawiki, they're proposing changes to the look of Wikipedia. While they may be synonomous, one is the software, one is the organization that uses the software.
Wikipedia could change the template for their version of the site, without affecting MW at all.
Re: Wikipedia Redefined
#104This is a smart idea by these folks, it's generating buzz for their firm and likely helped them improve their branding chops as they thought through this.
I found the way they presented it deferential and respectful enough, why trash their effort? Of course these fantasy redesigns are naive and mostly impractical, but there may also be some decent/helpful ideas being suggested. Do you think Wikipedia is worse off for all of us discussing how it might be improved?
I like unsolicited redesigns so long as the people behind them aren't snide or arrogant in the way they present them (I can see why the NY Times redesign irked people).
Re: Wikipedia Redefined
#105Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It does not have, as its primary goal, the delight of random web users. But it could. And that's really the point of this exercise: showing one way that it could additionally delight users, on top of providing the critical functionality it already does. Delighting users is one step up[1] from what Wikipedia does right now. Yes, they're doing something of fundamental importance to the human race. But does that mean…
I think it already delights users. Wikipedia is so absolutely content and hyperlink driven that it hardly needs much else. It's immense popularity and ubiquity is proof of that. I draw my delight not from some invasive graphics and UI work, but from the fact that when I want to read about Pyramids, I click a link on Google to Pyramids (or on the Wikipedia front page) and ALL I SEE IS PYRAMIDS. No other UI, no other s…
A great observation is that having access to the content provided by Wikipedia is a delight in and of itself. That's a fantastic starting point for investigating, then, how you can enhance that experience with great design.
These guys did that with this brief. It's not the right answer, but it does raise some interesting questions. How do you design a more delightful Wikipedia without damaging the content? Because surely you agree that certain elements of Wikipedia - like editing pages, for instance - could use a good bit of delight here and there.
Re: Wikipedia Redefined
#106You'd probably want any redesign of Wikipedia to start with the understanding that the front page of the English Wikipedia isn't WWW.WIKIPEDIA.ORG, it's EN.WIKIPEDIA.ORG, and that that page is dominated by content --- most notably the WP Featured Articles, which are a core part of the Wikipedia community. Draw the pretty colored lines after you grok the concept. It goes downhill for me as they try to get more technic…
Anecdotally, the overwhelming majority of people who I've observed using Wikipedia go to www.wikipedia.com and then select "English".
But does it matter what language is more popular? That is not what Wikipedia is about, really
Re: Wikipedia Redefined
#107Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think it already delights users. Wikipedia is so absolutely content and hyperlink driven that it hardly needs much else. It's immense popularity and ubiquity is proof of that. I draw my delight not from some invasive graphics and UI work, but from the fact that when I want to read about Pyramids, I click a link on Google to Pyramids (or on the Wikipedia front page) and ALL I SEE IS PYRAMIDS. No other UI, no other s…
A great observation is that having access to the content provided by Wikipedia is a delight in and of itself. That's a fantastic starting point for investigating, then, how you can enhance that experience with great design. These guys did that with this brief. It's not the right answer, but it does raise some interesting questions. How do you design a more delightful Wikipedia without damaging the content? Because su…
At issue here is that many of the things they choose to pour their delighting syrup over are fundamental to the way the project is managed. We probably don't need to litigate whether MediaWiki's UX could be improved; it can. "How?" is the operative question; one clear answer is probably "Not this way."
Re: Wikipedia Redefined
#108You'd probably want any redesign of Wikipedia to start with the understanding that the front page of the English Wikipedia isn't WWW.WIKIPEDIA.ORG, it's EN.WIKIPEDIA.ORG, and that that page is dominated by content --- most notably the WP Featured Articles, which are a core part of the Wikipedia community. Draw the pretty colored lines after you grok the concept. It goes downhill for me as they try to get more technic…
Agreed. But I like the highlighting, saving of snippets and history-tracking ideas. I would find that very useful for myself, beyond the "oh sweet I didn't know it could do that" but for real "now where did I once read that?" purposes.
Is it a good idea for a design shop to propose features that would beg huge numbers of otherwise passive consumers of the encyclopedia to register accounts? Because you'd have to do that, to get highlighting and bookmarking.
Re: Wikipedia Redefined
#109I work at Wikia, which means I work with MediaWiki every day. I was kind of offended by how naive New is New is being. I don't think they have any grasp on the sort of massive scope changes like this would require. Wikipedia is not MediaWiki's only consumer. A lot of communities that use MediaWiki are extremely conservative about the UI, so some of the conservatism is by design. The WikiMedia Foundation is working on…
Wow, I had no idea that Wikia ran on MediaWiki. I have usually avoided wikia wikis because they always seemed harder to use than Wikipedia. Now that I look closer, I can see the similarities.
What is the Wikia fractal?
Re: Wikipedia Redefined
#110The biggest problem I have with this sort of thing -- actually probably the whole field(s) of UI/UX design -- is that there is no actual prototype but it seems like they are implying that the programmers didn't include any of those features because they didn't think of them, and that now the real work for the 'redesign' has been done. As if the hard part was making a bunch of pictures. So this whole thing really irri…
I think the basic principle of visual simplicity is going to stick around. I do think there's some faddish elements to the adoption though. I like dropping 3d. Embracing the two dimensional property of the screen seems well founded. I doubt the monochrome is permanent: we can simply convey more information with color. I'm conflicted on the lack of labels. They are undoubtedly useful, but do visually clutter the screen. To speculate I suspect that if eye tracking come into wide usage tooltip like extra contextual information on the focus of attention could take over almost completely.