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Wikipedia is getting a new look

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Re: Wikipedia is getting a new look

#511

Post by sellyme »

specialist wrote: post #508
Eiriksmal wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also find your first point to be a truly indispensable tool. How else do you know what they call carbon fiber in German? [0] But the second is a touchy area. In fact, Wikipedia's co-founder recently wrote a blog post detailing how its neutral point-of-view policy has flopped, in the name of fighting false balance. [1] His examples are pretty embarrassing, but more important in that Google points human "Search Quali…

I just read [1]. I'd hope that a person with Sanger's experience and insight would at least float suggestions, proposals, wish list, or any thing at all, to achieve something he'd consider more neutral, objective, or something. everipedia.org I guess does some stuff differently. But if it has a different take on neutrality, it's not jumping out at me. Sanger has some role with Ballotpedia? Maybe his vision for neutra…

I was willing to at least consider anything Sanger had to offer, given his CV. But generally I fast fail [...] any media critic leading with "liberal bias".

Especially when one of the main criticisms is "It's biased to say a false statement is false".

Sanger's fundamental misunderstanding is that a neutral point of view doesn't mean that the thing you're writing about is also going to be neutral.

Re: Wikipedia is getting a new look

#512

Post by roryokane »

trynewideas wrote: post #164

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…

I use the Timeless theme myself (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pangolin?useskin=timeless). If you like the Timeless theme’s less-busy navigation but don’t like that theme’s sticky header and misaligned icons, you can copy my CSS customizations for it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Rory_O%27Kane/timeless.cs...

To try those customizations yourself, copy the CSS code on that page. Then, in your Wikipedia account’s Preferences > Appearance (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Preferences#mw-prefsec...), choose Timeless as your skin. Finally, click Custom CSS next to Timeless, paste my CSS, and click Save. If you don’t like those customizations, just edit the page again and delete the CSS.

I made one final tweak to the Timeless theme: on page load, a bit of JavaScript scrolls the page down to hide the search bar and user menu. Most of the time I don’t care about that part of the page when I visit an article, and when I do want to see it care, I just have to remember to scroll up.

I installed that JavaScript using a custom user script installed with https://violentmonkey.github.io/, though you could probably get it working with the Custom JavaScript link in your Preferences > Appearance settings too. Here’s a simplified version of my JS that you are free to copy:

  // ==UserScript==
  // @name Wikipedia – scroll below Timeless-skin static header on load
  // @description When using Wikipedia’s Timeless skin, modified with user CSS to not have a fixed header, this scrolls below that header when a page loads. This hides the distracting color bar and lets you see more of the article. If you want to see the header, just scroll back up.
  // @namespace roryokane.com
  // @match https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/*
  // @grant none
  // @author Rory O’Kane
  // ==/UserScript==
  
  const headerHeight = 60;
  
  const usingTimelessSkin = () => document.body.classList.contains("skin-timeless");
  
  if (window.location.hash === "" && usingTimelessSkin()) {
    window.scrollTo(0, headerHeight);
  }

Re: Wikipedia is getting a new look

#513

Post by WWLink »

mywittyname wrote: post #231
WWLink wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> when paragraphs are that wide they become harder to read I hope I don't sound like a jerk saying this, but resizing the browser window is the key. I dunno why some people maximize everything on their computer - that's a really inefficient use of space. I wish more websites wouldn't try to force formatting on me and just let me resize my window.

Well, I use tabs and not every website looks best at the same size. So I don't think the approach works. (FWIW, I'm also a non-full-screen user). But you're probably on to something. I would be cool if the web browser would allow you to adjust the body size of the document without adjusting the window size.

It'd be neat if it worked like the ruler at the top of an MS word window (or textedit/wordpad), where you can drag in the margins!

Re: Wikipedia is getting a new look

#515

Post by xf00 »

giddhhgcfygfg wrote: post #269
eepp wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For English-French translation in Québec, have a look at http://m.gdt.oqlf.gouv.qc.ca/index.aspx

Just out of interest, I tried "electronics packaging" (which other sources seem to indicate is called either "habillage" or "packaging" in French). I got this http://m.gdt.oqlf.gouv.qc.ca/ficheOqlf.aspx?Id_Fiche=1893553... result which says "electronics packaging designer" translates to "concepteur d'assemblage électronique." So now I'm not sure what to think. The suggested translation doesn't include the word "habil…

"Habillage" (literally "dressing") in this context relates to packaging of a concept/proposition i.e. the marketing around it (or "spin"). The french word for "packaging" in the physical sense would be "emballage" (literally "wrapping"). Some would use "empaquetage" but that is less common.

So "electronics packaging" would translate to "emballage/empaquetage de composants électroniques".

Re: Wikipedia is getting a new look

#516

Post by MockObject »

jdlrobson wrote: post #73
MockObject wrote: post #55

Try reading a math page on an iPhone with a spotty connection. All the images now only load when tapped. So after the page loads, I've got to scroll down, open each collapsed paragraph, and tap each image separately, before I lose signal on the subway.

Unfortunately certain iPhones do not have MutationObserver support. This is not the case on newer ones. There's an open bug to allow you to opt out of this however we've been a bit stretched to find the time to work on this. https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T261609

I would love a preference setting for this. Thank you!

Re: Wikipedia is getting a new look

#517

Post by walrus01 »

Uehreka wrote: post #19

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…

The biggest thing I've seen that's changed in the past 10 years is the creation and refinement of the VisualEditor extension. It's a great tool for self-hosted mediawiki when you have a bunch of relatively non technical users, who are not comfortable with editing wiki 'code'.

https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:VisualEditor

VisualEditor is what you get by default now when you go to edit a wikipedia page, unless you specifically click on the option to edit source.

Re: Wikipedia is getting a new look

#518

Post by Kliment »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #492
Kliment wrote: post #463

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not quite true - 语 as in 汉语 is a spoken language or dialect. 文 is used for written language, and can mean a language in general, a writing system, or an entire culture, depending on what you combine it with.

> depending on what you combine it with It's standing alone here. I'm aware of words like 文明 and 中文, but here are the 14 glosses for 文 in the 现代汉语规范词典: 1. (verb) to tattoo or paint patterns or words onto a body 2. (noun, literary) a pattern, particularly as of wood grain 3. (noun) ancient rites/ceremonies 4. (noun) non-military affairs (opposite of 武) 5. (adjective) gentle; not fierce 6. (noun) indicating phenomena o…

新华字典 has a gloss of "language" with "written language (文字)" and "foreign language (外文)" given as examples. That's where I'm getting it from.

Re: Wikipedia is getting a new look

#519

Post by zzo38computer »

vvanpo wrote: post #252
userbinator wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand why people complain about line length when that really means you should just resize the window to your preference. 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.

Who does that? I think most people browse the web with many tabs open at once, and switch between them constantly. I don't think it should be on the user to resize their browser viewport every time they switch tabs to maintain a comfortable measure. That's the website's responsibility.

I disagree. I want to be able to set the width to whatever I want; it is the user's job to set it to what they want. The website's responsibility is to not needlessly override the user's settings. If you want many tabs at once and switching, possibly with different widths, I think the best solution to that is split-screen (implemented in the browser), which solves many other problems too, actually.

Re: Wikipedia is getting a new look

#520

Post by zzo38computer »

WWLink wrote: post #223
Uehreka wrote: post #19

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…

> when paragraphs are that wide they become harder to read I hope I don't sound like a jerk saying this, but resizing the browser window is the key. I dunno why some people maximize everything on their computer - that's a really inefficient use of space. I wish more websites wouldn't try to force formatting on me and just let me resize my window.

> I wish more websites wouldn't try to force formatting on me and just let me resize my window.

I agree. Fossil mostly requires the use of CSS, but my own stuff I tend to not use CSS if I can avoid it, and often just write plain text files anyways (rather than HTML), which works well even if you are viewing them outside of the web browser, as well as with the web browser, too.

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