Wikipedia has come a long way since they started where anyone can go in and update the pages without having it verified...
Explore Wikipedia Like a Windows XP Desktop
111–120 of 127 posts
Re: Explore Wikipedia Like a Windows XP Desktop
#112Neato. I will never understand how microsoft settled on that vomit teal.
Re: Explore Wikipedia Like a Windows XP Desktop
#113This is kinda not dissimilar to old school 90’s yahoo.com.
Re: Explore Wikipedia Like a Windows XP Desktop
#114Having used Windows XP this bothers me because it's just slightly off.
Re: Explore Wikipedia Like a Windows XP Desktop
#115Incredibly beautiful, possibly because it maps so well to the mental model we typically use to organize knowledge in our heads. I don't know how we lost the folder/container vs. document/content iconography, and other things (like layout of items, sorting) during the shift to web applications.
This is why I frequently post about how I miss Gopher. It kind of forced this hierarchy.
Did you prefer the Yahoo/internet frontpage approach to google search though? I didn't, but I remember a time when it was a live debate. It has been interesting to see some sites like youtube or wikipedia evolve a quasi-hierarchical frontpage though.
Re: Explore Wikipedia Like a Windows XP Desktop
#116Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is why I frequently post about how I miss Gopher. It kind of forced this hierarchy.
Did you prefer the Yahoo/internet frontpage approach to google search though? I didn't, but I remember a time when it was a live debate. It has been interesting to see some sites like youtube or wikipedia evolve a quasi-hierarchical frontpage though.
I did. I made my own custom start page back in the day with frequently used searches, along with headlines, weather, stocks, etc. Instead of menus, it just divided topics using horizontal rules, much like an actual newspaper.
Re: Explore Wikipedia Like a Windows XP Desktop
#117Earlier quoted context omitted.
A folder system doesn't have to be strictly rigid, you can still have "symlinks" so the same article appearing in different folders (aka labels if you can easily duplicate content inside folders, but you retain the nested, drill-down approach)
Wikimedia Commons has this feature. Editors can manually bless certain combinations of traits as "subcategories". For example, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Paintings_of_cas... contains the subcategories "Paintings of castles by country" (nested hierarchy), "Frescos of castles" (a medium), "Paintings of Château de Chillon" (a subject), and "Young Knight in a Landscape by Carpaccio" (multiple views onto…
The Library of Congress uses both approaches, to an extent.
The cataloguing system uses a hierarchical classification, based on one originally developed by Thomas Jefferson, on whose initial donation the Library of Congress is based. This is known as the Library of Congress Classification, and is used to specifically locate a given title or work within the stacks, that is, each item has one and only one location.
There are also subject headings which are more tag-based, though also on a controlled vocabulary. A given work is given a (relatively small number) of subjects to which it's associated. These are not hierarchical, though of course the listing of subject headings itself follows a sequence. Unlike the classification, which assigns a single location to each work, the headings are a search aid to patrons searching for a set of related works within a subject heading, or facilitate branching of a search to possibly related subjects.
Tagging systems, especially ad hoc tags supplied by untrained users, are popular but tend to produce numerous issues over time. Not that formal systems (as with the LoC systems mentioned here) are immune to same. One feature of the LoC systems is that they've evolved processes for managing change over time. Examples would be terminology or classifications which are now deprecated, or of regions and polities which have changed or no longer exist (e.g., the Austro-Hungarian empire, the USSR), or of changes in underlying classifications (e.g., of chemical elements or of biological classifications, both of which have evolved significantly over the life of the Library of Congress).
The history of hierarchical information classifications is long and IMO fascinating, dating at least to Aristotle and his Categories, as well as numerous variants used in classifications of knowledge (such as Francis Bacon's) or encyclopedias, including Diderot's and Britannica.
Re: Explore Wikipedia Like a Windows XP Desktop
#118Honestly, a testament to current Wikipedia design, because while it's fun to click around it's literally impossible to find what you need in this kind of GUI. (Geofile explorer is simply baffling.)
What does Wikipedia do differently? I don't think I have ever used Wikipedia's internal navigation - if I want to find something I usually type 'XYZ wikipedia' into Google and click the first link.
I often use category links on the bottom or in the sidebar when researching. Also I use search, which doesn't work in this alternative GUI. Sometimes I check the article in another language.
Re: Explore Wikipedia Like a Windows XP Desktop
#119Earlier quoted context omitted.
> love how it loads instantly and feels smooth. Unlike Wikipedia these days.
Is this sarcasm? Doesn't Wikipedia look identical to 10 years ago and still load instantly?
It doesn't load very fast at all for me. Maybe they don't use a cdn close to my region, but each page load for me feels very sluggish.