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Wikipedia Redefined

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Re: Wikipedia Redefined

#51

Post by languagehacker »

I 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 a lot of the more feasible features already, such as the visual editor.

I think it's obnoxious that a design team would spend two months on something without taking any time to consider implementation detail. The MediaWiki project is very transparent, and if New is New cared to learn about what features were in the works, they could have easily found them on the right wiki -- design mockups and all. Whoever would hire these guys to do work for hire will be paying for an intractable mess of a design with a hearty helping of scope creep.

And don't get me started on the proposed Wikipedia logo. It looks like the Wikia fractal with way less nodes.

Re: Wikipedia Redefined

#52

Post by dsr_ »

Wikipedia doesn't need a redesign. It just needs to have an easy preferences setting for "I am a deletionist" vs "I am an inclusionist" or whatever the current preferred designations are.

The deletionists get pared-down, guaranteed notable content, and the inclusionists get the mess.

Re: Wikipedia Redefined

#53

Post by mnicole »

FuzzyDunlop wrote: post #34

I don't know where they got the idea that a serif 'W' is the most recognisable 'W' on the net (as Wikipedia). I first thought of Waterstones (a UK bookstore chain), and then Wordpress. Even after that, how does it then make sense to actually change it to something else, thus removing what identity there once was? It's not like the replacement (with the Adobe-esque abbreviations that are meaningless to people who don'…

Exactly what I thought; Wordpress' serif W dominates the web and this one is far too similar to it for people to know the difference. People know Wikipedia as Wikipedia and as an international website, we shouldn't use a generic 'W' as the logo across the board.

Re: Wikipedia Redefined

#54

Post by blake8086 »

pirateking wrote: post #38
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…

> 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.

J don't understand why you have such a problem with it. Jt seems fine to me.

Re: Wikipedia Redefined

#55

Post by csense »

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.

Re: Wikipedia Redefined

#56

Post by TomGullen »

I like the proposed design from the point of view that I'd be casually browsing it trying to find interesting information and learning things for no reason.

But for finding out information I need to find out for whatever reason, it's just going to slow that process down.

Re: Wikipedia Redefined

#57

Post by saraid216 »

estel wrote: post #37
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…

Anecdotally, the overwhelming majority of people who I've observed using Wikipedia go to www.wikipedia.com and then select "English".

Could you contextualize what population you're drawing your sample from, please?

Re: Wikipedia Redefined

#58

Post by SwellJoe »

dsr_ wrote: post #52

Wikipedia doesn't need a redesign. It just needs to have an easy preferences setting for "I am a deletionist" vs "I am an inclusionist" or whatever the current preferred designations are. The deletionists get pared-down, guaranteed notable content, and the inclusionists get the mess.

This distinction is only relevant to maybe 1% of wikipedia users...the heavy users who get involved in internal politics and editing decisions (and maybe the spammers who try to wield wikipedia's massive visibility for their own purposes). The average wikipedia user has no idea there are deletion wars.

Re: Wikipedia Redefined

#59

Post by saraid216 »

thebigshane wrote: post #45
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…

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.

These ideas would probably be better achieved using a browser add-on of some kind.

Re: Wikipedia Redefined

#60

Post by saraid216 »

languagehacker wrote: post #51

I 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…

> And don't get me started on the proposed Wikipedia logo. It looks like the Wikia fractal with way less nodes.

I found it offensive that they felt the English 'W' was the only one worth featuring in the logo.

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