Apparently Wikipedia is taking about a new initiative in usability. And it comes along with a fancy new theme as well.
The lines are a lot cleaner
Compare that with the current theme…
Boxy goodness
Of course I still have a problem with Wikipedia policy on exclusivity when it comes to what information is notable. This may be driven by their own technological limitations as we know there’s really no such thing as “unlimited”. I have a feeling this trend toward making knowledge spread like cocoa butter would similarly make it less intellectually nutritious.
Wikipedia may become what it despises the most… A collection of trivia.
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*I* think it already has largely approached that: Trivia collection. Which leads to further thoughts about the level of “intellectual nutrition” overall, not just Wiki. Scares me, and I’m fearless.
“Scares me, and I’m fearless”
Indeed. Like that astronaut who went to the moon as part of the Apollo program, but was allergic to cheese.
Honestly, in the good ol’ days when Wikipedia admins didn’t have an ego that would put the K2 peak to shame, the articles were actually quite good. And people didn’t bother signing in as much as they valued the quality of the article than their own little signature.
Wikipedia does indeed seem to be on the decline, particularly with the latest announcement that all edits are going to require editor approval.
Like posters on Slashdot said: “some people are more equal than others.” Looks like the Editing Elite have scored yet another victory.
That’s incredible!
All the article protections for vandalism and such were understandable, but they usually only lasted a relatively short period of time. On living persons articles, they usually only had partial protects and even those were removed after a while (except the one on Dubya, of course).
This just goes to show, anonymous contributions are the best way to attain critical mass very quickly, but managing that mass is another matter.
This isn’t the right approach for them. Edit conflicts should be resolved on the discussions page. Even though certain users act as children, this sort of sweeping discipline is counter productive.