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."

Comments

Simple is not ugly.

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Simple is not ugly.

[del_diablo]

Indeed. I don't get the article at all, what is there to improve on? The layout works, there are images when needed to be informative. The only flaw is that some times it can be hard to find a spesific topic even with knowing a few keywords.

Re:Simple is not ugly.

[runeghost]

I agree. I've never had a negative thought about Wikipedia's look. I like the way it looks. It's clean, useable, and easy on the eyes. It doesn't need anything more. I'd even say it shouldn't add anything more. Clutter is the opposite of information. And the charge that it's difficult to edit is ridiculous.

Re:Simple is not ugly.

[Joce640k]

If Wikipedia is ugly, what does that make Slashdot?

By her measure we should all be running away screaming instead of reading useless comments like this one.

Re:Simple is not ugly.

[dreamchaser]

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.

Exactly. I wouldn't even call it ugly; I'd call it utilitarian. That is a good thing for a tool used to search for knowledge. It also makes it much more readily available to minimalistic and text only browsers without much extra work on the part of the maintainers.

Re:Simple is not ugly.

[SternisheFan]

I agree. I've never had a negative thought about Wikipedia's look. I like the way it looks. It's clean, useable, and easy on the eyes. It doesn't need anything more. I'd even say it shouldn't add anything more. Clutter is the opposite of information. And the charge that it's difficult to edit is ridiculous.

Sometimes, less is more.

Re:Simple is not ugly.

[phantomfive]

Not only that, on the Atlantic article, I counted no less than 6 different typefaces, not counting colors, bold, all-caps, etc. If this lady wants to change things, she should start with her own magazine.

Comparison to Facebook

[fleeped]

"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?

Re:Comparison to Facebook

[syockit]

Intelligence barrier to entry.

Re:Comparison to Facebook

[gweihir]

At the cost of having everybody mediocre and below in there and loosing anybody smart.

Re:Comparison to Facebook

[Anonymous Coward]

And unlike Facebook, Wikipedia's UI seems relatively stable and bug-free, and to me is easier to use. Wikipedia does a great job at presenting information without getting in the way. It's not flashy and doesn't need to be flashy, and can stand alone on the strength of its sheer usefulness without having to have a lot of useless eye candy. The markup they use isn't particularly difficult to work with either.

Why is Jimmy Wales so ugly?

[Anonymous Coward]

An appeal from slashdot.org - get some hot employees to pose for the photos

Subjective nonsense

[simplexion]

is all this is.

So ugly?

[hcs_$reboot]

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.

It does prove that,

[transporter_ii]

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.

Functional

[Irishman]

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.

Re:Functional

[maxwell demon]

I guess anyone who thinks Wikipedia is ugly will also consider books ugly. Think of it: The typical book has a big, mostly uniform block of text surrounded by unprinted space except for a page number. Most books don't even have images (except on the cover).

Wikipedia suppors arbitrary themes.

[eggstasy]

Go select one or upload your own CSS / Javascript:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-rendering

Form vs. function: Many people do not get it

[gweihir]

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.

Wikipedia ugly?

[khoonirobo]

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.

Re:Wikipedia ugly?

[Sigma 7]

How is that an empirical truth?

It's an exact comparison learned by observing Wikipedia from more beautiful websites. Too bad it's a subjective comparison.

Then again, if that person finds a Wiki page ugly, then he's more than free to use CSS or other stuff to make it look beautiful. perhaps floating elements (already in use), rounded corners, etc. If it remains ugly, then it's obvious that presentation isn't an issue.

Bizarro world

[dingen]

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.

Less is more

[SpaghettiPattern]

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.

Megan Garber doesn't value functionality

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Megan Garber doesn't value functionality

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

In a nutshell, she's clueless on this topic.

Ah! Another candidate for Editor then.

Learning markup

[tepples]

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.)

Re:Learning markup

[jones_supa]

I think it would be still nice to have a WYSIWYG interface. Actually I'm surprised that something like that is not in place already. The thing is, even if you mastered the markup (which is not even hard at all), many pages are a horrible mess to edit. For a quick example, see the source of chapter "Early SSDs using RAM and similar technology" in the "SSD" article.

Re:Learning markup

[JDG1980]

I think it would be still nice to have a WYSIWYG interface. Actually I'm surprised that something like that is not in place already.

The Wikipedia brass have wanted this to happen for quite some time. There have been extensive discussions on the mailing lists about this. Unfortunately, it's extremely difficult to do from a technical point of view because there is no official specification for Wikicode. The markup format was never defined, it just sort of grew. The only real definition for Wikicode is whatever the PHP parser interprets (and that parser is a pile of spaghetti code). Features like templates and ParserFunctions make a WSYIWYG editor exceedingly challenging to develop without breaking many deployed pages.

and The Atlantic is webbug/tracker-ridden hell

[spage]

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."