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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
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.
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".
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)
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.
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.
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!
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.
I remember when the wiki markup was hailed as something anybody could use to edit webpages from the browser. Before wiki, only geeks could put webpages on the web (and even that was not true, there were plenty of editors with a big "upload" button), thanks to wiki it became easy for all.
Now you make it sound like a wiki being an expert tool for computer scientists.
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
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 :-)
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...
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.
Because that's the first thing a new Wikipedia editor wants to do: deal with "dispute resolution processes."
Wikipedia politics is one of the encyclopedia's most serious problems. In that sense it is like many other open source projects (GIMP especially comes to mind here). Good advice from the outside is refused or rejected for cultural reasons or because "they're not our kind of people".
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 ...
The problem with WYSIWYG editors is that the browsers themselves add their own mess of HTML and CSS to the things you edit.
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.
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
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.
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.
"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.
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.
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
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>.
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.
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
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.