Slashdot Mirror
Why Is Wikipedia So Ugly?
Hugh Pickens writes "Megan Garber writes in the Atlantic that aesthetically, Wikipedia is remarkably unattractive. 'The gridded layout! The disregard for mind-calming images! The vaguely Geocities-esque environment! Whether it's ironic or fitting, it is undeniable: The Sum of All Human Knowledge, when actually summed up, is pretty ugly.' But Wikipedians consider the site's homeliness as a feature rather than a bug. 'Wikipedia has always been kind of a homely, awkward, handcrafted-looking site,' says Sue Gardner, executive director of the Wikimedia Foundation, adding that the homeliness 'is part of its awkward charm.' Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr have built followings in part because of their exceedingly simple interfaces. Everything about their design says, 'Come on, guys. Participate. It's easy,' while Wikipedia, so far, has been pretty much the opposite of that. 'The free encyclopedia that anyone can edit' might more properly be nicknamed 'the free encyclopedia that any geek can edit.' This is particularly problematic because one of the Wikimedia Foundation's broad strategic goals is to expand its base of editors. While the editing interface is friendly to the site's super-users who tend to be so committed to Wikipedia's mission that they're willing to do a lot to contribute to it, if Wikipedia wants to make itself more attractive to users, a superficial makeover may be just the thing Wikipedia needs to begin growing in a more meaningful way."
Most websites that look awesome have almost no content which is hidden on several pages with lots of ads in between. No thx like it simple.
"There's one thing Wikipedia could learn from Facebook, which is less about attractiveness and more about user-friendliness. Facebook -- and Twitter, and Tumblr, and similar sites -- have built followings in part because of their exceedingly simple interfaces"
Yes, but at what cost?
An appeal from slashdot.org - get some hot employees to pose for the photos
is all this is.
Wikipedia is beautiful! Besides, do you really want non-geeks editing an encyclopedia?
the growth in cynicism and rebellion has not been without cause
This is so subjective. As an encyclopedia, I like Wikipedia as it is. Providing that much information, from so many fields, in a homogeneous and pleasantly readable way, keep up the good work ... Of course some design enhancements may be welcome. But ugly? Definitely no.
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
If your site has good content, the people will come regardless. Much better than a really pretty site with crap content, in my opinion. Another example here is, craigslist. I can't stand to even load up craigslist. It looks so freaking awful, yet they have made a fortune off that 1995-html1.0-looking crap.
Doctors destroy health, lawyers destroy justice, universities destroy knowledge, religion destroys spirituality
This is a complaint I have heard a lot in my programming career. In my own experience, most coders I have worked with are focused on functionality and simplicity; getting as much information out there in as straightforward a manner as possible. Often, this means "ugly" to non-CS people. Personally, I find Wikipedia easy to read and easy to navigate. Sure, it may not have graphics popping out everywhere or things dancing across the screen but when I hit WP, all I want is information.
Now, could it be better? Possibly. It is easy enough to create a new skin for it and give it some zip but I doubt the team would ever make it a default. WP is meant to be accessed on any device, through any type of connection (although it does have some issues in that department).
If I want lots of useless clutter, I will go to any number of large news organizations' websites.
Personally, I think it looks clean.
Go select one or upload your own CSS / Javascript:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-rendering
The number of sites that 'look great' but are impossible to actually read increases daily. Wikipedia is clear and easy to read. Don't make me turn off or customize the css.
Wikipedia is all function. It is efficient, loads fast, list information well. Improving aesthetics to the detriment of functionality is something seen far too often in the web and it is something done only by idiots. Of which there are many, unfortunately.
Bottom line: Wikipedia is only for those seeking knowledge. All others, please go away, you are not welcome and your criticism is misdirected.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
AJAX and scripts that bog down the server and make it inaccessible to chunks of the population. But it'll be prettier...
'nuff said.
30 years ago your typical young kid would say "Britannica is boring. Everyone should use only World Book encyclopedia and only World Book encyclopedia."
Today a young kid might say you should only use About.com.
From the full article :
Here is an empirical truth about Wikipedia: Aesthetically, it is remarkably unattractive.
How is that an empirical truth?
Personally I find the site's design really suited to it's purpose. It's clean, no bright colours or extraneous graphics. The content even though dense is easy to read. It is as far as I'm concerned, perfect for the job it is intended to do.
Now the article after making this broad unsubstantiated statement makes one and only one specific complaint. That editing wikipedia pages is too complex. I agree, it could possibly be easier but wiki markup is the best we have come up with so far. If you have suggestions on how to improve that. That is concrete steps that can make writing wiki pages easier, please share them, most of us are all agog.
if Wikipedia wants to make itself more attractive to users, a superficial makeover may be just the thing Wikipedia needs to begin growing in a more meaningful way.
What? Because it looks pretty, people will start reading an encyclopedia? Are you nuts?
First of all, last time I checked Wikipedia was in the top 10 of most visited websites on this planet. So they seem to be attracting users just fine. And obviously, the one and only thing that matters is the quality of their content. As long as Wikipedia continues to provide great information on basically any conceivable subject, a simple uncluttered layout to access that information is all they need.
Now I get the impression (also by the screenshot) that the article is mainly talking about Wikipedia's homepage. There might be some room for improvement there, but seriously, who goes to Wikipedia to look at the homepage? It's all about the articles. And those pages simply look fine.
Pretty good is actually pretty bad.
Please dont dont try and 'fix it'. And by fix it I mean make it worse. Adding alot of visual cute feature that slow down download of page will only make it take longer to download. For all that pay per MB of download - its better the less frills the more information. Lets keep wikipedia as a place with a high signal to noice ratio (SNR).
I love wikipedias simple and elegant design that puts the fokus on the information available on a page and with a high SNR. Please dont destroy it.
Just saying it like it are.
To paraphrase a favorite character of mine, "... I'm so sick of (article writers like this) I could vomit...".
Wikipedia has at its core one basic job to do: convey information. Setting aside for the moment the questions of validity of content, sources, spats between editors, astroturfing, etc, the prime question is, how quickly and easily was one able to find what one was looking for and absorb it. This is a task at which I personally feel Wikipedia does a fine job. It is a simple, straightforward visual style that doesn't bolt on any extraneous flash (no pun intended) or style just for flash or style's sake.
By the way, when the article author compares Wikipedia and Geocities visual style and finds similarities, I'm prompted to wonder where the author actually was when Geocities was in its heydey.
As for the complaint about the complexities of editing on Wikipedia: Heaven forbid that when editing one of the great repositories of human knowledge, that the editors should take the time required to learn the skills necessary to do so... seriously, if Wikipedia ever "redesigns" itself to appeal anywhere near the lowest common denominator of the Facebook/Twitter/Myspace generation, I quit.
Uh, no. The appearance is fine as it is. I think the goal of making it more user-friendly for people who may want to contribute edits is a good idea, but I see nothing wrong with plain, black text on a white background, and a simple grid-like presentation. It's simple, to the point, and not distracting. As far as I'm concerned, sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr are the ones that are ugly. I mean, sure, they aren't using Comic Sans, but I still think their interface is gaudy.
For similar ugliness, take a look at the frames filled with fluff around the margins of the linked "The Atlantic" article. Gaudy and distracting with flashing ads, "subscribe now", "facebook" something-or-other, "newsletters", blah blah blah. There's so much crap on the right side of the article that it protrudes way down the page, beyond the bottom of the actual text, where you also find the standard navigation/credits baseplate far at the bottom (so far down that it's nearly useless). Oh, and look at that. If I enable JavaScript I also get a pop-up that renders on top of everything else and doesn't scroll.
Clean up your own damn site. Then we'll talk about "ugly".
We really need it to be easier for non-geeks to edit so that people can add all the pearls of wisdom they have learned throughout their life, no matter what the quality. Example: Alligators are ornery because they got all them teeth and no toothbrush. [Source: Mama]
Haven't these people used encyclopedias before? They didn't have fancy bells and whistles (Britannica, for example, was quite plain) but they did their job just fine - knowledge repositories. I don't see why the virtual, editable version should be any different.
Dream as if you would live forever; live as if you would die today. -James Dean
I think it's telling that both TFAs linked in the post are by women. Please keep the creeping feminisation of the media out of Wikipedia!
"I bless every day that I continue to live, for every day is pure profit."
So Wikimedia needs to make a choice:
-If they simplify the site to make it more accessible, they will probably build a larger, more diverse population of contributors, and will also probably move Wikipedia some distance down the spectrum from "academically valuable tertiary resource" towards "Youtube comments section".
-Or they can keep it the way it is, with a relatively small community of dedicated contributors, which has allowed it to become one of the most valuable and extraordinary creations of the internet age.
Personally I value excellence over political correctness, so I would take the second route.
What's ugly about a site that at one blink of the eye shows you exactly what you need? A site that is meant to be informative. A site that loads like the wind blows!
May the rapist web designers stay away from one of the jewels of the internet. Less bloat is more usability.
I hadn't the slightest objection to his spending his time planning massacres for the bourgeoisie... (P.G. Wodehouse)
Enough with iPretty shit, it's an encyclopedia NOT an APPedia.
The sooner we burn pretty( Models, Socialites, Celebrities ) people who put form over function, the sooner we can have better engineered products.
Decoration gets in the way of functionality. Wikipedia is probably over-decorated as it is, and adding what Garber wants would make it both slower and less accessible.
In a nutshell, she's clueless on this topic.
The summary sounds confused, to me.
It would seem that the criticisms are more properly directed at the edit/contribute interface, rather than the information presentation.
But then it is a "wiki" and the interface available for editing a "wiki" is not that of facebook/tumblr/twitter.
Wikipedia is fine the way it is. It's clean, it's fast, it works for what it is. If they do redesign it, as they already have in the past, it should still focus on speed and usability, and not be bogged down by scripts and images to "enhance the user experience". Also, the social comparison is completely unsubstantiated. Facebook and Twitter don't have more followers because it's easier to post -- it's because your posts don't even have to be meaningful, let alone well-researched and neutral (would you really invite the #yolo crowd to work on Wikipedia?).
In fact there is a wysiwig interface on the road wich will make the editing less geeky
The website on which the original article is posted also has boxed layout, not-so mind-calming images, some fake popup, and all kinds of annoying mouse hover effects.
Dear god no. One of the best looking sites out there! Why must you gussy up all sites with noise? Can't simplistic form be beautiful too?
"Why is X ugly/bad?" -- typical stupid american style question to make impressions. Moron, it's not ugly. In order to ask why something is ugly/bad we have first to establish/agree that it is and then ask why. Idiotic "psychology" involved questions.
could have a pretty face but no brains.
I consider myself a geek, but I want to edit and contribute when the tools are at least as easy as a wordpress blog. I tried to amend something once and it was a waste of my time. It's not intuitive at all.
Jonathanjk.com
Easier to edit means more stupid edits in this case - it's not broke, so...
I notice that the author of the original article fails to provide examples of sites that she finds not ugly.
Personally, I find Wikipedia pretty easy on the eyes. It's not a web site that makes you say "wow, look at the design!" but, like typography, the best web design is the one that you don't notice and doesn't get between you and the information you seek.
Let's also not forget that a goal of Wikipedia is to be accessible by all, including people who use old computers and slow dialup lines. Making it "more beautiful" (according to some arbitrary idea of what is beautiful) would make it harder to use.
Indeed, Facebook's UI is too complex and dense for its own good. Profiles that use the timeline are nearly impossible to navigate easily. On the other hand, I do like Wikipedia's simple UI. Simple does not mean useless.
ftfy
http://maddox.xmission.com/
It's the unaccountable admins and their checkuser weilding arbcon thugs. Deletionists are also the real vandals eho delete things even then they are notable and encyclopedic.
Wikipedia is the online equivilent of a decaying city with a corrupt police force.
If Wikipedia needs improving it's simply to fix the almost impossible system they have of adding pictures. Text is easy. Why are pictures so hard?
As for the appearance of the site - I like it just as it is.
... function is primordial in this case; ... yet aesthetics are not to be disregarded; ... more pics would increase spendings; ... and that decorative elements might add to readability,
I propose simply the use of a few (e.g. 3) CSS alternatives.
Keep in mind that too many choices might increase costs. Also, Wikipedia must be democratic by nature and not all browsers can render everything. Just caring about the different platforms&browsers is already somewhat expensive, I think.
According to Betteridge's Law [wikipedia.org] of Headlines this is the correct answer.
I like my spaghetti with source.
Then there is the unforgettable scare mongering of Jeffrey Goldberg and torture apologia from Christopher Hitchens.
Never trust a magazine named after where it gets dumped.
Fugue for Aaron Swartz
The PCWorld article appears to claim that the barrier to entry is taking the time to learn wiki markup as opposed to pointy-clicky WYSIWYG bold, italic, heading, and link insertion. (Another barrier mentioned in other articles is taking the time to learn to discuss changes on the talk page to get past a perception of undue ownership, but that's not what this article is about.)
Add me to the droves of people also saying that Wikipedia is functional, not ugly. I am sick to death of stupid sites that have crap all over them and no content. Pop up s**t, f***ing animated junk on the sides, irritating mouse-overs, and countless other distractions and things to make the site non-functional and slow to load and use.
And each year it is getting worse and worse with all the "web 2.0" so-called innovations. And unlike the past where you could block Flash, or limit Javascript, now we have pretty much no control anymore, other than just breaking the site completely. So PLEASE LEAVE WIKIPEDIA ALONE.
Don't forget functional.
Today everything has to look like it has been released by apple or it's ugly.
I cringe when I see all the resources and battery consumption that go into features like false reflections in metallic buttons on a friggin screen.
I want a website that is designed for quick lookups to be just that, quick! And, it is!
Yes, Wikipedia is ugly., but the real problem is the custom markup language instead of using a pretty WYSIWYG editor or HTML. There is no reason why someone should have to learn another language just to contribute to Wikipedia
I think Megan Garber is unattractive.
Wikipedia is a great example of classic no-nonsense information design. Get your fluffy feel-good eye candy elsewhere.
When it comes to an encyclopedia, I want it to be written by geeks.
I want it to be written by geeks in the subject of the article, not necessarily computer geeks if the subject is not information science or information technology. For example, there used to be (still is?) a perception that articles' "in popular culture" were overpopulated with entries from works loved by the demographic of computer geeks who are willing to take time to learn the markup. When I read a chemistry article, I want it to be written by chemistry geeks. When I read a linguistic theory article, I want it to be written by language geeks. When I read an article on psychology or religion or other social sciences, I want it to be written by experts in the field, not people with a vested interest in discrediting the field.
maybe they (Wikipedia) should make the default font Comic Sans....
There are geeks, and then there are geeks. See my reply to an IP editor.
But then I categorize as 'geek' anyone with sufficiently deep and detailed knowledge of a subject that they can write intelligently on a topic. That includes charismatic lawyers.
Are scientifc papers ugly too?
What's your take on improving them, Megan.
The whole world is intrigued by the insight you gained from browsing social media sites all day.
Because it doesn't belong to a publishing empire. Look at all the wasted space that could be filled with ads for adult diapers and instant weight loss elixirs.
Fugue for Aaron Swartz
Yea, because betamax's superiority alone worked really well. Or let's look at PC vs. Mac - whose design && functionality is selling like hotcakes right now?
Imo, wikipedia is ugly as sin. It could be designed better. Simpler. Even more minimalist like an art gallery, since all it has are words - its core product.
As for craigslist, I'd argue they could be making even more money. Unless you live in a very large city, people don't use craigslist as much. The listings (such as Atlanta) are full of false ads and useless crap, not to mention untrustworthy. Craigslist in NYC or Bay area works much better I think. However, in my mind, craigslist as a brand reeks of cheap crap.
The summary sounds confused, to me.
That's because it's summarizing two different articles: one about the front page and one about the editor.
But then it is a "wiki" and the interface available for editing a "wiki" is not that of facebook/tumblr/twitter.
That's the problem. A lot of people who are experts in the subject of a particular article are not also experts in information technology who are willing to sit down and learn the markup to wikify an article.
If anyone thinks they can build a better looking front end for wikipedia, I'm sure they are free to do so. Then the form over function crowd can just pic the iWiki skin and be happy.
...while I am too much of a gentleman to call her "ugly" I certainly don't find ms. Garber particularly attractive.
Just sayin'
one of its broad strategic goals is to expand its base of editors
You must be joking. Several times in the past people tried to change the tagline shown below each article tag from "From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia" to "From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit"
And each time the attempt failed when some group of assholes with hidden agenda reverted or opposed the change. They actually do NOT want people to know everyone can edit it. That's the whole truth.
If I need information about something, I go to Wikipedia before I go to the "official" website. That tells you all you need to know. Wikipedia provides the information you want without a lot of cruft. Nothing ugly about that.
Thanks to you guys on slashdot, I learned that "monetize" does not mean what the author of TFA thinks. Wikipedia obviously isn't "monetizing" its patrons because the author is using the term incorrectly.
Also, this is probably a revenue-per-click article, as the premise is that Wikipedia is somehow awful, but then lavishes praise throughout TFA. I hate that crap. I can't opt out of their crappy revenue generation mechanism until I've already generated revenue for them...bah!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
The Wikipedia community officially doesn't want nasty. If an editor is persistent in being nasty to you, try one of the several dispute resolution processes listed at Dealing with incivility.
The Atlantic is a joke, just look at their business pages. They try to be provoxative , but are in general universally poorly researched, and inane.
What makes WP "ugly" to a designer? More than anything, it's the unrelenting density of information. What makes WP great? More than anything, it's the unrelenting density of information.
"Please enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus. blog comments powered by Disqus"
Large portions of the internet have become inaccessible from my "netbook" Dell mini because of the explosion of JavaScript websites in recent years. A simple text-based website will freeze and crash a computer which will happily run beefy IDEs and other fairly resource-draining programs.
The problem is that the web developers who sit at their 8-processors 16GB RAM machines all day will never know and the majority of people will continue walking the upgrade treadmill simply to use Facebook and gossip sites.
I thought new web standards would bring us new functionality and smoother experiences, now I wish they'd have just stuck with IE6 and Flash.
What an incredibly stupid statement. Empirically means derived from experiments. Aesthetics is largely subjective (see also: beauty, beholder, eye of) and therefore impossible to measure experimentally.
Another vacuous tart who thinks user friendly == pretty.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
The problem with the entire article is that it tries to hand-wave over the real issue: user experience. The article basically suggests, "If we put lipstick on a pig, the pig will look much better." This kind of thought process is exactly why there is so much shitty software in the real world... suddenly, everyone is a designer, everyone knows how to do information architecture, interaction design, and visual design. Wikipedia has a problem, agreed, but it is not just a "superficial" one. If Wikipedia was designed with a different kind of end-user in mind (average Joe vs. geeks), it really could enable folks to contribute on a larger scale. However, there's a lot more involved in improving user experience than just making it look nicer.
Why do you have to hack in the raw markup like it's 1978? Because Wikipedia grew too large too quickly, and when they realized the UI sucks it was too late to change it. Existing user bases tend to be extremely conservative. Even more so if the site gives them a say. Result is that the original state will be petrified for long after it has been outscaled.
This author is a joke... Certainly an attention whore...
Facebook is butt-ugly, complicated, messy, inconsistent, and terribly unorganized.
Wikipedia is simple, relatively clean, and easy to read.
Wikipedia certainly needs more popup ads that cover what you're reading. And a Clippy.
Making major changes for the sake of improving its aesthetic appeal is not going to attract more visitors or donors. Likely anything other than very minor changes will irritate more people than otherwise. WP is all about content, even though we may not always be happy about how its content gets there. When people consider visiting the site, only a mindless fashionista will also take the site's look into account.
Furthermore, Garber's remarks suggest that he doesn't have much of an idea about how WP works. Even if WP had to improve the way it looked to save its own skin, it would probably take years of discussion for them to achieve anything major.
Wikipedia is Not Ugly. It has a simple, readable, and dare-I-say even attractive design. It is the essence of quiet typographic design, emphasising content over appearance.
Which isn't to say that I always agree with the content itself. But like it or not, you have to admit that Mediawiki content is always clearly readable.
May the Maths Be with you!
who care what it looks like....it's easy to read, nicely organized and consistent! We don't need it chaning formats every 30 days like facebook does...
I find it quite refreshing compared to the vast majority of other crap out there. Maybe I'm old school but I never got the "put everything in the middle and leave the sides blank" shit. It's a page. Use it all.
Wuddooeyeno? IITYWYBMAD? Like nuts? eclecticallyincorrect.com
Simply no.
Just wait until it has some moronic marketing-expert-driven UI overhaul every few months like your typical corporate site. Then nobody will know how to edit it.
The answer is "mu". The question is broken.
Why do you still beat your wife? Why do Slashdotters hate (country they live in)? Why does the porridge bird lay its eggs in the air?
After three articles were deleted, I finally said screw it. I will never write a fucking thing ever again for Wikipedia.
They were not easy to write, I would have been better off spray painting them on the street, at least the delete nazi would have had to spend a day or two cleaning it off. Apparently some people are more important public figures than others. Ironic since later two articles showed up (not by my hand) a couple years later, I was just too early for delete nazi's fat thumb.. It's probably a good thing I don't know where delete nazi lives. Seriously.
Create a user CSS stylesheet and change the way you think it ought to look.
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
don't change function over looks...
Fair point on the editing set-up. I'm pretty experienced now with wiki markup, but that took time. What's she on about when she talks of "mind calming images"? What's with the Geocities comparison? Wikipedia is a minimalist and utilitarian layout. Geocities was the land that aesthetics forgot, and helped popularise eye-raping text on a tiled background. Really, why did people do that? I wondered if they had a monitor calibrated drastically differently to mine, or did they never read their own websites? How can anyone think that blue text on a starry background is pleasant to read, and auto-playing midi files? God, how did we survive?
There are plenty other sites she can visit for her modern web experience. Want dynamic stuff that breaks traditional browsing paradigms? Sure, you got it. How about over-use of flash and other crap? Coming right up, albeit in smaller amounts these days due to anyone with an ounce of sense blocking Flash content except for sites where it'll be used to provide the service being sought - not just advertising or "artistic" flair. Want Javascript/AJAX stuff that'll send your cycles climbing, and give you something that looks nice but is in fact far less useful that the old site? Sure, and why not come to Slashdot to see an example of how geeks can build a UI to solve a problem that never really existed - all while neglecting proper support for unicode and touch screen devices. Did anyone at Geeknet not even try browsing Slashdot on a touchscreen device? Trying to adjust filtering is a pain, and why is there an option at the bottom to opt out of the mobile version if it doesn't work? God I hate mobile versions of sites - particularly when I can't opt out of them.
Ironically The Atlantic reminds me of Wikipedia design. Nice simple layout that doesn't detract from the content. Wikipedia works because its layout doesn't get in my way (except maybe when they fuck around "mobile friendly" layouts.
JC
While I would not call it ugly, there is some room for improvement IMO. Wikipedia beautifier (https://github.com/scotchi/wikipedia-beautifier/wiki/Wikipedia-Beautifier) does exactly what I need.
Is she farking serious?
If a picture is relevant to the information presented, then sure it should be included. But to clutter up the information (which is exactly what Wikipedia is about) with an abundance of images is just plain stupid.
Let me guess, when she was a kid she enjoyed the pictures in the books and didn't really have an interest in the words of the story.
LOLz
wikipedia contains objective content
slashdot contain subjective content
follow your thoughts
I'm not surprised that an entity that deals with subjective content can't actually see through the forest in their eyes to the outside world
Did you even have a GeoCities account ? Wikipedia is damn good looking for those who are seeking facts, not bling.
Can I light a sig ?
It's certainly functional, and for an ENCYCLOPEDIA that's probably what it should be. Next she'll be saying how camouflage patterns are unbecoming on soldiers.
The person who wrote this article is a complete moron and probably graduated from a community college "web design" degree. The simplicity and elegance of Wikipedia is EXACTLY HOW WEB DESIGN SHOULD BE!!!
Wikipedia does not need a redesign.
Megan Garber needs to find a tall bridge and jump off it. Just be ready for a tsunami when her fat ass hits the water.
As other posters have observed, Wikipedia is functional. Simplicity *is* what counts as beautiful when writing an encyclopaedia.
There is one big flaw in its appearance, and that is the incoherent mixing of en-GB and en-US spellings. There are so many customization options already, it's ridiculous that there isn't one to consistently give your choice of en-GB, en-GB-oed, en-US, and maybe en-CA, rather than having what 45% or 55% of the world's English speakers will consider misspellings in an otherwise scholarly and professional-quality work.
I hear people say this and similar things more and more.
When I meet people like that I sometimes tell them about a couple I'm friends with. They are sculptors, and work with steel and marble, amongst other materials. They are certainly focused on beauty, that's their profession: both have a sophisticated sense of shape, color and composition, and they make really wonderful things. But somehow they don't mind that their workshop looks messy, they don't mind that their welding equipment isn't beautiful to look at, or their pneumatic chisel, or their angle grinder, or their safety goggles. Their tools and work environment need to be functional, not beautiful, to enable them to make beautiful things. And that doesn't hurt their eyes, they couldn't care less, the notion is ridiculous to them (I asked).
I point out that computers and software are tools, you use them to get things done, they are like the chisels and grinders. To get things done function matters more than looks, and you can get beautiful results using software that looks plain and uninteresting. I'm an artist myself, I use photographs, math and currently sounds to produce interesting images. I find any software that tries to attract my attention by being (supposedly) beautiful an irritating distraction, I want the software I use to look plain and unpretentious, the beauty is in my own mind.
I often get blank stares, some people don't seem to be able to distinguish between function and appearance at all. They seem to use software as entertainment and fashion. Tools for social status, I guess, not for getting work done.
like it needs advertisement and a a CSR program....
The kind of people who might want a more "wysiwig & feel good" content entry interface are exactly the kind of people who do not contribute to knowledge.
There could certainly be improvement in some elements, for instance I'm sure a plugin to render some biological representation would find some friends.
But ajax driven emoticon entries ? and maybe "like buttons" .... get lots, or even better go to craigslist and try to criticise them, the CEO reaction would probably be fun to see :-)
It works perfect cause you are not in visual overload. Keep it simple, as it works. This is not a magazine where you want color, graphics and style.
How to drive traffic to your site or network: Take something or someone that is good. Diss it severely in the most opinionated and illogical way. Vigorously stoke the controversy flames. Cash in from page views and ads. Pick something or someone else good, repeat. Goodbye Atlantic!
The fact that one woman produce a brain dead article does not permit to generalise to all women.
Or i'd be annoyed, since you are probably male and either a chauvinistic idiot, or lousy at trying humour, since i'm male also, it would make me ... hem ... nope still does not want an operation....
And if you look around you'll find lots of marketing people ready to "advise" companies/organisations like craigslist, wikipedia, sourceforge, ... on "how to be more efficient" (usually at the detriment of the users (but with more flash(tm) and lights)) and you'll also find out that it is quite gender neutral...
Of course you can creep back into some hole and say that they are all not true scotsmen...
Taking a clue from the Slashdot Playbook of Web Design, what they need to spruce up their site is, "OMG PONIES!!!!!!!!!1"
This kind of comment comes from the same kind of morons who brought us the re-tooling, for instance, of GMail. It was great (to use) the way it was. Now I hear nothing (NOTHING!) but complaints about it (or blank stares which when probed yield statements of powerlessness). If the underlying code was ugly, the first update cycle should have been to upgrade the code in a way that none of the users would notice.
Note to Jimmy Wales: resist the UX-groupthink mob who would tell you to make Wikipedia more tablet friendly. If it's ugly, it's ugly the way the old White Pages were ugly. Ugly and informative. The way a real newspaper used to be ugly (especially the front sections up to where the editorials, letters and Op-Ed pieces lay): ugly, information rich and informative.
Note to the groupthink mob: if you must make something tablet-friendly, make sure it's still screen friendly during the design before you foist it on those of us who haven't caved-in to constant computing through tablet ownership.
<quickly hitting submit before going off and doing something real>...ank
Still hoping for Gentle Treatment...
It does. I am extremely hostile to women. With the same right some of them claim all men are rapists, I take the right to say all women are braindead.
With my design hat on... looking at the 'page of the day', I can see quite a few things that could be simplified or made more consistent.
There are eight links that just say "edit", why not just one at the top? The pictures have all been resized to different widths (and lead to a very unfriendly 'back-end' page when you click them). There's an non-standard icon for expanding pictures (2 overlapping rectangles, not 4 arrows pointing diagonally outwards), but the contents are hidden not with a matching 'x' icon in the corner, but some text, which is inexplicably in brackets, not underlined like links usually are. There's a cryptic green 'lock' icon near the top that doesn't match the small grey style of the other icons. The 'view history' tab should probably be changed to 'article history' to be less misleading. The 'rate this page' and footer parts have a lot of wasted space and could be a lot cleaner. There's no obvious visual cue that the article has ended and the rest is 'housekeeping'. Shifting the categories section before the notes would fix this, and suggest places for the reader to go next.
A pizza of radius z and thickness a has a volume of pi z z a
While I mostly like the Wikipedia as it is, one could create a printed book version of Wikipedia with hand-picked premium articles and put some extra punch and layout there.
Have gnu, will travel.
Yeah, the designer's view: The only way of improving Wikipedia is to ADD GODDAMN BLINKENLIGHTS!
An online WYSIWYG editor that would allow saving the page layout (and not just the content) would be a mess. Even Google can't quite manage it with Google Docs, which remain simple when compared to the more complex layout possible with even a simple offline word processor like Abiword, much less full-blown suites like Libre/Open or MS Office.
The better and probably more elegant solution would be to develop an official standalone Wikipedia editor similar in function to an HTML editor, with offline and online capabilities and code and preview modes. Since Wikipedia represents a relatively minute subset of possible web page designs, the Wikipeditor can be forked from an existing free HTML editor like Mozilla Composer.
Just my lazy weekend thoughts ...
Title says it all. It honestly looks fine to me. And anyone *can* edit it, maybe making a whole new page with sections might require them to look at another page's edit field to see how it works but in general just making changes should be very easy.
I do wish Wikipedia would make use of hyphenations. And I wish hyphenations would just be a Html standard. I mean really, how hard is it? We have an open source hyphenation algorithm since 30 years or whatever.
Please compare yourself:
Without Hyphenations
With Hyphenations
There are some effords to bring hyphenations to the Web, like the phpHyphenator. Please compare also the showdown LaTeX vs. Word vs. Writer. The Web would have zero point.
Talking about uglyness. The whole Web is ugly. No hyphenations, no real small caps, no ligatures. From typographic perspective the Web tool a huge step back since Gutenberg first invented the printing press.
http://www.mueller-public.de - My site http://www.anr-institute.com/ - Advanced Natural Research Institute
No time to update the interface.
Do we really WANT editors who are too stupid to operate the simple interface? It is not rocket science.
Additionally - the (VERY SIMPLE) markup language is what a WIKI is all about...so making it WYSIWYG would make it NOT A WIKI.
Read This, and may you'll get a clue (for those who want to change the wikipedia interface).
Lodragan Draoidh
The more you explain it, the more I don't understand it. - Mark Twain
This is about contributing, not viewing the site. Have you contributed to Wikipedia? Its practically impossible for non geeks
The problem with WYSIWYG editors is that the browsers themselves add their own mess of HTML and CSS to the things you edit.
"Standalone" meaning "not in a webbrowser". Therefore no more susceptible to the quirks of individual browsers than the current text-based editor is.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
Megan Garber is pretty damn ugly herself. She looks like the guy fro Mask (with Cher, not Jim Carey)
I think what you mentioned about allowing people to create and save too much design is a big deal, and something that would end badly.
I've done more than my share of sites for organizations, and without fail, any time you give end users real command over design you end up with awfulness. This usually ends up being somewhere on the front page as little news updates, where it's a real eyesore.
I think smart people saw that coming and did a good job using something resembling an extensive superset of bbcode.
The site is about information. Photos are great. And more information is great, though I do think a minor barrier to entry is probably a blessing in disguise. A willy-nilly democratization of design, however, seems like a really bad idea.
Also, I don't think the wiki looks bad. It seems reasonably suited to its job as an encyclopedia. Or maybe I'm just used to it.
Anyone who does not contribute to Wikipedia cause they can't be bothered to spend a few minutes and figure out how to edit an article is a good thing. We don't need any more morons contributing than we already have.
The problem with WYSIWYG editors is that the browsers themselves add their own mess of HTML and CSS to the things you edit.
The problem with WYSWYG is that it's WYSIWYBNAEG.
Markup != presentation, which web "designers" still haven't gotten into their heads in more than fifteen years of fail after fail.
And in the case of Wikipedia, it does so exceedingly well because of its simplicity, not despite it. The less cluttered it is, the more the actual information pops to the front, and the more room there is for actual information.
Those who wants a rounded corner ajax-slowed video blog without all the boring details are free to make them. Don't hijack wikipedia, though. /., but we all noticed how well received that was.
You tried to hijack
True. But I thought of this as the answer to the problem of the best way to implement a WYSIWYG or near WYSIWYG editor for the masses who are daunted by the complex markup. Think of it as a necessary evil. An standalone editor with offline capabilities would definitely be better than something that needs to built into Wikipedia's infrastructure.
Also, a pure WYSIWYG editor isn't what I have in mind, but someting similar to a dedicated (La)TeX source editor that has WYSIWYG preview capability. You can edit the text directly in preview mode, but to change the layout you need to dig into the code. However, the editor can have functions to automate the creation of, for example, [table][/table] or \list{begin}\list{end}.
Do you really want non-geeks to edit articles?
Quite true, however just because a full WYSWYG editor would be a bad idea, doesn't mean you shouldn't have something beyond the primitive plain text. Things like ref's make editing the plain text pretty painful right now, as you simply can't read the text properly when every line is interrupted by three lines of ref hyperlinks and link descriptions. The proper answer should be a proper structured view of the text that makes it clear where tags start and stop, but also keeps the text human readable without looking like random markup soup.
If it keeps Megan Garber from editing wikipedia, that's a plus in my book.
If she needs soothing images while reading articles on such uplifting topics as The Thirty Years War or the Rwandan Genocide, she should drop a Xanax and go visit some site loaded with pictures of cute baby animals and LOLcats.
(Disclaimer: I actually rather like sites filled with cute baby animal pictures and the like, but NOT factual work-a-day sites like wikipedia.)
If complexity is the problem, then a possible Wikipedia editor can be restricted to the automation of frequently used functions such as the insertion of templates, photos, tables, citations, or footnotres. Users who use the dedicated Wikipeditor won't be able to fine-tune or fuss over, say, the placement of the photos or format of the citation without digging into the code themselves. Think of it as having training wheels for newbie editors.
I don't think Wikipedia looks ugly either. The problem is the complexity of the markup serves as barrier to entry.
Things like ref's make editing the plain text pretty painful right now, as you simply can't read the text properly when every line is interrupted by three lines of ref hyperlinks and link descriptions.
Exactly -- this is part of what I was talking about when I pulled the example from the "SSD" article some comments above. So, even if you are a MediaWiki markup ninja, that kind of clutter just hinders you seeing the article in whole.
'The gridded layout! The disregard for mind-calming images! The vaguely Geocities-esque environment! Whether it's ironic or fitting, it is undeniable: The Sum of All Human Knowledge, when actually summed up, is pretty ugly.'
Oh go fuck yourself, Article. It's perfectly fine. The only intuitive interface is the nipple.
"if Wikipedia wants to make itself more attractive to users, a superficial makeover may be just the thing Wikipedia needs to begin growing in a more meaningful way."
The 'Sum of All Human Knowledge' is not a giant Staples button. If you don't see the inherent contradiction of what you've just said, you've no business doing anything on Wikipedia, anyway.
"Why Is Wikipedia So Ugly?" presupposes that Wikipedia is ugly, and forces that notion on listener/reader. You can get away with posing a question in an article title, but not loading a question.
Yes, wiki markup was easier than HTML. But my impression from various comments is that the quality bar has been raised since then. For one thing, there are templates and , which didn't exist in UseMod or Phase II. And for another, "ownership" behavior has become more common with Wikipedia oldfags reverting new additions that aren't already wikified instead of wikifying them.
The way it is, aesthetics use more bandwidth and create more technical issues.
Leave it alone.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
thanks to Eolas, a professional advocate (roughly, an attorney in common law legalese), who holds a blog in which he explain legal matters
is that the same Eolas that successfully sued Microsoft over a software patent that IE's ability to download code to handle specific media types infringed?
Those who are still in the MS-Office stage of document creation have no business in editing wikipedia. These people mostly have a very shallow view of almost anything, except politics in the corporation. In the "hard" sciences they use LaTeX to do their publications, and that is for a reason. Most people don't have useful knowledge to be contributed to wikipedia over more than two paragraphs, anyway. How hard is it learning how to make a paragraph heading and how to make line breaks ? Real experts in some field (say honey bees) spend thousands of hours in the field and spending a few hours to learn wiki syntax is no big investment relative to that.
how hard is this
==Parenting of Unicorns==
Unicorns are sensitive little feckers. Their crappy behaviour must be accepted as long as it does not hurt them or other unicorns.
This is a line break in the parenting paragraph of unicorns. yadda yadda yaddayadda yadda yaddayadda yadda yaddayadda yadda yaddayadda yadda yaddayadda yadda yaddayadda yadda yaddayadda yadda yaddayadda yadda yaddayadda yadda yaddayadda yadda yaddayadda yadda yadda.
People should start to contribute single paragraphs, as these will survive edits by the "wiki masters" with higher probability. It is dead-simple to do it, if you really desire. Those who just want to apply their shitty powerpoint/word practices are NOT welcome.
This is an encyclopedia, a starting point for people who want to research something. It is not a textbook, not a collection of simpleton science articles.
If you are really interested in something, you need to go to a library anyway.
I can't imagine that anyone ever sent a letter to Encyclopædia Britannica Ltd. to tell them "Your encyclopaedia has lots of cool information, but it needs a fancier design, the current one is dull."
The purpose of Wikipedia is to provide information... aesthetics will waste bandwidth, hard-disk space, CPU resources and most importantly time.
I know that design is important to some people... many of those are the people who got overly excited when a white iPhone(TM) was launched. So it's white, but it works exactly the same way.
...for people who like to be spoon-fed by their favourite whacko broadcast channel. As we don't need the crap knowledge of fox news on wikipedia, it is good these bozos stay out.
Since a wikipedia page is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starting cap word phrase , you can just create a bookmarklet for http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%s, assign it keyword 'w', and then type [Ctrl+L][w]Criticism of Wikipedia to jump directly to a page. Even if you guess the page title wrong Wikipedia often has a redirect.
Also works well for Wiktionary, etc. Some browsers only let you keyword a search form with a query string, but this is fabricating the page's actual URL
It's a great Mozilla feature. You can't (?) do it on Android, Google wants you to search with them. And keep you in Google rather than jumping to Wikipedia: Google's "Knol" wikipedia competitor folded but now now with Knowledge Graph in search results (seemingly culled from Wikipedia) Google is showing you the quick Wikipedia info without you needing a trip there .
=S
If someone thinks wikipedia looks so ugly, let them do the hard work of designing new CSS suites for what they think should look great
Still hoping for Gentle Treatment...
Even better, visualize this request as Michael Jackson returned from the grave to recommend his favorite cosmetic surgeon.
There's a lot of people who seem to have trouble distinguishing aesthetics from anaesthesia. I'm guessing what many of these people want is a presentation layer designed by Normal Rockwell on Quaaludes to subjugate any perception of the complexity or messiness of the real world that might disrupt the internal forgetting contract.
Why should Wikipedia be more beautiful than the world it describes? Wikipedia is only ugly if it fails to describe the world in a way that is quickly intelligible as a workable first hypothesis.
Beauty is fragile. Beauty announces: Keep off the Flowers.
It's ugly, and the fine Ghostery extension tells me that Atlantic page has 15 web bugs and ad trackers from AdThis, Bizo, Chartbeat, Disqus, Doubleclick, Facebook Connect, Facebook Social Plugins, Google +1, Google Analytics, Omniture, Outbrain, Parse.ly, Quantcast, Scorecard Research Beacon, and Twitter Button. Each one of those is another image and/or increasingly, another 10kB of JavaScript crap just so third parties can watch what I'm doing on that page.
A Wikipedia page: not one.tracker or web bug. "You're beautiful to me on the inside."
=S
Why is Wikipedia filled with snobby, elitist editors with an over-inflated sense of self-worth?
I don't think WP is ugly, and I don't really care. It works very well for presenting articles about topics, and that's what it's supposed to do.
However, the other part of the complaint, that only geeks can edit it, does have some merit. It's overstated, of course, you don't have to be any sort of techie to figure out how to type wiki markup, but there is a non-trivial learning curve, and it's gotten worse as more features have been added to the markup language. I think it probably is an obstacle to getting people interested in editing.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
The problem is the complexity of the markup serves as barrier to entry.
I have never understood the *need* for wiki markup. What's wrong with plain old vanilla HTML (the basics of which can be learnt in an afternoon by any teenager of at least average intelligence)? Why all the unnecessary round trips between the two?
(Personally, I'd prefer to use a subset of DocBook XML, but that's neither here nor there.)
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
Megan is obviously a low density chick - easily sharecropped.
Megan Garber leave wikipedia alone you vile trendoid wench daemon.
It is an INFORMATION place. It's not suppose to look like a flippin itunes/app store. It's a "virtual" dictionary, so to speak, so just flat leave it alone.
Looks fine to me. Sure it doesn't have much flare but does an encyclopedia really need it?
I'd rather have articles written by experts in their respective fields rather than written by geeks. "Geek" != "Expert".
Because it's much easier to type:
This is a [[link]] and here is a link to a [[different subject]].
Than it is to type:
This is <a href="\wiki\link">link</a> and here is a link to a <a href="\wiki\something else">different subject</a>.
Wonder what her opinion of theatlantic.com is.
there are so many things that need to be done on wikipedia - like a more structured approach to information. the design is sparse, and that's a good thing, imho. good design is about usability first, not about fancy-schmancy fonts and graphic design. and even if the minimalistic design weren't a good thing - a new design should be way down on wikipedia's to do list. i can understand the "simple design makes it easier to contribute"-argument. but really - wikipedia's design isn't overly complex or anything. if megan garber or someone else is to lazy to grasp the interface of your run of the mill-wiki, she probably shouldn't be contributing to wikipedia in the first place. maybe she should also think of returning her computer and go back to using a typewriter instead.
It's minimalist and minimalism is beautiful.
What kind of web sites would you get if Megan Garber married Jakob Nielsen?
I come here for the love
So you type your "few keywords" into Google, followed by " wiki". Works for me.
I come here for the love
I like the simplistic layout of Wikipedia. It doesn't detract you from reading the articles with flashing images.
well, you might want to get some help, being hostile to half of humanity is a bad idea.
And you correctly assessed the value of your position, it is exactly as valid as the one of the few men eating dragons, that is not at all.
The fact that some of your enemies might be stupid does not make you smart...
I don't get this "Wikipedia is Ugly" idea either; I think it looks really good personally. There isn't a bunch of extra flashy crap, just the article text, some tables listing key points concisely, some relevant photos, and finally references at the bottom. Then there's a simple menu on the left, and some tabs to look at the "Talk" page, edit the content, or view the edit history, and a search box plus a link to log in or create an account. What little color there is is muted and very neutral. What's the problem?
I think this is just a bunch of Web 2.0 morons complaining because it hasn't been completely redesigned and uglified for no reason at all, just like Gmail's crappy new interface; change for change's sake.
As a longtime Wikian, gotta agree that WP is long-overdue for some interface overhauls. And some imaginative, sort of "3D"-ish (expansive, connection-revealing, ... ??) alternatives for viewing data. It has done well at emulating formatted texts, and taking elementary advantage of hyperlinks, but done very little serious innovation in modern/alternative forms of data-display, in linking, in user-customization and user-world-building ... I could go on and on.
WP is a wonderful project, and I'm happy to have been a part of it, but I'd really like to see some leadership into taking advantage of all that data in some awesome, mind-blowing ways. Maybe it needs to run a year-long contest with BIG substantial PRIZES for world-class innovation -with graphics- (plug-in?) that enhances insights and utility by an order of magnitude.
"You must try to forget all you have learned. You must begin to dream." -- Sherwood Anderson
Right. Wiki markup is easier than plain HTML for doing footnotes and the like. It's also more semantic (context or sense-based) in that marking, for example, a series of words as a title would autoformat the words as italics. This, of course, can be done using CSS, but the ensuing HTML with styles would become just as complex.
Just proves that some people will complain about anything.
Sounds more like the author has a problem. Oh well
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge's_Law_of_Headlines
Wikipedia obviously isn't ugly at all.
Look in the mirror first
>>> "a superficial makeover may be just the thing Wikipedia needs to begin growing in a more meaningful way"
A: Do you even read your own copy ?
So, if we do something superficial, something meaningful may happen?
If I change my desktop wallpaper, do I get more work done ?
If I buy a new welcome mat, is my house now a home?
B: Wikipedia will be more welcoming when the majority of posters aren't the worst of homosexuals, atheists, abortionists, socialists, political hacks,
or well-meaning but essentially clueless twenty-somethings who do not have the mental acumen to write for an encyclopedia.
When in doubt the KISS principle always wins http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiss_principle. Keep It Simple Stupid, just like same lame arsed journalist trying to drive page views by targeting well known public identity with some lame pointless attack. This article on slashdot should not just be about the appearance of Wikipedia but also about lame hack journalists on the web trying desperately to drive page views before being fired by writing up inane articles that try to hype the journalist by associating their name with the identity they are targeting.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
OK. Now, is it easier to type Heading or
======Heading=====
(oh, is that 5 or 6 equals signs?)
I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on the Internet. Blog
Just reading this makes me angry. We've got this amazing volume of content in a highly useable, incredibly clean and completely unobtrusive format... and your complaint is that it's ugly? Fuck you. I don't know exactly why it makes me that angry, but it does. Probably something to do with the vast swaths of people who can't tell the difference between pretty and quality.
Why don't we got back and take Shakespeare out of this awful line-by-line format and make it all swirly or something? Moby Dick needs to be printed on pages with a water-texture background. Black readable text on a white background, cleanly segmented by content? Oh god, the graphic designer in me is just aching to jump in and fuck it all up.
Sigh.
Doesn't Wikipedia have a little toolbar like most wikis where you click on h3 and it ouputs
===Enter text here===
?
If so, what's the problem?
If not, that would be nice.
I don't think Wsyiwig would quite work because Wikipedia has a lot of semantic markup (like the dreaded Citation Required).
So, from my perspective Wysiwyg would be a disaster, but a markup helper would be useful.
I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on the Internet. Blog
Leave it to a broad to attempt to devalue something of utmost value and use (and entertainment and amusement) because it (to paraphrase) "isn't pretty." Is she American? It would hardly be surprising because that lot are nothing but superficial and watch reality on telly because they refuse to recognize it all around them.
Wikipedia is "unattractive," I assume, because it gets to the point and presents its information clearly; would that the same could be said for the female of the species.
Leave it alone. If you don't like how it looks, slag off.
What do you want a trash CSS like Slash dot. Slash Dot looks better if you turn CSS off.
HTML was written so people could publish there papers online. But HTML has gotten so ugly under the hood most people would not could not publish a paper in HTML.
People have lost sight that in the fact that simply is is beautiful. Ask any physicist. About the Beauty of a simple equation .
Wikipedia is not ugly.
It has an interface suited for it's purpose : providing concise information on basically anything.
When just looking for information, you don't want a super slick colorful interface, that's just going to distract you, and waste your time.
Also, having a lot of different content, it's kind of necessary to have a light interface that works with all content.
Slipping shoelaces ?
On the desktop, it's mostly pretty good, although tables can look a bit poor when not done well. On the mobile, I would go as far as to say it is the single best looking site I've seen.
So let's get started. Now, should The New Wikipedia have a spinning logo, or a flaming logo?
It's not THAT difficult. There are all kinds of WYSIWYG edtiors for wikicode already! The fckeditor plugin for mediawiki is one example, TinyMCE is another, and there are other examples as well.
Yes, none of them are perfect, but that is partially because they have no champion project backing them. If Wikipedia adopted one of these, they could make it "perfect enough" in very short order.
If you analyze it long enough it seems the words "empirical truth" does not have a meaning. As far as I reckon the truth is illuminated by what is empirical. What is not true can be illuminated by what is empirical, but in my estimation empirical information is always used to illuminate the truth. Wtf are you talking about ma'am ???????
Based on the context, I am assuming she is saying Wikipedia is ugly because it doesn't look like all the other sites. Look at every modern site, and the empirical truth arrives. Wikipedia does not look like that. If it doesn't look like everything else it is therefore ugly. I can hear her shrieking now "nooooo thats not what I meant."
The article is a fucking mystery. I think the author is playing some weird game.
Megan Garber is being destroyed in the comment section of The Atlantic. There are nearly 50 comments... all of them pointing out how clueless she is about design, how Wikipedia is actually well laid out, that she doesn't know what an empirical truth is , etc...
Oddly enough, Wikipedia has some interesting info on The Atlantic-
"In 2010, The Atlantic posted its first profit in the last decade... was the result of a cultural
transfusion, a dose of counterintuition and a lot of digital advertising revenue."
It has already been suggested in the comments that she may be nothing more than a comment troll.
If you found Megan's article to be insightful, be sure to read her similarly penetrating articles:
Taco Bell vs. Old Spice: The Twitter War That Wasn't
Here Are 10 GIFs That Will Restore Your Faith in GIFs
'New York Times' + Buzzfeed = OMG
She just needs to take off her glasses in an 80s teen movie nerd-to-hot-girl sequence.
Since this whole Slashdot comments page has - expectably - become a giant circlejeck, I beg to differ. Wikipedia's default themes are all hard on the eyes. The text is too small, and there is no easy option to set a black background. I positively hate the obligatory bright white background, DOS-style fluorescent-on-black was much better. Wikipedia has already given in to a certain 1999's style "fashion". Also, the markup is a kludge.
In fact, I like the mobile site. That, and no limitations on use (the mobile view has limited functionality), it could be better.
I like Wikipedia the way it is. However, some people (sorry for the weasel words) want to turn it into a WYSIWIG platform that rivals Google Docs. If that's the intention, then I think it would better to leave Wikipedia the web site alone, and dump the WYSIWIG editing onto a standalone application. The standalone app would be capable of reading all official Wikipedia "tags" (if that's what it's called) and have something like the W3 Consortium's Tidy to clean up or beautify (in a structural sense) bad or human unreadable markup.
I was thinking more of a program that can be installed in the user's computer. But, yes, blessing an existing project would help it gain traction and would be better than starting a project from scratch.
I wonder if the markup generated by the tool would be so bad that bad markup would drive out good. I.e., the markup would be so bad that people wouldn't want to wade through it manually anymore.
More generally, regarding wikis that you use privately, am I the only one who thinks that wiki markup is not really that intuitive or easy? I wrote a manual once in DocBook (an SGML format), and I found that easier than some of the wiki markup which you have to lookup and check before using it.
I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on the Internet. Blog
Semi-WYSiWYG is probably the way to go, similar to TeX editors with preview and helper modes. I find Wiki markup when HTML code is embedded into it. Also, I see far too many kinds of delimiters when compared to HTML or even TeX. This appears to be the byproduct of a design where delimiters are doubled characters like [[ or == versus the mostly single characters of TeX like \ or { or HTML's < or / (with the notable exception of the comment block markers).
So anyone can go ahead and make a "beautiful" version of Wikipedia, right?
What's that? Oh, the curious sound of crickets mixed with tumbleweed.
(But I do wish it was much easier to correct very minor mistakes, like typos, just by clicking on the text to make it editable, like the descriptions under [one's own] Flickr photos).
Interesting? Informative? Insightful? Funny? Flamebait? Off-topic? Overrated? Underrated? Troll?
Decisions, decisions...at least it's not redundant.