This girl acts like Wikipedia owners don’t realize this shit. It’s about principles. Modern web is simply cancer that is eating out the planet from the inside, one TCP segment at a time (although with HTTP3 and QUIC we gotta call it a datagram!).
I realize this is just a fun video, but I got super triggered because I am dead tired of ‘Silicon Valley Mindset’ and this girl embodies it to the extreme.
She also claims that the app has a better design than the desktop website so I’m not really convinced they’re even a good designer if this isn’t just tongue in cheek. It’s too crazy not to be satire.
Speaking as someone who has some experience with graphic design, I agree. She doesn’t seem to have any knowledge of accessibility features and her criticisms are mostly unrelated to how the eye follows information or how attention is drawn. They seem to be following a naive aesthetic doctrine instead of design principles.
The app does look better.
This seems to be posted on this forum with that title solely for rage-bait.
She clearly just-for-fun redesigned Wikipedia as if a modern company got a hold of it. Yes of course this would drive people in this forum up a wall, but that’s just not the point. This is also not about programming at all?
Don’t go around looking for content of other creators just to take it out of context and then bash it.
This is like you watched “we made marvel r-rated” from corridor digital (https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=k5-3eujJyZE) and then post about it, being pissed how they destroyed a superhero fantasy aimed at a wide audience and children and how noone would ever want something like that.
Calling her a bad designer just because you disagree with her design decisions is just mean. This entire post just makes it seem like you are specifically looking for things to hate…
Saying Wikipedia is a bastion of the old web is funny.
Wikipedia has cancer. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Guy_Macon/Wikipedia_has_Cancerthey’re talking about the principles of free knowledge and the commons without goals of money
They haven’t had a single year with net loss. That’s an impressive track record compared to most other tech companies.
That’s absolutely not the point about the article I just sent.
The point about the article is that WMF’s spendings are somehow unsustainable. I don’t think that’s necessarily the case.
The article points out:
For those readers who were around three years ago, did you notice at the time any unmet needs that would have caused you to conclude that the WMF needed to increase spending by $30 million dollars? I certainly didn’t.
Maybe why you didn’t notice anything is exactly because they made these spendings to ensure no major hiccups? I’m confident OG Wikipedia code wouldn’t be able to support their internet hosting needs today. Maybe their infrastructure costs would be 100x of today’s if they hadn’t spent the R&D on optimizations?
Sure, their spending is likely not 100% optimal. But given how Wikipedia is still one of the most visited sites and is still financially healthy through multiple financial crises (without diverting from their core business model), I wouldn’t worry too much about their spendings.
The point of the article is that the costs increased non linearly with the number of user, the cost just keep increasing.
Maybe why you didn’t notice anything is exactly because they made these spendings to ensure no major hiccups? I’m confident OG Wikipedia code wouldn’t be able to support their internet hosting needs today. Maybe their infrastructure costs would be 100x of today’s if they hadn’t spent the R&D on optimizations?
A few line before what you quoted: The point is taken into account, the traffic did x12 and the costs of server x33, and the author call it
This seems reasonable given that they have improved reliability, redundancy and backups.
since 2005 the WMF has hired hundreds of extra employees and is now spending 1,250 times as much overall
So the traffic did x12, but the spending on staff did x1250.
Did you skipped this whole part on purpose or you didn’t read the article completly and jumped to there ?
You started to say “yes but they didn’t had a single year in a net loss”, the point of the article I sent is that wikipedia is spending too much money because they have too much money.
I was so confused when they removed the sidebar and put it into icons.
Yes, replace the space on the right that is being used right now with… nothing. And let’s take away horizontal space instead and make you remember what the icons mean… Why?
The design and semantic search are great. The rest is eww.
I don’t know what “Figma” is but it sounds stupid.
Figma balls
That’s what’s called a fig newton.
It’s like Ligma but different
It’s currently the best tool for doing UX/design work.
It’s a great tool for interface design and visualization.
Programming?
But regardless, IMO, I’d rather have useful “pro” features than get that nagging banner up there. However, this does open a certain door I’m uncomfortable opening. If the owners of wikipedia suddenly wanted to cash in on the popularity of the site and act like a mega corps, they obviously could. But it is true that wikipedia’s services aren’t free, so complaining about them trying to keep it alive is entitled.
Maybe the middle ground is to take all that this person did, create another website, and donate proceedings from “pro” users to wikipedia. For every subscriber, donate at least 2€ or a user-defined amount to wikipedia. That way wikipedia stays the way it is and another website tries out this monetisation idea.
Great take as always. May I suggest we be the change we want to see and host our own federated wiki? One of the great dev of lemmy has recently made one and a short search shows there are a lot of possibilites. At least thats my opinion atm. I think wiki.js is also working on federation iirc.
Thanks 🙏 People who do have the time, will and skill, could (should?) be the change they want to see.
The idea of a federated wiki does sound exciting and indeed could allow for a “pro wiki” instance. Hopefully somebody with the aforementioned qualities finds an interest in federated wikis. On my end only time is lacking. For now, it’ll end up on my (huge) list of ideas that I’m trying to work off.
Have a good one
That’s what they are doing with Fandom (formerly Wikia). Right?
That’s just a wiki on a specific topic. IINM that doesn’t contribute to wikipedia, nor to proceeds (nor in part or in full) go to wikipedia.
Not sure how they actually make money since I can’t find “pro” options.
Damn I hated watching that, fuck pro and all this other monetization shit my god
