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Wikipedia Redefined

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Re: Wikipedia Redefined

#221

Post by karlherler »

This design forgoes my second biggest usage of Wikipedia (and I suspect it's a big use case for other multilinguals). (My primary usage of course being reading and enjoying the vast content.)

I often use Wikipedia as a high quality word translator. I study at a Swedish speaking university which requires that a lot of the written material I produce is of course in swedish. Whenever I'm writing a comp sci text and I wonder what in gods name a "morphism" is in swedish I just look up the english article (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morphism) and hover over the swedish language in the sidebar and voilà I've got a peer reviewed translation (peer reviewed because it probably has sources in both languages, in most cases).

Re: Wikipedia Redefined

#222

Post by arrrg »

cwe wrote: post #147
tptacek wrote: post #27

You'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…

The capital "J" was pretty bad too, dropping under the baseline, for no other reason than to differentiate it from that stupid "I"

It’s pretty stupid because it doesn’t follow convention – but that’s actually exactly how I learned it in school, so it’s not like there isn’t precedent.

Here is (roughly) what I learned in elementary school (in Bavaria): http://i.imgur.com/LbQ7l.png

I think the J dropping below the baseline isn’t particularly uncommon or unique. (I know quite a few famous typefaces in which the J drops below the baseline: Baskerville Old Face, Lucida Grande, Palatino, Rockwell, Optima, …) However, the I looking like a J certainly is, at least in print.

Re: Wikipedia Redefined

#223

Post by gpvos »

bpatrianakos wrote: post #209
eps wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Draw the pretty colored lines after you grok the concept. There is nothing to grok. Imagine Google's landing page being chokeful of "content" including, most notably, the featured articles of random nature. Your comment inadvertently demonstrates the problem with Wikipedia as it exists now. A vast majority of its users has nothing to do with its community. People come, they consume and they leave. Sad, but that's l…

I've never once edited a Wikipedia article and have no desire to do so. I'm I'm the epitome of a Wikipedia outsider and I agree with your parent that this is not good design. It's pretty and minimalist and trendy but it isn't Wikipedia. Honestly, they would have done the same thing with any website. It's just a shallow coating of gloss over what they've labelled as "bad design". There is a lot wrong with this whether…

> Not only do they throw up a huge middle finger to non-English speakers

Yes, that irked me too, amongst other things. But intriguingly, they are from Lithuania, where Vikipedija does not start with a W.

Re: Wikipedia Redefined

#224

Post by [deleted] »

briandear wrote: post #202
adam wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you for your thoughtful comments. I'm not the designer, but recognize this for what it is - a thought piece that obviously required some fairly significant effort to put together. Some items have issues as you point out, but there are also some very intelligent ideas here and that was the point - to put something out there credible for discussion.

I agree, the majority of commenters have chosen to just rip apart this strong effort at doing something even if it isn't perfect. I've found that a good portion of the wikipedia "community" to be terribly provincial and cliquish. They're like the homeowners associations of the web, they have "their" way of doing it and get almost irritatingly passionate over trivial nonsense (should it be "behavior or behaviour") The…

[deleted]

Re: Wikipedia Redefined

#225

Post by Dinoguy1000 »

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.

Deleted pages are never truly deleted. A more accurate description would be "hidden", and there are different levels to which a page can be hidden:

* Blanking a page, or part of a page, is an action that any editor can perform, and any editor can undo. This hides content from the "live" page, but anyone can view the blanked content by looking in the page's history. * Deleting a page is an action limited to administrators, and similarly, only an admin can undelete a page. A deleted page is basically treated by MediaWiki like it doesn't exist, and only admins can view the deleted content. Individual edits can also be deleted, but this is not as common. * Lastly, oversighting can be used to hide content from even admins. Admins can oversight stuff as well, and in these cases, the oversighted content can be viewed by other admins, though it requires more work than viewing deleted stuff. For oversighted content to be hidden even from admins, the oversighting must be done by another user group called (aptly enough) oversighters. In the context of WMF project, entry to this usergroup is tightly controlled (seriously, it makes the request for adminship process look like an open door), and anyone selected for the role must personally confirm their identity to the WMF.

The main point is that, in all of these cases, the content is never gone, but simply hidden; the MediaWiki software is designed so that every action is logged and can be reversed.

Re: Wikipedia Redefined

#226

Post by jarek »

wangweij wrote: post #218
csense wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I've been brainwashed by the article and is wondering what JS means here. IS or JS?

Javascript

Re: Wikipedia Redefined

#227

Post by lubujackson »

dsl wrote: post #181
Osiris wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really? I use a custom search engine in my browsers so I can search directly from the address bar since I know I want Wikipedia results and don't want to sift through other junk.

Really? I have my assistant find the article of interest and send a bit.ly link via courier.

Really? I use Encyclopedia Britannica. It's the best.

Re: Wikipedia Redefined

#228

Post by ShawnBird »

eps wrote: post #173
tptacek wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Wikipedia FA's aren't "random". They're a showcase of the best articles on the site, and are p a i n s t a k i n g l y vetted by the WP community. Getting your article on the front page is a very big deal. The FA process is one of the primary drivers of editorial quality on the site.

> Getting your article on the front page is a very big deal. I'm sure it is. If I wrote that article that is. If on the other hand I just walked in through a front door it is as useful as a book of the month featured in a local library. It is essentially a random pick. > The FA process is one of the primary drivers of editorial quality on the site. Hold on. So you are saying that if it weren't for a carrot of being f…

I am sure Olympic athletes would still train if there was no gold medal but it would not be the same.

Giving people something to strive for helps define what it is to succeed.

Re: Wikipedia Redefined

#229

Post by [deleted] »

kellishaver wrote: post #220
vacri wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's hilarious from the start - first thing they do is throw out the logo that incorporates multiple languages and says 'fuck you, we're going English for Wiki'. They compound this by then making all the various logos English-derived, so these guys have basically shouted to the world that they don't grasp the basics of their client. They even propose a feature that shows everyone how much English dominates the other…

They lost me at "Jmagine" ....

[deleted]

Re: Wikipedia Redefined

#230

Post by lubujackson »

Agree with all the critiques. Interestingly, while reading through the redesign, I thought some of the new functionality they added (highlighting, mapping link connections, etc.) were kind of interesting.

But then I remembered designers aren't supposed to develop new features.

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