[Wikimedia-l] Wikipedia redefined -- typography and UX and such

Thu Aug 9 01:07:14 UTC 2012

Labas!

My 2 cents:

Overall the team at http://www.newisnew.lt/lt have some very good ideas to
share, however:

If you are colorblind, the rainbow thing wont make any sense, and I
strongly dislike the idea of burying smaller languages under a mouse. I
think that Lithuanians (this re-design has been proposed by a Lithuanian
firm) might be able to understand my dislike of that idea (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithuanian_press_ban). Also the W as a logo is
EXTREMELY Euro-centric. In my opinion the puzzle globe, while it's busy, is
a healthier representation of what the project is and represents. It's busy
like a European coat-of-arms is busy: you won't understand it until you
spend some time understanding the complexity of the symbols and their
relationships to each other.

The designers should post mock-ups of their work here if they are serious
about making a change:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:2012_main_page_redesign_proposal

On Wed, Aug 8, 2012 at 2:12 PM, Ziko van Dijk <vandijk at wmnederland.nl>wrote:

> Perfectly sound remarks, Amir.
> I would be a little bit more lenient about their grades. The problems
> linked to this proposal are smaller than the achievements.
> One could consider the "W" an abbreviation of "Wikimedia", or take
> "WM". WM Commons, WM Source, WM News, WM Wikipedia. If in your
> language it is a VM or something else, in "local" characters no
> problem, use them.
> The letter type could be a better one, indeed.
> "History": It's amazing how little those terms are unified among the
> Wikipedia language versions. A big renaming after 10 years of organic
> growth would be great.
> Kind regards
> Ziko
>
>
> 2012/8/8 Amir E. Aharoni <amir.aharoni at mail.huji.ac.il>:
> > 2012/8/8 Michel Vuijlsteke <wikipedia at zog.org>
> >>
> >> Well, it's certainly a possible starting point for discussion:
> >> http://www.wikipediaredefined.com/
> >
> > TL;DR:
> > * It's so-so for a mid-term design school project: It shows that they
> > can draw mock-ups, but I doubt that they would get high grades for
> > typography, logo design, and understanding the client's needs.
> > * It's not so useful as design ideas for the actual Wikipedia, except
> > some proposed reader-centric features.
> >
> > Now, the longer version.
> >
> > The beginning is just horrible:
> >
> > * They picked a font in which the capital I looks like a J. The fact
> > that the capital J there is longer doesn't help at all. It's not an
> > original typographic solution. It's just weird, ugly and hard to read.
> > It may be useful somewhere, but not here.
> > * They want to redesign the Wikipedia logo, but they start from the
> > one that was retired two years ago. So yes, the ideas are the same,
> > but they should still do their homework properly.
> > * They want to kill all the scripts except Latin from the logo. On the
> > main page they want to make the big languages even bigger on the main
> > page and to make small languages even smaller. Imperialism FTW.
> > * They create logos for sister projects from their English names and
> > once more disregard the notion that there are other languages in the
> > world. And that it's rarely a good idea to design logos from letters
> > without a good reason to begin with.
> >
> > Somewhat better ideas begin in the middle. What they call "history" is
> > completely different from what editors call "history". They should
> > have called it "reading list" or "what I read" or something. It
> > requires an account, which is not so relevant to most people in the
> > current setup. That said, their idea of history can be useful. If
> > nothing else, it's a good reminder that MediaWiki's technical
> > innovations are mostly aimed at the editors (1%) and not the readers
> > (99%). The "Quote" button that they propose is not a bad idea either.
> >
> > Then they get to editing. Basically, they don't propose anything very
> > different from what the Visual Editor is going to be. In fact, the
> > current testing version of the Visual Editor is already quite close to
> > that. And they use "history" again, with a different meaning,
> > disregarding the very basic design principle that different things
> > should have different names. (Come to think of it, using "history" the
> > way we use it today is not a great idea either. It's easy to confuse
> > it with the subject of History. In the Hebrew Wikipedia the "View
> > history" tab is called "Previous versions", which makes a lot more
> > sense.)
> >
> > Towards the end they discuss the "portal of Wikipedia", by which they
> > actually mean the Main Page of the English Wikipedia, and disregard
> > yet again that there are other languages.
> >
> > So OK, it brings up a few areas where we can improve, but the solution
> > as they propose it is not viable. I'm not sure that they meant it to
> > be.
> >
> > --
> > Amir Elisha Aharoni · אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי
> > http://aharoni.wordpress.com
> > ‪“We're living in pieces,
> > I want to live in peace.” – T. Moore‬
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikimedia-l mailing list
> > Wikimedia-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
>
>
>
> --
>
> -----------------------------------------------------------
> Vereniging Wikimedia Nederland
> dr. Ziko van Dijk, voorzitter
> http://wmnederland.nl/
>
> Wikimedia Nederland
> Postbus 167
> 3500 AD Utrecht
> -----------------------------------------------------------
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikimedia-l mailing list
> Wikimedia-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
>

-- 

*Victor Grigas*
Storyteller
Wikimedia Foundation
vgrigas at wikimedia.org
+1 (415) 839-6885 x 6773
149 New Montgomery Street 6th floor
San Francisco, CA 94105
https://donate.wikimedia.org/