Could we please update them with a slightly more up-to-date skin?
Take a look at our Norwegian competitor in the lexicon field. https://snl.no/kunstig_intelligens
John Erling Blad /jeblad
Do you know about https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Reading/Web/Desktop_Improvements ?
On Wed, Dec 11, 2019 at 10:48 PM John Erling Blad jeblad@gmail.com wrote:
Could we please update them with a slightly more up-to-date skin?
Take a look at our Norwegian competitor in the lexicon field. https://snl.no/kunstig_intelligens
John Erling Blad /jeblad _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
We are constantly fighting to keep aesthetics from interfering with usability, for example by people using lower-contrast, more subjectively appealing typography, such as quoting text in green on white, or using lower contrast backgrounds of any color. Both are hard even for people with normal vision to read in bright sunlight. A dark mode might be a better accessibility option at present; the evidence is inconclusive overall, but much stronger than smaller or lower contrast text, of course.
The story of Comic Sans' accessibility to dyslexics is truly remarkable:
https://www.thecut.com/2017/03/the-reason-comic-sans-is-a-public-good.html
What makes it remarkable is that Comic Sans outperforms both of the fonts which were specifically designed to be easier for dyslexics by copying its surnised features in a more aesthetically appealing way, Dyslexie and OpenDyslexic. Overriding browser default faults and using lower contrast, smaller text for aesthetic purposes is an ableist assault on dyslexics, and it's not hard to find plenty of them complaining about it.
Our efforts would be better spent allowing people to switch to Comic Sans as a preference, or trying to get people to remember to include a shortlink to their slides and upload them before they present, for nearsighted people not in the row who might want to read along, and not use fonts smaller than 1/12 the height of their slides, for that matter.
On Wed, Dec 11, 2019 at 2:21 PM Amir Sarabadani ladsgroup@gmail.com wrote:
Do you know about https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Reading/Web/Desktop_Improvements ?
On Wed, Dec 11, 2019 at 10:48 PM John Erling Blad jeblad@gmail.com wrote:
Could we please update them with a slightly more up-to-date skin?
Take a look at our Norwegian competitor in the lexicon field. https://snl.no/kunstig_intelligens
John Erling Blad /jeblad _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
-- Amir (he/him) _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
În joi, 12 dec. 2019 la 00:21, Amir Sarabadani ladsgroup@gmail.com a scris:
Do you know about https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Reading/Web/Desktop_Improvements ?
Those are all evolutions, I think the question here was about a revolution.
The main problem I see with that is that is changing all the on-wiki templates and scripts that work with the current skin. There is also a question of opportunity: with less and less desktop users, it just makes more sense to invest in the mobile experience (and the beta mode there is super cool, but still breaks some templates).
Strainu
On Wed, Dec 11, 2019 at 10:48 PM John Erling Blad jeblad@gmail.com wrote:
Could we please update them with a slightly more up-to-date skin?
Take a look at our Norwegian competitor in the lexicon field. https://snl.no/kunstig_intelligens
John Erling Blad /jeblad _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
-- Amir (he/him) _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Am 12.12.19 um 02:25 Uhr schrieb Strainu:
There is also a question of opportunity: with less and less desktop users, it just makes more sense to invest in the mobile experience
Most authors still use desktop computers for writing articles or doing maintenance work. Mobile is for readers.
Regards, Jürgen.
Multiple responses:
On Thu, Dec 12, 2019 at 10:07 AM Juergen Fenn jfenn@gmx.net wrote:
Am 12.12.19 um 02:25 Uhr schrieb Strainu:
There is also a question of opportunity: with less and less desktop users, it just makes more sense to invest in the mobile experience
Most authors still use desktop computers for writing articles or doing maintenance work. Mobile is for readers.
That is true in most wikis, but not all, and it's a slowly growing percentage. Some contributors only have a phone as their single (or sometimes even just *shared*) access to the internet. Much of the world cannot afford a laptop/desktop computer. There are edit-percentage statistics in this spreadsheet in columns P and K: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1a-UBqsYtJl6gpauJyanx0nyxuPqRvhzJRN81... Secondly, we always need/hope to find new editors in all the projects, and if the readers are getting to our projects via mobile, then that could be the best place to get them started on the path to being an editor (occasional or regular). Getting readers to take that first step of an initial edit, can be the hardest part. Lastly, there's a useful essay by this Ewiki admin about mobile editing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Cullen328/Smartphone_editing
On Wed, Dec 11, 2019 at 11:21 PM Amir E. Aharoni < amir.aharoni@mail.huji.ac.il> wrote:
The tragic thing here is that reading is increasingly done on mobile devices, and in some countries it's already the majority of pageviews. But editing is mostly done on the desktop, which looks completely differently. So editors don't even see a preview of how what they write will look for *most* readers.
Agreed. There is an old gadget on Enwiki (and re-used at a dozen other wikis, per [[m:Gadgets]]) which shows a mockup of how the article might appear on a small screen. I suspect it needs improvements in a few aspects (design, performance), but it works quite well. Anyone can see how it looks (ideally from a laptop-or-bigger window!) with this URL: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon?withJS=MediaWiki:Gadget-mobile-sidebar.js... Or here's a screenshot: https://i.imgur.com/juXqcKW.png
On Wed, Dec 11, 2019 at 5:26 PM Strainu strainu10@gmail.com wrote:
The main problem I see with that is that is changing all the on-wiki templates and scripts that work with the current skin. There is also a question of opportunity: with less and less desktop users, it just makes more sense to invest in the mobile experience (and the beta mode there is super cool, but still breaks some templates).
Templates that still have problems on mobile at some wikis, can usually be fixed with the assistance of this page (especially section #12) https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Recommendations_for_mobile_friendly_articles_... -- I'll be sending a reminder to a few VillagePumps about this in the next few weeks.
Gadgets/scripts sometimes work as expected across different skins, and sometimes not. That's a very different and distinct problem from templates.
On Wed, Dec 11, 2019 at 8:58 PM Aron Manning aronmanning5@gmail.com wrote:
That's nice. Try these redesigns with an adblocker for a comparison:
I've just added a new batch of links that I learned about yesterday, to that page. ;) https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Unsolicited_redesigns&a...
On Thu, Dec 12, 2019 at 1:38 PM Todd Allen toddmallen@gmail.com wrote:
Erm, I remember what websites looked like in 1996. I even made some then. It looks nothing like that.
On the other hand, on the site you linked to? The first thing I see is an absolutely huge photo of a robot looking at me. I have to scroll down past that to get to the actual meat, the text content. *That* looks like 1996.
I'll take the way we have it over that, thanks very much.
I initially learned HTML from this site/book c.1998, https://web.archive.org/web/20000818170520/http://www.arsdigita.com/books/pa... and ever since I've appreciated clean simple structured content. I completely understand what you mean here, Todd. Although I'd balance it out with: not-all-wikis-are-Wikipedia, and hence some of the Wikivoyages have their distinct intro-landscape-image design, e.g. https://es.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Tokio
I think we all generally endorse incremental improvements, instead of drastic overhauls. Overhauls can make many users (of any site) confused or frustrated, and our users (readers and editors) are the whole point of this endeavour. The problem is there simply haven't been many improvements to the basic site-design elements over the last decade, despite the numerous great ideas that editors and gadget-authors and others amongst us (and beyond us) have had.
The biggest complexities of any changes here, are the vastly different needs of all the different demographics/types of users (e.g. keeping things similar enough so that readers don't get confused when they start to edit; e.g. not disrupting the current editors whether they use phones or desktops; e.g. adding new accessibility & usability improvements/options; etc), balanced with the technical requirements of efficiency given our current software "stacks".
Hence the "Goals" and "Constraints" sections (for the TL;DR) in https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Reading/Web/Desktop_Improvements We're planning on adding/tweaking/changing elements in the UI slowly and carefully, so that editors can keep on efficiently editing, and readers (and editors implicitly!) can slowly get a clearer/better reading experience, over the years ahead.
There are /many/ ideas for subtle or significant improvements listed in the project pages (don't get distracted by just the first image in the slideshow!), and probably more good ideas we're still missing. Anyone's feedback (hopefully nuanced and friendly) and further ideas/links/suggestions/etc would be appreciated at that project page.
Quiddity / Nick
בתאריך יום ו׳, 13 בדצמ׳ 2019 ב-2:13 מאת Nick Wilson (Quiddity) < nwilson@wikimedia.org>:
On Wed, Dec 11, 2019 at 5:26 PM Strainu strainu10@gmail.com wrote:
The main problem I see with that is that is changing all the on-wiki templates and scripts that work with the current skin. There is also a question of opportunity: with less and less desktop users, it just makes more sense to invest in the mobile experience (and the beta mode there is super cool, but still breaks some templates).
Templates that still have problems on mobile at some wikis, can usually be fixed with the assistance of this page (especially section #12)
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Recommendations_for_mobile_friendly_articles_... -- I'll be sending a reminder to a few VillagePumps about this in the next few weeks.
The instructions on this page are probably correct, but the practical problem with this attitude is that to actually get it to work, it has to be discovered, read, understood, and acted upon by people from 900 wikis, and much less than half of these wikis have people who have the necessary programming skills to do all of this. And, as you say, you need to say reminders.
This is different from extensions, which are developed once and used everywhere. The only thing that needs to be done to make them fully usable is translating them, which is a reasonable thing to request. Some extensions, such as Citoid and Wikilove, do need local adaptations to actually be useful, but these are exceptions that prove the rule: it would be better if these local adaptations weren't needed.
That's why templates need to be global, so that there will be a repository of templates that are written once and usable everywhere. (Some templates should be converted to extensions, but it's far from feasible to do it with all templates.)
One crucial thing that makes templates (and gadgets) relevant to any major redesign project is that the designers and the developers who will work on it should themselves be accustomed to seeing them in the content or next to it, or at least to have a way to experience them easily in a language they know. This is possible to do in a scalable way only if they are global. (Some people assume that all templates are available in English, but it's very, very far from being true. The innovation in templates in Russian, French, Hebrew, Persian, and many other languages is amazing and mostly unknown to English-only Wikipedians. But that's a topic for a different thread. Maybe I'll start a series of blog posts titled "non-English Wikipedia template of the week"?)
Gadgets/scripts sometimes work as expected across different skins, and
sometimes not. That's a very different and distinct problem from templates.
Indeed. It's tempting to think that global templates and global gadgets are the same project, but they aren't.
I focus my efforts on promoting the idea of the necessity of global templates and modules, which are also distinct from each other, but much more closely related. Gadgets should be global, too, however.
A skin does not have to change the content, most of the skin is chrome and can be changed without touching the content at all.
On Fri, Dec 13, 2019 at 1:12 AM Nick Wilson (Quiddity) nwilson@wikimedia.org wrote:
Multiple responses:
On Thu, Dec 12, 2019 at 10:07 AM Juergen Fenn jfenn@gmx.net wrote:
Am 12.12.19 um 02:25 Uhr schrieb Strainu:
There is also a question of opportunity: with less and less desktop users, it just makes more sense to invest in the mobile experience
Most authors still use desktop computers for writing articles or doing maintenance work. Mobile is for readers.
That is true in most wikis, but not all, and it's a slowly growing percentage. Some contributors only have a phone as their single (or sometimes even just *shared*) access to the internet. Much of the world cannot afford a laptop/desktop computer. There are edit-percentage statistics in this spreadsheet in columns P and K: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1a-UBqsYtJl6gpauJyanx0nyxuPqRvhzJRN81... Secondly, we always need/hope to find new editors in all the projects, and if the readers are getting to our projects via mobile, then that could be the best place to get them started on the path to being an editor (occasional or regular). Getting readers to take that first step of an initial edit, can be the hardest part. Lastly, there's a useful essay by this Ewiki admin about mobile editing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Cullen328/Smartphone_editing
On Wed, Dec 11, 2019 at 11:21 PM Amir E. Aharoni < amir.aharoni@mail.huji.ac.il> wrote:
The tragic thing here is that reading is increasingly done on mobile devices, and in some countries it's already the majority of pageviews. But editing is mostly done on the desktop, which looks completely differently. So editors don't even see a preview of how what they write will look for *most* readers.
Agreed. There is an old gadget on Enwiki (and re-used at a dozen other wikis, per [[m:Gadgets]]) which shows a mockup of how the article might appear on a small screen. I suspect it needs improvements in a few aspects (design, performance), but it works quite well. Anyone can see how it looks (ideally from a laptop-or-bigger window!) with this URL: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon?withJS=MediaWiki:Gadget-mobile-sidebar.js... Or here's a screenshot: https://i.imgur.com/juXqcKW.png
On Wed, Dec 11, 2019 at 5:26 PM Strainu strainu10@gmail.com wrote:
The main problem I see with that is that is changing all the on-wiki templates and scripts that work with the current skin. There is also a question of opportunity: with less and less desktop users, it just makes more sense to invest in the mobile experience (and the beta mode there is super cool, but still breaks some templates).
Templates that still have problems on mobile at some wikis, can usually be fixed with the assistance of this page (especially section #12) https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Recommendations_for_mobile_friendly_articles_... -- I'll be sending a reminder to a few VillagePumps about this in the next few weeks.
Gadgets/scripts sometimes work as expected across different skins, and sometimes not. That's a very different and distinct problem from templates.
On Wed, Dec 11, 2019 at 8:58 PM Aron Manning aronmanning5@gmail.com wrote:
That's nice. Try these redesigns with an adblocker for a comparison:
I've just added a new batch of links that I learned about yesterday, to that page. ;) https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Unsolicited_redesigns&a...
On Thu, Dec 12, 2019 at 1:38 PM Todd Allen toddmallen@gmail.com wrote:
Erm, I remember what websites looked like in 1996. I even made some then. It looks nothing like that.
On the other hand, on the site you linked to? The first thing I see is an absolutely huge photo of a robot looking at me. I have to scroll down past that to get to the actual meat, the text content. *That* looks like 1996.
I'll take the way we have it over that, thanks very much.
I initially learned HTML from this site/book c.1998, https://web.archive.org/web/20000818170520/http://www.arsdigita.com/books/pa... and ever since I've appreciated clean simple structured content. I completely understand what you mean here, Todd. Although I'd balance it out with: not-all-wikis-are-Wikipedia, and hence some of the Wikivoyages have their distinct intro-landscape-image design, e.g. https://es.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Tokio
I think we all generally endorse incremental improvements, instead of drastic overhauls. Overhauls can make many users (of any site) confused or frustrated, and our users (readers and editors) are the whole point of this endeavour. The problem is there simply haven't been many improvements to the basic site-design elements over the last decade, despite the numerous great ideas that editors and gadget-authors and others amongst us (and beyond us) have had.
The biggest complexities of any changes here, are the vastly different needs of all the different demographics/types of users (e.g. keeping things similar enough so that readers don't get confused when they start to edit; e.g. not disrupting the current editors whether they use phones or desktops; e.g. adding new accessibility & usability improvements/options; etc), balanced with the technical requirements of efficiency given our current software "stacks".
Hence the "Goals" and "Constraints" sections (for the TL;DR) in https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Reading/Web/Desktop_Improvements We're planning on adding/tweaking/changing elements in the UI slowly and carefully, so that editors can keep on efficiently editing, and readers (and editors implicitly!) can slowly get a clearer/better reading experience, over the years ahead.
There are /many/ ideas for subtle or significant improvements listed in the project pages (don't get distracted by just the first image in the slideshow!), and probably more good ideas we're still missing. Anyone's feedback (hopefully nuanced and friendly) and further ideas/links/suggestions/etc would be appreciated at that project page.
Quiddity / Nick _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
בתאריך יום ה׳, 12 בדצמ׳ 2019 ב-3:27 מאת Strainu <strainu10@gmail.com >:
În joi, 12 dec. 2019 la 00:21, Amir Sarabadani ladsgroup@gmail.com a scris:
Do you know about https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Reading/Web/Desktop_Improvements ?
Those are all evolutions, I think the question here was about a revolution.
The main problem I see with that is that is changing all the on-wiki templates and scripts that work with the current skin.
Indeed, this is the biggest reason.
And it would be about 900 times more manageable if they weren't different in every wiki as they are now. If any big rewrite is done in the design, the templates and the gadgets will have to be massively updated in any case. This design will be designed and implemented once, in core MediaWiki or in an extension. The question is—will the templates and the gadgets have to be updated 900 times, on every wiki, or just once.
It must become possible to store templates, modules, and gadgets in a global wiki. Not all of them have to be global, because some are unique to a certain wiki. But most can be shared. The work on this can start already now, so that when a big redesign comes—and surely it will come one fine day—most templates and gadgets will have to be only once.
A good place to agree or to disagree with this is https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Global_templates
There is also a question of opportunity: with less and less desktop users, it just makes more sense to invest in the mobile experience (and the beta mode there is super cool, but still breaks some templates).
The tragic thing here is that reading is increasingly done on mobile devices, and in some countries it's already the majority of pageviews. But editing is mostly done on the desktop, which looks completely differently. So editors don't even see a preview of how what they write will look for *most* readers.
I know about the work on changing the interactions, but this is about the design issue. All of the skins are horribly outdated, sorry to those that made them, but I guess they already know. What I would really like is a new fully responsive skin, using the concepts defined by w3, that also look modern.
On Thu, Dec 12, 2019 at 2:26 AM Strainu strainu10@gmail.com wrote:
În joi, 12 dec. 2019 la 00:21, Amir Sarabadani ladsgroup@gmail.com a scris:
Do you know about https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Reading/Web/Desktop_Improvements ?
Those are all evolutions, I think the question here was about a revolution.
The main problem I see with that is that is changing all the on-wiki templates and scripts that work with the current skin. There is also a question of opportunity: with less and less desktop users, it just makes more sense to invest in the mobile experience (and the beta mode there is super cool, but still breaks some templates).
Strainu
On Wed, Dec 11, 2019 at 10:48 PM John Erling Blad jeblad@gmail.com wrote:
Could we please update them with a slightly more up-to-date skin?
Take a look at our Norwegian competitor in the lexicon field. https://snl.no/kunstig_intelligens
John Erling Blad /jeblad _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
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That's nice. Try these redesigns with an adblocker for a comparison: https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Wikipedia:Unsolicited_redesigns#/Live_sites https://www.wikizero.com/en/Wikipedia:Unsolicited_redesigns#Live_sites https://en.wiki2.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Unsolicited_redesigns#Live_sites https://everipedia.org/wiki/lang_en/Wikipedia (redesign and fork)
Btw, switching https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-rendering to *Timeless* or *Minerva* (mobile) skin gives a bit nicer experience than the default Vector skin. Unfortunately, it has to be changed individually on each wiki you use.
Imo Timeless should be the default, that's the closest to modern designs. With these improvements it would be quite close to the modern alternatives: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Reading/Web/Desktop_Improvements
Aron
On Wed, 11 Dec 2019 at 22:48, John Erling Blad jeblad@gmail.com wrote:
Could we please update them with a slightly more up-to-date skin?
Take a look at our Norwegian competitor in the lexicon field. https://snl.no/kunstig_intelligens
John Erling Blad /jeblad _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
You can use https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:GlobalPreferences#mw-prefsection-ren... to set the same skin everywhere.
Sent from mobile
to 12. jouluk. 2019 klo 6.57 Aron Manning aronmanning5@gmail.com
Btw, switching < https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-rendering
to *Timeless* or *Minerva* (mobile) skin gives a bit nicer experience than the default Vector skin. Unfortunately, it has to be changed individually on each wiki you use.
On Thu, 12 Dec 2019 at 07:04, Stryn strynwiki@gmail.com wrote:
You can use
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:GlobalPreferences#mw-prefsection-ren... to set the same skin everywhere.
Thank you so much! I was looking for this...
Aron
Hi John!
On Wed, 11 Dec 2019 22:47:21 +0100 John Erling Blad jeblad@gmail.com wrote:
Could we please update them with a slightly more up-to-date skin?
Take a look at our Norwegian competitor in the lexicon field. https://snl.no/kunstig_intelligens
I took a look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page and it doesn't look anything like a geocities/etc. site from the 90s, and I feel it doesn't look bad.
For the record that was my site at around 1998 - https://old-1998-site.shlomifish.org/ and people complained enough that my current site looks like "[insert year here]" that I added a FAQ entry:
https://www.shlomifish.org/meta/FAQ/site_looks_old.xhtml
See https://everybootstrap.site/ for how many contemporary sites look like.
Someone on freenode told me he thinks plain black-on-white sites look great.
Regards,
Shlomi
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Thank you, but discussing how your site or any other specific site looked like in some year is an distraction.
On Thu, Dec 12, 2019 at 12:30 PM Shlomi Fish shlomif@shlomifish.org wrote:
Hi John!
On Wed, 11 Dec 2019 22:47:21 +0100 John Erling Blad jeblad@gmail.com wrote:
Could we please update them with a slightly more up-to-date skin?
Take a look at our Norwegian competitor in the lexicon field. https://snl.no/kunstig_intelligens
I took a look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page and it doesn't look anything like a geocities/etc. site from the 90s, and I feel it doesn't look bad.
For the record that was my site at around 1998 - https://old-1998-site.shlomifish.org/ and people complained enough that my current site looks like "[insert year here]" that I added a FAQ entry:
https://www.shlomifish.org/meta/FAQ/site_looks_old.xhtml
See https://everybootstrap.site/ for how many contemporary sites look like.
Someone on freenode told me he thinks plain black-on-white sites look great.
Regards,
ShlomiJohn Erling Blad /jeblad _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
--
Shlomi Fish https://www.shlomifish.org/ https://www.shlomifish.org/lecture/C-and-CPP/bad-elements/
As it turns out, compiling a C program from more than 20 years ago is actually a lot easier than getting a Rails app from last year to work. — https://passy.svbtle.com/building-vim-from-1993-today
Please reply to list if it's a mailing list post - http://shlom.in/reply .
I wrote 1996 in the subject field because that was the year I made a wikisite with tabbed interface, and experimented with a paper-like design in Xt. More or less what designers today would call a material design. The present design is what I would call Monobook 2.0, and that imply a 15 year old design. Monobook was rolled out in 2004-2005 if I remember correctly.
At nowiki we had a discussion with a designer from The Oslo School of Architecture and Design around 2009, and he come up with a really nice design. The design at SNL (the other Norwegian lexicon) starts to look more and more like it. The design proposal was deemed to radical and to simple for Wikipedia. He got several awards for the design.
No, I'm not a designer, but I do like good design.
On Thu, Dec 12, 2019 at 1:34 PM John Erling Blad jeblad@gmail.com wrote:
Thank you, but discussing how your site or any other specific site looked like in some year is an distraction.
On Thu, Dec 12, 2019 at 12:30 PM Shlomi Fish shlomif@shlomifish.org wrote:
Hi John!
On Wed, 11 Dec 2019 22:47:21 +0100 John Erling Blad jeblad@gmail.com wrote:
Could we please update them with a slightly more up-to-date skin?
Take a look at our Norwegian competitor in the lexicon field. https://snl.no/kunstig_intelligens
I took a look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page and it doesn't look anything like a geocities/etc. site from the 90s, and I feel it doesn't look bad.
For the record that was my site at around 1998 - https://old-1998-site.shlomifish.org/ and people complained enough that my current site looks like "[insert year here]" that I added a FAQ entry:
https://www.shlomifish.org/meta/FAQ/site_looks_old.xhtml
See https://everybootstrap.site/ for how many contemporary sites look like.
Someone on freenode told me he thinks plain black-on-white sites look great.
Regards,
ShlomiJohn Erling Blad /jeblad _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
--
Shlomi Fish https://www.shlomifish.org/ https://www.shlomifish.org/lecture/C-and-CPP/bad-elements/
As it turns out, compiling a C program from more than 20 years ago is actually a lot easier than getting a Rails app from last year to work. — https://passy.svbtle.com/building-vim-from-1993-today
Please reply to list if it's a mailing list post - http://shlom.in/reply .
Seems like Marius Hauken delivered the thesis in 2012.[1] A short video is available on YouTube.[2] He got several awards, at most three in one week. [3] A few of them are listed here.[4][5]
[1] Hauken, Marius Aa., and Kunst- Og Designhøgskolen I Bergen. Same Shit, Different Wrapping (2012): Ca 200. Print. [2] Wikipedia-concept for smartphones and tablets https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V-xI-mPDLBo [3] Tre designpriser på en uke https://www.bt.no/nyheter/okonomi/i/eagk4/tre-designpriser-paa-en-uke [4] REDESIGNING WIKIPEDIA FOR MOBILE & TABLET https://europeandesign.org/submissions/redesigning-wikipedia-for-mobile-tabl... [5] Masteroppgave, redesign av Wikipedia for touchenheter ”Same shit different wrapping” https://www.grafill.no/visuelt/vinnere/2013/interaktiv-design/studentarbeid/...
On Thu, Dec 12, 2019 at 2:01 PM John Erling Blad jeblad@gmail.com wrote:
I wrote 1996 in the subject field because that was the year I made a wikisite with tabbed interface, and experimented with a paper-like design in Xt. More or less what designers today would call a material design. The present design is what I would call Monobook 2.0, and that imply a 15 year old design. Monobook was rolled out in 2004-2005 if I remember correctly.
At nowiki we had a discussion with a designer from The Oslo School of Architecture and Design around 2009, and he come up with a really nice design. The design at SNL (the other Norwegian lexicon) starts to look more and more like it. The design proposal was deemed to radical and to simple for Wikipedia. He got several awards for the design.
No, I'm not a designer, but I do like good design.
On Thu, Dec 12, 2019 at 1:34 PM John Erling Blad jeblad@gmail.com wrote:
Thank you, but discussing how your site or any other specific site looked like in some year is an distraction.
On Thu, Dec 12, 2019 at 12:30 PM Shlomi Fish shlomif@shlomifish.org wrote:
Hi John!
On Wed, 11 Dec 2019 22:47:21 +0100 John Erling Blad jeblad@gmail.com wrote:
Could we please update them with a slightly more up-to-date skin?
Take a look at our Norwegian competitor in the lexicon field. https://snl.no/kunstig_intelligens
I took a look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page and it doesn't look anything like a geocities/etc. site from the 90s, and I feel it doesn't look bad.
For the record that was my site at around 1998 - https://old-1998-site.shlomifish.org/ and people complained enough that my current site looks like "[insert year here]" that I added a FAQ entry:
https://www.shlomifish.org/meta/FAQ/site_looks_old.xhtml
See https://everybootstrap.site/ for how many contemporary sites look like.
Someone on freenode told me he thinks plain black-on-white sites look great.
Regards,
ShlomiJohn Erling Blad /jeblad _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
--
Shlomi Fish https://www.shlomifish.org/ https://www.shlomifish.org/lecture/C-and-CPP/bad-elements/
As it turns out, compiling a C program from more than 20 years ago is actually a lot easier than getting a Rails app from last year to work. — https://passy.svbtle.com/building-vim-from-1993-today
Please reply to list if it's a mailing list post - http://shlom.in/reply .
Nice find, thanks for sharing!
Amir: yes, we need global templates -- a framework for them and incremental way editors and tools can migrate to that. What's the latest overview of where that work sits? What can we all do to help?
🌍🌏🌎🌑
On Thu., Dec. 12, 2019, 8:37 a.m. John Erling Blad, jeblad@gmail.com wrote:
Seems like Marius Hauken delivered the thesis in 2012.[1] A short video is available on YouTube.[2] He got several awards, at most three in one week. [3] A few of them are listed here.[4][5]
[1] Hauken, Marius Aa., and Kunst- Og Designhøgskolen I Bergen. Same Shit, Different Wrapping (2012): Ca 200. Print. [2] Wikipedia-concept for smartphones and tablets https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V-xI-mPDLBo [3] Tre designpriser på en uke https://www.bt.no/nyheter/okonomi/i/eagk4/tre-designpriser-paa-en-uke [4] REDESIGNING WIKIPEDIA FOR MOBILE & TABLET
https://europeandesign.org/submissions/redesigning-wikipedia-for-mobile-tabl... [5] Masteroppgave, redesign av Wikipedia for touchenheter ”Same shit different wrapping”
https://www.grafill.no/visuelt/vinnere/2013/interaktiv-design/studentarbeid/...
On Thu, Dec 12, 2019 at 2:01 PM John Erling Blad jeblad@gmail.com wrote:
I wrote 1996 in the subject field because that was the year I made a wikisite with tabbed interface, and experimented with a paper-like design in Xt. More or less what designers today would call a material design. The present design is what I would call Monobook 2.0, and that imply a 15 year old design. Monobook was rolled out in 2004-2005 if I remember correctly.
At nowiki we had a discussion with a designer from The Oslo School of Architecture and Design around 2009, and he come up with a really nice design. The design at SNL (the other Norwegian lexicon) starts to look more and more like it. The design proposal was deemed to radical and to simple for Wikipedia. He got several awards for the design.
No, I'm not a designer, but I do like good design.
On Thu, Dec 12, 2019 at 1:34 PM John Erling Blad jeblad@gmail.com
wrote:
Thank you, but discussing how your site or any other specific site looked like in some year is an distraction.
On Thu, Dec 12, 2019 at 12:30 PM Shlomi Fish shlomif@shlomifish.org
wrote:
Hi John!
On Wed, 11 Dec 2019 22:47:21 +0100 John Erling Blad jeblad@gmail.com wrote:
Could we please update them with a slightly more up-to-date skin?
Take a look at our Norwegian competitor in the lexicon field. https://snl.no/kunstig_intelligens
I took a look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page and it
doesn't look
anything like a geocities/etc. site from the 90s, and I feel it
doesn't look
bad.
For the record that was my site at around 1998 - https://old-1998-site.shlomifish.org/ and people complained enough
that my
current site looks like "[insert year here]" that I added a FAQ
entry:
https://www.shlomifish.org/meta/FAQ/site_looks_old.xhtml
See https://everybootstrap.site/ for how many contemporary sites
look like.
Someone on freenode told me he thinks plain black-on-white sites
look great.
Regards,
ShlomiJohn Erling Blad /jeblad _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, <mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org
?subject=unsubscribe>
--
Shlomi Fish https://www.shlomifish.org/ https://www.shlomifish.org/lecture/C-and-CPP/bad-elements/
As it turns out, compiling a C program from more than 20 years ago
is actually
a lot easier than getting a Rails app from last year to work. — https://passy.svbtle.com/building-vim-from-1993-today
Please reply to list if it's a mailing list post -
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
בתאריך יום ה׳, 12 בדצמ׳ 2019 ב-16:54 מאת Samuel Klein < meta.sj@gmail.com>:
Nice find, thanks for sharing!
Amir: yes, we need global templates -- a framework for them and incremental way editors and tools can migrate to that. What's the latest overview of where that work sits? What can we all do to help?
Thanks :)
If you have time, read https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Global_templates/Proposed_specification and feel very free to *disagree* with it. I wrote most of it, but I don't want to own it. Poke holes in it. Challenge its assumptions. Tell me where is it wrong, why it cannot be implemented, or what problems will it cause if it is implemented. If you have less time, read https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Global_templates/Proposed_specification,_shor... . Add your comments on https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Global_templates/Discuss . Tell your friends from all wikis and languages about it.
No, this is obviously not the only thing that will make our sites' design modern. But of all the blockers, this one is the most important elephant in the room. Without addressing this problem, there will be no revolution in our design. At least not for all wikis and all users. I can explain why, but I don't want to hijack the thread too much.
בתאריך יום ה׳, 12 בדצמ׳ 2019 ב-16:54 מאת Samuel Klein < meta.sj@gmail.com>:
Nice find, thanks for sharing!
Amir: yes, we need global templates -- a framework for them and incremental way editors and tools can migrate to that. What's the latest overview of where that work sits? What can we all do to help?
... Oh, and as for the "overview of where that work sits"—this work doesn't exist as an official project of any kind, as the pages to which I linked explain. It needs a commitment from a lot of community members and Foundation teams and managers. At a recent Wikimedia Tech Conference in Atlanta there were some very good discussions about this topic, and the Phabricator links that appear throughout https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Global_templates/Proposed_specification are the result of these discussions, but that's just a high-level plan. It's better than what we had two months ago because it's a more modular plan now, but it's still just a theoretical plan. What is to be done is quite well-understood, but who will do it and when—not so much.
I'm thinking out loud here. Are there any estimates of would be required in terms of time (both staff time and community time) and money to make templates and other tools be much easier to globalize across wikis and across skins? I'm looking for an answer that is more specific than "a lot", but isn't a promise or a detailed estimate.
בתאריך יום ה׳, 12 בדצמ׳ 2019 ב-23:37 מאת Pine W <wiki.pine@gmail.com >:
I'm thinking out loud here. Are there any estimates of would be required in terms of time (both staff time and community time) and money to make templates and other tools be much easier to globalize across wikis and across skins? I'm looking for an answer that is more specific than "a lot", but isn't a promise or a detailed estimate.
Difficult to say.
I won't make an actual time estimation, because I'm very bad at doing it, and because I have too many conflicts of interest ;)
However, I do hope to give you something more specific than "a lot". I envision the following feasible plan for "global modules and templates, phase 1": * Make a localization framework for modules. ( https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T238417 ; probably, but not necessarily, mostly by staff) * Develop a documentation page and a framework for making robust modules ( https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T238532 ; probably, but not necessarily, mostly by staff). * Make modules storable and loadable from a global repository, and *actually enable it on all Wikimedia projects* ( https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T41610 ; probably, but not necessarily, mostly by staff). * Migrate most local modules from all the wikis to using global modules, and deleting all the migrated local modules. This will have to be done by the editors communities in many wikis, and it will only be feasible if all the points above are planned and executed well. The challenges I expect at this step are: ** Making sure that just the right amount of things are global and everything that communities want to override locally can be conveniently overridden. ** Making tough choices about which modules to use when several communities developed modules with similar functionality. For example: English, French, Russian, Spanish, and Hebrew Wikipedias have modules for loading Wikidata values. They aren't the same, but they probably should be. Merging them into a global module will require a lot of good-faith collaboration.
Note that I only mentioned modules. Templates have some extra challenges. But once modules are done well, a "phase 2" of this project, that would tackle templates, will become possible. Also, global gadgets will have to be a separate project. Maybe the same localization framework can be used for both modules and gadgets, but I cannot think of anything else that they really have in common.
All of the above is my interpretation of discussions in the recent Tech Conf in Atlanta (other people may have a significantly different interpretation). See these Phab tasks, and the web of other tasks linked to them: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T234661 https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T52329
I get a little scared when I read “probably, but not necessarily, mostly by staff” because all kind of central standardization creates a whole lot of arguing in the individual subprojects. If that standardization means changing a whole lot of templates I'm afraid it will create much more fighting than real solutions. I'm a little “Marvin” here…
On Fri, Dec 13, 2019 at 10:14 AM Amir E. Aharoni amir.aharoni@mail.huji.ac.il wrote:
בתאריך יום ה׳, 12 בדצמ׳ 2019 ב-23:37 מאת Pine W <wiki.pine@gmail.com >:
I'm thinking out loud here. Are there any estimates of would be required in terms of time (both staff time and community time) and money to make templates and other tools be much easier to globalize across wikis and across skins? I'm looking for an answer that is more specific than "a lot", but isn't a promise or a detailed estimate.
Difficult to say.
I won't make an actual time estimation, because I'm very bad at doing it, and because I have too many conflicts of interest ;)
However, I do hope to give you something more specific than "a lot". I envision the following feasible plan for "global modules and templates, phase 1":
- Make a localization framework for modules. (
https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T238417 ; probably, but not necessarily, mostly by staff)
- Develop a documentation page and a framework for making robust modules (
https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T238532 ; probably, but not necessarily, mostly by staff).
- Make modules storable and loadable from a global repository, and
*actually enable it on all Wikimedia projects* ( https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T41610 ; probably, but not necessarily, mostly by staff).
- Migrate most local modules from all the wikis to using global modules,
and deleting all the migrated local modules. This will have to be done by the editors communities in many wikis, and it will only be feasible if all the points above are planned and executed well. The challenges I expect at this step are: ** Making sure that just the right amount of things are global and everything that communities want to override locally can be conveniently overridden. ** Making tough choices about which modules to use when several communities developed modules with similar functionality. For example: English, French, Russian, Spanish, and Hebrew Wikipedias have modules for loading Wikidata values. They aren't the same, but they probably should be. Merging them into a global module will require a lot of good-faith collaboration.
Note that I only mentioned modules. Templates have some extra challenges. But once modules are done well, a "phase 2" of this project, that would tackle templates, will become possible. Also, global gadgets will have to be a separate project. Maybe the same localization framework can be used for both modules and gadgets, but I cannot think of anything else that they really have in common.
All of the above is my interpretation of discussions in the recent Tech Conf in Atlanta (other people may have a significantly different interpretation). See these Phab tasks, and the web of other tasks linked to them: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T234661 https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T52329 _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Yes, and that's why I really, really, really want to hear more feedback on it from various communities of editors, including criticism. That's also why in my proposal I write that it's a requirement that communities must be able to override any central functionality, and I only speak about the generic principle of making templates global, mentioning particular templates only as examples. I leave everything else to the communities.
The parts about which I wrote that they will have to be done mostly by staff are the parts that require heavy PHP coding, code review, and testing, and as far as I know, most of the people who know the relevant areas of code well are on staff. (I might be wrong. Also, everything I'm saying here are my own assessments, and they don't represent the WMF in any way.)
However, the more volunteer developers and editors participate in it, the better—not because it saves money, but because it makes the project more "owned" by the community.
בתאריך שבת, 14 בדצמ׳ 2019, 09:12, מאת John Erling Blad jeblad@gmail.com:
I get a little scared when I read “probably, but not necessarily, mostly by staff” because all kind of central standardization creates a whole lot of arguing in the individual subprojects. If that standardization means changing a whole lot of templates I'm afraid it will create much more fighting than real solutions. I'm a little “Marvin” here…
On Fri, Dec 13, 2019 at 10:14 AM Amir E. Aharoni amir.aharoni@mail.huji.ac.il wrote:
בתאריך יום ה׳, 12 בדצמ׳ 2019 ב-23:37 מאת Pine W <
wiki.pine@gmail.com
>:
I'm thinking out loud here. Are there any estimates of would be
required in
terms of time (both staff time and community time) and money to make templates and other tools be much easier to globalize across wikis and across skins? I'm looking for an answer that is more specific than "a
lot",
but isn't a promise or a detailed estimate.
Difficult to say.
I won't make an actual time estimation, because I'm very bad at doing it, and because I have too many conflicts of interest ;)
However, I do hope to give you something more specific than "a lot". I envision the following feasible plan for "global modules and templates, phase 1":
- Make a localization framework for modules. (
https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T238417 ; probably, but not
necessarily,
mostly by staff)
- Develop a documentation page and a framework for making robust modules
(
https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T238532 ; probably, but not
necessarily,
mostly by staff).
- Make modules storable and loadable from a global repository, and
*actually enable it on all Wikimedia projects* ( https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T41610 ; probably, but not
necessarily,
mostly by staff).
- Migrate most local modules from all the wikis to using global modules,
and deleting all the migrated local modules. This will have to be done by the editors communities in many wikis, and it will only be feasible if
all
the points above are planned and executed well. The challenges I expect
at
this step are: ** Making sure that just the right amount of things are global and everything that communities want to override locally can be conveniently overridden. ** Making tough choices about which modules to use when several
communities
developed modules with similar functionality. For example: English,
French,
Russian, Spanish, and Hebrew Wikipedias have modules for loading Wikidata values. They aren't the same, but they probably should be. Merging them into a global module will require a lot of good-faith collaboration.
Note that I only mentioned modules. Templates have some extra challenges. But once modules are done well, a "phase 2" of this project, that would tackle templates, will become possible. Also, global gadgets will have to be a separate project. Maybe the same localization framework can be used for both modules and gadgets, but I cannot think of anything else that
they
really have in common.
All of the above is my interpretation of discussions in the recent Tech Conf in Atlanta (other people may have a significantly different interpretation). See these Phab tasks, and the web of other tasks linked
to
them: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T234661 https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T52329 _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l
New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
This tend to diverge away from the chrome and into the content, which is a lot more difficult to change. (Urgh, way to long…)
Anyway, I have this really-really weird idea that “staff” should provide (extremely good) design elements, and then local projects would chose to use them in favor of their own because they are better than what the have locally. Those elements should typically provide some features that would otherwise be to difficult or expensive to make locally, thus the projects would want to use them.
Example 1: The staff could provide a complete set of design symbols for featured articles, not the jammed together mix that is used now. At some projects they even claim that the current kludges are what WMF want to use, and that they are “Wikipedia”. Pretty weird.
It should be pretty easy to set up a project “Design elements: featured articles”. We probably need them to have sufficient details for badges, indicators, and pages. They should have symbolic names, and they should probably adapt to the chosen skin. Remember, if the design element is an SVG then it might be styled.
Remember to add a page indicator from the item on the local page itself. Now we only add badges in the sidebar.
Added feature: The design elements will look good over all projects and skins, and they will look consistent. (Increased conformance over projects leads to decreased boundaries between the projects, that is less “us and them”.)
Example 2: The staff could provide necessary modules for common tasks like an infobox, navbox, taxbox, succession box, etc. There are not many of them. Most of them will use structures at Wikidata, with some local adaptation.
The present use of modules tries to support existing templates, but I believe that is a wrong approach. By doing this we perpetuate present problems with the templates. Instead of redirecting calls to modules through templates we should simply call the modules as {{module:infobox}} in the articles, and only add arguments as necessary to solve problems. The module should check out the type of item (P21) and act accordingly. (Yes it is possible, but then modules must implement and use a __tostring metamethod. It is a tech-ting.)
Added feature: I guess editors will be glad to finally have infoboxes that work as expected in all articles, and the conflicts between various infoboxes would go away . (The soccer fans will probably hate it, they can't style the infobox in the colors of their favorite soccer team. Don't tell them they can still mess with the colors through template styles.)
Example 3: The staff could provide well-defined help pages, that could be localized at Meta, and the localized page transcluded into the local project. It should be possible to link to such pages as if they were local, and even if locally overridden they should always exist.
It is a pretty large undertaking to define all necessary help pages to kick off a local project. To have some help pages, even in English or some other language, would be a real boon. Also to link those pages we need a slightly more advanced help indicator. Now we only have one link that follows the page, but there are probably several given the role and state of the user.
Added feature: It would be possible to find the help pages, thus making the editing simpler. (Some oldtimers will probably get a grudge over their favorite nit-pick items being thrown out on the common pages, and will thus insist on keeping their favorite help page.)
On Sat, Dec 14, 2019 at 9:38 AM Amir E. Aharoni amir.aharoni@mail.huji.ac.il wrote:
Yes, and that's why I really, really, really want to hear more feedback on it from various communities of editors, including criticism. That's also why in my proposal I write that it's a requirement that communities must be able to override any central functionality, and I only speak about the generic principle of making templates global, mentioning particular templates only as examples. I leave everything else to the communities.
The parts about which I wrote that they will have to be done mostly by staff are the parts that require heavy PHP coding, code review, and testing, and as far as I know, most of the people who know the relevant areas of code well are on staff. (I might be wrong. Also, everything I'm saying here are my own assessments, and they don't represent the WMF in any way.)
However, the more volunteer developers and editors participate in it, the better—not because it saves money, but because it makes the project more "owned" by the community.
בתאריך שבת, 14 בדצמ׳ 2019, 09:12, מאת John Erling Blad jeblad@gmail.com:
I get a little scared when I read “probably, but not necessarily, mostly by staff” because all kind of central standardization creates a whole lot of arguing in the individual subprojects. If that standardization means changing a whole lot of templates I'm afraid it will create much more fighting than real solutions. I'm a little “Marvin” here…
On Fri, Dec 13, 2019 at 10:14 AM Amir E. Aharoni amir.aharoni@mail.huji.ac.il wrote:
בתאריך יום ה׳, 12 בדצמ׳ 2019 ב-23:37 מאת Pine W <
wiki.pine@gmail.com
>:
I'm thinking out loud here. Are there any estimates of would be
required in
terms of time (both staff time and community time) and money to make templates and other tools be much easier to globalize across wikis and across skins? I'm looking for an answer that is more specific than "a
lot",
but isn't a promise or a detailed estimate.
Difficult to say.
I won't make an actual time estimation, because I'm very bad at doing it, and because I have too many conflicts of interest ;)
However, I do hope to give you something more specific than "a lot". I envision the following feasible plan for "global modules and templates, phase 1":
- Make a localization framework for modules. (
https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T238417 ; probably, but not
necessarily,
mostly by staff)
- Develop a documentation page and a framework for making robust modules
(
https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T238532 ; probably, but not
necessarily,
mostly by staff).
- Make modules storable and loadable from a global repository, and
*actually enable it on all Wikimedia projects* ( https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T41610 ; probably, but not
necessarily,
mostly by staff).
- Migrate most local modules from all the wikis to using global modules,
and deleting all the migrated local modules. This will have to be done by the editors communities in many wikis, and it will only be feasible if
all
the points above are planned and executed well. The challenges I expect
at
this step are: ** Making sure that just the right amount of things are global and everything that communities want to override locally can be conveniently overridden. ** Making tough choices about which modules to use when several
communities
developed modules with similar functionality. For example: English,
French,
Russian, Spanish, and Hebrew Wikipedias have modules for loading Wikidata values. They aren't the same, but they probably should be. Merging them into a global module will require a lot of good-faith collaboration.
Note that I only mentioned modules. Templates have some extra challenges. But once modules are done well, a "phase 2" of this project, that would tackle templates, will become possible. Also, global gadgets will have to be a separate project. Maybe the same localization framework can be used for both modules and gadgets, but I cannot think of anything else that
they
really have in common.
All of the above is my interpretation of discussions in the recent Tech Conf in Atlanta (other people may have a significantly different interpretation). See these Phab tasks, and the web of other tasks linked
to
them: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T234661 https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T52329 _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at:
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Hello John,
On Thu, 12 Dec 2019 14:01:46 +0100 John Erling Blad jeblad@gmail.com wrote:
I wrote 1996 in the subject field because that was the year I made a wikisite with tabbed interface, and experimented with a paper-like design in Xt. More or less what designers today would call a material design. The present design is what I would call Monobook 2.0, and that imply a 15 year old design. Monobook was rolled out in 2004-2005 if I remember correctly.
In that case, it was flamebait and provocative.
At nowiki we had a discussion with a designer from The Oslo School of Architecture and Design around 2009, and he come up with a really nice design. The design at SNL (the other Norwegian lexicon) starts to look more and more like it. The design proposal was deemed to radical and to simple for Wikipedia. He got several awards for the design.
No, I'm not a designer, but I do like good design.
Like I said, I do not find the current https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page design lacking, except for the fact it may not be mobile-friendly (or so called https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Responsive_web_design ) enough, which is a difficult problem to tackle.
On Thu, Dec 12, 2019 at 1:34 PM John Erling Blad jeblad@gmail.com wrote:
Thank you, but discussing how your site or any other specific site looked like in some year is an distraction.
On Thu, Dec 12, 2019 at 12:30 PM Shlomi Fish shlomif@shlomifish.org wrote:
Hi John!
On Wed, 11 Dec 2019 22:47:21 +0100 John Erling Blad jeblad@gmail.com wrote:
Could we please update them with a slightly more up-to-date skin?
Take a look at our Norwegian competitor in the lexicon field. https://snl.no/kunstig_intelligens
I took a look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page and it doesn't look anything like a geocities/etc. site from the 90s, and I feel it doesn't look bad.
For the record that was my site at around 1998 - https://old-1998-site.shlomifish.org/ and people complained enough that my current site looks like "[insert year here]" that I added a FAQ entry:
https://www.shlomifish.org/meta/FAQ/site_looks_old.xhtml
See https://everybootstrap.site/ for how many contemporary sites look like.
Someone on freenode told me he thinks plain black-on-white sites look great.
Regards,
ShlomiJohn Erling Blad /jeblad _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
--
Shlomi Fish https://www.shlomifish.org/ https://www.shlomifish.org/lecture/C-and-CPP/bad-elements/
As it turns out, compiling a C program from more than 20 years ago is actually a lot easier than getting a Rails app from last year to work. — https://passy.svbtle.com/building-vim-from-1993-today
Please reply to list if it's a mailing list post - http://shlom.in/reply .
Erm, I remember what websites looked like in 1996. I even made some then. It looks nothing like that.
On the other hand, on the site you linked to? The first thing I see is an absolutely huge photo of a robot looking at me. I have to scroll down past that to get to the actual meat, the text content. *That* looks like 1996.
I'll take the way we have it over that, thanks very much.
Todd
On Wed, Dec 11, 2019 at 2:48 PM John Erling Blad jeblad@gmail.com wrote:
Could we please update them with a slightly more up-to-date skin?
Take a look at our Norwegian competitor in the lexicon field. https://snl.no/kunstig_intelligens
John Erling Blad /jeblad _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Try holding your cellphone vertically.
tor. 12. des. 2019, 22.38 skrev Todd Allen toddmallen@gmail.com:
Erm, I remember what websites looked like in 1996. I even made some then. It looks nothing like that.
On the other hand, on the site you linked to? The first thing I see is an absolutely huge photo of a robot looking at me. I have to scroll down past that to get to the actual meat, the text content. *That* looks like 1996.
I'll take the way we have it over that, thanks very much.
Todd
On Wed, Dec 11, 2019 at 2:48 PM John Erling Blad jeblad@gmail.com wrote:
Could we please update them with a slightly more up-to-date skin?
Take a look at our Norwegian competitor in the lexicon field. https://snl.no/kunstig_intelligens
John Erling Blad /jeblad _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
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Is this the right time to plug Timeless?
It is, well, timeless. Looks modern too.
On Thu, Dec 12, 2019 at 18:22 John Erling Blad jeblad@gmail.com wrote:
Try holding your cellphone vertically.
tor. 12. des. 2019, 22.38 skrev Todd Allen toddmallen@gmail.com:
Erm, I remember what websites looked like in 1996. I even made some then. It looks nothing like that.
On the other hand, on the site you linked to? The first thing I see is an absolutely huge photo of a robot looking at me. I have to scroll down
past
that to get to the actual meat, the text content. *That* looks like 1996.
I'll take the way we have it over that, thanks very much.
Todd
On Wed, Dec 11, 2019 at 2:48 PM John Erling Blad jeblad@gmail.com
wrote:
Could we please update them with a slightly more up-to-date skin?
Take a look at our Norwegian competitor in the lexicon field. https://snl.no/kunstig_intelligens
John Erling Blad /jeblad _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
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On Sun, 15 Dec 2019 at 18:53, Chris Gates via Wikimedia-l < wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org> wrote:
Is this the right time to plug Timeless? It is, well, timeless. Looks modern too.
Should be the default imho by now. Then the wikimania design features could be added to it, to make it almost up-to-date.
Aron
Regarding Timeless, folks may want to read https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:Project/Timeless/Post-deployment_supp... .
I'm cross-posting this thread to the public Design mailing list. That's usually a quiet list, but I think that if people want to have an extensive discussion that is focused on design issues then that list would be a good venue.
Pine ( https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Pine )
On Sun, Dec 15, 2019 at 8:01 PM Aron Manning aronmanning5@gmail.com wrote:
On Sun, 15 Dec 2019 at 18:53, Chris Gates via Wikimedia-l < wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org> wrote:
Is this the right time to plug Timeless? It is, well, timeless. Looks modern too.
Should be the default imho by now. Then the wikimania design features could be added to it, to make it almost up-to-date.
Aron
I'm not using my cell phone. I'm using an actual computer with a 28" monitor.
There's really no excuse, in web design, for something aside from the content to absolutely overwhelm the whole monitor on a first view. That robot image should be about a third of its size.
Todd
On Thu, Dec 12, 2019 at 4:22 PM John Erling Blad jeblad@gmail.com wrote:
Try holding your cellphone vertically.
tor. 12. des. 2019, 22.38 skrev Todd Allen toddmallen@gmail.com:
Erm, I remember what websites looked like in 1996. I even made some then. It looks nothing like that.
On the other hand, on the site you linked to? The first thing I see is an absolutely huge photo of a robot looking at me. I have to scroll down
past
that to get to the actual meat, the text content. *That* looks like 1996.
I'll take the way we have it over that, thanks very much.
Todd
On Wed, Dec 11, 2019 at 2:48 PM John Erling Blad jeblad@gmail.com
wrote:
Could we please update them with a slightly more up-to-date skin?
Take a look at our Norwegian competitor in the lexicon field. https://snl.no/kunstig_intelligens
John Erling Blad /jeblad _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
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I don't see any reason to turn this into a help thread, but yes there are a few browsers that don't fully support responsive design. For example IE11 has trouble with responsive images.[1]
Mobile best Practices become a W3C Recommendation 29 July 2008, we're not compliant as far as I know.[2]
[1] https://caniuse.com/#feat=picture [2] https://www.w3.org/TR/mobile-bp/
On Fri, Dec 13, 2019 at 12:39 AM Todd Allen toddmallen@gmail.com wrote:
I'm not using my cell phone. I'm using an actual computer with a 28" monitor.
There's really no excuse, in web design, for something aside from the content to absolutely overwhelm the whole monitor on a first view. That robot image should be about a third of its size.
Todd
On Thu, Dec 12, 2019 at 4:22 PM John Erling Blad jeblad@gmail.com wrote:
Try holding your cellphone vertically.
tor. 12. des. 2019, 22.38 skrev Todd Allen toddmallen@gmail.com:
Erm, I remember what websites looked like in 1996. I even made some then. It looks nothing like that.
On the other hand, on the site you linked to? The first thing I see is an absolutely huge photo of a robot looking at me. I have to scroll down
past
that to get to the actual meat, the text content. *That* looks like 1996.
I'll take the way we have it over that, thanks very much.
Todd
On Wed, Dec 11, 2019 at 2:48 PM John Erling Blad jeblad@gmail.com
wrote:
Could we please update them with a slightly more up-to-date skin?
Take a look at our Norwegian competitor in the lexicon field. https://snl.no/kunstig_intelligens
John Erling Blad /jeblad _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
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For those interested: https://www.w3.org/TR/css-device-adapt-1/
On Wed, Dec 11, 2019 at 10:47 PM John Erling Blad jeblad@gmail.com wrote:
Could we please update them with a slightly more up-to-date skin?
Take a look at our Norwegian competitor in the lexicon field. https://snl.no/kunstig_intelligens
John Erling Blad /jeblad
wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org