The "Vector 2022" redesign for desktops

[ericbarbour]

They hid the LH sidebar, a feature that dates from 2001 and something which few people would care about anyway. (Frankly MORE casual WP users should look at Recent Changes and noticeboards to see how the sausage is made. But nooo, they don't care.) More white space. In fact, it now looks more like the mobile site than ever. The sidebar reappears when logged in as an editor.

https://slate.com/technology/2023/01/wi ... -skin.html
(Thanks to the Bird for catching that)

But many "insiders" fought it tooth and nail. And it happened anyway. Most journalists are calling it "subtle", since I suspect they're all using it on smartphones. Yet, only the Slate article mentions the fuckheaded squabble they had in September to November about the new skin. 681k bytes of rampant Wiki-Stupidity and IDONTLIKEIT. Roy Chen, that arrogant little highway nerd, was one of the loudest objectors. And how "nice" it is to see Fram being his classic Frammy asshole self.

See how reactionary these "progressive" WP twits are when someone changes their constipated little wikiworld?

also--
https://www.engadget.com/wikipedia-desk ... 00932.html
https://www.pcmag.com/news/wikipedia-de ... r-10-years
https://techcrunch.com/2023/01/18/wikip ... ly-subtle/

Screenshot 2023-01-18 at 14-10-10 Flow control (fluid) - Wikipedia.png (76.03 KiB) Viewed 6824 times

I should also note the stupid Stephen Harrison item that ran a few days prior....that guy should be writing corporate propaganda for Disney or an oil company. It seems to be his reason for existence. He is openly being fed "talking points" by WP insiders.
https://slate.com/technology/2023/01/ch ... icles.html

[ylevental]

Agreed, now I am even less tempted to use Wikipedia as a result. Even some Redditors think the change doesn't make sense

https://old.reddit.com/r/wikipedia/comm ... 9_monitor/

[SkepticalHistorian]

Vast majority of users are on mobile devices; desktop users can adjust margins, complainers don’t know how to adjust?

[Arsenal4904]

There's an extension on the Chrome store. https://chrome.google.com/webstore/deta ... jlda?hl=en

And if you promote that on Wikipedia, it will probably be removed.

[boredbird]

Vast majority of users are on mobile devices; desktop users can adjust margins, complainers don’t know how to adjust?

Maybe viewers but not active contributors. You can see in the article histories which edits were mobile devices because there is a special flag telling Wikipedians "help I am muggle please revert me!" and they usually are.

[ericbarbour]

Vast majority of users are on mobile devices; desktop users can adjust margins, complainers don’t know how to adjust?

Maybe viewers but not active contributors. You can see in the article histories which edits were mobile devices because there is a special flag telling Wikipedians "help I am muggle please revert me!" and they usually are.

Not only, but also: remember that thousands of extra-obsessed WP insiders have been using desktop browsers to edit for 12 or more years. Some of them have been on there for 20 years. Literally. So they blow a fuse when something changes in a desktop browser. And yeah, they have great contempt for anyone trying to edit with a smartphone. This is why the "Visual Editor" was such a screaming mess, they could not make it work properly on a phone, so the solution was to throw tantrums. Thus giving the insiders even more reasons to chase off phone editors.

The article about the Visual Editor barely mentions the multi-year shitfest raised by "good Wikipedians". They are STILL complaining today--it's just better hidden now. See that mention of Kww making it "opt-in only"? As usual, they fail to mention that Kww was desysopped and stalked away in a huff about a year later.....after an eight-year career of being a complete bastard and fighting with others on WP. And I won't even discuss the sock farm he ran on Commons.

[boredbird]

Not only, but also: remember that thousands of extra-obsessed WP insiders have been using desktop browsers to edit for 12 or more years. Some of them have been on there for 20 years. Literally. So they blow a fuse when something changes in a desktop browser. And yeah, they have great contempt for anyone trying to edit with a smartphone. This is why the "Visual Editor" was such a screaming mess, they could not make it work properly on a phone, so the solution was to throw tantrums. Thus giving the insiders even more reasons to chase off phone editors.

I sort of agree with them though. Not just Wiki addicts but also journalists, academics and anyone else who has to write for a living are much more likely to be using desktops. That matters for readers too because number of readers and influence of those readers are different things.

Long articles don't work well on a phone regardless of how they're formatted. If that's the standard than any in-depth resource is a bad idea. Next the WMFers will worry that Wikipedia doesn't work well on Twitter or TikTok. Anything that makes the case for why more "engineering" is needed. Anything that helps delay and distract from the realization that the real problem is content and they're the wrong people to fix it.

[ericbarbour]

Long articles don't work well on a phone regardless of how they're formatted. If that's the standard than any in-depth resource is a bad idea. Next the WMFers will worry that Wikipedia doesn't work well on Twitter or TikTok. Anything that makes the case for why more "engineering" is needed. Anything that helps delay and distract from the realization that the real problem is content and they're the wrong people to fix it.

That fight has happened over and over again--but got little attention. The original mobile version was first put up in 2007, at about the same time the first iPhone appeared. And the Bastard Squad completely failed to notice it. A discussion in 2009 on the Signpost was also ignored.

Meanwhile, this tiny article about the mobile site is constantly vandalized. This essay from 2011 attracted complaints. Plenty of technical complaints were posted. But it took the Visual Editor (being crammed down their throats, thanks partly to James Forrester) to really trigger the rage-squabble.

Wanna see some hilarious anti-WMF bitching? Here ya go. Tretikov is long gone and they're still whining about her. The progressive bias of the WMF has gotten deeper, the connections to Tides Foundation have become permanent, and they allowed it to happen. WMF top staff have increased their own salaries while treating the low-ranking staff like meat lumps. And the "community of volunteers" keeps vomiting up donations, supporting it, and tolerating its abuses. Suckers.

[Strelnikov]

Everybody and their brother is using a tablet or smartphone for Internet so changing the layout for mobile was inevitable. It's funny that en.Wikipedia now more resembles Wikipedia Sucks!! the blog in 2023 than when I started in 2014, and I picked that all-White layout because it resembled a blank Wikipedia page.

[ericbarbour]

lol.........

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia ... sh/Archive

And should you enjoy reading their asinine splutter-fests, this new RFC can't fail to amuse you. 553 kbytes and still going.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia ... ector_2022