181–190 of 529 posts
So does anyone have a userscript to override the maximum line width? I have claustrophobia, and having text forced into narrow columns actively triggers it. Taking a look at the Basque Wikipedia, I can tell right here that it's completely unusable for me. I'm willing to pay real money for someone to write me a script to override it.
If 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…
> 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…
Interesting anecdote: Linguistically, Serbian and Croatian are almost identical, except for the obvious thing that Serbs write in Cyrillic alphabet, while Croatians use the Latin alphabet. Politically however? Holy what a can of worms. "Inevitably biased" is putting it mildly, outright history revisionism puts it better, and it has been twice a subject of widespread outrage: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2...
(in case it's relevant, I'm half Croat, and have a massive dislike against NDH supporters and any other fascist/fascist apologets)
If 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…
Direct link to one of the early adopter wikis: https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikip%C3%A9dia:Accueil_princip...
I don't know why they did that, now we have empty space on the left and right, it's really useless, why is it better than using the full screen? "Our second change introduces a maximum line width to our content on pages where reading is the focus, such as article pages and discussion pages. Research has shown that limiting the width can lead to better retention of the content itself, as well as a decrease in eye stra…
The research on line length is not new and it's certainly not BS. I'm sure that even you read better at 70 chars/line than 200.
I don't know why they did that, now we have empty space on the left and right, it's really useless, why is it better than using the full screen? "Our second change introduces a maximum line width to our content on pages where reading is the focus, such as article pages and discussion pages. Research has shown that limiting the width can lead to better retention of the content itself, as well as a decrease in eye stra…
No it isn’t. There’s ample research showing that shorter lines are more readable. Check out the sources on this page for more details: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Line_length
Amusingly, given the context, I haven't actually read any of those citations. However, he's pretty careful, so I take the claim seriously, though I'll ultimately withhold judgment. As far as I'm aware, no one has come back to point to a citation and show that it supports the result.
I don't know why they did that, now we have empty space on the left and right, it's really useless, why is it better than using the full screen? "Our second change introduces a maximum line width to our content on pages where reading is the focus, such as article pages and discussion pages. Research has shown that limiting the width can lead to better retention of the content itself, as well as a decrease in eye stra…
You haven't used a ultra widescreen monitor then. Reading Wikipedia (until today) on such screen was pretty hard, with sometimes a full paragraph on a single, long line. This change is much better. As for the sidebar (which you don't talk about, I realize) it's very useful for non-English speakers: it's easy to switch from the local page to the English one, and I've used it quite a lot. For switching to other languag…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think ideally there might be powerful features of the tool that take some time learning, and that's okay. But the tool itself should have simple features that can be used by a newcomer too. The tool itself should not be "overwhelming and difficult to understand" -- I mean "overwhelming" is never a plus, is it? The power-user features should be designed in such a way they don't scare off or interfere with more basic…
So I think Wikipedia's bar for use is pretty low. To bring it much lower (i.e. to Twitter or Facebook levels) might reduce quality because people will be more willing to make changes while requiring even less time investment. Wikipedia has wildly succeeded and mostly avoided the fate of other social media sites. We must tread very carefully to keep Wikipedia for future generations.
And I'm suspicious of the theory that a harder to use UI for editing results in higher quality content. I understand your theory that some people who would edit content maliciously or without proper care would be put off by a harder to use UI, but it's not obvious to me that it's true, or that it wouldn't be countered by putting off even more people who would have good intentions and take proper care, some of whom correct malicious content. When making decisions for a site that millions use, you probably don't want to make significant strategic decisions, like to intentionally not make the UI as easy to use as you can, based on hunches.
But anyway, wikipedians have actually had the opposite concern of yours for a while, rather than increasing to "too many" contributors, wikipedia seems to be losing contributors, and many see it as a problem. Both because you need enough contributors to maintain content, and because the self-image of wikipedia is that "anyone can edit", they actually want to make it accessible, not put barriers in the way.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Why_is_Wikipedia_los...
More info about who contributes to wikipedia is on the following page, which suggests about 132K users in the last 30 days. I don't know what the number is for how many users viewed wikipedia in the last 30 days but I'd guess far under 1% of wikipedia users make edits.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Who_writes_Wikipedia...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree very much in principle. The wikipedia desktop site is beautiful, functional, fast, and doesn't change every 6 months to chase trends (unlike every god-damn website today it seems). That being said I don't understand why the sidebar should be collapsible (and collapsed by default). It's just an extra click to access functionality with some people rely on (languages, for example, being probably one of the most…
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…
On the other hand, pages that stay in a narrow column in the middle when I widen the window really infuriate me, because I explicitly asked for wider columns and am not getting it.
MediaWiki has a skin system, and judging from other comments here this appears to be treated as a new skin, or an iteration of the already default "Vector" skin. There are several skins that have tried to tackle some of these problems in the past, notably Foreground: https://foreground.wikiproject.net/wiki/Main_Page Refreshed: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Skin:Refreshed and Timeless, which was a quasi-Wikimedia pro…