Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Wikipedia Redefined

wikipediaredefined.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

191–200 of 305 posts

Re: Wikipedia Redefined

#191

Post by danenania »

wyclif wrote: post #129
pirateking wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Also the capital "I" in the font they're using is killing me. This is the main thing I remember after reading what seemed like an otherwise interesting study.

Also, there's a grammatical error: "We check our mail dozen times a day." No. We check our mail a dozen times a day.

Not to spoil the pile on, but I think that's just a mistake. You know, the kind humans make?

That said, I agree the redesign is misguided. But it's certainly gotten them some attention.

Re: Wikipedia Redefined

#194

Post by prodigal_erik »

csense wrote: post #55
citricsquid wrote: post #13

copying my comment from reddit: If a user doesn't recognise the word "English" then they are not going to have any idea what language select. The reason the languages are all listed on the page without any interaction needed is so someone can look at the webpage and recognise their language and select it without having to understand anything else. How do I access the main page of a wiki? This isn't redefined, it's ju…

The existing front-page looks like it should work in browsers with JS disabled (though I have not personally tested this). We should think carefully about the possible consequences of Wikipedia dropping support for no-JS browsers.

It does. Being properly engineered, it's semantically accessible with any browser or scraper or mashup. Sacrificing that for a site as important as Wikipedia doesn't even deserve serious consideration.

Re: Wikipedia Redefined

#196

Post by owyn »

DHowett wrote: post #165
tptacek wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm more worried about their database servers melting, since the overwhelming amount of traffic Wikipedia handles today is passive consumption. If you think highlighting and bookmarking of Wikipedia articles is extremely valuable --- and maybe it is! --- go start a site backed by Wikipedia's content. In the places where it actually counts, Wikipedia has bent over backwards to be helpful to developers.

Well, they're already trying to quell the flames of their database servers by heavyhandedly deleting articles that they find non-notable. The unfortunate truth of the matter is that, given infinite time, they will have to fight all these fires eventually. To delay the inevitable by not actively encouraging user registration is a disservice to the entire editorial platform.

That's not why stuff gets deleted from wikipedia, the USERS do that, because they have processes and policies which encourage it. That's a much more difficult problem to address, because you can't fix it with technology. Same problem affects a redesign... That said, I have seen some encouraging evidence that the community wants to address the usability of the tools and UI on wikipedia, and the engineers working at the foundation have their own ideas which are a little more realistic, for example:

http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Athena

Re: Wikipedia Redefined

#197

Post by ricardobeat »

gddr wrote: post #136
ilaksh wrote: post #86

The 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 read somewhere about how Windows introduced in early versions the ability to make buttons look "3D" (update: here: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2004/07/28/19958... ), and for the next few years every program made its buttons look more 3D than the previous version, until someone decided they had gone too far and started going in the opposite direction. And now looking at Metro I'd say we are at the ot…

The Nokia one was spot on too.

Re: Wikipedia Redefined

#198

Post by [deleted] »

csense wrote: post #55
citricsquid wrote: post #13

copying my comment from reddit: If a user doesn't recognise the word "English" then they are not going to have any idea what language select. The reason the languages are all listed on the page without any interaction needed is so someone can look at the webpage and recognise their language and select it without having to understand anything else. How do I access the main page of a wiki? This isn't redefined, it's ju…

The existing front-page looks like it should work in browsers with JS disabled (though I have not personally tested this). We should think carefully about the possible consequences of Wikipedia dropping support for no-JS browsers.

[deleted]

Re: Wikipedia Redefined

#199

Post by briandear »

wyclif wrote: post #129
pirateking wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Also the capital "I" in the font they're using is killing me. This is the main thing I remember after reading what seemed like an otherwise interesting study.

Also, there's a grammatical error: "We check our mail dozen times a day." No. We check our mail a dozen times a day.

Good grief. Is everything you've ever made absolutely perfect? You build something beautiful and then you can dogpile on a grammar mistake.

Re: Wikipedia Redefined

#200

Post by briandear »

te_chris wrote: post #157
primigenus wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

That's the problem with designers, they always want to "enhance X with great design", ignorant of the fact that the object of their OCD desire for "great design" (in this case the world's most popular web service) obviously has great design already, as it's the most popular website in the world.

Craigslist anyone?
Post reply on HN