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Comment by tptacek | Hacker News Reader

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.

View on HN

It's hilarious from the start - first thing they do is throw out the logo that incorporates multiple languages and says 'fuck you, we're going English for Wiki'. They compound this by then making all the various logos English-derived, so these guys have basically shouted to the world that they don't grasp the basics of their client.

They even propose a feature that shows everyone how much English dominates the other languages in other languages, being the colour bar. And if you want something not in English, you have to find the nigh-undiscoverable 'roll over top right corner' to have the language selecter appear. They're pushing really hard to make non-English users feel like second-class citizens.

Then they redesign the page to make content harder to get to by putting a giant damn banner at the top of every page. Literally a third of the page is the banner. It's a wonder they didn't suggest putting some 'subtle' advertising in or something.

This redesign literally made be laugh out loud several times. My main regret is that I don't have a marketing budget, because then I could ensure these jokers would never get any of it.

They lost me at "Jmagine" ....

Ugh thanks for pointing that out -- I read the whole article and was assuming 'Jts' was some technology I'd not heard of yet.

Not just that - they redefine the word "history", which is a core component of the site for article revisions. And they changed where the contents are placed (do you know how many holy wars this started?!?!), they wipe to the community chosen logos, they change the templating system of the English main page (with one that is poorly laid out - check out the featured picture of the day section!), they associate number of articles with popularity...

Not sure how well they thought this out. They seem o have taken their own design brief, bu not consulted with Wikipedians!

Best this could be would be an iPad app. Not for the main site(s).

> Not just that - they redefine the word "history"

Despite the historical use of "history" on WikiPedia, I'd rather it be called "Revisions." Revisions is much clearer as a concept.

> Not sure how well they thought this out. They seem o have taken their own design brief, bu not consulted with Wikipedians!

I'm not a Wikipedian (I assume that's what contributors refer to themselves as?), but I'd welcome some more personalization into the site. It'd be wonderful for me to be able to easily see the pages I've viewed, and be able to highlight and keep track of things in much the same way that I could in a real set of encyclopedias. Now, that doesn't necessarily mean it has to be within WikiPedia itself--at least not for me, but I'm sure the masses would like the same sort of features, and they'd be more willing to just create an account on WikiPedia than to install some third party app/plugin/etc.

"Revision" is also a more honest admittance that edits are often revisionist history.

Oh hardly!

What offended me the most is their suggestion that the Wikimedia Foundation appropriate the name "wiki". Either they lack awareness that the wiki is a separate invention from Wikipedia or they do not mind language and usage evolving in such a way as to make it hard to explain the history of the development of the technologies and nearly impossible for the inventor of the wiki to get the recognition he deserves.

Extend the same argument. They probably said 'fuck you, we're going English for Wikipedia' instead of Enzyklopädie or whatever like every other recognizable brand worldwide.

Let's face it, English is the universal language.

English is indeed spoken by over a billion people, however it's not spoken by the other six billion.

> 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.

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.

> 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.

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... ). 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.

I am sure Olympic athletes would still train if there was no gold medal but it would not be the same.

Giving people something to strive for helps define what it is to succeed.

A big deal for who? Nobody cares except the 5 people involved.

The people involved create the content on Wikipedia. If it's a big deal for them, it's a big deal for Wikipedia as a whole.

(to put it in web 2.0 speak: properly incentivizing users to submit quality user-generated content is essential to any crowdsourced website, and few incentives work as well as the recognition of your peers).

"5 people". You've never read an FA debate.

Where can I find them?

Type in "WP:FAC" into the search. Believe me, it's more rigorous than pretty much anything I've eve seen. About 6 years ago I wrote the article on exploding whales, and this hit the main page. Now it's not even featured any more!

You wrote that? My hat's off to you, sir. Did you know they have an entire category http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Exploding_animals now? :)

People went a little exploding animal crazy, if I recall correctly :-)

I did a lot of things on Wikipedia. Perhaps my most lasting creations will have been [citation needed] and the admin's noticeboard. Though I have, perhaps, a somewhat dubious legacy, it was a fairly amazing experience - rather marred by the manner in which I had to leave the project.

I've never once edited a Wikipedia article and have no desire to do so. I'm I'm the epitome of a Wikipedia outsider and I agree with your parent that this is not good design.

It's pretty and minimalist and trendy but it isn't Wikipedia. Honestly, they would have done the same thing with any website. It's just a shallow coating of gloss over what they've labelled as "bad design". There is a lot wrong with this whether you're an insider or outsider. These are my biggest peeves:

Not only do they throw up a huge middle finger to non-English speakers (something I usually don't ever mind but this is almost obscene) but they do it in a way which involves replacing the current system with mystery meat navigation. How is anyone supposed to know the color bar is clickable and not just a ripoff of Vimeo?

The logo... They explain why the current logo is what it is then proceed to basically say "but we don't give a shit, let's use cool fonts and be trendy". The whole concept of the world being a puzzle of knowledge goes right out the window and they carried absolutely no piece of it into the new one. Also, the "w" brands have one major flaw: Wictionary. Every other name is a compound word but Wiktionary isn't a compound word but kind of a half compound word. It sticks out and doesn't make sense like the others (had the others truly made sense to begin with). I know it's a minor detail affecting only one brand but good design is all about the details.

In the end this redesign amounts to nothing but slapping a fresh coat of trendy on a massively popular website. It smacks of arrogance and self importance. I have to say they damn sure know how to make something look pretty and trendy but the way they went about this, especially the subject they chose, made them look pretty terrible now.

> Not only do they throw up a huge middle finger to non-English speakers

Yes, that irked me too, amongst other things. But intriguingly, they are from Lithuania, where Vikipedija does not start with a W.

A vast majority of its users has nothing to do with its community

So, your thinking is that Wikipedia should be more like YouTube comments.

In the words of John Lennon, "Well, you know..."

I appreciate why the authors have made the suggestions that they have.

Their reasonably desires do not prevent the end result being a dog's breakfast.

Wikipedia is not a social media site.

> Imagine Google's landing page being chokeful of "content" including, most notably, the featured articles of random nature.

Yahoo's landing page is full of content and is useful for many people. Wikipedia's landing page is also full of content and is organized much better then yahoo's page. The majority of wikipedia's audience will google "SOMETHING" or "SOMETHING wiki" and read it possibly click a few links from the main article. A large minority of Wikipedia users including many who rarely or never edit or contribute want to browse "random" interesting facts possibly going on an info binge clicking dozens of links(leading to a tree of articles).

Google is a search engine designed to be fully functional in its simplicity. Wikipedia is a community.

If you use Wikipedia only as a search engine, you are missing out.

I'm not. I only ever use wikipedia the same way I would use an encyclopedia - to look up facts. I'm entirely uninterested in the community, just as I'm uninterested in the individual contributors to an encyclopedia.

The article makes some silly points, but it also makes some good ones. The front page of wikipedia shouldn't be mainly comprised of a list of languages - that's useless to most people. It should mainly be about search.

I've also never seen a "featured article" and am not really interested in using wikipedia like that.

>The front page of wikipedia shouldn't be mainly comprised of a list of languages - that's useless to most people. It should mainly be about search.

How much page real estate does a page have to have devoted to what essentially boils down to typing a query into a search bar and pressing enter before it's considered "mainly about search"?

I'd say being told "this is a community that cares about non-English speaking people" isn't completely useless to most people.

It clearly cares about non-English speaking people, as there's many articles in other languages. As I say, I don't think the vast majority of people consider wikipedia as a "community". They consider it a place to find facts.

However, you don't dedicate 90% of your home page to 5% of use-cases.

Is it that hard to have a small dropdown language selection in one of the corners? I don't see why "language" needs to be the main thing on the wikipedia homepage.

Also I'm not sure going forward that language will matter that much. Chrome can already translate webpages to whatever language you choose with pretty good results.

No, I am not.

I've been a part of the community, did daily edits for about a year, but ultimately there's just too many people who like to argue and enforce things (read - "delete shit left and right") rather than to actually contribute and edit. To each his own, but that community was not something that I would ever miss.

> "Imagine Google's landing page being chokeful of "content" including, most notably, the featured articles of random nature."

In the case of Google that is easy, since they have no content. Wikipedia does, and displays it (and yes, content, not "content", I have no idea what you thought you were doing there, but I saw it) -- along with a search field. So where is the problem?

> "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"

You say that is if it's a bad thing. It's not as if there was any content there if the site wasn't accomodating to those who actually help out.

> "the change initiated by those outside of the community."

Making a websites with some screen mockups, zero code and a huge font as to make the whole thing unreadable isn't initiating change, it's piggybacking on the success and popularity of Wikipedia.

I mean, yes, by all means get involved and help improve it. But just telling them from the outside what to do, that's silly. Actually, all the content is free. You can make a mirror of Wikipedia and implement those changes. Let us see a live demo, you know. Screenshots and the promise to check your email are cute, but it's kinda been done before.

"but it's kinda been done before"

You nailed it. I think that's the thing that really bothered me if not many others too. This is cliche now and if you're going to do it then you'd better make something really god damn good! This comes off like "hey, we can redesign a major website and get a bunch of notoriety, lots of street cred, back links, and look like a big deal in the design world". Major fail. The bar was already set pretty high but now that we've seen it enough times the bar is way higher.

"Been done before" doesn't even begin to cover the amount of spec mockups we see like this. Oh, you whipped up some new design and functionality for us in Photoshop one afternoon? Thank you so much for doing literally 5% of the work of your proposed redesign, please let me know where to send the cheque for giving us a huge amount of work to do that we never asked for.

> I mean, yes, by all means get involved and help improve it.

I don't think you understand just how toxic some parts of the community are.

> I don't think you understand just how toxic some parts of the community are.

Oh, I do.. which is why I know you're talking about editors, not coders/designers, i.e. the ones it actually concerns.

But even if it was true for all of Wikipedia -- so? What is making some mockups and a (kinda pompous IMHO) domain name going to achieve in that case? Even less.

This is a bunch of designers talking to a bunch of designers, on a page I can hardly read because the letters are so huge and the horizontally so restricted. It's either a clever joke, or can be summed up with "ouch".

You're right, I was very unclear.

This "redesign" is horrible for reasons that everyone gives in this thread. I agree.

There are some design changes that could be made to Wikipedia to make things easier for editors (and for regular editors) - see, for example, the wall of text at the head of some meta pages such as the main page, or ANI, or etc.

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

This is the main thing I remember after reading what seemed like an otherwise interesting study.

J don't understand why you have such a problem with it. Jt seems fine to me.

J don't get it either. Jf you're going to criticize something, make it something substantial.

I agree, J != I

I'm a fan of the minimalism but as high caliber as I was expecting.

http://www.minimallyminimal.com/ is one of my favorites.

Oooh... that was capital of "I". was reading and thought that I`ve missed definition of kind a important acronym "JT". silly and ironic indeed.

And it wasn't even consistant. They used the same character for the first letter of "Jimmy" and "It". I first thought it was a weird font with a weird I, but then say "Iimmy" and had to re-read.

Almost the same, the "J" in Iimmy descended and was overall taller than the "J" in Jmagine.

When I read this discussion I had to go back and see it for myself. I read the whole thing and apparently my brain autocorrected the whole mess for me.

Also, there's a grammatical error:

"We check our mail dozen times a day."

No. We check our mail a dozen times a day.

They're Lithuanian. I'm guessing English is not their first language.

Seeing the number of possessive its with an apostrophe on HN I can cope with someone using English as a second language making a minor grammar error.

The issue was not coping. The issue is that it's poorly written.

So they check it exactly one dozen times per day? Your correction also doesn't seem valid. Perhaps they meant to write that "We check our mail dozens of time per day."

First impressions are very important; I too find copy errors an indication of an inadequate effort to communicate effectively. However, that doesn't validate a malicious attempt to bash the writer(s) when a simple correction would have sufficed.

Sorry, but: 1. That would still be ungrammatical, 2. The parent was a simple correction, and 3. There was absolutely nothing malicious about it.

Should have been 'times per day.' I made a typo and couldn't edit it; I don't know why HN isn't letting me do so.

Asides from that, why post a correction here? Only other HN readers are going to see it, which inherently means you aren't writing the comment in the hopes of them fixing it, but to show the error to other commenters. Perhaps malicious was the wrong term, but your comment certainly wasn't trying to help them improve their copy.

Good grief. Is everything you've ever made absolutely perfect? You build something beautiful and then you can dogpile on a grammar mistake.

I think if you're going to put so much focus on visuals, and make it your clear aim to get as much attention from the world as possible, it would probably be a good idea to:

* Check that your font doesn't do anything crazy, like make "I" look like "J" - come on, the sixth word on the page looks like it has a spelling mistake

* Check your grammar. I know it's pernickety but if I'm hiring a designer I expect attention to detail, and if someone doesn't get someone to cast a cursory glance over their work before inviting thousands of people to look at it, what does that say about how much effort and pride they put into their work?

* Check your spelling, I saw at least one fairly basic mistake (for rationale see above)

The whole J - I thing is something rather European I think. Here in Europe some consider it distinguished and hip... It's of course debatable whether that validates the decision, but it might be an explanation. Kind of a back to the (typographic) roots thing.

Personally, I don't care for it...

The rest, yeah, I agree with you. Get someone that speaks the language to spell and grammar check.

What "dogpile"? Seriously, since when does two upvotes constitute a dogpile?

The reality is that if something isn't written well, the design is not going to wow me by itself. Good writing is a requirement, not an option, for great sites.

Not to spoil the pile on, but I think that's just a mistake. You know, the kind humans make?

That said, I agree the redesign is misguided. But it's certainly gotten them some attention.

I'm fully aware it was a mistake. That's why I pointed it out.

Thought I was the only one. +1

> It does not have, as its primary goal, the delight of random web users.

But it could. And that's really the point of this exercise: showing one way that it could additionally delight users, on top of providing the critical functionality it already does.

Delighting users is one step up[1] from what Wikipedia does right now. Yes, they're doing something of fundamental importance to the human race. But does that mean that the software needs to be bleak, emotionless, and, let's face it, not very enjoyable to work with?

[1] See Aarron Walter's Emotional Interface Design as described here: http://thinkvitamin.com/design/emotional-interface-design-th... for a great explanation

I think it already delights users. Wikipedia is so absolutely content and hyperlink driven that it hardly needs much else. It's immense popularity and ubiquity is proof of that. I draw my delight not from some invasive graphics and UI work, but from the fact that when I want to read about Pyramids, I click a link on Google to Pyramids (or on the Wikipedia front page) and ALL I SEE IS PYRAMIDS. No other UI, no other stuff to interfere with what I'm trying to do. And from there, I click hyperlinks and quickly jump from Pyramids to Ancient Engineering to Trigonometry to the various mathematicians who have improved on the work the Egyptians did.

The delight is in the speed at which I can quickly explore and consume human knowledge. Nothing I've seen in terms of graphical suggestions would improve that - only distract or prevent my friends in other countries from being able to use it properly.

To me, Wikipedia is embodiment of "less is more", which supposedly all of these hotshot designers are supposed to subscribe to, but apparently mistranslate it to "a metric butt-load of negative space".

A great observation is that having access to the content provided by Wikipedia is a delight in and of itself. That's a fantastic starting point for investigating, then, how you can enhance that experience with great design.

These guys did that with this brief. It's not the right answer, but it does raise some interesting questions. How do you design a more delightful Wikipedia without damaging the content? Because surely you agree that certain elements of Wikipedia - like editing pages, for instance - could use a good bit of delight here and there.

At issue here is that many of the things they choose to pour their delighting syrup over are fundamental to the way the project is managed. We probably don't need to litigate whether MediaWiki's UX could be improved; it can. "How?" is the operative question; one clear answer is probably "Not this way."

That's the problem with designers, they always want to "enhance X with great design", ignorant of the fact that the object of their OCD desire for "great design" (in this case the world's most popular web service) obviously has great design already, as it's the most popular website in the world.

This is a horrible blanket statement. Don't call all designers ignorant because you don't like one specific proposed redesign.

> obviously has great design already, as it's the most popular website in the world.

Amazon has (sorry for anyone who works there) hideous design. HIDEOUS. It is a very popular website.

There are dozens of examples of websites with bad design that are popular. Many web-forums have thousands, tens of thousands, of users yet are really hard to use.

It's not particularly hard to use. You think of a topic you want to read, type it in the search and press enter. You start reading that topic. And you can click on a hyperlink to related articles within that article.

Great design already, with a few rough edges. Nothing that needs a fundamental overhaul. I would hate to see Wikipedia go the way of Digg!

Craigslist anyone?

Wikipedia already delights me. Dozens of times a month.

Advertising campaigns-in-disguise do not.

Can a multi-lingual interface actually convey the emotions you would like it to? I think you're asking a very interesting question.

The homepage of _Wikipedia_ is WWW.wikipedia.org. They never said they only want to target the english Wikipedia. The Frontpage of the _German_ Wikipedia is DE.wikipedia.org, but that has nothing to do with the article.

The individual language front pages are still here. With loads of information density and featured articles and everything.

The beautiful front page for searches in different languages is very nice and certainly provides better overview over the different languages available.

The overhaul of the Editor is also a nice addition, although it should probably be coded in a way as to enforce adherence to templates. A challenge you say? Maybe. But most things worth doing are.

The highlighting is a nice touch, certainly useful for doing research, which is what WP is often used for.

They did not confuse wikipedia with wikimedia. They very clearly proposed a specific logo for both Wikimedia and Wikipedia. They were aware of the connections and relationships between the organisations and concepts in question. The title can be construed as misleading, "Wikipedia redesigned" vs. "Wikimedia redesigned", I guess. But most people using WP are not acutely aware of the difference and relationship between the two. So they decided to hook the article on "Wikipedia" because it's the more recognized name. I have no problem with that.

I don't like that "organic living logo" idea either, I'll side with you on that one.

Yes, the capital J is a bit annoying :)

Your criticism seems mostly superficial and I don't quite understand why. A better branding does not water down the content. "Doing something bigger than that", (which i completely agree with) is not diagonally opposed to beautiful design.

One of my favorite articles I always share when someone does an unsolicited redesign without putting the requisite analysis into it:

http://www.ryanholiday.net/this-is-what-real-analysis-looks-...

nice post, but mildly unfortunate title - the phrase "real analysis" makes me think of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real_analysis first.

Anecdotally, the overwhelming majority of people who I've observed using Wikipedia go to www.wikipedia.com and then select "English".

Really? I've never in my life went to wikipedia without following a link from a Google search. I don't think I've ever seen the Wikipedia home page.

Really? I use a custom search engine in my browsers so I can search directly from the address bar since I know I want Wikipedia results and don't want to sift through other junk.

Really? I have my assistant find the article of interest and send a bit.ly link via courier.

Really? I use Encyclopedia Britannica. It's the best.

To the above few parents, keep this idiocy on reddit, please.

I go to Wikipedia itself all the time. I just type 'en' + enter into my address bar because I'm so used to it, but I'm sure there's probably millions of people that always go to the first page instead.

I still think it should remain mostly as it is, though. I didn't like their changes to it.

Indeed, I can't say I recall its appearance at all.

Could you contextualize what population you're drawing your sample from, please?

English speaking people, presumably.

Maybe what was meant was that, of those who go to Wikipedia directly, not through Google, they usually go through www.wikipeida.org or wikipedia.org, not en.wikipedia.org. I would agree with that assessment.

Me too, but let me add that I think it is also worth considering that they may not be there to search. For that reason it feels a bit weird to make www.wikipedia.org a crappy version of www.google.com...

My own use-case, and that of others I see using it:

  * Go to wikipedia.org
  * Try to ignore the glut of language names and find the tiny search box
  * Search

But does it matter what language is more popular? That is not what Wikipedia is about, really

Sorry, the language wasn't supposed to be the key user action here: it was more how people navigate to en.wiki from wikipedia.com.

Agreed. But I like the highlighting, saving of snippets and history-tracking ideas. I would find that very useful for myself, beyond the "oh sweet I didn't know it could do that" but for real "now where did I once read that?" purposes.

Is it a good idea for a design shop to propose features that would beg huge numbers of otherwise passive consumers of the encyclopedia to register accounts? Because you'd have to do that, to get highlighting and bookmarking.

I don't know. You think it's a bad idea though? Why? Are we worried about vandalism?

I think I can support an idea that would hope to turn otherwise passive consumers into not-so-much-any-longer passive consumers. As long as pseudonyms remain acceptable.

I'm more worried about their database servers melting, since the overwhelming amount of traffic Wikipedia handles today is passive consumption.

If you think highlighting and bookmarking of Wikipedia articles is extremely valuable --- and maybe it is! --- go start a site backed by Wikipedia's content. In the places where it actually counts, Wikipedia has bent over backwards to be helpful to developers.

Well, they're already trying to quell the flames of their database servers by heavyhandedly deleting articles that they find non-notable.

The unfortunate truth of the matter is that, given infinite time, they will have to fight all these fires eventually. To delay the inevitable by not actively encouraging user registration is a disservice to the entire editorial platform.

Deleted pages are never truly deleted. A more accurate description would be "hidden", and there are different levels to which a page can be hidden:

* Blanking a page, or part of a page, is an action that any editor can perform, and any editor can undo. This hides content from the "live" page, but anyone can view the blanked content by looking in the page's history. * Deleting a page is an action limited to administrators, and similarly, only an admin can undelete a page. A deleted page is basically treated by MediaWiki like it doesn't exist, and only admins can view the deleted content. Individual edits can also be deleted, but this is not as common. * Lastly, oversighting can be used to hide content from even admins. Admins can oversight stuff as well, and in these cases, the oversighted content can be viewed by other admins, though it requires more work than viewing deleted stuff. For oversighted content to be hidden even from admins, the oversighting must be done by another user group called (aptly enough) oversighters. In the context of WMF project, entry to this usergroup is tightly controlled (seriously, it makes the request for adminship process look like an open door), and anyone selected for the role must personally confirm their identity to the WMF.

The main point is that, in all of these cases, the content is never gone, but simply hidden; the MediaWiki software is designed so that every action is logged and can be reversed.

That's not why stuff gets deleted from wikipedia, the USERS do that, because they have processes and policies which encourage it. That's a much more difficult problem to address, because you can't fix it with technology. Same problem affects a redesign... That said, I have seen some encouraging evidence that the community wants to address the usability of the tools and UI on wikipedia, and the engineers working at the foundation have their own ideas which are a little more realistic, for example:

http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Athena

It is also a disservice to the entire editorial platform if they can't pay their own bills and go under. Or if they overload their servers to the point that people complain that "Wikipedia is always down" and migrate to one of the less free alternatives.

Has anything that has built on top of wikipedia as the primary product got much traction? I think it is something that would be hard to really get widespread without it.

Can a 3rd party even maintain a fully up to date set of wikipedia content? Not sure what their policy on scraping is?

Wikipedia also has an API (although this does little to address tptacek's concerns of database meltdown, unless you cache frequent requests):

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/api.php

http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/API:Main_page

http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/API:Query

For example:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/api.php?action=query&prop=revi...

brings back:

   { 
     "query": { 
       "pages": {
         "1666533": {
           "pageid": 1666533, 
           "ns": 0, 
           "title": "Y Combinator (company)", 
           "revisions": [
             {
               "*": "{{Infobox company\n| company_name = Y Combinator\n 
                     [...redacted full wikitext content of article...]"
             }
           ]
         }
       }
     }
   }

No need to scrape, Wikipedia has full dumps for the articles available for download: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Database_download#Eng...

Yeah I am aware, but wikipedia changes daily. There would have to be a pretty impressive feature set built on top before many would consider using an out of date wikipedia when they can easily see the latest version.

There is a feed of changes though - both a "realtime" IRC feed that is restricted access and some sort of batch feed (daily? Hourly?)

Hm... for most pages it shouldn't really matter, they don't change drastically within days. For developing or current subjects I guess it would...

This dump is updated once a month, though the API is live.

One problem I've found with the dump is that you still need to render it (unless someone knows of another dump) which has caused us a few problems with the current thing I'm working on.

That could be implemented using localStorage + a simple key-value API, no sign-in required.

These ideas would probably be better achieved using a browser add-on of some kind.

Not if you want it to be popular (read: IE users, high school and college students, other "normal" people).

(Ok, yes, a browser add-on would be better for someone like me. But I don't think my need is very unique.)

Most people who really care about this functionality are already using external tools to handle it. EndNote and Scrivener come to mind off the top of my head.

But more to the point, the plugin wouldn't make it Wikipedia-only. Doing research involves more than Wikipedia.

The capital "J" was pretty bad too, dropping under the baseline, for no other reason than to differentiate it from that stupid "I"

It’s pretty stupid because it doesn’t follow convention – but that’s actually exactly how I learned it in school, so it’s not like there isn’t precedent.

Here is (roughly) what I learned in elementary school (in Bavaria): http://i.imgur.com/LbQ7l.png

I think the J dropping below the baseline isn’t particularly uncommon or unique. (I know quite a few famous typefaces in which the J drops below the baseline: Baskerville Old Face, Lucida Grande, Palatino, Rockwell, Optima, …) However, the I looking like a J certainly is, at least in print.

Can you provide a link to the Brand New Blog or some additional search terms? I'm interested, but "brand new blog" and "brand new blog logo" Google searches don't seem to bring up anything relevant.

This is the Brand New blog: http://www.underconsideration.com/brandnew/

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