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Wikipedia Turns 15
- rplnt 11y agoI was thinking just yesterday whether wikipedia will ever change its design or if it is timeless (unless devices change radically). I don't remember any major changes, I guess there were gradual that I didn't notice?
- bsimpson 11y agoThey have an m. subdomain that's a bit cleaner, visually: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hitchhiker%27s_Guide_to_the_Galaxy_(fictional) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hitchhiker%27s_Guide_to_... versus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hitchhiker%27s_Guide_to_the_Galaxy_(fictional) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hitchhiker%27s_Guide_to_th...
- nitin_flanker 11y agoThe m. subdomain is for mobile devices, to make thing look chrisper on mobile phones. You can see at the bottom of page, there's an option to switch between mobile and desktop view. However we can use this to read on desktop too.
- provemewrong 11y agoThere have been design changes. The most noticeable one happened in 2010.[1] [1]: http://www.technorms.com/326/the-new-wikipedia-wikimedia-foundation-is-getting-ready-to-roll-out-design-changes http://www.technorms.com/326/the-new-wikipedia-wikimedia-fou...
- rorykoehler 11y agoHave you used wikiwand? Much improved UX. Can't go back since I started using it.
- cooper12 11y agoMy friend swears by Wikiwand, but I hate how it changes all links to its own domain. (It really should have been a browser extension instead of its own website that's merely a stylesheet) It also overoptimizes for the reader: minimizing the edit tab, hiding the talk page, hiding the history tab, over-enlarging images, and making disambiguation hatnotes nearly invisible. I do like how it has article preview popups on hover, though Wikipedia has had that feature in beta for a while. This blog post sums up the objection to redesigns well: http://jgthms.com/wikipedia-redesign.html http://jgthms.com/wikipedia-redesign.html
- edgyswingset 11y agoI'm not sure that blog post is really applicable. It's shunning the idea of using designer tools to generate mockups of Wikipedia which focus on eye candy at the expense of content. That's not really what's going on with Wikiwand.
- cooper12 11y agoI think it is applicable in how it brings up how these redesigns focus on aesthetics at the expense of information. Wikiwand puts aside what it doesn't think is important, but if they had talked to anyone who actually uses Wikipedia they would learn otherwise. For example, look how much prominence it gives to images. While these are aesthetically pleasing, they reduce the information density and give the images more prominence than the actual content. I also bought up how it hides so much important parts of an article. How is a reader/editor supposed to bring up their concerns if they don't clearly know that there is a talk page? What if they felt that the article suddenly changed drastically and wanted to view the article history? What if they landed on the wrong article and can't see the hatnotes that usually tell them about the article they likely wanted? The blog post has this to say: > Why Wikipedia? Because you often stumbled upon it and thought “Urgh, it’s so ugly!”? If so, you weren’t using it. You were looking at it. and I think it rings quite true.
- MatmaRex 11y agoThe design evolves, just very carefully. There were typography tweaks in 2014: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Typography_refresh https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Typography_refresh (mostly increasing the font size of the main page text and changing headings to use a serif font).
- ptha 11y agoThe logo has also changed quite a bit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_logos https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_logos The one of the recent iteration removed the symbol from the Klingon alphabet to be replaced by a Geʿez character, along with other changes.
- bsimpson 11y agoWhoa - Wikipedia has been around more than half my life already? Good on them! It's one of the best things humanity has ever created. Hopefully they'll find a funding strategy that doesn't make them constantly feel like panhandlers. They provide uncountably huge value, yet I suspect with their current marketing, even very heavy readers rarely donate. EDIT: Sounds like they are working on it: https://15.wikipedia.org/endowment.html https://15.wikipedia.org/endowment.html
- edelans 11y agoI find their campaigns rather effective. I have the impression they do a big surge once a year with banners everywhere on the site. I find it very effective at reminding you how wikipedia bring you value everytime you use it. At least it made me donate at each occasions and I don't consider myself as a heavy user (hardly one consultation / week), and I think it is the only project I have donated multiple times.
- agumonkey 11y agoFirst campaign were subtler though, making me pay, and then it was big banner fest which me a bit angry. Maybe it's not the case if you're logged in and they track your donation so they can ask in finer ways.
- davidgerard 11y agoFWIW, the more obnoxious campaigns also met with considerable dissent from the community as well.
- glaberficken 11y agoIt's the only site I have ever donated to. I believe that is the same for other hundreds of thousands of people. When I see the banners, I just have to reflect on the huge knowledge value I get from the site, and I donate. simple as that
- wodenokoto 11y agoIs it really only once a year? I feel like I saw it several times last year.
- joolze 11y ago"Wikipedia is no banners at the top of the page"
- moonshinefe 11y agoWikipedia isn't without its problems, but there's no doubt it's been a very positive force on the internet. I'm not sure there's been anything like it in human history, where most people can have such easy access to such a wide variety of encyclopedic topics for free. It's an equalizer for sure in education. For casual readers like myself it's also a real pleasure to occasionally just dive into a section of history, follow the links around, and learn about the world. Same goes for various other topics but that's the one that came to mind. Here's to hoping Wikipedia sticks around for a long time to come.
- rodionos 11y agoCongratulations, Wikipedia! I found it tremendously useful over the years. I have one suggestion for them. I wouldn't mind making micro-donations for articles of particular quality and relevance to me. Say I find something useful and click on a '2c' donation button. The system doesn't trigger an immediate payment transaction because I would not have time to do it but instead waits until I accumulate $1+ in 'spend' and then displays another button 'Pay'. This way micropayments are easy for me as the reader and at the same time Wikipedia's transaction costs are minimized. Besides, I like to be able to pay later.
- smickie 11y agoI really like that idea, it would give the user a sense of how much they use it over time.
- nindalf 11y agoI think its a pretty good idea, worth trying for sure. My concern is that what is currently a "free" resource will have a price tag placed on it. Also, people who are paying might start to act entitled to very high quality.
- mtone 11y agoI think in that case I would somehow expect part of the money go towards the authors. By giving to Wikipedia as whole, it's easier to accept that I'm supporting the infrastructure and not the content.
- Wingman4l7 11y agoThis could also create a valuable dataset -- which pages on Wikipedia provide content that people consider useful enough to that they'll contribute funds.
- davidy123 11y agoThis idea was proposed for mainstream news, and rejected. It would amplify the filter bubble effect. Certain topics which are probably already popular would get all kinds of funding, others , which might be just as important but just not currently popular, would be ignored. It's better to consider the content generally.
- daniel_iversen 11y agoI've always wondered if Wikipedia could come up with alternate revenue streams because of the huge amounts of people they touch, the mammoth cross section of content they have. And the kinds of traffic analysis they could do... Targeted ads? Analytics for companies (a medical, tech or other company could learn what their stakeholders are interested in), recommendation engines, content classification engines for media and news orgs (or even SEO or UX navigation conscious web devs) etc.. They could do these thighs gracefully. What do you think?
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- MatmaRex 11y agoI for one sure hope that Wikipedia never falls so low as to have to run ads. :) Which doesn't mean that there aren't any alternative revenue streams for the Wikimedia Foundation. But it's a very touchy topic here. Ideas I've heard is finding/accepting more large grants (rather rare now, since it affects the independence of the organization), collaborating with companies wishing to crawl the content (like search engines; nothing that isn't public, just easier access) or hosting MediaWiki wiki instances (many people want to run "their own Wikipedia" and there aren't very many good providers now). Not that anyone is planning to switch to one of these models, as far as I know. But it's an alternative in case people stop donating.
- deepnet 11y agoI pay monthly to wikipedia, I use it tens of times a day, it is a fantastic unparalleled resource - a real public good. Wikipedia is a proof of a utopian vision that infused the early web - ensuring public rights wins public contribution. Humanities collective knowledge is better distributed because of Wikipedia, a true wonder of the modern world. IMHO, we must treasure wikipedia as it is not clear it could happen again and it embiggens us all.
- gmt2027 11y agoWikipedia confirms that "embiggens" is a made up word from the Simpsons https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisa_the_Iconoclast#Embiggen_and_cromulent https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisa_the_Iconoclast#Embiggen_a...
- meagain20000 11y agoI'm not sure if you are passing judgement but this is how language evolves.
- iolothebard 11y agoI'm perfectly cromulent with that as well.
- martiuk 11y agoI support Wikipedia's efforts and would gladly donate once they sort out the NPOV issues on the site. A lot of power users think NPOV is their POV and revert anything they don't agree with.
- Christan 11y agoThis is how these World War 1 battlefields look like after 100 years! http://goo.gl/6wJWCe http://goo.gl/6wJWCe
- herbst 11y agoThe grid is no grid on chrome. The boxes are beyond each other.
- elcapitan 11y agoIt's a grid in my Chrome, but only after loading js for another 15 years. ;)
- Isamu 11y agoI remember the announcement of the beginning of the project, probably on Slashdot. There was the call for participants. I felt certain they would fail to achieve critical mass in order to become the large scale success that they have. Glad to be proven wrong! And congrats. I have contributed too. Here's hoping they solve the latest set of challenges with the insider community.
- midgetjones 11y agoThe page is 2.5mb and took 18 seconds to fully load. Is that why they've been badgering us for donations for donations recently? (I am being facetious; I bloody love Wikipedia and do donate, but you think they'd be more careful about this sort of thing)
- rocky1138 11y agoIt's true, though I think it's being hugged by HN right now. So that means slow transfers. It took ~10 seconds to get to 115KB. The good part is that the text loaded after the first 615B, so I was able to read it.
- emw 11y agoWikipedians are hosting free events across the world for "Wikipedia Day" this weekend. * San Francisco (Saturday): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Meetup/San_Francisco/Wikipedia_Day_2016 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Meetup/San_Francisco... * New York City (Saturday): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Meetup/NYC/Wikipedia_Day_2016 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Meetup/NYC/Wikipedia... * Boston (Saturday): https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_15/Events/Boston https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_15/Events/Boston * Bangalore (Sunday): https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_15/Events/Bangalore https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_15/Events/Bangalor... * London (Sunday): https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Meetup/London/101 https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Meetup/London/101 * Portland, Seattle, Vancouver (Saturday, meet Ward Cunnigham!): https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_15/Events/West_Coast https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_15/Events/West_Coa... New York will feature a talk about Wikidata, how to query it with SPARQL, and how we are integrating it with Wikipedia and pushing forward the Semantic Web. Other NYC talks include things like "Git-flow approach to collaborative editing", "Copyright and plot summaries", and "Automated prevention of spam, vandalism and abuse". We will be linking up with San Francisco and likely some other cities for a global teleconference at 4:00 - 5:00 PM ET (21:00 UTC). If you're interested, sign up and stop by!
- ausjke 11y agoUse it occasionally and donate to it annually, happy anniversary Wikipedia!
- klenwell 11y agoI was talking to a friend the other day and came up with a term to sorta quantify what I consider perhaps the most important revolution of my lifetime: TTK or Time To Knowledge. The example I always use, the occasion when it first occurred to me, was a couple years ago when, for some reason, I decided I wanted to make a foam for a cocktail. Within 5 minutes, I had found a video on Youtube illustrating how, not to mention a dozen other sites documenting various techniques. I imagined being back in the 1980s or 90s and confronting the same wild impulse. How would I have figured this out? Asked a couple people perhaps. Contemplate a trip to my local library. Maybe make a mental note to chat with a bartender next time I found myself at a cocktail bar. Probably just give up on the idea and go back to watching the A-Team. This is a rather trivial example. But then consider the ease and dramatically lowered TTK where programming knowledge (via StackOverflow) or general knowledge (Wikipedia) is concerned. The internet itself cut the lag. But it was first Google, then Wikipedia, that turned TT#$&!%&@ (Time To me cursing that I have access to all this potentially useful information that I can't quite seem to reach) to TTK, Time To (real meaningful well-organized) Knowledge.
- reasonality 11y agoAll magic comes at a price. You could have learnt other tricks of the trade, could have made new friends talking to that human bartender. Talking to someone who is a master at something is far more valuable than asking the internet specific questions - how do you know what questions to ask...
- judemelancon 11y agoThe internet's supply of masters is much larger and more accessible. Is there a reason to think the video or other sources he found are from someone inferior in expertise to a local? Does that reason apply even for people who live outside major urban centers? Also, that line of thinking is letting the perfect be the enemy of the good. Remember the most likely outcome before was recognizing the cost of acquiring the knowledge exceeded the benefit of having it; there would have been no learning at all.
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- knughit 11y agoThey celebrated by sending spam email to past donors.
- jonknee 11y agoIn the age of Unicorns, Wikipedia is truly the rare beast. Nothing is perfect, but Wikipedia has managed to not screw up one of the most impressive collections of information the world has ever seen. They haven't sold out (like say, Mozilla) and manage to fund one of the world's most popular web sites with an annual pledge drive. Bravo!
- paulannesley 11y agoPretty much the more important site on the internet. I make a small automatic monthly donation; you can set it up in a few clicks via https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Ways_to_Give https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Ways_to_Give
- arca_vorago 11y agoI love wikipedia, and contribute when I can, it does a great service to us all. Where it fails though is regarding controversial subjects. It would be a thesis paper to get into the meat of the issue, but thats its weakpoint. Which is why I love they have shared their system open source so others can use it. The real issue boils down to a filter bubble problem, and google isnt helping avoid this. Its that people use wikipedia as a panacea and forgoe actually following sources far too often. Shades of trusting trust but instead of compilers its editors and censorship.
- markc 11y agoI first encountered Jimbo back in the 80's when he ran the Moderated Discussion of Objectivist Philosophy (MDOP), an Objectivist mailing list that featured brilliant philosophical discussions among the stars of the Objectivist community. Jimbo's contributions were consistently excellent as well. [Anyone know if there's an archive anywhere?] It was quite a surprise when he turned up years later in an entirely different context as a founder of Wikipedia - though I'm not surprised he did something big. His charisma showed in his MDOP contributions and he always seemed destined for something big. Congrats Jimbo, and all the other people who have made Wikipedia, for this amazing asset to humanity.