7 ms·
Wikipedia's new skin is a sad opportunity to reminisce what we could've had
- bobsmooth 4y ago[flagged]
- afavour 4y agoI wish the article had more detail on exactly what Timeless did. On my phone at least tapping through to the link to try Timeless shows me a Wikipedia homepage that looks pretty much exactly how I remember it being.
- penteract 4y agoYou can compare to the suffix ?useskin=vector The most noticeable things (on desktop) are that there's a big bar stuck to the top and the body text has a maximum width.
- peeters 4y agoThe WP front page is a bad showcase of the WP user experience as it is not an article, almost nobody sees it (as most navigate directly to articles via search results), and the layout is heavily customized outside of what the theme controls. Previewing the theme on an article gives a better contrast: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacker_News?useskin=timeless https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacker_News?useskin=timeless
- sergiomattei 4y agoJeez, that’s awful. I’m glad the article’s author lost this battle. The rejection wasn’t bad faith… someone at Wikimedia happened to have enough taste to say no.
- peeters 4y agoI think it's a great example of the bubble that the average WP editor lives in. For the vast majority of users, that theme is incredibly distracting. But it might be more efficient for the most hardcore editors that rarely actually read articles. And those hardcore editors make up the vast majority of the talk pages discussing themes etc.
- benatkin 4y agoHow do we feel about the dropdown Table of Contents in GitHub? A README is kind of like a single Wikipedia page. It wastes the margin but I think an empty margin might be a better use than an occasionally used feature being shown so prominently.
- chongli 4y agoJust make a Wikipedia account and change your preferences to use the old skin. That’s what I did.
- ilyt 4y agoIt's annoying to log in to every browser on every device you ever use. I wish theme was just saved in a cookie instead of requiring an account. The "I created account just to set theme" isn't even a choice on creation
- chongli 4y agoI only use one browser to access Wikipedia. On my phone, I use the app which I'm already logged into.
- Am4TIfIsER0ppos 4y agoSo which spy agency is wikipedia now working with that they want to you identify yourself? facebook, google, an actual TLA?
- jemmyw 4y agoI don't really get it. The linked designs from this article aren't particularly interesting or different. > During the question-and-answer period, I was asked whether people should think of Athena as a skin, a project, or something else. I responded, "You should think of Athena as a kick in the head" Typical "my project" hyperbole.
- password1 4y agoYes, from the introduction of the blogpost i expected some radically visionary design that would challenge some established rules of webdesign. Which honestly is an endeavour that I would expect from the Wikipedia community. But when i saw it, it reminded me of the Wordpress themes i used to browse around that time (2012). Very ordinary and very in line of how web design was a decade ago.
- karaterobot 4y agoFor private sector developers, this is sort of a glimpse into the horrific world of non-profits and government, where even the smallest changes take years to get approval for, and usually get mutated into something else once all the stakeholders get input. Things which would have been done in maybe two sprints at previous jobs now take me six to eight months, and by the end all the edges have been rounded off so that you could mistake them for being lateral changes rather than progress.
- archerx 4y agoShould we take design advice from some one who puts light grey text on a white background for the main article text?
- jasim 4y agoThis feels like process and principles driven design, which I've found to often result in a sub-par end-product, but with copious rationals. You see the end product and you know this is not what you want, but being an instinctual reaction, it feels arbitrary and unfair. And processes are there exactly for this reason: so that some capricious stakeholder cannot impose stupid blockers without being seen as unreasonable in the face of so many "facts". I think some of the best designs come out of the un-reasoned aesthetics and preferences of designers deeply immersed in the craft, and with all the reasonings post-hoc so it can be pushed through a political process.
- stevebmark 4y agoLegitimately, what is this? The article doesn’t make sense. Someone is sad their favorite custom theme wasn’t chosen, dressed up as something more profound?
- nindalf 4y agoWorst part is, there aren’t any links to his preferred theme. No screenshots, no comparisons, no argument for why it’s better. And the cherry on top is that this website itself isn’t responsive. Hopefully the theme that the author is clamouring for is responsive. And doesn’t use grey text on white.
- yellowapple 4y ago> there aren’t any links to his preferred theme. The sentence "You can try it yourself on Wikipedia today. (I'll wait.)" contains exactly such a link.
- ac29 4y agoJust add ?useskin=timeless to the end of any wikipedia URL
- philliphaydon 4y agoThis website is kinda horrible to read on mobile. If you zoom to the width of the text it’s so tiny it makes me feel tired trying to read it.
- braingenious 4y agoHighlighting the light-gray-on-white text to properly make out the words about poor choices in website skinning
- bobobob420 4y ago[flagged]
- suction 4y ago[dead]
- tempodox 4y agoSomeone who cannot make a page where text is legible without me using Reader View is not a credible authority on design by a long shot.
- lokedhs 4y agoI thought you must have been exaggerating, but then I clicked the the link and oh wow, that contrast. Completely unreadable.
- pharmakom 4y agoCame to say exactly that.
- aorth 4y agoWait, do you mean the blog post or the Timeless skin on Wikipedia? Both look fine in Firefox's built-in reader view.
- IanCal 4y agoThe point is you shouldn't need reader view. Having to use it means the design of the site is so bad you have to use a special tool to remove it all.
- Dalewyn 4y agoI am reminded of the thread the other day regarding W3C's website failing to load its CSS, and thereby improving its readability for a lot of the commenters.
- Zandikar 4y ago> means the design of the site is so bad you have to use a special tool to remove it all. Sounds like most of the content on the web at this point. I agree, you shouldn't need it. But at this point, it should pretty much be standard practice for users given the current state of the web. At this point I'm so used to the internet being fucked by stupid design decisions and the ceaseless bombardment of ads, dark patterns, "engagement" CTA's, and lazy loading javascript that keeps pushing the content I'm trying to read or interact with down the page (looking at you google suggested results) that I had the opposite reaction to most people i this thread: I was pleasantly surprised at how perfectly cromulent it is. Is it good? No. Is it well above average viewing experience? Unfortunately, yes. Again, not a defense of the design(s) in question. Just surprised there are people out there that expect anything more than hot garbage at this point.
- rippercushions 4y agoHere is the skin the author wanted: https://en.wikipedia.org/?useskin=timeless https://en.wikipedia.org/?useskin=timeless IMHO it's worse on all counts. In particular, at least on mobile, the series of drop-down menus with obscure icons up top is ugly, incomprehensible and a waste of space.
- catach 4y agoOn desktop, main changes I see are the persistent header and the sidebar. Definitely agree that it's worse, but only marginally so.
- ilyt 4y agoI don't like new design (space wasters, too narrow, colors for links is too bright) but this ain't better
- Gigachad 4y agoIt's not too narrow, if anything, it isn't narrow enough. There is endless research showing shorter lines are easier to read. The alt design linked is far too wide and too cluttered. I don't need to see all this useless junk about wikidata item numbers or backlinks. The chosen design correctly hides all the obscure power user links under the hamburger menu.
- Dalewyn 4y agoI prefer it to the latest skin for the simple reason that the background isn't one solid white with no dividers to separate what are clearly different pieces of information. The trend of absolute minimalism can die in a fire.
- ad404b8a372f2b9 4y agoTimeless is terrible, it's a mobile skin for desktop, it doesn't use the full screen space and it hides the languages behind a menu, I get mad every time I get linked to it. It's the default for french articles as far as I can tell.
- Hayarotle 4y agoTimeless is another skin, which was never made default [1]. The skin that hides the languages and doesn't use the full screen space is the new skin (Vector 2002). There was talk about fixing the language menu on Vector 2022, but they deployed it without fixing it. The a/b tests even showed that the introduction of the language-switching button even reduced the amount of clicks on language links, the opposite of what they expected by introducing it [2]. I don't know if those concerns were ignored or if they plan on fixing it later on. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China?useskin=timeless https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China?useskin=timeless [2] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Reading/Web/Desktop_Improvements/Features/Language_switching https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Reading/Web/Desktop_Improveme...
- ad404b8a372f2b9 4y agoOooh I see, you're right, I was confused because there are two vectors: Vector Legacy shown with useskin=Vector and modern Vector which is now the default everywhere and was the French default for quite some time, modern vector looks quite similar to Timeless except for the language-menu. More info here for other confused people like me: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Skin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Skin
- stuaxo 4y agoJust tried Timeless and it certainly feels nicer.
- zebracanevra 4y agoIf you don't like Wikipedia's look, create one yourself! User styles are freeing. Here's what I currently have: https://i.imgur.com/P6Ie59b.png https://i.imgur.com/P6Ie59b.png (unchanged: https://i.imgur.com/HOKASy8.png https://i.imgur.com/HOKASy8.png) I like the ToC on the left side, but I also liked how only the content had a white background in the old version. I find it draws my eye to the content much better. With that change and a few others to reduce the whitespace here and there, I like my version much more than what Wikimedia has done. https://pastebin.com/A3CZxg8m https://pastebin.com/A3CZxg8m
- forgotpwd16 4y agoNice looking. The solid white seems to be the most often critique of new skin.
- chickenimprint 4y agoI don't see any difference. I concur with your assessment on the ToC, but my main complaint is that monolinguals seem to have decided for the rest of us that changing language should involve multiple clicks in the top right corner.
- zebracanevra 4y agoUser styles are freeing, and so are user scripts! Languages moved to sidebar. https://i.imgur.com/c0Nh9UO.png https://i.imgur.com/c0Nh9UO.png https://pastebin.com/nmJaugZR https://pastebin.com/nmJaugZR
- chickenimprint 4y agoThanks!
- onetokeoverthe 4y ago[dead]
- c7b 4y agoOne thing that makes me really sad about the new design is that the links to the same article in different languages are now collapsed by default. Even when you don't want to read the article in another language (which I highly recommend by the way, if you can, it can really be quite enlightening to see the same concept explained differently), it actually worked surprisingly well to get a practical translation for technical terms. I loved having this bit of extra learning always available on the left. One might caution that it doesn't always work as a translation and one would have to follow the link and consult other resources to be sure. But I've done that often enough to feel comfortable saying that it works OK enough of the time to be useful. Apart from this feature regression, I like the new skin, actually. Feels cleaner and more modern.
- flohofwoe 4y agoI was wondering "what new skin?" and noticed just now that the German Wikipedia doesn't have made the switch yet. Anybody know why? German: https://de.wikipedia.org/ https://de.wikipedia.org/ English: https://en.wikipedia.org/ https://en.wikipedia.org/
- trynewideas 4y ago> By the end of 2017, following Timeless being deployed everywhere as opt-in, Isarra applied for a grant to continue supporting and developing Timeless (I volunteered as one of the advisors). Despite overwhelming public support from community members and WMF staff, it was rejected for vague reasons that I'm comfortable describing as in bad faith. Eventually she applied yet once again and received approval midway through 2018. This time I provided some of the "official WMF feedback" publicly. But the constant delays and secret objections took a lot of steam out of the project. The original proposal was for $8,000; some of the 'vague feedback' was that the proposal was too broad in scope for the limited resources. The follow-up was for $16,000. Isarra's final report on the accepted grants results is public: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:Project/Timeless/Post-deployment_support/Final https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:Project/Timeless/Post... Isarra cites a lack of resources, oversight, and support from WMF in the report. The project misses seemed to be from the unexpectedly broad scope of the problems with skinning. There's an omitted IdeaLab proposal by Isarra from March 2017 that requested $100,000 with a much larger scope: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IdeaLab/Timeless https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IdeaLab/Timeless
- wlonkly 4y agoI use a Firefox extension called Wikiwand[1] which, on one hand, has had some privacy/ads concerns in the past, but on the other hand, really looks good. (I've never experienced the privacy issues myself, though. Whenever I'm reminded of it I check my network tab and there's nothing too weird going on, aside from GTM and Google Analytics.) Here's an example page[2] -- honestly I think all the extension does is redirect you to wikiwand.com. (They recently added an AI summary feature which I could do without, but I've successfully ignored it.) [1] https://www.wikiwand.com/ https://www.wikiwand.com/ [2] https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Hacker%20News https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Hacker%20News
- roncesvalles 4y agoI get the point that the author is trying to make but I just don't think that Wikimedia has any dearth of resources. Just because something is a volunteer-driven nonprofit doesn't mean that it's poor nor does it mean that they should do things scrappily or less-than-perfect at a low price.