23 ms·

If someone asked me to critique the UX of Wikipedia, the first two things I’d point out would be that I almost never use the left hand side bar (and I have a fe

If someone asked me to critique the UX of Wikipedia, the first two things I’d point out would be that I almost never use the left hand side bar (and I have a feel almost no one does) and that when paragraphs are that wide they become harder to read (especially when they snake around floated images). Not changing for 10 years, watching as some trends fade and others become law-of-the-land, and then making two changes that are backed by a fair amount of data strikes me as a great way for Wikipedia to operate. I’ll also note that they definitely have changed some UX stuff over the past 10 years. The fullscreen expandable thing for images is pretty good, clean and JS-light (although this is HN so I have to note it would be better if it didn’t break the back button).

kome 6y ago
I use it very often, just because i check articles in multiple languages.
- Aerroon 6y ago
  I use it for the same thing. This allows me to learn what specific word is used for [obscure thing] in a different language. Eg computer hardware related words for my native language.
  - segfaultbuserr 6y ago
    Yes! I found Wikipedia article names are fairly reliable as a translation reference, especially for technical terminology. In my language, translations of technical terms in Wikipedia article names are often more accurate than the vast majority of random blog posts and articles on the web, and occasionally even better than some technical dictionaries, which may use old-fashioned or outdated terms.
- formerly_proven 6y ago
  Languages - yes, all the other links - almost never.
  - wodenokoto 6y ago
    Given the image on the blog post, I thought it didn't include the languages, but looking into the wiki page about the change, it does include the language bar as well. Damn. I use that all the time. Wikipedia is one of my favourite dictionaries.
- mfsch 6y ago
  This has also been my only use of the sidebar. It looks like the new design takes this into account and moves the language selection to a more prominent location at the top right next to the title.
andrepd 6y ago
I agree very much in principle. The wikipedia desktop site is beautiful, functional, fast, and doesn't change every 6 months to chase trends (unlike every god-damn website today it seems). That being said I don't understand why the sidebar should be collapsible (and collapsed by default). It's just an extra click to access functionality with some people rely on (languages, for example, being probably one of the most used).
- systemvoltage 6y ago
  Design should not be trendy. It is not fashion. I hope we don't bloat up wikipedia pages with too much whitespace. Getting of borders, "minimal" looks bother me so much because they're sacrificing layout for aesthetics. There is a reason why borders exist. It is a line segment that separates logically laid out content into groups. I want Wikipedia to stay the same even if it is not ideal. There is a lot of legacy and "learned" behavior. We need to add the familiarization factor to any UI changes. The amount of changes should at the minimum exceed the accrued familiarization of the UI...the longer the design remains the same, the higher this factor. It is crazy to think that we should not make a change if it is for the better, but there are a lot of people ... millions that use this less-than-ideal UI. There is something to be said about that. Typographically, Wikipedia pages have too wide of a column width. This is a common problem not just with webpages, but with magazines and newspapers. There is a reason why the dimension of a book (such as a novel) is smaller than a magazine and that has to do with how wide of a column is comfortable for reading. We need to look at how magazines and newspapers solve this problem. They use columns. Larger fonts is not the answer nor is excessive whitespace because you're not solving the layout issue. It is just magnification. If newspapers didn't exist and if web designers today were tasked to design a physical newspaper, it would be bloody 80 pages long and full of massive margins and fonts with no understanding about density of presentation. The web needs to be treated like physical media (yes, I said that, fight me). It is a rectangular 2D space that presents text - no difference to my retina whether it is a magazine, newspaper or LCD monitor in terms of spatial representation (not talking about contrast/backlit aspects). This was different a while ago, but today, the pixel density is great and we can almost treat monitors like paper (again, not talking about backlit issues). Web designers today won't be able to design a physical telephone book. It would be called "Too overwhelming" for the user and it would be insanely big in 17 volumes.
petters 6y ago
This is how I use the fullscreen expandable images: 1: Go to a page. 2: Click on an image. 3: Close the image. 4: Click the browser back button. I am now at the image again. This is surprising and I cannot seem to learn this.
- daniel2x 6y ago
  There is a setting to disable it. You're welcome.
  - oblio 6y ago
    Setting? Where?
    - msla 6y ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-rendering https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Preferences#mw-prefsec... Uncheck "Enable Media Viewer" and then click "Save" at the very bottom.
      - oblio 6y ago
        You need to be logged in for that, though :-(
    - daniel2x 6y ago
      In the "Media Viewer" there is a gear on the right hand side. You can click it and choose "Disable Media Viewer"
- petters 6y ago
  Update: This is no longer the case. I can not reproduce this any more. Great!
- fiblye 6y ago
  The worst part is when you eventually make it back, it loses your position on the page. They made this change years ago and it still drives me nuts.
WilTimSon 6y ago
I think the only times I use it is to go to random articles, which can be quite fun if you're in the mood to discover new things. However,I couldn't tell you a single other function they have on that side bar even with a gun to my head. Just went to check it and apparently they let you print pages out as PDF, news to me. Wikipedia really doesn't advertise its features much.
- intrepidhero 6y ago
  Ooh! I recently discovered the "Print to PDF" feature too. I used it to print out some pages for offline reading when I took the kiddos on an adventure outside cell network range. It worked really well.
  - zozbot234 6y ago
    It's actually an obsolescent feature. With modern browsers, you can just use the native "Print page" feature and the content will be styled in a paper-friendly way.
- trynewideas 6y ago
  Like almost every MediaWiki feature, there's a massive pile of Wikimedia drama behind it. They went through at least three major iterations, almost all behind the scenes, for exporting content for offline viewing, including PDF at all stages, and eventually kind of gave up.[1][2][3][4] This also encompassed the mostly ill-fated PediaPress system to get printed books of wiki content collections, the Collections MediaWiki extension,[5] and various back-end rendering engines that came and went (some without ever being fully deployed in production). All to have a link that, in the span from OCG to Proton, was made mostly redundant by browsers implementing "Print to PDF". [1] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Offline_content_generator https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Offline_content_generator [2] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:ElectronPdfService https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:ElectronPdfService [3] https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/tag/proton/ https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/tag/proton/ [4] Confusion over knowing who owns or maintains the PDF service: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T247310 https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T247310 [5] https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T256071 https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T256071
davidivadavid 6y ago
Reducing maximum column width would also be my #1 suggestion. Maybe that can be taken care of through themeing/browser plugins? If anyone has good ones to recommend, suggestions appreciated.
- pbronez 6y ago
  They are reducing maximum column width, but perhaps not as drastically as you'd wish: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Reading/Web/Desktop_Improvements/Features/Limiting_content_width https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Reading/We...
  - davidivadavid 6y ago
    Yeah, I don't think 900+px is ideal for reading on a desktop computer. Better than nothing, though!
    - userbinator 6y ago
      Resize the window yourself then. I get far more annoyed at sites that refuse to flow text to the desired width.
      - stevebmark 6y ago
        This is a good strategy called "blaming the user" and means you should never design computer interfaces! Full width site text means the creator has no understanding of basic HCI
        userbinator 6y ago
        Full width site text means the creator has no understanding of basic HCI No, it means the creator thinks of users as knowledgeable and able to take care of their own personal needs, and not as idiots who don't know how to use their computer's window manager. Perfect example of the former? HN itself.
segfaultbuserr 6y ago
> I almost never use the left hand side bar (and I have a feel almost no one does) Editors do. The sidebar contains tools useful for maintenance works. Just to name a few, I use "What links here" to check links and redirections, "Wikidata item" to update metadata - these two are the most used features by editors: after contributing a new article, you need to add/fix some inbound links, and to link it to editions in different languages. Also, there's "Page information" to see statistics, and checking "recent changes" for spams and vandalism is a hobby for some people who need to kill time. The current website works for me, I hope Wikipedia will keep it as an option.
- jessriedel 6y ago
  If you're an editor doing editing, you'll be logged in, so presumably they will just remember your preference, or give you an option.
- zzo38computer 6y ago
  I use those functions too, although there are accesskeys for those commands, so the side bar is not needed. That is also the case for editing, talk pages, history, etc; there are accesskeys for those too. So, all of the commands can be hidden, in order to make more room for the article text instead.
thibran 6y ago
> I almost never use the left hand side bar (and I have a feel almost no one does) If you speak different languages, the left hand bar is very useful to switch between different language versions of an article.
- cuddlybacon 6y ago
  True. But the gif in the article indicates they intend to move the language selector to a more prominent location.
  - rmetzler 6y ago
    While the language selection on mobile Wikipedia is in a very prominent spot, I often struggle to find it, because it’s just some Asian sign I can’t make sense of. I hope they don’t do this on desktop too.
- bakuninsbart 6y ago
  I use that quite a lot, because google periodically just refuses to acknowledge that I usually want my links in English despite living in Germany. English quality is often times a bit better, but it is also useful to check in multiple languages, as sometimes you get different information, especially on more controversial topics.
  - em-bee 6y ago
    or regional ones. topics that relate to the german area are usually more detailed in german. same for other areas and languages to the point that it can be worth it to use machine translation to look into a foreign local topic
    - bakuninsbart 6y ago
      That's how it should be at least, but not always! - Probably the best department for german literature is in Princeton, and my favorite scholar on german existentialism, Walter Kaufmann, also an American at Princeton.
upgrejd 6y ago
I use the left hand side bar, I like to read the articles in different languages.
azepoi 6y ago
I am constantly juggling between several languages and always preferred the desktop version for this reason.
bpodgursky 6y ago
I also love the new-ish mouseover previews. That was a great change imo.
- pintxo 6y ago
  As someone "reading with the mouse" I love them until the mouseover appears over the piece of text, I was just going to read.
FpUser 6y ago
"Not changing for 10 years..." I absolutely love that part about Wikipedia.
buovjaga 6y ago
The article refers to this: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Reading/Web/Desktop_Improvements/Features/Limiting_content_width https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Reading/Web/Desktop_Improveme... From what I can see, this particular change is already live in https://fr.wikipedia.org/ https://fr.wikipedia.org/
- MayeulC 6y ago
  Then it explains the difference I've seen for a few weeks, thanks. It's not much different, mostly narrower.
G4BB3R 6y ago
I use a lot to switch between portuguese, esperanto and english. Portuguese to read national/local articles, esperanto for every other and english when the other two have incomplete articles.
pmachinery 6y ago
> I’ll also note that they definitely have changed some UX stuff over the past 10 years. The mouseover popup/tooltip for links showing a brief snippet of other articles is so great that I find it irritating when other sites don't have it.
- DonCopal 6y ago
  The problem for me was that when opening links with Vimium, it also activates that popup, thereby obstructing the text. In the end I had to turn off the popup, good thing it can be disabled.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
ssully 6y ago
"that when paragraphs are that wide they become harder to read" I actually use the mobile view on desktop for this reason. The mobile view will have white space on the sides if you do full screen, but I usually have two windows side by side, which results in all text, no sidebar, and a more minimal top bar. There is a 'mobile view' button on the footer of every page, or you can throw an 'm' between the language and base url.
seppel 6y ago
The sole critique of the UX of Wikipedia that I have is that the normal version of Wikipedia redirects you to the mobile version when using a mobile device, and changes the URL while doing so. This is why we end up with all these m.wikipedia links. The mobile version, however, does not redirect you to the normal page when using a normal computer. So people like myself constantly have to edit the "m." from wikipedia links to get the normal version. I really dont get why they are doing that.
- mywittyname 6y ago
  I honestly think they were exploring replacing the desktop version with mobile at some point and used desktop m. removal as a gauge of aversion to the change.
  - msla 6y ago
    That can't be true because the mobile version doesn't allow access to all of Wikipedia's functionality, such as talk pages, unless they've made some serious changes. (More precisely, I don't remember there being any way to get from an article to the article's talk page without editing the URL in the mobile version.)
    - howlgarnish 6y ago
      This was fixed quite some time ago, there's now a Discussion tab/link on the mobile version.
      - seppel 6y ago
        Can you tell me you I can get there, e.g., here? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Test https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Test The work "discuss" does not show up in the source code, you can check "curl https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Test https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Test | grep -i discuss" The discussion is called "talk" on the desktop version, but it is also missing on the mobile one. Or there is some javascript trickery going on, but I clearly dont get it.
cjsawyer 6y ago
Also in-page hovers to other articles!
thaumasiotes 6y ago
> the first two things I’d point out would be that I almost never use the left hand side bar (and I have a feel almost no one does) and that when paragraphs are that wide they become harder to read Good news! The sidebar makes the paragraphs narrower. But yes, that wide-text issue makes it incredibly annoying that so many HN users provide explicit links to mobile wikipedia pages in their comments. Don't do that! The mobile pages have bad readability in normal aspect ratios! If I'm on a phone, ordinary en.wikipedia.org links will redirect to en.m.wikipedia.org, but the reverse is not true! There is no conceivable reason to provide a mobile wikipedia link, and plenty reason not to!
amirkdv 6y ago
> I almost never use the left hand side bar (and I have a feel almost no one does) The left sidebar has two killer features for me: 1. Finding canonical translations for technical terms. You need to know what the standard way to translate "hardware acceleration" or "differentiable manifold" is in French? Go to the wikipedia page and hover over the language switcher link in the left sidebar. Done. This has become one of my indispensable tools. 2. Learning about historical events where there are multiple inevitably biased narratives. For example, want to know about the Islamic Golden Age? The English, French, and Farsi versions have significantly different content from different perspectives (I would assume the Spanish and Arabic ones are also equally interesting). I highly recommend this exercise especially for history that one is taught in school, e.g. if you're American and can read Spanish, I bet the Spanish entry on Mexican-American War will teach you a few things you had never heard of.
- tasogare 6y ago
  You summarize it very well. Those are the two big usage I have from that bar. In fact I switch so often between languages I wish they were displayed upper in the bar (btw I don’t like switch language on mobile), and personalized with my 4 most used languages on top. Sometimes a language I want to read is hidden and it’s super annoying to get it.
- dheera 6y ago
  > 1. Finding canonical translations for technical terms. OMG yes I do this as well. Google translate is unreliable for technical terms, regional vegetables/fruits, cultural concepts, and lots of other things. EDIT: Wikipedia is also good at differentiating regional variants of a language, e.g. the country of Laos is 老撾 in Beijing Mandarin and 寮國 in Taiwanese Mandarin and Wikipedia knows this. Likewise, a USB drive is almost universally called "U盤" in Mainland China but this word is virtually unknown outside Mainland China. It's actually a good way for native speakers to look up one-off words like this when writing documents intended to be read by another region because you really just need to replace a few nouns here and there.
- ttsda 6y ago
  The direct link to the commons page is also useful for finding pictures related to a topic.
ksec 6y ago
Which is why I almost always use the mobile variant of Wikipedia. It is so much better, even on Desktop.
- mkl 6y ago
  I find it really frustrating, because the sections all start collapsed, so "Find in page" doesn't work.
pier25 6y ago
I agree on both. I actually prefer using their mobile site on desktop.
lultimouomo 6y ago
> I almost never use the left hand side bar (and I have a feel almost no one does) Pretty much every non-native english speaker uses it all the time.
- DonCopal 6y ago
  We've witnessed a typical example of an American mindset.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
Isognoviastoma 6y ago
I us it to check pronunciation of English, French and other surnames. I know Russian letters and make use of their tradition of rewriting surnames phonetically.
vaccinator 6y ago
> I almost never use the left hand side bar I use it most often to change the language...
rvba 6y ago
When English is not your only language, then you basically have 2x the amount of articles thanks to the sidebar. What is the most irritating is that they dont make some sort of really persistent cookies to remove the irritating mobile view.
baby 6y ago
I use the left side bars to switch languages all the time
WWLink 6y ago
> when paragraphs are that wide they become harder to read I hope I don't sound like a jerk saying this, but resizing the browser window is the key. I dunno why some people maximize everything on their computer - that's a really inefficient use of space. I wish more websites wouldn't try to force formatting on me and just let me resize my window.
- mywittyname 6y ago
  Well, I use tabs and not every website looks best at the same size. So I don't think the approach works. (FWIW, I'm also a non-full-screen user). But you're probably on to something. I would be cool if the web browser would allow you to adjust the body size of the document without adjusting the window size.
  - ehavener 6y ago
    Opening the dev tools works
  - pintxo 6y ago
    Reader View is available in Firefox.
  - Atomskun 6y ago
    That's...in literally every browser's setting since the beginning of browsers.
  - WWLink 6y ago
    It'd be neat if it worked like the ruler at the top of an MS word window (or textedit/wordpad), where you can drag in the margins!
- watwut 6y ago
  I don't maximize anything, but site that expects me to raise browser is obnoxious. It is not the only tab and idon't want to resize especially separately for each
- zzo38computer 6y ago
tomrod 6y ago
Also, tables on mobile.
swebs 6y ago
Sounds like you want the responsive design version of Wikipedia. https://en.m.wikipedia.org https://en.m.wikipedia.org
aden1ne 6y ago
I use the sidebar a _lot_ for switching between languages.
karmakaze 6y ago
There's a left-hand sidebar? I've gotten completely blind to its existence...I once knew there was stuff below the logo.
gerdesj 6y ago
Remember that Mediawiki (MW) is not just Wikipedia (WP and co.) I run several MW instances and the sitewide sidebar is fully customisable which is handy. Many users are used to the LHS holding "tools". You could also/instead put a hierarchy tree of say categories in it. I'm not absolutely sure but I think you might even be able to create your own user version of the sidebar if you create a suitably named user page. I'm not sure what WP sites allow you to do but MW has a lot of user customisation options built in.
bananamerica 6y ago
I use the sidebar a lot to find the same article in another language. But that’s the only use I have for it.
neiman 6y ago
> I have a feel almost no one does I use it all the time for switching the same article in different languages.
tambourine_man 6y ago
>and that when paragraphs are that wide they become harder to read Yes, reading Wikipedia on a 27” iMac is comical. Anything larger than 1000px wide is entering eye gymnastics territory. Ideally it should be around 600/700
- bmn__ 6y ago
  You are allowed to change the width of the browser window.
  - tambourine_man 6y ago
    Sure, but you shouldn’t need to.
sacredcows 6y ago
I always use the left-hand side bar. Switching between different languages (and being able to see which languages each article is written in) is important for multilinguals. And the “random” button is great.
WikipediasBad 6y ago
A blockchain-hosted fork of Wikipedia named Everipedia.org has most of these features already built coincidentally. While I prefer Wikipedia over them, I have been noticing myself use other skins/newer look wikis instead of the dated Wiki UI. Although, the load speed of Wikipedia.org is difficult to beat.
mcdevilkiller 6y ago
I use the translations all the tine.
Kiro 6y ago
> then making two changes that are backed by a fair amount of data I don't like how you go from a subjective assumption that no-one uses the sidebar to this, almost sounding disappointed that they haven't already done it. Or are you referring to some other data? I for one use the sidebar all the time.
account42 6y ago
> The fullscreen expandable thing for images is pretty good Strongly disagree: Links shared by people with JS enabled now silently show the page instead of the image that was intended to be shared if the recipient has JS disabled.
forgotmypw17 6y ago
i use the sidebar all the time to look at different language articles. some are quite understandable, and some i can google translate. for a multilingual person, that bar is indispensable..
walrus01 6y ago
The biggest thing I've seen that's changed in the past 10 years is the creation and refinement of the VisualEditor extension. It's a great tool for self-hosted mediawiki when you have a bunch of relatively non technical users, who are not comfortable with editing wiki 'code'. https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:VisualEditor https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:VisualEditor VisualEditor is what you get by default now when you go to edit a wikipedia page, unless you specifically click on the option to edit source.

kome 6y ago

I use it very often, just because i check articles in multiple languages.

Aerroon 6y ago
I use it for the same thing. This allows me to learn what specific word is used for [obscure thing] in a different language. Eg computer hardware related words for my native language.
- segfaultbuserr 6y ago
  Yes! I found Wikipedia article names are fairly reliable as a translation reference, especially for technical terminology. In my language, translations of technical terms in Wikipedia article names are often more accurate than the vast majority of random blog posts and articles on the web, and occasionally even better than some technical dictionaries, which may use old-fashioned or outdated terms.
formerly_proven 6y ago
Languages - yes, all the other links - almost never.
- wodenokoto 6y ago
  Given the image on the blog post, I thought it didn't include the languages, but looking into the wiki page about the change, it does include the language bar as well. Damn. I use that all the time. Wikipedia is one of my favourite dictionaries.
mfsch 6y ago
This has also been my only use of the sidebar. It looks like the new design takes this into account and moves the language selection to a more prominent location at the top right next to the title.

andrepd 6y ago

I agree very much in principle. The wikipedia desktop site is beautiful, functional, fast, and doesn't change every 6 months to chase trends (unlike every god-damn website today it seems). That being said I don't understand why the sidebar should be collapsible (and collapsed by default). It's just an extra click to access functionality with some people rely on (languages, for example, being probably one of the most used).

systemvoltage 6y ago
Design should not be trendy. It is not fashion. I hope we don't bloat up wikipedia pages with too much whitespace. Getting of borders, "minimal" looks bother me so much because they're sacrificing layout for aesthetics. There is a reason why borders exist. It is a line segment that separates logically laid out content into groups. I want Wikipedia to stay the same even if it is not ideal. There is a lot of legacy and "learned" behavior. We need to add the familiarization factor to any UI changes. The amount of changes should at the minimum exceed the accrued familiarization of the UI...the longer the design remains the same, the higher this factor. It is crazy to think that we should not make a change if it is for the better, but there are a lot of people ... millions that use this less-than-ideal UI. There is something to be said about that. Typographically, Wikipedia pages have too wide of a column width. This is a common problem not just with webpages, but with magazines and newspapers. There is a reason why the dimension of a book (such as a novel) is smaller than a magazine and that has to do with how wide of a column is comfortable for reading. We need to look at how magazines and newspapers solve this problem. They use columns. Larger fonts is not the answer nor is excessive whitespace because you're not solving the layout issue. It is just magnification. If newspapers didn't exist and if web designers today were tasked to design a physical newspaper, it would be bloody 80 pages long and full of massive margins and fonts with no understanding about density of presentation. The web needs to be treated like physical media (yes, I said that, fight me). It is a rectangular 2D space that presents text - no difference to my retina whether it is a magazine, newspaper or LCD monitor in terms of spatial representation (not talking about contrast/backlit aspects). This was different a while ago, but today, the pixel density is great and we can almost treat monitors like paper (again, not talking about backlit issues). Web designers today won't be able to design a physical telephone book. It would be called "Too overwhelming" for the user and it would be insanely big in 17 volumes.

petters 6y ago

This is how I use the fullscreen expandable images: 1: Go to a page. 2: Click on an image. 3: Close the image. 4: Click the browser back button. I am now at the image again. This is surprising and I cannot seem to learn this.

daniel2x 6y ago
There is a setting to disable it. You're welcome.
- oblio 6y ago
  Setting? Where?
  - msla 6y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-rendering https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Preferences#mw-prefsec... Uncheck "Enable Media Viewer" and then click "Save" at the very bottom.
    - oblio 6y ago
      You need to be logged in for that, though :-(
  - daniel2x 6y ago
    In the "Media Viewer" there is a gear on the right hand side. You can click it and choose "Disable Media Viewer"
petters 6y ago
Update: This is no longer the case. I can not reproduce this any more. Great!
fiblye 6y ago
The worst part is when you eventually make it back, it loses your position on the page. They made this change years ago and it still drives me nuts.

WilTimSon 6y ago

I think the only times I use it is to go to random articles, which can be quite fun if you're in the mood to discover new things. However,I couldn't tell you a single other function they have on that side bar even with a gun to my head. Just went to check it and apparently they let you print pages out as PDF, news to me. Wikipedia really doesn't advertise its features much.

intrepidhero 6y ago
Ooh! I recently discovered the "Print to PDF" feature too. I used it to print out some pages for offline reading when I took the kiddos on an adventure outside cell network range. It worked really well.
- zozbot234 6y ago
  It's actually an obsolescent feature. With modern browsers, you can just use the native "Print page" feature and the content will be styled in a paper-friendly way.
trynewideas 6y ago
Like almost every MediaWiki feature, there's a massive pile of Wikimedia drama behind it. They went through at least three major iterations, almost all behind the scenes, for exporting content for offline viewing, including PDF at all stages, and eventually kind of gave up.[1][2][3][4] This also encompassed the mostly ill-fated PediaPress system to get printed books of wiki content collections, the Collections MediaWiki extension,[5] and various back-end rendering engines that came and went (some without ever being fully deployed in production). All to have a link that, in the span from OCG to Proton, was made mostly redundant by browsers implementing "Print to PDF". [1] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Offline_content_generator https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Offline_content_generator [2] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:ElectronPdfService https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:ElectronPdfService [3] https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/tag/proton/ https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/tag/proton/ [4] Confusion over knowing who owns or maintains the PDF service: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T247310 https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T247310 [5] https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T256071 https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T256071

davidivadavid 6y ago

Reducing maximum column width would also be my #1 suggestion. Maybe that can be taken care of through themeing/browser plugins? If anyone has good ones to recommend, suggestions appreciated.

pbronez 6y ago
They are reducing maximum column width, but perhaps not as drastically as you'd wish: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Reading/Web/Desktop_Improvements/Features/Limiting_content_width https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Reading/We...
- davidivadavid 6y ago
  Yeah, I don't think 900+px is ideal for reading on a desktop computer. Better than nothing, though!
  - userbinator 6y ago
    Resize the window yourself then. I get far more annoyed at sites that refuse to flow text to the desired width.
    - stevebmark 6y ago
      This is a good strategy called "blaming the user" and means you should never design computer interfaces! Full width site text means the creator has no understanding of basic HCI
      - userbinator 6y ago
        Full width site text means the creator has no understanding of basic HCI No, it means the creator thinks of users as knowledgeable and able to take care of their own personal needs, and not as idiots who don't know how to use their computer's window manager. Perfect example of the former? HN itself.

segfaultbuserr 6y ago

> I almost never use the left hand side bar (and I have a feel almost no one does) Editors do. The sidebar contains tools useful for maintenance works. Just to name a few, I use "What links here" to check links and redirections, "Wikidata item" to update metadata - these two are the most used features by editors: after contributing a new article, you need to add/fix some inbound links, and to link it to editions in different languages. Also, there's "Page information" to see statistics, and checking "recent changes" for spams and vandalism is a hobby for some people who need to kill time. The current website works for me, I hope Wikipedia will keep it as an option.

jessriedel 6y ago
If you're an editor doing editing, you'll be logged in, so presumably they will just remember your preference, or give you an option.
zzo38computer 6y ago
I use those functions too, although there are accesskeys for those commands, so the side bar is not needed. That is also the case for editing, talk pages, history, etc; there are accesskeys for those too. So, all of the commands can be hidden, in order to make more room for the article text instead.

thibran 6y ago

> I almost never use the left hand side bar (and I have a feel almost no one does) If you speak different languages, the left hand bar is very useful to switch between different language versions of an article.

cuddlybacon 6y ago
True. But the gif in the article indicates they intend to move the language selector to a more prominent location.
- rmetzler 6y ago
  While the language selection on mobile Wikipedia is in a very prominent spot, I often struggle to find it, because it’s just some Asian sign I can’t make sense of. I hope they don’t do this on desktop too.
bakuninsbart 6y ago
I use that quite a lot, because google periodically just refuses to acknowledge that I usually want my links in English despite living in Germany. English quality is often times a bit better, but it is also useful to check in multiple languages, as sometimes you get different information, especially on more controversial topics.
- em-bee 6y ago
  or regional ones. topics that relate to the german area are usually more detailed in german. same for other areas and languages to the point that it can be worth it to use machine translation to look into a foreign local topic
  - bakuninsbart 6y ago
    That's how it should be at least, but not always! - Probably the best department for german literature is in Princeton, and my favorite scholar on german existentialism, Walter Kaufmann, also an American at Princeton.

upgrejd 6y ago

I use the left hand side bar, I like to read the articles in different languages.

azepoi 6y ago

I am constantly juggling between several languages and always preferred the desktop version for this reason.

bpodgursky 6y ago

I also love the new-ish mouseover previews. That was a great change imo.

pintxo 6y ago
As someone "reading with the mouse" I love them until the mouseover appears over the piece of text, I was just going to read.

FpUser 6y ago

"Not changing for 10 years..." I absolutely love that part about Wikipedia.

buovjaga 6y ago

The article refers to this: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Reading/Web/Desktop_Improvements/Features/Limiting_content_width https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Reading/Web/Desktop_Improveme... From what I can see, this particular change is already live in https://fr.wikipedia.org/ https://fr.wikipedia.org/

MayeulC 6y ago
Then it explains the difference I've seen for a few weeks, thanks. It's not much different, mostly narrower.

G4BB3R 6y ago

I use a lot to switch between portuguese, esperanto and english. Portuguese to read national/local articles, esperanto for every other and english when the other two have incomplete articles.

pmachinery 6y ago

> I’ll also note that they definitely have changed some UX stuff over the past 10 years. The mouseover popup/tooltip for links showing a brief snippet of other articles is so great that I find it irritating when other sites don't have it.

DonCopal 6y ago
The problem for me was that when opening links with Vimium, it also activates that popup, thereby obstructing the text. In the end I had to turn off the popup, good thing it can be disabled.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

ssully 6y ago

"that when paragraphs are that wide they become harder to read" I actually use the mobile view on desktop for this reason. The mobile view will have white space on the sides if you do full screen, but I usually have two windows side by side, which results in all text, no sidebar, and a more minimal top bar. There is a 'mobile view' button on the footer of every page, or you can throw an 'm' between the language and base url.

seppel 6y ago

The sole critique of the UX of Wikipedia that I have is that the normal version of Wikipedia redirects you to the mobile version when using a mobile device, and changes the URL while doing so. This is why we end up with all these m.wikipedia links. The mobile version, however, does not redirect you to the normal page when using a normal computer. So people like myself constantly have to edit the "m." from wikipedia links to get the normal version. I really dont get why they are doing that.

mywittyname 6y ago
I honestly think they were exploring replacing the desktop version with mobile at some point and used desktop m. removal as a gauge of aversion to the change.
- msla 6y ago
  That can't be true because the mobile version doesn't allow access to all of Wikipedia's functionality, such as talk pages, unless they've made some serious changes. (More precisely, I don't remember there being any way to get from an article to the article's talk page without editing the URL in the mobile version.)
  - howlgarnish 6y ago
    This was fixed quite some time ago, there's now a Discussion tab/link on the mobile version.
    - seppel 6y ago
      Can you tell me you I can get there, e.g., here? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Test https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Test The work "discuss" does not show up in the source code, you can check "curl https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Test https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Test | grep -i discuss" The discussion is called "talk" on the desktop version, but it is also missing on the mobile one. Or there is some javascript trickery going on, but I clearly dont get it.

cjsawyer 6y ago

Also in-page hovers to other articles!

thaumasiotes 6y ago

> the first two things I’d point out would be that I almost never use the left hand side bar (and I have a feel almost no one does) and that when paragraphs are that wide they become harder to read Good news! The sidebar makes the paragraphs narrower. But yes, that wide-text issue makes it incredibly annoying that so many HN users provide explicit links to mobile wikipedia pages in their comments. Don't do that! The mobile pages have bad readability in normal aspect ratios! If I'm on a phone, ordinary en.wikipedia.org links will redirect to en.m.wikipedia.org, but the reverse is not true! There is no conceivable reason to provide a mobile wikipedia link, and plenty reason not to!

amirkdv 6y ago

> I almost never use the left hand side bar (and I have a feel almost no one does) The left sidebar has two killer features for me: 1. Finding canonical translations for technical terms. You need to know what the standard way to translate "hardware acceleration" or "differentiable manifold" is in French? Go to the wikipedia page and hover over the language switcher link in the left sidebar. Done. This has become one of my indispensable tools. 2. Learning about historical events where there are multiple inevitably biased narratives. For example, want to know about the Islamic Golden Age? The English, French, and Farsi versions have significantly different content from different perspectives (I would assume the Spanish and Arabic ones are also equally interesting). I highly recommend this exercise especially for history that one is taught in school, e.g. if you're American and can read Spanish, I bet the Spanish entry on Mexican-American War will teach you a few things you had never heard of.

tasogare 6y ago
You summarize it very well. Those are the two big usage I have from that bar. In fact I switch so often between languages I wish they were displayed upper in the bar (btw I don’t like switch language on mobile), and personalized with my 4 most used languages on top. Sometimes a language I want to read is hidden and it’s super annoying to get it.
dheera 6y ago
> 1. Finding canonical translations for technical terms. OMG yes I do this as well. Google translate is unreliable for technical terms, regional vegetables/fruits, cultural concepts, and lots of other things. EDIT: Wikipedia is also good at differentiating regional variants of a language, e.g. the country of Laos is 老撾 in Beijing Mandarin and 寮國 in Taiwanese Mandarin and Wikipedia knows this. Likewise, a USB drive is almost universally called "U盤" in Mainland China but this word is virtually unknown outside Mainland China. It's actually a good way for native speakers to look up one-off words like this when writing documents intended to be read by another region because you really just need to replace a few nouns here and there.
ttsda 6y ago
The direct link to the commons page is also useful for finding pictures related to a topic.

ksec 6y ago

Which is why I almost always use the mobile variant of Wikipedia. It is so much better, even on Desktop.

mkl 6y ago
I find it really frustrating, because the sections all start collapsed, so "Find in page" doesn't work.

pier25 6y ago

I agree on both. I actually prefer using their mobile site on desktop.

lultimouomo 6y ago

> I almost never use the left hand side bar (and I have a feel almost no one does) Pretty much every non-native english speaker uses it all the time.

DonCopal 6y ago
We've witnessed a typical example of an American mindset.

deleted 6y ago

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Isognoviastoma 6y ago

I us it to check pronunciation of English, French and other surnames. I know Russian letters and make use of their tradition of rewriting surnames phonetically.

vaccinator 6y ago

> I almost never use the left hand side bar I use it most often to change the language...

rvba 6y ago

When English is not your only language, then you basically have 2x the amount of articles thanks to the sidebar. What is the most irritating is that they dont make some sort of really persistent cookies to remove the irritating mobile view.

baby 6y ago

I use the left side bars to switch languages all the time

WWLink 6y ago

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

mywittyname 6y ago
Well, I use tabs and not every website looks best at the same size. So I don't think the approach works. (FWIW, I'm also a non-full-screen user). But you're probably on to something. I would be cool if the web browser would allow you to adjust the body size of the document without adjusting the window size.
- ehavener 6y ago
  Opening the dev tools works
- pintxo 6y ago
  Reader View is available in Firefox.
- Atomskun 6y ago
  That's...in literally every browser's setting since the beginning of browsers.
- WWLink 6y ago
  It'd be neat if it worked like the ruler at the top of an MS word window (or textedit/wordpad), where you can drag in the margins!
watwut 6y ago
I don't maximize anything, but site that expects me to raise browser is obnoxious. It is not the only tab and idon't want to resize especially separately for each
zzo38computer 6y ago

tomrod 6y ago

Also, tables on mobile.

swebs 6y ago

Sounds like you want the responsive design version of Wikipedia. https://en.m.wikipedia.org https://en.m.wikipedia.org

aden1ne 6y ago

I use the sidebar a _lot_ for switching between languages.

karmakaze 6y ago

There's a left-hand sidebar? I've gotten completely blind to its existence...I once knew there was stuff below the logo.

gerdesj 6y ago

Remember that Mediawiki (MW) is not just Wikipedia (WP and co.) I run several MW instances and the sitewide sidebar is fully customisable which is handy. Many users are used to the LHS holding "tools". You could also/instead put a hierarchy tree of say categories in it. I'm not absolutely sure but I think you might even be able to create your own user version of the sidebar if you create a suitably named user page. I'm not sure what WP sites allow you to do but MW has a lot of user customisation options built in.

bananamerica 6y ago

I use the sidebar a lot to find the same article in another language. But that’s the only use I have for it.

neiman 6y ago

> I have a feel almost no one does I use it all the time for switching the same article in different languages.

tambourine_man 6y ago

>and that when paragraphs are that wide they become harder to read Yes, reading Wikipedia on a 27” iMac is comical. Anything larger than 1000px wide is entering eye gymnastics territory. Ideally it should be around 600/700

bmn__ 6y ago
You are allowed to change the width of the browser window.
- tambourine_man 6y ago
  Sure, but you shouldn’t need to.

sacredcows 6y ago

I always use the left-hand side bar. Switching between different languages (and being able to see which languages each article is written in) is important for multilinguals. And the “random” button is great.

WikipediasBad 6y ago

A blockchain-hosted fork of Wikipedia named Everipedia.org has most of these features already built coincidentally. While I prefer Wikipedia over them, I have been noticing myself use other skins/newer look wikis instead of the dated Wiki UI. Although, the load speed of Wikipedia.org is difficult to beat.

mcdevilkiller 6y ago

I use the translations all the tine.

Kiro 6y ago

> then making two changes that are backed by a fair amount of data I don't like how you go from a subjective assumption that no-one uses the sidebar to this, almost sounding disappointed that they haven't already done it. Or are you referring to some other data? I for one use the sidebar all the time.

account42 6y ago

> The fullscreen expandable thing for images is pretty good Strongly disagree: Links shared by people with JS enabled now silently show the page instead of the image that was intended to be shared if the recipient has JS disabled.

forgotmypw17 6y ago

i use the sidebar all the time to look at different language articles. some are quite understandable, and some i can google translate. for a multilingual person, that bar is indispensable..

walrus01 6y ago

The biggest thing I've seen that's changed in the past 10 years is the creation and refinement of the VisualEditor extension. It's a great tool for self-hosted mediawiki when you have a bunch of relatively non technical users, who are not comfortable with editing wiki 'code'. https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:VisualEditor https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:VisualEditor VisualEditor is what you get by default now when you go to edit a wikipedia page, unless you specifically click on the option to edit source.