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Simon Willison’s Weblog

Wikipedia enhancements

I don’t know when it happened, but Wikipedia has a stylish new design in mostly valid XHTML 1.0 Transitional (the front page validates, some of the inside pages do not) with a CSS layout to boot. They even have an option to turn off the single layout table used on their home page. The site seems much easier to navigate now and the organisation of the front page is a masterpiece of information architecture. When you’ve got over 250,000 articles just in the English version providing a useful home page is going to be a challenge, but Wikipedia pulls it off with aplomb.

Every time I visit Wikipedia I find something else to be impressed by. This time round it was the Community Portal, which provides resources for Wikipedia contributors including Things you can do, an Article of the week, a Tip of the day and a myriad of other links. This is seriously well-organised content. It’s interesting to see how they deal with the challenges of 250,000 items in a single namespace as well.

Their recent Webby award for best community was thoroughly deserved. And yes, they even encourage people to collaborate on writing their press releases.

Posted 31st May 2004 at 10:20 pm

This is Wikipedia enhancements by Simon Willison, posted on 31st May 2004.

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9 comments

  1. Oh wow, that's amazing. I was using wikipedia for an assignment on the weekend and I was wondering why the site was so slow to respond and intermittent. Obviously, they were performing this upgrade. Pity the search field isn't as prominent but the site is a lot more readable now.

    Jack - 1st June 2004 01:09 - #

  2. I find the redesign ugly. The old one looked more like a wiki, more professional, and more serious. I keep looking for edit/history/talk links in the wrong places. I don't think the sans-serif font is as readable. Etc.

    Britta - 1st June 2004 07:06 - #

  3. i discovered this new design in the german version a week ago. to that point the english version still used the old layout.

    roger - 1st June 2004 16:54 - #

  4. Wow! They did a great job on the redesign! I just visited Wikipedia a couple of days ago. I come home from a long holiday weekend and find this now. Very impressive work.

    Scott Johnson - 1st June 2004 18:32 - #

  5. The new design looks lovely and in general is lovely.

    I do, however, have one problem with it? Why on earth does it not use my browser's default font size as (I think) the old version did? It works perfectly well if I tell my browser to use a minimum font size of 15px (the same as my usual default) so why bother with the rather small font? If I want to use 24px text then I probably have a damn good reason for it.

    Of course, Wikipedia isn't the only site to do this but, really, they ought to know better...

    Pete - 5th June 2004 10:35 - #

  6. And I was the one who made the Front Page validate first! :)

    But I very much disagree that the current homepage is well-designed. I find it cluttered and unfriendly, and I've been working on some new designs myself.

    Tom Gilder - 6th June 2004 22:47 - #

  7. I like the new design as well. It gives the site, at least in my opinion, a more professional touch.

    Mario - 7th June 2004 14:12 - #

  8. I'm also quite enamored by Wikipedia and MediaWiki, the FLOSS software that it's based on. MediaWiki 1.3 is in beta testing now and as soon as it is released, I'm probably going to turn my Infinite Ink site into a MediaWiki-based site. I'm thinking that maybe MediaWiki will be the hit software of 2004!

    Nancy McGough - 9th June 2004 01:57 - #

  9. It was down because they were installing new hardware. The redesign was mostly coincidental. I learned this via #wikipedia on freenode. The site's been highly unreliable for the past few weeks, new hardware notwithstanding.

    Taak - 10th June 2004 00:15 - #

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