5 ms·

Redesigning Wikipedia: The Athena Project

119 points by friggeri 14y ago

mjn 14y ago
I agree with most of this, except I'm a little skeptical of the claims in the "More bodies means better articles" section, such as "featured articles are so good precisely because they are edited by so many". Many featured articles are good precisely, to the contrary, because a small number of people did the library research to write a good article. This doesn't necessarily have a 1:1 correspondence with the views discussed in the article: When a history article includes coverage of 4 major historiographical views on a controversial subject, often all four of them were added and summarized by the same editor who is describing the debate, not by separate editors each representing one of the viewpoints. That does seem to vary by area. The featured articles on major recent news subjects may be closer to fully crowdsourced, piecing together hundreds of sources, mostly newspapers/magazines and mostly available online. The good history articles tend to be more often written by smaller numbers of historians or history enthusiasts who have read and can cite proper books and journal articles on the subject. For example, one user I've run across is single-handledly responsible for hundreds of lengthy articles on classical antiquity, with >80% of the content and >95% of the references in each typically being hers: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Cynwolfe http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Cynwolfe I think more and more diverse editors could have many positive benefits, but I think quality is more important than quantity. Some areas have very good editors. Mathematics comes to mind as probably the best in terms of having editors who are very knowledgeable in the field and also interested in writing Wikipedia articles; I was tickled to find out that mathematician David Eppstein is a prolific Wikipedian, among others. But some areas lack much in the way of editors who are knowledgeable in a subject and willing to do the library research needed to produce well-cited articles. Those areas could be greatly improved if they had the analog of folks like Eppstein (or Cynwolfe) writing articles.
micheljansen 14y ago
Now this is how you go about redesigning a project like Wikipedia. All due respect to those other guys ( see http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4352290 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4352290), but Wikipedia doesn't need a branding makeover. Everyone knows Wikipedia, but not everyone contributes. Why? It's a pain in the ass to do. A better Wikipedia starts with streamlining the editing process (although something can be said in favour of a healthy barrier to keep the trolls out). Making Wikipedia look prettier is a nice extra to have in the process.
- briandear 14y ago
  That branding makeover wasn't designed to be actually used. It was, as companies are prone to do, a case study/exercise with the intent of showing clients their though processes with a recognizable product. I wouldn't criticize those gents to strongly because they are a branding company and they were using Wikipedia to demonstrate the thought processes that go into a project. It's essentially useful as similar exercises that we got in college -- it isn't about actually implementing the changes, its an academic exercise. In the case of the design firm that did the Wiki remaining, it serves a similar purpose. I think HN was especially hard on those guys despite the fact that it achieved its intended purpose: to start a conversation. Even bad ideas have a purpose in the design process (although I have to admit, I actually liked their work.) I'd love to see them do a similar case study on Craigslist or the Drudge Report, if just to see what they came up with.
insertnickname 14y ago
I'm all for improving the functionality of Wikipedia (e.g., the visual editor and Flow), but I'm very much against changing the look of the site. Wikipedia's layout is simple and puts focus on the content instead of the design.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- briandear 14y ago
  >> puts focus on the content ... That's the purpose of good design. Design has but one purpose, to serve the UX. That's it. Anything else is just vanity. When there's an obvious focus on "design", then the UX is harmed. I put design in quotes because we all know what I'm talking about, design that is more about artistry than utility. Real design is much different from art. While great design can be artistic, design is all about purpose and not that nebulous "What's the purpose of art" type of purpose, but actual utility. Getting something done. Solving a problem. The Drudge Report is considered by many on the internets to be a terrible "design" yet it's exceptionally well designed for what it does: it allows people to get a very fast listing of headlines curated by someone with a specific point of view. The purpose is precisely clear -- it's a place to browse headlines and perhaps visit links. Going to the Yahoo page, by contrast, I'm left wondering what the heck the purpose of yahoo is. Presumably, it's a news homepage, but it's incredible badly designed because the purpose of the page isn't really clear. It looks like Yahoo hired rejected Naver (http://www.naver.com/ http://www.naver.com/) designers and told them to ruin the Yahoo homepage as much as possible while maximizing ad pixels. Anyway, I know I'm rambling a bit, but I think the "look" of wikipedia could be improved slightly, but the design (at least on the consumer facing (not the editor) side is effective. I especially appreciate the mobile version of Wikipedia. It's a constant companion while I'm out and about and it's fast, crisp and gets me the information I need.
  - Gormo 14y ago
    I think you've hit the nail on the head here - there's an enormous amount of pure visual-design influence in UIs these days, prioritizing aesthetics over usability. We can see it in this proposed Wikipedia redesign, in Microsoft's Windows UI overhauls, and in plenty of other websites. There are major problems with what we see in the 'Athena' screenshots. Why are the navigational controls at the top of the page - ones that expose functionality applicable to the entire site, not the current article - skinned with a photograph taken from the current article? What does a picture of the Beatles convey regarding how to find information on Wikipedia? The author says that the Athena skin "emphasizes content", but it causes article content to bleed through somewhat into the functional UI, compromising both. This isn't a good thing.
tjic 14y ago
The biggest problems I have with wikipedia are: 1) deletionists 2) secret editor cabals Wikipedia is stunningly open to new editors, unless you create a page that someone else doesn't like. I've seen multiple people get turned off from Wikipedia when they create two or three pages and each gets hit with a speedy deletion within days. The other big problem with Wikipedia, for slightly more advanced editors, is that the ethics of the site frown on recruiting allies for revision wars...and yet there is tons of evidence that there's a vast world of behind-the-scenes editor politics, factions, rivalries, and Joe User can make a change, or weigh in on a controversy, and a dozen editors can jump in at once. After being burned a few times I've avoided the cliquey corners of wikipedia and mostly just work on things like spacecraft docking standards...but not everyone is content to work on out of the limelight areas. I think it was Clay Shirky who once said that it was a mistake to try to solve social problems with technological fixes. I think Wikipedia's big problems are social problems. (Disclaimer: it's still an amazing site, and I'm a big fan...but it could be better.)
- chris_wot 14y ago
  When I went back to Wikipedia after an absense of about 3 years or so, I found that there were some remarkably intolerant and rude editors who seemed to be able to do anything with impunity. Luckily, the main editor in question has since left, but it was ridiculous. Regrettably my depression flaired up while dealing with the issues, and I left the project (again), but this time most definitely for the very last time. Also regrettably, the Admin's Noticeboard - which I founded - seems to be a hotbed of intrigue and oftentimes is more a hindrence to the project than a help. It's still necessary, but I suspect that it has centralized power far too much. It may have changed as it's more than a year since my last foray on the project, but that was my experience.
  - mjn 14y ago
    I hear stories like this, but have not run into it myself, with the exception of areas that are inherently contentious anywhere, such as Israel-Palestine or current elections. What kinds of areas is it in? I most often run into the opposite problem of just not enough people around. I'll ask for comments on a talk page and nobody will answer for months, if ever; and even some of the WikiProjects are ghost towns if I ask a question over there. The people who do answer are usually polite and helpful. I mostly edit in history- and geography-related areas, along with a little bit of computer science. Are those unusually polite areas? If anything, I personally find Wikipedia-writing a bit of a relaxing break from the often-rancor-filled tone of other online activities (even HN can have an edge to it). Digging up some books from the library and using them to write a new article or two, along with adding a few citations to other articles, etc., passes a pleasant afternoon.
InclinedPlane 14y ago
Wikipedia has two core problems. At the level of merely an encyclopedia they've been able to cope with them but as wikipedia becomes more relied upon they will increasingly cause difficulties. First, there is a fundamental misalignment between the people who are actually responsible for contributing the bulk of the value of wikipedia and the people who "run" the site. To the degree such that the people who are in charge are generally clueless where the value comes from. Almost all of the value comes from content edits, which come from the long tail of contributors, many of them anonymous. The admins and mods who run wikipedia generally contribute only formatting and metadata changes. Rearranging, fixing the layout, hooking up keywords and so on. However, there seems to be the impression within the wikipedia org that the 2nd group is responsible for the majority of value. So they structure guidelines and so forth with that in mind, sometimes to the detriment of the content. Second, there are very flimsy standards of "evidence" for wikipedia entries. Overall this isn't such a bad thing because in reality most encyclopedia authoring groups are no better at ensuring they print the truth, but in wikipedia's case more readers will apply a critical eye and double check sources, which is all for the better ironically. However, as wikipedia becomes more and more trusted the need to rely on truly reliable sources becomes more and more important. And, as the internet becomes the primary method we communicate and store knowledge the need to store and catalog evidentiary sources becomes a more pressing concern than having a convenient encyclopedia at your fingertips.
britta 14y ago
Possibly of interest to readers of this link, Wikipedia is hosting an engineering meetup in San Francisco on August 15: http://www.meetup.com/Wikipedia-Engineering-Meetup/events/69097042/ http://www.meetup.com/Wikipedia-Engineering-Meetup/events/69... Looks like a chance to talk about these projects and ideas with people who work on Wikipedia full-time, including on the mobile interfaces and visual editor.
atirip 14y ago
The biggest problem for me is lack of clues of importance of the subject. Somehow I learned from printed encyclopedias that the longer the article the more important the subject is (in context of the subject of course). Take music. According to impression i got from Wikipedia, there's almost no important music made or recorded before, let's say 21st century :-) Or more specifically - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4_(Beyoncé_Knowles_album) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4_(Beyoncé_Knowles_album) - seems to be one of the most important, influential record ever made?
- slurgfest 14y ago
  Also, the most important things are ones which are mentioned in many different anime shows, all of which MUST be mentioned in the article, even if it takes pages to do so
nnash 14y ago
This redesign, at least as shown in the screenshots, is rather underwhelming. The new UI elements just seem to add a lot of clutter and distract attention from what is important.

119 points by friggeri 14y ago

mjn 14y ago

I agree with most of this, except I'm a little skeptical of the claims in the "More bodies means better articles" section, such as "featured articles are so good precisely because they are edited by so many". Many featured articles are good precisely, to the contrary, because a small number of people did the library research to write a good article. This doesn't necessarily have a 1:1 correspondence with the views discussed in the article: When a history article includes coverage of 4 major historiographical views on a controversial subject, often all four of them were added and summarized by the same editor who is describing the debate, not by separate editors each representing one of the viewpoints. That does seem to vary by area. The featured articles on major recent news subjects may be closer to fully crowdsourced, piecing together hundreds of sources, mostly newspapers/magazines and mostly available online. The good history articles tend to be more often written by smaller numbers of historians or history enthusiasts who have read and can cite proper books and journal articles on the subject. For example, one user I've run across is single-handledly responsible for hundreds of lengthy articles on classical antiquity, with >80% of the content and >95% of the references in each typically being hers: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Cynwolfe http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Cynwolfe I think more and more diverse editors could have many positive benefits, but I think quality is more important than quantity. Some areas have very good editors. Mathematics comes to mind as probably the best in terms of having editors who are very knowledgeable in the field and also interested in writing Wikipedia articles; I was tickled to find out that mathematician David Eppstein is a prolific Wikipedian, among others. But some areas lack much in the way of editors who are knowledgeable in a subject and willing to do the library research needed to produce well-cited articles. Those areas could be greatly improved if they had the analog of folks like Eppstein (or Cynwolfe) writing articles.

micheljansen 14y ago

Now this is how you go about redesigning a project like Wikipedia. All due respect to those other guys ( see http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4352290 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4352290), but Wikipedia doesn't need a branding makeover. Everyone knows Wikipedia, but not everyone contributes. Why? It's a pain in the ass to do. A better Wikipedia starts with streamlining the editing process (although something can be said in favour of a healthy barrier to keep the trolls out). Making Wikipedia look prettier is a nice extra to have in the process.

briandear 14y ago
That branding makeover wasn't designed to be actually used. It was, as companies are prone to do, a case study/exercise with the intent of showing clients their though processes with a recognizable product. I wouldn't criticize those gents to strongly because they are a branding company and they were using Wikipedia to demonstrate the thought processes that go into a project. It's essentially useful as similar exercises that we got in college -- it isn't about actually implementing the changes, its an academic exercise. In the case of the design firm that did the Wiki remaining, it serves a similar purpose. I think HN was especially hard on those guys despite the fact that it achieved its intended purpose: to start a conversation. Even bad ideas have a purpose in the design process (although I have to admit, I actually liked their work.) I'd love to see them do a similar case study on Craigslist or the Drudge Report, if just to see what they came up with.

insertnickname 14y ago

I'm all for improving the functionality of Wikipedia (e.g., the visual editor and Flow), but I'm very much against changing the look of the site. Wikipedia's layout is simple and puts focus on the content instead of the design.

deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
briandear 14y ago
>> puts focus on the content ... That's the purpose of good design. Design has but one purpose, to serve the UX. That's it. Anything else is just vanity. When there's an obvious focus on "design", then the UX is harmed. I put design in quotes because we all know what I'm talking about, design that is more about artistry than utility. Real design is much different from art. While great design can be artistic, design is all about purpose and not that nebulous "What's the purpose of art" type of purpose, but actual utility. Getting something done. Solving a problem. The Drudge Report is considered by many on the internets to be a terrible "design" yet it's exceptionally well designed for what it does: it allows people to get a very fast listing of headlines curated by someone with a specific point of view. The purpose is precisely clear -- it's a place to browse headlines and perhaps visit links. Going to the Yahoo page, by contrast, I'm left wondering what the heck the purpose of yahoo is. Presumably, it's a news homepage, but it's incredible badly designed because the purpose of the page isn't really clear. It looks like Yahoo hired rejected Naver (http://www.naver.com/ http://www.naver.com/) designers and told them to ruin the Yahoo homepage as much as possible while maximizing ad pixels. Anyway, I know I'm rambling a bit, but I think the "look" of wikipedia could be improved slightly, but the design (at least on the consumer facing (not the editor) side is effective. I especially appreciate the mobile version of Wikipedia. It's a constant companion while I'm out and about and it's fast, crisp and gets me the information I need.
- Gormo 14y ago
  I think you've hit the nail on the head here - there's an enormous amount of pure visual-design influence in UIs these days, prioritizing aesthetics over usability. We can see it in this proposed Wikipedia redesign, in Microsoft's Windows UI overhauls, and in plenty of other websites. There are major problems with what we see in the 'Athena' screenshots. Why are the navigational controls at the top of the page - ones that expose functionality applicable to the entire site, not the current article - skinned with a photograph taken from the current article? What does a picture of the Beatles convey regarding how to find information on Wikipedia? The author says that the Athena skin "emphasizes content", but it causes article content to bleed through somewhat into the functional UI, compromising both. This isn't a good thing.

tjic 14y ago

The biggest problems I have with wikipedia are: 1) deletionists 2) secret editor cabals Wikipedia is stunningly open to new editors, unless you create a page that someone else doesn't like. I've seen multiple people get turned off from Wikipedia when they create two or three pages and each gets hit with a speedy deletion within days. The other big problem with Wikipedia, for slightly more advanced editors, is that the ethics of the site frown on recruiting allies for revision wars...and yet there is tons of evidence that there's a vast world of behind-the-scenes editor politics, factions, rivalries, and Joe User can make a change, or weigh in on a controversy, and a dozen editors can jump in at once. After being burned a few times I've avoided the cliquey corners of wikipedia and mostly just work on things like spacecraft docking standards...but not everyone is content to work on out of the limelight areas. I think it was Clay Shirky who once said that it was a mistake to try to solve social problems with technological fixes. I think Wikipedia's big problems are social problems. (Disclaimer: it's still an amazing site, and I'm a big fan...but it could be better.)

chris_wot 14y ago
When I went back to Wikipedia after an absense of about 3 years or so, I found that there were some remarkably intolerant and rude editors who seemed to be able to do anything with impunity. Luckily, the main editor in question has since left, but it was ridiculous. Regrettably my depression flaired up while dealing with the issues, and I left the project (again), but this time most definitely for the very last time. Also regrettably, the Admin's Noticeboard - which I founded - seems to be a hotbed of intrigue and oftentimes is more a hindrence to the project than a help. It's still necessary, but I suspect that it has centralized power far too much. It may have changed as it's more than a year since my last foray on the project, but that was my experience.
- mjn 14y ago
  I hear stories like this, but have not run into it myself, with the exception of areas that are inherently contentious anywhere, such as Israel-Palestine or current elections. What kinds of areas is it in? I most often run into the opposite problem of just not enough people around. I'll ask for comments on a talk page and nobody will answer for months, if ever; and even some of the WikiProjects are ghost towns if I ask a question over there. The people who do answer are usually polite and helpful. I mostly edit in history- and geography-related areas, along with a little bit of computer science. Are those unusually polite areas? If anything, I personally find Wikipedia-writing a bit of a relaxing break from the often-rancor-filled tone of other online activities (even HN can have an edge to it). Digging up some books from the library and using them to write a new article or two, along with adding a few citations to other articles, etc., passes a pleasant afternoon.

InclinedPlane 14y ago

Wikipedia has two core problems. At the level of merely an encyclopedia they've been able to cope with them but as wikipedia becomes more relied upon they will increasingly cause difficulties. First, there is a fundamental misalignment between the people who are actually responsible for contributing the bulk of the value of wikipedia and the people who "run" the site. To the degree such that the people who are in charge are generally clueless where the value comes from. Almost all of the value comes from content edits, which come from the long tail of contributors, many of them anonymous. The admins and mods who run wikipedia generally contribute only formatting and metadata changes. Rearranging, fixing the layout, hooking up keywords and so on. However, there seems to be the impression within the wikipedia org that the 2nd group is responsible for the majority of value. So they structure guidelines and so forth with that in mind, sometimes to the detriment of the content. Second, there are very flimsy standards of "evidence" for wikipedia entries. Overall this isn't such a bad thing because in reality most encyclopedia authoring groups are no better at ensuring they print the truth, but in wikipedia's case more readers will apply a critical eye and double check sources, which is all for the better ironically. However, as wikipedia becomes more and more trusted the need to rely on truly reliable sources becomes more and more important. And, as the internet becomes the primary method we communicate and store knowledge the need to store and catalog evidentiary sources becomes a more pressing concern than having a convenient encyclopedia at your fingertips.

britta 14y ago

Possibly of interest to readers of this link, Wikipedia is hosting an engineering meetup in San Francisco on August 15: http://www.meetup.com/Wikipedia-Engineering-Meetup/events/69097042/ http://www.meetup.com/Wikipedia-Engineering-Meetup/events/69... Looks like a chance to talk about these projects and ideas with people who work on Wikipedia full-time, including on the mobile interfaces and visual editor.

atirip 14y ago

The biggest problem for me is lack of clues of importance of the subject. Somehow I learned from printed encyclopedias that the longer the article the more important the subject is (in context of the subject of course). Take music. According to impression i got from Wikipedia, there's almost no important music made or recorded before, let's say 21st century :-) Or more specifically - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4_(Beyoncé_Knowles_album) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4_(Beyoncé_Knowles_album) - seems to be one of the most important, influential record ever made?

slurgfest 14y ago
Also, the most important things are ones which are mentioned in many different anime shows, all of which MUST be mentioned in the article, even if it takes pages to do so

nnash 14y ago

This redesign, at least as shown in the screenshots, is rather underwhelming. The new UI elements just seem to add a lot of clutter and distract attention from what is important.