
Wikipedia Redefined - troethom
http://www.wikipediaredefined.com
======
tptacek
You'd probably want any redesign of Wikipedia to start with the understanding
that the front page of the English Wikipedia _isn't_ WWW.WIKIPEDIA.ORG, it's
EN.WIKIPEDIA.ORG, and that that page is dominated by content --- most notably
the WP Featured Articles, which are a core part of the Wikipedia community.

Draw the pretty colored lines after you grok the concept.

It goes downhill for me as they try to get more technical, redefining the way
the encyclopedia is edited and organized. Drag and drop reformatting of
article layouts? Really? Don't the best Wikipedia articles tend to be
conformant to template layouts?

Wikipedia is not Digg. It does not have, as its primary goal, the delight of
random web users. They are doing something bigger than that.

I'm also not a fan of the branding idea. First, they've confused Wikipedia
with The Wikimedia Foundation. The two aren't the same thing. The branding
they propose makes sense only for the latter. Second, they're trying to do
that organic living logo thing that has become ultra-trendy lately (just read
Brand New Blog to see it done well); "as Wikimedia evolves, the little lines
in the logo will change". Well, maybe, but the relationship between Wikimedia
top-level properties doesn't change all that regularly, nor does it
meaningfully change depending on the context. Nor does the aggregate set of
lines between properties draw an appealing or meaningful picture.

Also the capital "I" in the font they're using is _killing_ me.

~~~
eps
> Draw the pretty colored lines after you grok the concept.

There is nothing to grok. Imagine Google's landing page being chokeful of
"content" including, most notably, the featured articles of random nature.

Your comment inadvertently demonstrates the problem with Wikipedia as it
exists now. A vast majority of its users has _nothing_ to do with its
community. People come, they consume and they leave. Sad, but that's life. But
still the site is built to favor not their experience, but the experience of
those who is deeply involved with Wikipedia - the very same people who are
perfectly content with how things are and who resist the change initiated by
those _outside_ of the community.

So perhaps instead of dismissing alternative views as complete garbage, it
might've been a better idea to try and understand where their authors are
coming from and _why_ it is that they are proposing the changes.

~~~
tptacek
The Wikipedia FA's aren't "random". They're a showcase of the best articles on
the site, and are _p a i n s t a k i n g l y_ vetted by the WP community.
Getting your article on the front page is a very big deal. The FA process is
one of the primary drivers of editorial quality on the site.

~~~
eps
> Getting your article on the front page is a very big deal.

I'm sure it is. If I wrote that article that is. If on the other hand I just
walked in through a front door it is as useful as a book of the month featured
in a local library. It is essentially a random pick.

> The FA process is one of the primary drivers of editorial quality on the
> site.

Hold on. So you are saying that if it weren't for a carrot of being featured
on the front page, the Wikipedia editors would've not been putting as much
effort into polishing the articles as they do now. This is simply not true.

~~~
zevyoura
I think you're misinterpreting your parent comment; I believe he's referring
to the fact that to become a featured article you must go through an extremely
rigorous process that definitely improves the article it's applied to (see:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Featured_article_crit...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Featured_article_criteria)
). You end up with a thousand or so articles a year (rough guess, I'm not
active on Wikipedia) that have gone through some or all of this process, which
makes a surprisingly large dent. Also, after being listed as a featured
article, it's theoretically held to that standard in perpetuity (in fact,
Wikipedia has a group of people dedicated to maintaining these). Next time
you're reading an article that seems exceptionally well written and researched
on Wikipedia, check its FA status.

------
languagehacker
I work at Wikia, which means I work with MediaWiki every day. I was kind of
offended by how naive New is New is being. I don't think they have any grasp
on the sort of massive scope changes like this would require. Wikipedia is not
MediaWiki's only consumer. A lot of communities that use MediaWiki are
extremely conservative about the UI, so some of the conservatism is by design.
The WikiMedia Foundation is working on a lot of the more feasible features
already, such as the visual editor.

I think it's obnoxious that a design team would spend two months on something
without taking any time to consider implementation detail. The MediaWiki
project is very transparent, and if New is New cared to learn about what
features were in the works, they could have easily found them on the right
wiki -- design mockups and all. Whoever would hire these guys to do work for
hire will be paying for an intractable mess of a design with a hearty helping
of scope creep.

And don't get me started on the proposed Wikipedia logo. It looks like the
Wikia fractal with way less nodes.

~~~
hkmurakami
I highly highly doubt that this is an actual appeal by them to change the
MediaWiki interface. I see this purely as a publicity stunt / marketing move,
intended to get their brand and abilities out there in front of people. And to
be frank, I think they're being quite successful at that. UX/practicality
aside, most of the components do _look_ good. (though good parts of it remind
me of Google, Quora, and other prominent sites)

(Seeing this site reminded me of the guy who did the Windows redesign work a
few months ago, which means that the windows redesign guy did a good job
marketing/branding himself too!)

~~~
mieubrisse
> most of the components do look good. (though good parts of it remind me of
> Google, Quora, and other prominent sites)

I got the exact same aesthetic feeling, too. This redesign reminded of nothing
so much as GMail.

~~~
rplnt
Exactly. No content, just big buttons that aren't clear about what they do.

------
kristianc
The front page of Wikipedia works remarkably well for discovery - go to
en.wikipedia.org on any given day, and you are guaranteed to learn something
new.

Deciding that users want to see your overbearing minimalism and your 'sound-
great-in-concept-meetings-but-shit-on-paper' designs instead of you know,
actual information on the front page of an encyclopaedia strikes me as an
astonishing act of hubris.

The one piece of information given on the front page (the languages bar) is a
nice curiosity, but utterly useless after about one visit. I'm sure the Swiss,
the Swedes, the Danes, the Indonesians would also be delighted to find that
their languages have been relegated to 'rollover' status.

As for the article pages, too much white-space, nowhere near enough
information density. Did it not strike the authors, "Hey, hang on, the article
is almost invisible on this page after all the crap we put in?"
<http://www.wikipediaredefined.com/img/27.png>

~~~
michaelfeathers
Google indexes wikipedia so I haven't seen the front page in years.

~~~
fromhet
But google search doesnt replace the wikipedia start page, only it's search
feature.

------
mbrubeck
Proposed Wikipedia logo: <http://www.wikipediaredefined.com/img/4.png>

Actual WordPress logo: [http://s.wordpress.org/about/images/logos/wordpress-
logo-sta...](http://s.wordpress.org/about/images/logos/wordpress-logo-stacked-
rgb.png)

(It's not just that both are W's -- they also chose a typeface with a similar
distinctive swoosh.)

~~~
nnash
>the letter W, which is/could be the most famous W in the whole web. W is
enough for Wikipedia to be recognized.

I read this and thought the same thing, "What about Wordpress?"

~~~
sanjiallblue
Wordpress isn't very well-known by the general public. I mean hell, it's not
even in the same ballpark compared to Wikipedia.

~~~
mbrubeck
It's closer than you might guess. According to Alexa statistics (which I know
aren't perfect), WordPress.com is one of the top 20 web sites in the entire
world, even though it is visited by "only" 4% to 5% of all Internet users each
day [1], compared to Wikipedia's 10-15% [2]. The WordPress software has been
around for almost a decade, and although most readers of WordPress blogs might
not recall the name "WordPress", they probably have at least some passive
recognition. Each hosted WordPress blog uses the "W" favicon by default.

[1]: <http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/wordpress.com>

[2]: <http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/wikipedia.org>

~~~
dagw
Sure lots of people visit WordPress sites, but how many of them actually know
who/what WordPress is and know what the logo looks like. I have to admit that
if you'd asked me 5 minutes ago to describe the WordPress logo I would have
drawn a blank.

------
patrickmclaren
Sent this email to them:

" Absolutely terrible; increasing the signal/noise ratio, in addition to
increasing unnecessary white space were extremely bad design choices.

The purpose of Wikipedia is to share information. The changes that you
proposed impede that goal by the addition of a step where the user has to
"understand" the design, before they can begin to use it.

You should have reviewed mathematical and scientific journals before you begun
your sketch work. Those types of publications succeed at transmitting a high
amount of information, very quickly. Bare HTML pages also succeed at
transmitting technical information at a very fast rate.

Rather than just stating that Wikipedia is in need of a redesign, state your
reasons. The design of Wikipedia is not simply an aesthetic designer's
problem, it is a problem that has to be approached from an engineering point
of view: maximise the information communication rate whilst keeping the design
aesthetically pleasing, not the other way around."

~~~
fromhet
Why mail it to them? We who hang out at HN may find it awful, but it's mean to
smear it in their faces.

~~~
patrickmclaren
I mailed them based on a number of reasons: 1. Critiquing is an essential step
of the design process, 2. They provided an email address at the end of the
post, 3. I wanted to ensure that they weren't reinforcing their design biases
that had emerged as a result of their 2 month drive to release their concept.

------
ilaksh
The biggest problem I have with this sort of thing -- actually probably the
whole field(s) of UI/UX design -- is that there is no actual prototype but it
seems like they are implying that the programmers didn't include any of those
features because they didn't think of them, and that now the real work for the
'redesign' has been done. As if the hard part was making a bunch of pictures.

So this whole thing really irritates me.

Having said that, I think that modernizing Wikipedia or MediaWiki is a an
interesting idea (although probably not a priority), and this is actually a
decent starting point for discussing how many of the new (mainly, but not
entirely, stylistic) UI/UX trends (principles in a few cases I guess) could be
applied.

I mean obviously their nav takes up more space than necessary and we don't
need Wikipedia's logo to look just like WordPress's, but the minimalism,
alternate typography of some sort, monochrome icon widgets, etc. are
apparently now required in order to qualify as contemporary design. And the
connection clouds and highlighter quote idea is cool. And it probably wouldn't
hurt to remove one or two of the buttons on the editor or move them to an
advanced section, or spend an hour or two making the editor looking more
contemporary.

In case anyone actually reads this, I have a question. Is the thing where
buttons and controls are monochrome icons (and usually with no 3d appearance),
is that going to stay? I mean, is there a reason you can't have multiple
colors in icons now? Also it seems a lot of times you don't get labels on
buttons anymore (I know, tooltips). How much of this stuff is likely to stick
for the next 5, 10 years, or is it just a short term fad? I mean I coded a UI
recently for a component platform thing I am building (actual functional
software platform, not pictures) and it had multicolor traditional icons on
normal 3d buttons with labels. This UX guy saw that and said I was 'completely
out of touch'. So I took the labels, 3d and colors off the buttons.

~~~
gddr
I read somewhere about how Windows introduced in early versions the ability to
make buttons look "3D" (update: here:
[http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2004/07/28/19958...](http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2004/07/28/199589.aspx)),
and for the next few years every program made its buttons look more 3D than
the previous version, until someone decided they had gone too far and started
going in the opposite direction. And now looking at Metro I'd say we are at
the other extreme (completely flat and minimalist). I hope it stabilizes
somewhere in the middle in 5 years. Just look how fast they ditched the
"vista" look.

It's funny if you look at <http://stocklogos.com/topic/past-and-future-famous-
logos>. That page is satire from 2011... well check out the last "Microsoft"
logo ;-)

~~~
ricardobeat
The Nokia one was spot on too.

------
Katelyn
Wikimedia Foundation's Senior Designer, Brandon Harris, had a lot of
insightful, interesting feedback[1] regarding the 'redesign,' (of which I
happen to agree with):

- _It's completely impractical and does not take into account some of the most basic ideas that Wikipedia is and depends upon. I don't think it's very well thought out or researched, and serves mostly as a hypothetical portfolio piece for a design firm._

 _For example, the fact that Wikipedia is available in multiple languages is
quite possibly its most important feature. The idea of burying language
selection within an incomprehensible color band (that will only work on non-
touch devices) boggles my mind._

\- _Many, many important principles are tossed away. Why do the designers
change the meaning of the "history" button? Burying the revision history is
counter to all things that wikis stand for._

\- _Research into the Foundation projects would tell you that storing a user's
browsing history is against the privacy policy - so why include that?_

\- > "Sharing functions will be the same so no change is necessary" - _except
that there are no sharing functions._

\- _The most basic principle of product design is "Know the product," and
these designers do not._

And finally,

 _This is to say nothing of the exercise in 'brand manipulation.' The most
powerful brand that Wikipedia has is the wordmark itself ("wikipedia"),
followed by the distinctive "W" logo (crossed "v" characters), followed by a
single puzzle piece, followed by the puzzle globe. The brand rework here
throws ALL of these things away and replaces them with a stylized "w" glyph
that is almost but not quite exactly like the logo used by Wordpress."_

 _But that's just my opinion"_

 _"If you want to have an idea of what the Wikimedia Foundation is thinking
with regards to the future of Wikipedia, you'd be better served by
reading:[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/20...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2012-08-06/Op-
ed*)

[1] Brandon full response to the design:
[http://www.quora.com/Wikipedia/Wikipedia-What-does-the-
Wikip...](http://www.quora.com/Wikipedia/Wikipedia-What-does-the-Wikipedia-
community-think-of-this-Wikipedia-Redefined-redesign-of-the-
site/answer/Brandon-Harris-1?__snids__=50923403)

------
FuzzyDunlop
I don't know where they got the idea that a serif 'W' is the most recognisable
'W' on the net (as Wikipedia). I first thought of Waterstones (a UK bookstore
chain), and then Wordpress.

Even after that, how does it then make sense to actually change it to
something else, thus removing what identity there once was? It's not like the
replacement (with the Adobe-esque abbreviations that are meaningless to people
who don't already know them) is an actual improvement.

Otherwise, I don't really get the purpose of it. Wikipedia's not there to look
fancy or show off designer skills, and I'd argue that anything that isn't pure
content is just completely unnecessary for it.

~~~
mnicole
Exactly what I thought; Wordpress' serif W dominates the web and this one is
far too similar to it for people to know the difference. People know Wikipedia
as Wikipedia and as an international website, we shouldn't use a generic 'W'
as the logo across the board.

------
citricsquid
copying my comment from reddit:

If a user doesn't recognise the word "English" then they are not going to have
any idea what language select. The reason the languages are all listed on the
page without any interaction needed is so someone can look at the webpage and
recognise their language and select it without having to understand anything
else. How do I access the main page of a wiki?

This isn't redefined, it's just a redesign with some bad, some good, aesthetic
changes.

~~~
csense
The existing front-page looks like it should work in browsers with JS disabled
(though I have not personally tested this).

We should think carefully about the possible consequences of Wikipedia
dropping support for no-JS browsers.

~~~
wangweij
I've been brainwashed by the article and is wondering what JS means here. IS
or JS?

~~~
jarek
Javascript

------
jameswyse
Does anyone else find the font used on that page really distracting? What's
with the I looking like a J?

~~~
taylorfausak
I was going to say the same thing. The font is FF Schulbuch Süd Web Pro, and
it looks like this: <http://imgur.com/Uvft4>. I can't fathom why it's designed
like that. (Link to FontShop:
[http://www.fontshop.com/fonts/singles/fontfont/ff_schulbuch_...](http://www.fontshop.com/fonts/singles/fontfont/ff_schulbuch_sud_web_pro_regular/))

~~~
gurkendoktor
This is how I was taught cursive writing in school:

<http://de.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Datei:La-ges.jpg>

I am German (as is the name of the font) and I could read the article without
being distracted.

~~~
jerf
For comparison, a great deal of us in the US, if not most of us, were taught
this: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Cursive.svg>

And I hear this is fast on its way out, with cursive English script simply
dying, with no replacement.

------
flixic
Oh dear...

New! is a fairly... new.. advertising agency from my country, Lithuania. They
are trying to become better known, so this is without a doubt a targeted
publicity stunt ("Look how well it worked for Dustin Curtis to redesign
American Airlines! I guess we can do something similar!")

And as that, it's pretty bad. Not only did they showed poor design (in a sense
of "how it works") skills, but also left a bad impression as a studio.

~~~
lallysingh
How well it worked for Dustin Curtis? He got a guy fired
<http://www.dustincurtis.com/incompetence.html> for his post.

------
runjake
I see some Wikipedia people commenting, so I'll mention I _MUCH_ prefer the
existing Wikipedia over this design. It's simple and it loads quickly.

I find this design gaudy and the gradient bars reminds me of mid-2000s ASP.net
design style, which I have a particular adversion to.

Just because a design has been around awhile doesn't mean it requires an
overhaul.

------
jasonwatkinspdx
Design starts with constraints. If you don't understand the constraints, a
redesign is just a fantasy.

Wikipedia is heavily constrained by one thing: the existing mediawiki markup.
That presents a huge challenge to implementing this redesign.

Large mediawiki installs become brittle because users have a natural tendency
to use the markup for presentation, not structure. Combined with the in markup
template mechanisms, the tendency is toward a tangle of interdependent markup.
Wikipedia's community does far better than most in fighting this with policy
and consistency, but it's still an issue.

Implementing this redesign would require not just working with some of the
more difficult parts of the mediawiki code base, but also a laborious effort
to rewrite a sizable fraction (if not the majority) of all wiki foundation
content. That just isn't going to happen.

But that doesn't mean design improvements on wikipedia are impossible, just
that any attempt needs to work in alignment with the constraining forces.

------
dmazin
I'm not sure Wikipedia needs a rebranding, and tell me if I'm the only one,
but I use Google to get to specific Wikipedia articles. Wikipedia's actual
search and search results need to be re-implemented, but I don't agree about
redesign beyond that.

That leaves the actual articles. I like the way they are designed here, except
for the monolithic nav bar.

If anything, this is a nice theme for articles - and theming is a feature that
has existed on Wikipedia for a number of years now.

------
bherms
I'm a big fan of the reimagining of how people interact with the site.. I
think that's a major step forward, but I was very displeased with the
redesign. I definitely agree a redesign is in order, but I wasn't a fan of
nearly any of the design work presented here. So the take away from this is:
these guys rock at interaction design and UX, but still have a lot of work to
do in the actual design dept. Keep in mind that this is just my opinion,
however, and is entirely subjective.

------
shalmanese
For a look at what Wikipedia is actually of thinking of designing over the
next 3 years, check out Project Athena:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/20...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2012-08-06/Op-
ed)

~~~
thinkingisfun
Thanks for that. I never lost faith in Wikipedia, but now I'm actually excited
again, yay.

Are we there yet? Are we there yet? Are we there yet? Are we there yet?

:)

------
dsr_
Wikipedia doesn't need a redesign. It just needs to have an easy preferences
setting for "I am a deletionist" vs "I am an inclusionist" or whatever the
current preferred designations are.

The deletionists get pared-down, guaranteed notable content, and the
inclusionists get the mess.

~~~
SwellJoe
This distinction is only relevant to maybe 1% of wikipedia users...the heavy
users who get involved in internal politics and editing decisions (and maybe
the spammers who try to wield wikipedia's massive visibility for their own
purposes). The average wikipedia user has no idea there are deletion wars.

~~~
cabalamat
> This distinction is only relevant to maybe 1% of wikipedia users

I disagree. I have looked for content on WP before, only to find it has been
deleted by deletionists. I have also given up creating new articles because of
deletionists.

~~~
SwellJoe
I don't believe any HN reader could ever be considered an "average user" in
this context.

------
dimitar
Its awful. It reminds me of the Gmail redesign. I hate these simplified, 2d
websites.

Why do you have to ruin every website?

~~~
SwellJoe
I like the new GMail, and the new post-4.0 Android 2D UIs. I don't like most
of these suggested changes for WikiPedia, however.

~~~
TazeTSchnitzel
You mean _wiki_ pedia?

I mean, _w_ P?

------
neilk
Every now and then a designer comes along and says they're going to fix
Wikipedia. And those of us who've tried either are polite or roll our eyes....

However, this person has some legitimately great ideas. I love how the design
is far more reader-centric. I'm not sure why I need a history of articles that
I read (browsers do that very well these days), but the 'highlighted' text is
a cool idea. You can start thinking about the site as helping you research
things, keep a scrapbook of snippets. I love it.

The front page redesign: believe it or not, the multiple languages _are_ the
most important thing to highlight. Wikipedia's global audience often uses that
system to navigate between encyclopedias. They also often use Google to find
the English article, and then look for an 'inter-wiki link' in the margin to
an article in their native language.

It looks like there's a lot of cruft in the design, and maybe someone needs to
be very bold and piss off a lot of users and force a new interaction pattern.
But this stuff is all there for a reason. The 'random article' button is
actually one of the most popular features. Really!

As for the proposed branding: first of all, the ideas presented here are not
very good. It reminds me of the generic brands at the supermarket. The
gossamer rainbow graph wouldn't even reproduce properly at small sizes (and if
projects are added or eliminated, then what, do we change the logo?)

But more importantly - the thing which the designers rarely understand is that
Wikipedia and its sister projects are not products to be sold - they are
communities. And they came to consensus on those logos. They're more like
sports team logos than a unified branding system to sell something. That said,
there is a system, of sorts; when new logos are made, they try to make
variations on the red dot and blue and green shapes.

Also, don't get me started on making color meaningful for navigation. It works
for subway maps and it sucks everywhere else. Very bad for accessibility
(color-blind people). And very bad for maintainability. The Russian Wikipedia
is currently the fastest growing site; you can expect it to change position in
the rankings soon. Then what, add another color? Should it change colors,
surprising the user? Swap the colors in the rainbow?

Lastly, this designer isn't even addressing the biggest problem we have today,
which is how to modify Wikipedia for the mobile web. Reading articles is
getting better, and we've been using the Wiki Loves Monuments annual contest
as a way to drive the development of mobile photo submissions. But there's
still no clear vision of how anyone does serious editing on a mobile device.

As for the part where they offhandedly remark that we should make the site
live-editable... HA HA HA. You have no idea what you're up against. I worked
on this myself for a while. We made some interesting demos but they weren't
something you could deploy.

If we were making Wikipedia from scratch today, of course we'd do that and
more, but the thing is, there are multiple challenges, and a whole lot of
legacy to support.

Technically: it has to serialize to wikitext and be uploaded as discrete
changes to sections. So if you want live editing you need bidirectional
parsing and serialization in the browser. Wikitext is unlike any other regular
language and has a complex macro system, which consists of... other wiki
pages. Stored in the database. Which means you need heavy database I/O _just
to render HTML_. Or at least, a very extensive cache of page fragments. You
also can't cheat with a simpler parser in the browser, because wikitext was
basically designed to indulge whatever shortcuts the community wanted, and be
extremely forgiving. Most wiki pages exploit at least one of the weird quirks.
You can't even cheat by regularizing wikitext as you go, because then you're
causing spurious changes that the community can't easily police. The current
team is solving this with a radical approach to parsing that leverages HTML5's
standards and a Node.JS based system. So eventually the parser on the site and
in the editor might be very similar.

Operationally: Wikipedia is a cheap site to run because it's basically a
static site that you can serve from cache. But changing an article can be
monstrously inefficient. There are some articles, like "Barack Obama", that
would take _minutes_ to re-render if the caches were empty. When you start
changing the basic database model to be more 'live', the costs start to
explode.

But rather than drown in negativity, let me just say that whoever this is -
thank you for throwing your ideas out there. Assuming this isn't just a
resume-building exercise, get in touch with the MediaWiki developers. They
need designers.

~~~
adam
Thank you for your thoughtful comments. I'm not the designer, but recognize
this for what it is - a thought piece that obviously required some fairly
significant effort to put together. Some items have issues as you point out,
but there are also some very intelligent ideas here and that was the point -
to put something out there credible for discussion.

~~~
briandear
I agree, the majority of commenters have chosen to just rip apart this strong
effort at doing something even if it isn't perfect. I've found that a good
portion of the wikipedia "community" to be terribly provincial and cliquish.
They're like the homeowners associations of the web, they have "their" way of
doing it and get almost irritatingly passionate over trivial nonsense (should
it be "behavior or behaviour")

There's a billion articles about Linux distros, yet an article about a famous
wedding dress gets cut? Yet, on the other hand, many of these same commenters
nail Craigslist for their lack of design and defend Wikipedia for it's lack of
design.

It seems like nobody is ever happy with anything. If you think Wikipedia is
perfect, you're delusional -- no site is perfect. So rather than constant
critism, put your money where your mouth is and build your own mock up. Show
us how you think it should be rather than continually knocking everyone else.

Sometimes I feel like HN is populated by grumpy old men who haven't had their
Metamucil.

~~~
thinkingisfun
"If you think Wikipedia is perfect, you're delusional -- no site is perfect."

Who said it is? That's a strawman if I ever saw one.

"So rather than constant critism, put your money where your mouth is and build
your own mock up."

No mockup is perfect. This one has some HUGE flaws, and they've all been
pointed out. You could have pointed out what is strong about this proposal, or
what is wrong with the criticism. Just making up nice excuses for not doing
that ain't enough.

------
vosper
Typical "creative agency" - not proofing their own copy. I've seen this kind
of thing so many times, and it baffles me that it's allowed to slip through to
production sites.

~~~
aslewofmice
The last image of the US Map caught my eye. San Diego is not located directly
below San Francisco. Come on guys, show a little bit of effort here and take 5
seconds to look at a map.

<http://www.wikipediaredefined.com/img/45.png>

I understand it's a mock-up, but it just shows carelessness. If I can notice
it, it's just one less reason for me to care.

~~~
grendelt
I also like how there's no city marked in Louisiana. Of course, to their
credit, there really is no civilization in Louisiana anyways.

~~~
zeroonetwothree
Or Missouri, apparently.

------
dgreensp
I hope this Adobe-like visual branding strategy of "we have so many
properties/products, let's just make a rainbow period table" dies a slow and
horrible death.

See: [http://thoughts.shawncheris.com/wp-
content/uploads/2012/05/c...](http://thoughts.shawncheris.com/wp-
content/uploads/2012/05/colorwheel_cs6-640x640.png)

------
cmelbye
This is awesome. I'm not on board with everything (as someone else pointed
out, the navigation is huge and overshadows the content), but it does a good
job of rethinking how users interact with Wikipedia by making it easier to use
for research. Unfortunately, I can't see anything like this ever happening due
to inertia and the direct democracy system that Wikipedia generally employs
when making changes.

~~~
kajecounterhack
If they made a mediawiki theme that could easily be applied or made an option,
they might actually have a chance. << I don't think they did that though.

~~~
gee_totes
Agreed. I think the people who put this page together didn't realize that you
can already customize the theme of Wikipedia. For example, here is the custom
CSS theme I use to surf wiki:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Gee_totes/modern.css>

(it's not very custom, more of a PoC)

------
netmau5
"We hope you will find it interesting."

Why the guillotine on these guys? I think they contributed something
meaningful to the discussion. You don't have to like it to be respectful.

------
juddlyon
This is a smart idea by these folks, it's generating buzz for their firm and
likely helped them improve their branding chops as they thought through this.

I found the way they presented it deferential and respectful enough, why trash
their effort? Of course these fantasy redesigns are naive and mostly
impractical, but there may also be some decent/helpful ideas being suggested.
Do you think Wikipedia is worse off for all of us discussing how it might be
improved?

I like unsolicited redesigns so long as the people behind them aren't snide or
arrogant in the way they present them (I can see why the NY Times redesign
irked people).

~~~
andrewfelix
I think it's a great concept.

But if you're going to conceptualise a change to one of the most popular
websites that is backed by an intelligent and active community you're going to
have to expect some critical feedback.

I actually think there is a bit of arrogance implicit in the redesign, as the
designers haven't solicited feedback from the wider wiki community and made
big assumptions about the original design.

------
correctifier
The sub section branding with the small w and the large first letter looks
really awkward. Wiktionary is represented by a wT, but having a T represent a
dictionary makes no sense, and there is a similar problem with wikiversity.
They also tried clarifying the Species and Source by adding more letters on
the latter which is isn't very visually appealing and shows the limitations of
this scheme.

I also think that they add too much focus on the site wide navigation stuff at
the top, which takes away the focus on the data.

------
waqf
I didn't even have the patience to read their own page because of their poor
design choices (mostly, waaay too much scrolling).

I'm glad I don't have to read a Wikipedia designed by these people.

------
testdfsg
> The homepage of current Wikipedia is overcrowded with display of languages,
> which overshadows the main functionality–the search area.

The main functionality of wikipedia.org is not search, but showing a list of
Wikipedia language editions.

> Rolling over the top right corner reveals more options for languages.

What the hell is this? Why would you use JavaScript dropdown? That's not how
websites work. Just look at 99% of websites. They don't require putting mouse
over something to view hidden content.

> Quote serves as a felt pen. It can be an easy way to highlight the best
> parts of an article, just like in text books.

This functionality is better done as a web browser plugin. Because then you
can save quotes from other websites too, not only Wikipedia.

> <http://www.wikipediaredefined.com/img/26.png>

Where Research, Edit, Talk buttons disappeared?

> Basically, there are two reasons to visit Wikipedia: to read or to
> contribute. Reading function is Research and contribution is called Edit.

This layout is bad for reading. Article text starts at half of screen, not at
top. On most popular resolutions (1366x768, netbook 1024x600) it's even worse,
article text would start at the bottom of screen.

------
egypturnash
J kinda thought this started out on the wrong foot wjth the chojce of fonts
for the body copy. Jt only went downhill from there.

J'm really not hot on the rebrandjng of everything as "wX". Thjs js almost as
unjnspjred as Adobe's CS-era brandjng. Jn fact J wouldn't be surprjsed jf jt
turned out that whoever made thjs page js a fan of that abomjnatjon.

Oh and thjs gets even better: you know how thjs "redesjgn" seems to be all
about makjng Wjkjpedja's multjple languages completely obscured? The people
who djd thjs are from Ljthuanja. WHAT. <http://newisnew.lt>

------
akandiah
That 'W' that's being used here looks awfully similar to the 'W' used by the
company 'Westfield'. There may be issues with the trademark.

<http://www.westfield.com/>

------
figital
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:User_style>

(also ... the content is open .... ripe for anyone else to give this a go)

------
jblock
This redesign assumes that Wikipedia needed simplification. I think that if
the brand and experience needed simplification, people wouldn't use it or
would be more vocal about changing it.

The designers clearly have some layout and visual acumen, but this redesign
doesn't fully grasp the magnitude of Wikipedia. Every layout is modular, and
every pixel has to be fully thought out. The result here looks more like the-
new-Digg than it should.

~~~
mikecane
>>>I think that if the brand and experience needed simplification, people
wouldn't use it or would be more vocal about changing it.

Never underestimate inertia. Plus, it's looked like that for so long, does
anyone think it ever _will_ change?

------
jcfrei
I couldn't care less about a proposed redesign of wikipedia by a random design
agency. but I do gotta give props to their marketing department.

------
wishfulcoding
> ...and decided to eliminate, ahem, everything except... …the letter W, which
> is/could be the most famous W in the whole web.

Wikipedia is available in 275 languages, and the current logo at least
acknowledges that there are other writing systems and that this is not just an
English encyclopaedia.

Changing it for a W is a complete disregard of the significance of Wikipedia
as a multilingual reference work.

------
cantrevealname
Tip to anyone looking for a link to the Redefined Wikipedia so you can
actually try it out: _it doesn't exist_.

What they did is a design -- i.e., a document explaining their ideas. There is
no working prototype that you can try out. (I was looking forward to trying
out the Connection Cloud.)

It wasn't obvious to me that they had a discussion about design but no actual
implementation.

------
rotskoff
I feel like this redesign invests in exactly the sort of brand-ism that
wikipedia opposes. These changes seem to do little to improve the actual
interface, instead introducing an intrusive menu and pasting a logo wherever
possible.

That said, the connection explorer is quite neat and the efforts to ease
editing have their heart in the right place.

------
karlherler
This design forgoes my second biggest usage of Wikipedia (and I suspect it's a
big use case for other multilinguals). (My primary usage of course being
reading and enjoying the vast content.)

I often use Wikipedia as a high quality word translator. I study at a Swedish
speaking university which requires that a lot of the written material I
produce is of course in swedish. Whenever I'm writing a comp sci text and I
wonder what in gods name a "morphism" is in swedish I just look up the english
article (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morphism>) and hover over the swedish
language in the sidebar and voilà I've got a peer reviewed translation (peer
reviewed because it probably has sources in both languages, in most cases).

------
calvin
I like the use of colors in the redefined design, but will it work for people
with color-blindness?

------
lubujackson
Agree with all the critiques. Interestingly, while reading through the
redesign, I thought some of the new functionality they added (highlighting,
mapping link connections, etc.) were kind of interesting.

But then I remembered designers aren't supposed to develop new features.

------
werdnanoslen
Agghhh, it's like they're making it web-3.0-y with all the giant logos/buttons
and a massive toolbar. I already hate sites enough that cram a whole load of
fat things above the actual content. Especially sharing buttons. I KNOW HOW TO
COPY A URL DAMMIT!

~~~
gddr
Just accept the future man.

"Pyramid

 _From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia_

A pyramid (from Greek: πυραμίς pyramis[1]) is a structure whose shape is
roughly that of a pyramid in the geometric sense; that is, its outer surfaces
are triangular and converge to a single point at the top.

Share "Pyramid" with your friends: Twitter - Facebook - LinkedIn - Google+ -
Email - Pinterest - Tumblr - Reddit - Delicious - Digg - WordPress

Follow Wikipedia on: Twitter - Facebook - Google+ - Pinterest"

(Or you could get Ghostery)

------
umairsiddique
I'm glad Wikipedia is nothing remotely like that.

~~~
briandear
Yeah, I hope it stays more like Craigslist. Simple, ugly and functional.

------
rafudu
Worth reading:

[http://www.quora.com/Wikipedia/Why-doesnt-Wikipedia-
innovate...](http://www.quora.com/Wikipedia/Why-doesnt-Wikipedia-innovate-
with-regards-to-their-user-interface)

Some interesting technical (and also 'philosophical') aspects.

------
jrockway
It basically looks like a copy of Google's current design. Black bar with
other properties at the top, then a big white page full of whatever. It's a
fine interface, but I don't have much trouble with en.wikipedia either.

------
dinkumthinkum
Wow that's ugly. When did minimalism and copying Google's get mistaken fir
creativity?

I'm kinda over the whole "hey. we're all cool people. let's get together and
do stuff." design aesthetic. It was cute for a time but let's move on.

------
javert
Please just KISS. Why would we want to make Wikipedia clunky and overstylized?

------
mehulkar
J don't really care about Wikipedia looking nice or being more navigatable. J
rarely go there to browse. J google a term and append it with 'wiki', click on
the first link and 3 minutes later J'm done.

------
BasDirks
I can't take designers seriously when they use a font with that such an
unreadable "I", and input boxes big enough to park a truck in. Get the basics
right when you make proposals that are supposed to represent your skills and
vision. There are too many cute ideas in this redesign like the upside-down
"w" for "meta" and the LSD spiderweb logo.

Do the colours indicate language or specific wiki? Can't have both, sorry.

The designers have huge problems with proportion both typographically and in
their whitespace. Even if they are just mock-ups, they can use some more care.

------
kleiba
I'm using a netbook. I think without "Readability" I woudln't have been able
to make it through most of their post because I kept hitting space about twice
per second. From looking at their redesign for an article page (didn't care
much about anything related to the wikipedia homepage, I never use it), it
seems like they don't care too much for people with small screens either:
about half of the available screen estate available to my browser would be
covered by their menu thing at the top.

I guess people with netbooks would be worse off.

------
fusiongyro
Overall, I think it's gorgeous, especially the page layout stuff. I don't like
the logos especially, but having a "branded house" approach makes a lot of
sense for uniting the disparate sites.

~~~
chris_wot
Each of those "disparate sites" has a working and passionate community
contributing to it. Their approach is about as bad as it can get.

------
EternalFury
Where is the Wikimedia theme/skin described in this showcase?

~~~
insertnickname
It doesn't exist. They just made some fancy images.

~~~
EternalFury
Ah, then they have no idea if what they are describing is even remotely
possible given the constraints imposed by Wikimedia. Making a theme/skin for
Wikimedia is quite a task, actually.

------
moe
Well, got to cut them some slack for effort.

But the result is atrocious.

This is exactly the kind of stuff you normally get when BigCorp meets CI-
agency.

Every single detail gets backed by an elaborate, esoteric justification, so
everyone has their asses covered. Nevermind the horror that is the end-result.
What matters is that "we made the button bright pink and 2 pixels tall because
studies have shown bright pink catches attention and small click-targets
invoke natural curiosity"...

------
yitchelle
Is wikipedia __really__ broken that it requires a redefinition?

I think what these folks did was a new UX/UI implementation. Redefinition
would imply a new way of how wikipedia handles with the data. Not in terms of
displaying or presentating the data but in terms of providing better analysis
tools for the data (among others).

What this folks did was more of a PR exercise to showcase what they are
capable of..

------
cabalamat
In the redesign, the body of the pyramid article starts halfway down the page.
In the original, it starts 1/4 way down the page.

This is not an improvement.

------
damian2000
Nice effort, but they don't understand one of the fundamental things about
content heavy sites the size of wikipedia - the vast majority of users never
even need to go to its home page - they get to the content via direct links
from search engines like google. Many these days prefix their google search
with "wiki" as well in order to look on wikipedia.

------
hessenwolf
To me, it is obviously just an experiment in design concepts. I enjoyed
reading it. I don't agree with almost everything, and the changes to wikipedia
they make are, in my opinion, fuck-ugly, but I don't know why we need to be so
harsh on it!! It's not like they were trying to replace Wikipedia, just play
with 're-imagining any website'.

------
dt7
Interesting proposals, but like Andy Rutledge's NYT re-design
(<http://andyrutledge.com/news-redux.php>) limited by the practicalities of
implementing them. I don't think the Wikimedia foundation has the resources to
do any kind of major re-design, at least not quickly.

~~~
runemadsen
I agree. There are so many of these "awesome redesigns" around that totally
miss the point. First of all, design is not chrome. It never has been and
never will be. Design is the combination of form and content, but all of these
redesigns are 100% form. Content is always sacrificed in these attempts.

If a person like Andy Ruthledge had worked at the NYTimes, he would know that
a number of this country's best designers are working on that site, and it's
not just a matter of sitting down in Photoshop to do a redesign. You should
never lose readers for the sake of new colors. Not to mention how the
nytimes.com is an enormous site with layers and layers of interplaying
systems. Making stuff like this mostly looks like a young designer saying
"this is what you should do", but feels like a young designer saying "I don't
have a clue about how things work".

------
johanneswagener
I did a very similar project a couple of weeks ago. You can see the results on
<http://ency.cl/opedia>

This post sums up some of my thoughts about it:
<http://lolcat.biz/post/27368236760/ency-cl-opedia>

------
mgurlitz
It's hard to say what's going on with the font. Works fine on Mac 10.8 Chrome
22.0.1215.0 (<http://i.imgur.com/QMfte.png>), but not in Safari, Firefox or
Chrome iOS (<http://i.imgur.com/8FruE.png>).

------
shmerl
Design looks somewhat "tabletized" with oversized controls intended making
usage of capacitive touchscreens easier. Desktop version of the site doesn't
need such oversized controls - they don't look pretty and unnecessary eat
useful space. It's nicely done though for the mobile optimized version.

------
sazpaz
Obviously, Wikipedia is an extremely useful educational resource, and I think
it's even more powerful in developing countries, which usually lack of
academic materials. Making changes that rise the technological barrier of
entry for many users doesn't seem adequate to me.

------
maximveksler
This feels hugely like an attempt to make Wikipedia look like a google.com
side project.

Bottom line: Personal Taste: I don't like it.

Wikipedia is not Google, it does not crawel and select the best content, it
hosts and distributes the most valuable content crawled by wetware during
their life time.

------
sonier
I would really love to be able to highlight and bookmark snippets.
Unfortunately, it would likely be a huge back end change for Wikipedia and
their servers would likely melt.

It would be great if there was an external site that used content from
Wikipedia and had these features.

------
TomGullen
I like the proposed design from the point of view that I'd be casually
browsing it trying to find interesting information and learning things for no
reason.

But for finding out information I need to find out for whatever reason, it's
just going to slow that process down.

------
andrewfelix
Wikipedia's current design has never impeded my ability to consume its
content. It works.

I would love some a image browser and lightbox style reference pop-ups. BUT I
imagine the current build runs great on old machines, making it accessible to
a wide audience.

------
laconian
My Page Down key melted from being pressed repeatedly so many times. Fucking
designers.

~~~
briandear
every heard of scrolling?

------
MisterMerkin
Wow. Just wow. The Microsoft redesign that was submitted a month or so ago
was.. okay. But this is absolutely horrid. When they got rid of the nod to all
the other languages it couldn't be saved.

------
mvzink
Agree or disagree with their design decisions, I do hope they are right that
"the discussion begins". Does anybody know of internal/official Wikimedia
efforts/discussions wrt redesigns?

~~~
languagehacker
There is always discussion. Go to MediaWiki.org and poke around.

------
iansinke
Am I the only one who finds a capital "T" very non-intuitive for "Dictionary"?
Likewise "V" for "University"? That part of the whole logo branding I found
unnecessarily concise.

------
amirnathoo
Love it. Ignore them.

------
thowar2
Criagslist needs their help more than wikipedia!

------
MichaelMcQuirk
LOVE IT!!! Had the feeling Wikipedia was starting to look old. Now it's
starting to look more of a 21st century web site ^_^

------
phmagic
Flat. More space. Focused on typography. Typography.

I think designers are moving further away from form follows function.

------
justin_vanw
OMG, they think it might be a good idea to do a minor frontend redesign of
wikipedia!

More about this story as it breaks!

------
hexo
I'm sick of these bloated designs which tries to solve an issue which doesn't
exist in a first place!

Please go away.

------
jbranchaud
I think they copied the W from the label on the can of cashews I am currently
munching.

------
sajithdilshan
functionality wise much more better than prevailing wikipedia. But still seems
like a lot of clutter is there. And sister sites could use different icon
(logo) scheme. Using a letter as an icon (or logo) can be confusing sometimes.

------
Honzo
Couldn't someone just make this into a Chrome Extension? I'd be happy with
that.

------
fiatjaf
Ok, now the logo of Wikipedia will be the same of a thousand other W
companies.

------
countessa
The single W just looks like they want to be Wordpress. Not my cup of tea.

------
ekianjo
WOW. That must be the laziest logo redesign EVER.

------
hk__2
What is that font? “I” and “J” have same glyph!

------
mikecane
Brilliant redesign. They should adopt it.

------
radicaldreamer
Clever is the enemy of simple.

------
jermaink
Add a share button to your site :)

------
derleth
Too much space is taken up by navigation in this scheme. There's a _reason_
Wikipedia's design is dominated by text.

~~~
jwm
I agree. Websites that do this are awful, Google Plus is guilty of this.

Re combo-boxing the language list: Wikipedia is the most successful multi-
language website by far. Highlighting this to new and old users is a great
thing. Its not like the search box takes up any more than one line anyway.

For Wikipedia, this redesign blows. I do like the visual style though. This is
really just showcasing the webdesign company's talent, right?

~~~
stephengillie
Wikipedia is probably the worst site for this redesign, which is probably why
it's so eye catching - we're seeing all of these elements in a shape that's
terrible for wiki but great for some other site. Since it's such a terrible
fit for wiki, we can clearly see and identify elements we'd glaze over if we
liked the changes.

------
padrian2ss
yeah sure, you almost got me fooled, microsoft. this kind of remake is just a
microsoft stunt to foul people to adhere to their ridiculous UI from windows
8.

