This is an archive of past discussions about Wikipedia:Vector 2022. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.
I'd love to see a collection or contest of the best scripts to extend the new skin. There's a lot of great improvements here but also a bunch of new annoyances for power users (that will either subside with acclimation/time or be tweaked through CSS user scripts). czar03:26, 14 January 2023 (UTC)
Perhaps the invitation to try out the skin can be made less imperative? For example: The Wikimedia Foundation Web team strongly suggests trying it for at least one week, as it can take a few days to start feeling comfortable with a new interface. If you are unsatisfied, you can switch to any of our other skins at any time.isaacl (talk) 22:52, 13 January 2023 (UTC)
Thanks for the changes; I feel it's more friendly this way. I have a minor copy edit to suggest to the first sentence for more conciseness: If you decide to try it out, we, the Web team, suggest trying it for at least one week prior to deciding whether to switch to one of our older skins. I appreciate your responsiveness. isaacl (talk) 17:45, 14 January 2023 (UTC)
Thanks! I would have done so, except that since this particular section is relaying advice from the Web team, I wanted to check that there was no objection to a change in tone. isaacl (talk) 18:44, 14 January 2023 (UTC)
Heading, Article, Talk
Switching the links to "Article" and "Talk" as well as all the other editing tools to appear below the article heading is confusing to the reader as the links appear to be part of the content instead of tools. --Millbart (talk) 18:11, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
Invisible search box: something from Talk:Main_Page you may have missed
User:Neelthakrebew said:
I usually use the Internet in reversed visual format, white type on a black background. It's much easier on my eyes .
In the old main page, the search box showed up in the white on black format. Now, those buttons are invisible in the white on black format. I wonder if this can be fixed. Card Zero (talk)19:17, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
Please let us change Wikipedia "skin" without logging in.
I sincerely hate the new layout. I will not get used to it. I see I can change it in the preferences. This is not adequate. I usually am not logged in when reading Wikipedia. I can change my habits on my home machine, but I use Wikipedia on many different machines, browser profiles, etc, and for both privacy and practicality reasons I can't log in on each one. Logging in can create delays (for example, at the moment I've actually forgotten my password, so I had to create a throwaway account to turn on the old layout and make this comment— I have an edit history, I promise).
@NoFlatDesignEverSorry, I have seen your question, but due to the setting of mediawiki, IP user doesn't have the ability to change the skin without logging in. BTW, if you are using more than one accounts, please disclose these to Arbcom. Thank you. Lemonaka (talk) 19:54, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
I don't have any faith of winning a debate against developers, no, even RFC here of keeping the old vector was lost. Lemonaka (talk) 20:16, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
There's a lot of good stuff in this new skin, but regardless of what the research may show for users in *general*, for *this* user, the fixed width makes Wikipedia unpleasant to use. If I could use the width toggle to persistently opt out of fixed width, I'd be reasonably happy. But the fact that 1) the toggle exists and 2) it doesn't persist makes it, legitimately, an insult. It makes me frustrated every time I click a link or reload a page, because my experience is degraded every single time. I don't know how to interpret having a toggle *and* making it utterly useless, other than as a "f*** you" to users like me. It would be better to not have the toggle at all--at least that way I would have to either adapt, or decide to stop spending as much time on wikipedia, without the temptation of a nice interface being "so close yet so far." Of course, much better would be to simply *make the damn setting persistent*!
I realize that I could have this be persistent by making an account and logging in, but I have no interest in doing so, and forcing a change like this on users to incentivize them to log in is the definition of a dark pattern. 2601:602:8C00:78A0:0:0:0:432F (talk) 20:03, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
Agreed. Is this all just a scheme for force yet another log-in on the web for the purposes of data harvesting? Why else would there not be a global option to disable? Hopefully this is just a silly oversight and will be fixed. 75.35.176.54 (talk) 21:54, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
This was very predictable and very preventable
Adding my voice to those who think this was handled poorly. The product analytics team collect a bunch of data and decided that Vector 2022 was superior because "Readers and editors jumped between sections 50% more than with the old table of contents" and "it decreases scrolling to the top of the page by 16%" without regard for whether these are actually meaningful benefits, especially compared to the loss of usable space. ProcrastinatingReader and ScottishFinnishRadish, who closed the RfC on the topic, summarized the result as "Overall, there is a positive reception to the changes" when that was clearly not the case, misrepresenting the oppose section as supporting most aspects of the overhaul. The decision to implement was made without the community when there was clearly no consensus to do so, despite the promise that If the community decides against deploying the skin, no deployment will be made (emphasis by WMF web team). Unfortunately, the WikiMedia Foundation continues to indicate through its actions a belief that it privately owns Wikipedia and has the right to make unilateral decisions regarding the website.
Even if it directly undermines the community's notion of WP:CONSENSUS, the launch still wouldn't have been as big of a deal if it had been done properly. Gradual rollout (like had been promised), increased publicity, and an attempt to get input more broadly would all have been beneficial. As far as I can tell, the only people that even knew this was happening are the most active, always-online Wikipedia editors. Casual editors seem to have been taken by surprise, which is to say nothing of non-editor readers. For all the noise the WMF made about collecting user input, the net they cast was very small, and even much of that was stubbornly disregarded. I think this change came with many improvements, but it also came with many drawbacks, and the haphazard implementation raises questions about whether the people involved in this rollout are qualified to oversee the the operations of Wikipedia.
After some digging here it's my understanding that it was known that this would be an unpopular change but they are moving ahead with it anyway. I'm not seeing any evidence of any kind of popular support for this at all. WikEdits5 (talk) 20:16, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
@Thebiguglyalien I believe If the situation continues to deteriorate, the arbitration committee may be required to intervene. BTW, as a login user, you can change back to vector-legacy Lemonaka (talk) 20:18, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
"the arbitration committee may be required to intervene"
What would be the best way to move this up to arbcom as quickly as possible, and who would have the authority to do so? On a similar note, would it be possible to get Jimbo involved? I'm sure he would be interested to find out what the community actually thinks of this change on his website for which he is still, as far as I'm aware, Benevolent Dictator for Life.
Why can only the privileged opt out of this new feature?
Why do you need to have an account to turn of this 'skin'? What's the point forcing this skin on any unregular visitor, while people with accounts are privileged to be able to opt out? This 'skin' is awful. 37.247.31.205 (talk) 19:04, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
It seems obvious to me that if you want to change your settings from the default (irrespective of the default being terrible), you need an account. DS (talk) 22:22, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
An update 30 hours after the deployment from WMF team
Hi everyone - we have posted an update to the technical Village Pump with some information about the deployment, responses to feedback we've received so far, and some upcoming changes we will be making to the skin. We encourage you to check it out and leave any comments or questions. Thank you! SGrabarczuk (WMF) (talk) 01:32, 20 January 2023 (UTC)
Not an improvement
"We've made a few changes to your reading experience. These improvements will make Wikipedia more welcoming and easier to use." Improvements? Hell no. "Optimized for your 6.2" mobile phone display", presumably. For people using wide screens, it looks like left behind from 4:3 times. Space4Time3Continuum2x (talk) 20:47, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
agreed, so much white space and i only have a widescreen... for my mates with ultrawides i imagine this is a strip of text in the middle and an acre of white either side!
Hi @Space4Time3Continuum2x. On this page (and especially in this table), you will find detailed information why we use this wording. For example, people use the new Table of Contents over 50% more, they search almost 30% more, etc.
Dark Pattern for logged in accounts is unacceptable
The redesign creates a dark pattern encouraging users to create accounts, which is a potential violation of privacy statues (CCPA is one example), and could put users at risk in unfriendly places. Roll it back. 73.63.251.220 (talk) 02:04, 20 January 2023 (UTC)
Vector 2010 should return as the default skin immediately, and should remain as such until there is a COMPELLING reason that determines that visitors to the site actively determine otherwise. AdmiralBeans (talk) 03:30, 20 January 2023 (UTC)
l you guys please consider adding it? even though ive already used this site for 3 years it still melts my eyes lmao. if not, is there a way to at least change the color?l Vectorskin2010fan (talk) 22:38, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
@Vectorskin2010fan, hello, thanks for asking. Yes, it seems it will be more possible now, after the engineering changes made for Vector 2022. You will find more information in our FAQ. By then, you need to use customizations such as User:MusikAnimal/nightpedia.js. SGrabarczuk (WMF) (talk) 23:21, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
So is this is a scam to force people to make accounts?
The only reason I can think of to ruin the functionality-driven design of Wikipedia in favor of this new mobile-browser style advertiser-friendly (for a website without ads oddly) look is to try and force people to make accounts. Surely there could have been a less annoying way to do that? 2601:547:901:4C60:8D97:10F3:935C:ACDC (talk) 04:49, 20 January 2023 (UTC)
Suggested languages list too long
Where should I ask this?
It seems that the Wikipedia interface has changes. Earlier I could switch between languages simply by clicking on the left. Now I have to select the language from the box in the top right corner (at least 2 clicks).
The problem is that in that box I have 11 suggested languages if I'm logged in. How can I remove languages from that list? I would like to select which languages are my suggested languages and I would like to choose the order of the suggested languages. Usually, you would like to have the languages you use often in the top of that list. Now there is a language, which I don't understand and won't use. The languages I use most often are in the end. 2001:14BA:2BF7:F700:B26:BF56:169:9663 (talk) 07:40, 20 January 2023 (UTC)
"Limitations in MediaWiki's caching system"
We've been told again and again, that it isn't possible to give a logged out users the option to switch to the old skin, "because caching". Please explain in detail. You've already got two copies (one for desktop, and another for mobile). So this would be a third copy. How is a 50% increase going to break the camel's back? Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 22:36, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
Hello @Suffusion of Yellow. Thank you for your question. I'm not sure if I've shared that link with you, do tell me if I already have. In the FAQ, there's an explanation reflecting the current state of things. I suggest taking a look at the "see also" links shared there. I hope this helps! SGrabarczuk (WMF) (talk) 23:25, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
It's certainly not technically impossible, we could give logged-out users a cookie that tells the caching servers they should be shown a different skin, and then teach MediaWiki to look at that cookie, it's mostly that we don't want to do that. I don't have any numbers on hand, but a third copy of everything is a lot! There has been a lot of work over the past few years to remove cache fragmenting options that caused even more splits. Legoktm (talk) 23:53, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
@Legoktm: Thanks for the reply. Given the backlash from non-logged-in editors here, I think some "hard numbers" would go a long way. If you can say straight out "Desktop requires X terabtyes, mobile requires Y terabytes, and adding support for classic vector would require Z terabytes. We have X + Y < W < X + Y + Z capacity, and increasing storage would cost D dollars" would at least get us all on the same page. Right now all we have in the FAQ is something vague about "overloaded" servers. I fail to see how this could increase bandwidth consumption. CPU usage? I don't know, but it's got to be low compared to parsing the page, right? And storage is cheap(TM). Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 01:50, 20 January 2023 (UTC)
Someone on the SRE team could probably get you numbers. But I don't think it matters really, mostly because it's the opposite of the direction we've been going in for years. New things that split caches are basically forbidden. I assume that now we have a responsive skin by default (of course, years after volunteers had already implemented it), we can start discussing shutting down MobileFrontend and the mobile domain and reducing cache fragmentation even further. Legoktm (talk) 07:41, 20 January 2023 (UTC)
Some scripts bugged and down
I came across this because some of the scripts work terribly on vector-2022, FYI active sysops, Teahouse scripts and so on. Is this a change too fast for scripts to follow? Lemonaka (talk) 20:15, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
Ahhh, I found the solution! The toolbar is now in a drop down menu from the figure on the very upper right in the screen. So dark mode and day mode are still optional! Paradise Chronicle (talk) 09:00, 20 January 2023 (UTC)
A couple interesting Phabricator tasks
Preliminary stats on the V22 rollout can be found here: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T327440#8542723. Some 7500 accounts were registered on January 19, which is about 3-4k more than the daily average for the last month. This number is still dwarfed by the average 140 million daily pageviews, but the trend is noticeable. (It's also worth mentioning that I'm going off the static images in this post; users with Wikimedia developer accounts can presumably track these figures live.)
@Steue It's in the dropdown menu to the right of the Create an account button. Now, to be fair, it should be next to Create an account, but that's another story for another day. LilianaUwU () 08:37, 20 January 2023 (UTC)
Thank you Liliana for the ping and the fast answer.
Which (this dropdown menue-icon) I can not see, because I use my own colours. In my browser (Firefox)/Settings/General/Colours I have set to "Always use my own colours". I know: this results in certain icons of the wiki software (as well as in other web sites) not being visible. Only if my mouse pointer happens to be in this place it changes its appearance.
One solution would be for the wiki software to use pixel images as icons, like photos (e.g. in jpg or png format) (as well as for the colours in the legend of a map). They ARE visible despite my colours.
But the [ Log in ] should definitely be visible at first sight. At least in the beginning. Once the user is informed about where this [ Log in ] is and knows where the [ Log in ] is "hidden", it might be OK to hide it in this menue.
Imagine that this issue was pointed out the 19th of August of 2021 at Phabricator and no one has taken this serious usability issue seriously. Theklan (talk) 12:29, 20 January 2023 (UTC)
Top bar, make it hide-able
The new permanent top bar takes space away and reduces the amount of the article which I can see.
The name of the article is already in the tab of the browser.
Suggestion one:
It should at least have a (standard) [ Close this top bar ] or [ Fold/Hide this top bar ] button.
Suggestion two:
It should be possible for the user to change "the height of this top bar" and the size/height of the font in this top bar (seperately from each other).
Suggestion three:
These settings should be available WITHIN this top bar: via a [ Settings ] button.
Suggestion four:
And when the mouse pointer is within this button, this button should change its caption/appearance to [ Settings for this top bar ].
Suggestion five:
And when the mouse pointer has left this button it should reduce to [ Settings ] or an even smaller icon.
These are decent suggestions. I would actually prefer it to hang about a bit more, and to be a bit modular. I can see potential uses but the current form is limited. CMD (talk) 09:29, 20 January 2023 (UTC)
You have interpreted correctly. I would like the top bar to be more available in time, and able to be replaced/changed/modified. CMD (talk) 13:42, 20 January 2023 (UTC)
Is there a feedback form where I can tell my opinion?
I read the answer to Q1 and I do not agree. I suppose majority of the wikipedia readers are not logging in to read wikipedia. Why bother if you want to check something from single article. You probably log in to edit something. Also, reading wikipedia logged-in allows tracking and profiling so many users prefer to stay logged-out.
Logged-in users have the option to go back. Logged-out users don't have that option. Did you ask their opinions about this change before you went live? Give us a simple way to give you feedback about this change. Typical wikipedia reader does not know about talk pages or RFCs or such. Simple feedback form in the banner would be nice. 2001:14BA:2BF7:F700:B26:BF56:169:9663 (talk) 09:28, 20 January 2023 (UTC)
For what it's worth, the main page banner offered me a WMF survey for feedback when I opened up Wikipedia and before I created this account (I had been intending on doing some expansion on stubs for a while, but this spurred me on to properly create an account. I don't resent it for that reason, but the amount of whitespace is very distracting for me and makes using the site not really feasible). Is not everyone who accesses Wikipedia logged-out being prompted with said survey? If so, that's not very good web design. NuclearOverhauserEffect (talk) 12:30, 20 January 2023 (UTC)
Just yesterday, I found this https://wikimedia.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_eKv2YsD5GQXnJt4 Which should have been a permanent post through all wikiprojects for one year. Even if for technical reasons the trustees, the staff, opted for such a switch to a new look, why did they not prepare the public. Was there not one member specialising in conduct, relations. Some kind of note from the foundation, to address the anonymous readers is needed, even now, the day after... Sarri.greek (talk) 13:29, 20 January 2023 (UTC)
Even if a user/reader is on an article page, using the new skin, there should be a link [ Feedback re. this New Skin ] too.
I.e.: Where-EVER the "NEW SKIN" is in use, there should be available a link [ Feedback re. this New Skin ], e.g. at the TOP of the left bar or in the top bar.
And such a link (one and/or the other) should be visible PERMANENTLY.
Hi @Steue: your suggestion is interesting, it should be a link just above or below the "Switch to old look" link, or placed where you said. I will report it to the rest of the Web Team, we have a lot of messages now to consider but I hope we could discuss about this soon. Thank you!--Patafisik (WMF) (talk) 14:13, 20 January 2023 (UTC)
I suggest to pull the link [ Switch to old look ] up, so that those who do not like to take time to get acquainted with the new skin DON'T have to SEARCH for how to switch to the skin they are used to.
@Steue: Because we are talking about position: article tools has changed of position on itwiki and viwiki, for enwiki the change will be available in few weeks. Actually the position of the "Switch to old look" is at the center of the leftside bar ("Torna al vecchio aspetto" in Italian in the picture). If you or someone else reading this discussion want to give us a feedback you are welcome. Thank you,--Patafisik (WMF) (talk) 15:27, 20 January 2023 (UTC)
Apologies in advance if this sounds a little silly given Wikipedia's policies. Just switched to using Vector 2022 and, given that its wide rollout to the default skin is only a few days away, I feel it prudent to put it out there that I have noticed a potential issue with a new feature where images appear when using the search bar. For instance, if a user were to innocently search for 'peninsula', the 'penis' article appears while typing (thanks to the first four letters matching) complete with, for lack of a better phrasing, a photograph of an elephant's schlong. This is still far from the worst such example!
I fully understand that Wikipedia is not censored and such images are often necessary for the encyclopedic value of the articles where they are placed. However, on the old skin these pictures never appeared while using the search bar, so people making innocent searches didn't have to see them. A new Wikipedia user could be discouraged from using the site if they are offended and/or disturbed by the images appearing as they try to search for topics that aren't explicit at all. This seems especially likely if they're not logged in, with no idea how to hide the images.
On that note I am curious to know what (if anything) will be done to prevent these unfortunate incidents while not compromising the quality of the articles. I am wondering if there will be some sort of technical means implemented to hide specific images from search results and previews, like how the bad image list ensures certain pictures (many of which are sexual, violent or otherwise considered repulsive by many) aren't shown on pages other than which they are allowed. There could also be an option for logged-in users to choose whether to allow explicit images in their search results, with the default setting being to hide them.
This is a decent point. While we've traditionally had WP:NOTCENSORED, some of this is based on the philosophy that someone visiting the penis article should expect to see a penis. It's obviously not the same philosophy if you're given search suggestions when trying to find a different article, and of course we do avoid potentially objectionable material on unrelated articles, if there is no clear encyclopaedic purpose. (Wikipedia:Offensive material is a decent summary.) ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 13:03, 14 January 2023 (UTC)
These images have appeared like this on mobile for some time, so just imagine what all the mobile users have to deal with. :)
There is a separate list (MediaWiki:Pageimages-denylist) that can be used to eliminate search results without affecting the page directly. You can also add |class=notpageimage to a specific image if it's inappropriate to be the page image. As page images are only ever used in 'secondary' locations, this concern is a good reason to use the class. (I don't know if all infoboxes support the second option today.)
We should have a way to prevent that article from showing up on the list until you type out its full name. While I understand that if you type out the full name of an article it will show up on the list, it's name in this case is not a header of "peninsula". Animal lover|666|06:55, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
That's somehow more restrictive and functionally disruptive than what's being proposed. Instead of not showing an image, autocomplete is basically gone for fear of words. Artoria2e5🌉15:30, 20 January 2023 (UTC)
The WMF added images to the global wikipedia.org search results years ago. I warned them that there would be disruption from people showing up demanding they be censored. I'm pleasantly surprised we avoided it for a couple of years.
Anyway, WP:NOTCENSORED is policy. One of the reasons we agrees on that policy is that we don't want the massive disruption from people arguing over which images they do and do not want to censor. Before anyone attempts to actually advocate this really really bad idea, let me preview how this goes. First of all, our number one group of objectionable images are the images of Muhammad. There no zero chance our medical and scientific and sociological articles are going to have their images censored because "ohmygodboobies", without first dealing with the images of Muhammad issue. Good luck with that. Secondly, next up on the list will be demands for an equal right to censor any image related to Christianity or any other religion. Third, censorship-advocates all know it's simple and obvious which images to censor, but they wind up battling each other because no two can agree on which ones. NOTCENSORED have been repeatedly and exhaustively debated, and challenges to it always fail. It would be unrealistic to expect otherwise. Alsee (talk) 11:50, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
One of the main arguments for NOTCENSORED (which I am one of the biggest advocates for) is that potentially offensive images are only shown in an appropriate context, but they are being shown here out of context. e.g. images of a penis are contextually appropriate (and indeed encyclopaedically necessary) on the penis article and nobody here is arguing to change that. However images of penises are not contextually appropriate on the peninsula article (not even at Mull of Kintyre#Mull of Kintyre test) - the argument here is only that people searching for things that are not penises should not see images of penises in their search results. It may also be the case that people would wish to prevent images of the Islamic prophet being shown to people searching for Muhammad Ali but, just as with the male genitalia argument, this is not censorship in any way shape or form. Thryduulf (talk) 12:26, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
Of course it's censorship. It's just censorship which you happen to agree with, but that's always true when anyone advocates cesorship Alsee (talk) 21:35, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
I've explained in detail why choosing not to display irrelevant images to people looking for something completely different is not censorship, you cannot successfully refute that by just asserting that it is - especially as the ideal long term solution to the issue would result in irrelevant images not being shown regardless of potential offensiveness (e.g. a person searching for Chessington World of Adventures would not see the lead image of the chess article). Please explain how and why this is censorship, with reference to something other than hand waving and personal assertions. Thryduulf (talk) 23:49, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
Your asserted rationale is not to display irrelevant images to people looking for something completely different. But that's not really true, now is it? You're not trying to prevent the irrelevant peninsula image from being displayed when I search for penis, are you? No. You're proposing to selectively censor images that you consider offensive.
the ideal long term solution to the issue would result in irrelevant images not being shown - if you want to improve the search engine to avoid irrelevant search results, of course, everyone supports that. But you're not advocating eliminating irrelevant results. No. You know the search engine is already making a best-effort to show the most likely and most relevant search results. What you're proposing is to censor images from search results even when they are exactly the desired result. You either overlooked, or didn't care, that the proposal is selectively discriminatory and detrimental against the people who were searching for exactly those articles.
Setting aside all that, your most fatal point is in trying to define an image list. We've debated this issue repetitively and exhaustively and it always ends the same way. You don't get to be dictator deciding which images go on the list, and the community doesn't want endless disruption arguing over individual images. The debate always goes the same way. The pro-censorship side walks in assuming it's obvious which images should be censored, and by the end the debate they've pretty well killed their proposal themselves warring with each other over which content should_be/cannot_be be censored. Alsee (talk) 09:24, 20 January 2023 (UTC)
Nice theory, shame about the facts. The image list (which currently exists in the form of the MediaWiki:Bad image list, which doesn't see endless arguments) is being proposed as a workaround for the issue. If there is a way to show images of penises when people are searching for penises but not at other times (and the same for other images, of anything), then please go and propose it at the phabricator task where devs are (or at least should) be listening. This is what I and at least most other people want long term, however we realise that this is a very hard problem (not just for MediaWiki, its at best a not-fully solved problem in computer science) so in the short term we are looking for a solution to an actual problem that has minimal side effects. You going to have to work a lot harder to demonstrate that not showing people some images in search results (but showing them those exact images when they look at the article) is either censorship or discrimination, because they simply are not. Thryduulf (talk) 11:48, 20 January 2023 (UTC)
To paraphrase someone on the phab, the BIL page is an administrative tool to prevent people from spamming pics, not to really define what should be surpressed (since we are talking about "not censorship"). We don't have a spamming problem here, do we? Artoria2e5🌉15:57, 20 January 2023 (UTC)
I support the point forwarded by [Entranced98] and supported by [Animal lover |666] and [Thryduulf].
On the issue:
If one has finished typing something and hits [Enter], one, of course, should get this. This is "Non-censor".
But if one is still typing and has NOT yet hit [Enter], there is no need to bother the more sensitive users with images which infringe on their morale. They should feel comfortable too to use the WP, if possible.
This is the same respect which we are supposed to show regarding living persons or non-binaries or why we do not tolerate personal attacks. To them it IS an offence, but it is avoidable by some technical efforts, without having to censor what others do want to read.
Therefore we (our programmers) should try to find ways to satisfy both.
Stop contributing to Wikipedia if old layout is not brought back again
The new layout is a complete joke, the most useless layout I have ever seen. Everything about it, is ridiculous.
If Wikipedia wants to act like a corporate and not listen to its readers and contributors, it's time to bury wikipedia. I request others (who hate the new layout) also to stop contributing to Wikipedia. In any case, what alternatives to wikipedia are there? 130.88.16.130 (talk) 10:37, 20 January 2023 (UTC)
The problem is that there are not really any alternatives to WP. It's also completely against the spirit of WP to require a log in to make it readable, we should encourage casual and occasional readers. however, it's not my call, I'm just an editor of 10 years standing, so have no voice in this shambolic load of bovine leavings. Martin of Sheffield (talk) 10:54, 20 January 2023 (UTC)
Genuinely feels like this is some trick to force me to make an account for a site I thought was better than that. I guess it worked, because I'm here now. But at this point why even trust this shit if they're gonna just do the same scammy dark pattern shit every other site is doing nowadays? Thelaftwardbard (talk) 15:20, 20 January 2023 (UTC)
This reminds me so much of back when Mozilla Firefox forced a bunch of unpopular changes on the user base and then simply refused to change course. The result: everyone left and never came back. There currently isn't an alternative to Wikipedia but if things don't change there probably will be. Developers, you actually don't know better than me how to use my computer. Please stop trying to do so. 2600:1700:1471:2550:4102:7C99:2804:8FC3 (talk) 14:55, 20 January 2023 (UTC)
Firefox seriously left a bad scar after the cliqz and laserlike events, where they partnered with third parties to harvest user data. They are not even worth considering as a browser anymore imo, not trustworthy in the slightest. Deadoon (talk) 15:53, 20 January 2023 (UTC)
We're hearing promising words from the WMF about starting to listen to communities such as English Wikipedia. Recent impositions such as Vector 2022 and UCOC tell the opposite story, but I hope that this is simply because a $200m pa juggernaut takes time to turn. For those of us on the verge of leaving, I don't think Vector 2022 will be the last straw because, unlike our unfortunate readers, regular editors can set a preference for another skin. However, even the WMF must now realise that it is on a final warning from the community and its next unwanted change is very likely to result in a mass exodus. Certes (talk) 16:53, 20 January 2023 (UTC)
For the love of all that is good, stop telling people to use useskin=vector!
This goes to both people with and without (WMF) accounts: The useskin=vector trick only shows one page in the selected skin. All of the links on the page will take you right back to the old skin. It's not, and never was, intended as an option for readers. It's there for "power users" and developers to check how something looks in another skin. So please stop directing people to this "solution". You'll only frustrate them. Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 22:27, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
Spinning up a mirror on the wikipedia.org domain with the Vector skin would not be a terrible idea. If Reddit can do it, Wikipedia can do it as well. Aasim - Herrscher of Wikis ❄️ 23:51, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
With the understanding that useskin=vector greatly hurts performance and having a lot of IPs skip the caching layer is probably not good, there's really no reason we couldn't make the useskin parameter sticky. Commons has an AnonymousI18N gadget that makes uselang= sticky, and recently I helped the Chinese Wikipedia set up sticky variant links via a gadget (phab:T223053). Code-wise it's pretty simple, just look to see if a uselang parameter is there, and if so rewrite all the other links to also add that parameter. Legoktm (talk) 23:56, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
I was mostly directing the rant at people who are suggesting the that useskin is a solution right now. It's not. A future not-yet-implmented "sticky useskin"? Sure that might work. But it seems less elegant than the cookie-based solution (what happens when they follow a link from an external site?), and just as expensive. Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 01:55, 20 January 2023 (UTC)
Table of contents (toc) does not present contents well
Current implementation of table of contents (TOC) has a few issues:
It does not present the contents when opening the page as it is hidden below the general navigation, requires page scrolling.
For long pages with many headings only a part of the TOC is shown. Users will have to scroll within the TOC itself to see the bottom part of headings. The TOC looses its primary function: provide overview for long pages.
h2, h3, h4 headings are hidden by default, requires expanding, mouse clicks
the good news: the toc stays visible when users scroll down, searching for content. But that is too late.
Fall back to previous layout: TOC as part of the text, fully visible, after the intro. Readers will encounter the TOC when reading. No scrolling, no clicks required to see contents of page. Fast navigation to the chapter of interest.
as previous layout, but TOC collapsed by default.
move the TOC to the left hand top corner as its frequency of use outranks the general navigation.
An option to mannually [ Expand ] <--> [ Hide ] the deeper levels of the toc.
Means:
A: Such buttons at the top of the left bar/toc.
B: When the mouse pointer is in the left bar/toc, then this toc expands itself as it is from start in the former skin; and when the mousepointer leaves the left bar then the toc deflates itself to the top level only.
However, this automatism might/could be annoying if a user simply wants to select one of the top level headers. So, explicit buttons (solution 'A') might be better for all users.
I agree with Uwappa. The ToC, by definition, should be an essential part of the article, below the lede, introducing and giving an overview of the text's body and its subsections, at the same time dividing the latter from the lede. The new ToC is completely useless and confusing. Also cfr. my RfC comment about it. I propose that the solution #1 (restoration of the old ToC, which was perfectly fine and functional the way it was) would be the best one. Æo (talk) 13:54, 20 January 2023 (UTC)
The new ToC also doesn't number sections, so once you've scrolled into it, the scroll bar on the right will disappear and you have no way to tell how far into the ToC you are looking.
I agree it should be part of the body. It is not visible at all if the article is opened in a portrait aspect ratio. If you click the button to open it, it covers the article text. Eblon2 (talk) 22:04, 20 January 2023 (UTC)
All critizism will be ignored
There is much critizism against this new skin here, and much rightly so. However, Wikipedia Foundation decides on this.
I think it will be like before, when changes have been made. Like when most language links for no reason at all were cramped together in a "see more" section some years ago instead of all being seen at once in the left margin where they did not bother any text but where available for anyone with just one click. Much critizism came back then, also posted in the designated talk page, but was totally ignored. Noone from Wikipedia Foundation even bothered to try to explain their reasoning, they probably did not even read the critizism. No ordinary user liked that change, but it stuck, because ... well, nobody knows. Ove Raul (talk) 21:00, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
@Ove Raul It's some people in local community, hold the RFC, and the result of RFC is agree to change, then WMF change the skin. They promise not to change unless there is a consensus for changing. Please read Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment/Deployment_of_Vector_(2022). I still believe WMF will not be too silly to ignore all the editors. Although in some cases, they performed a little slow and ... Lemonaka (talk) 21:56, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
That RfC is a joke and you know it. The ~150 uber-active editors who supported the change are simply not representative of the majority of Wikipedia's users. 142.162.17.231 (talk) 22:02, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
@Lemonaka, you're joking, right? There were loads of oppose votes there, enough so noone can seriously say there was a consensus for the change, and still the change has been made. Also, most of us probably had no clue this was on its way until it was suddenly implemented. I think we'll unfortunately have to accept fait accompli, because Wikipedia will not change this back even if there would be 99% users voicing their disagreement. Wikipedia does not work that way nowadays. Years ago, there was an idea that changes should only be made on consensus, but that was a long, long time ago. And noone in charge will give any answer here. Ove Raul (talk) 23:45, 20 January 2023 (UTC)
@Ove Raul Please read that If all the concerns outlined above are satisfactorily addressed then we see community support to roll out the change, and in our view no further RfC would be required, although the Web team is free to hold one if they wish.Lemonaka (talk) 01:53, 21 January 2023 (UTC)
I sure hope not. I feel like this skin is simply forcing mobile view for everyone, and ignoring laptop/desktop users, who are the vast majority of contributors. I get the old wikipedia was lacking in whitespace, which can be problematic for some people, but now there's just far too much of it. It also breaks a number of standard article layouts (due to moving the table of contents, etc). There really are better ways to implement "responsive" and "modern" changes without impacting the practicality of the design, and the current changes are most definitely not it; it's like an incomplete project that was forced to release. The fact remains that the old 2010 skin still looks modern, and the new 2022 skin looks more like a gimmicky blog, at least on desktop. I really think more effort should have been put into making the new skin properly responsive (auto-resizing, automatic layout changes depending on portrait/landscape, DPI, etc), rather than the old archaic m.wikipedia format (which really, is a practice dated to the pre-smartphone days). Xander T. (talk) 21:42, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
Forgot to mention, the wide mode button looks like a "full screen" button, and having wide mode off by default is a pain. Correcting these issues would probably fix the problems for the vast majority of people. Xander T. (talk) 21:53, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
Wikipedia is far too important of a site to be this degraded on desktop. I really hope that Wikipedia will listen to users who are unhappy, because they really have no place else to go. There are no realistic alternatives to use. And I would hope that the Wikipedia team would realize that they have a tremendous amount of responsibility and they need to be usable by a global audience. These sort of forced changes with no opt-out need to be avoided going forward. This isn't a personal website. It's one of the most important sites on the web. It should be treated as such. 75.35.176.54 (talk) 22:40, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
It is my biggest grievance, too. The interwiki panel still serves me a lot like a multi-language dictionary. It used to make of Wikipedia a real multi-language project. But now millions of Wikipedia readers (and maybe editors) don't even guess that other versions exits. 2dk (talk) 00:47, 20 January 2023 (UTC)
When I view pages on my phone in the new format, there seems to be no table of contents shown. Will this be attended to? --Jax 0677 (talk) 15:14, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
Hi @Jax 0677. Thanks for asking this question. In principle, the recommended view for mobile devices, especially phones, is the mobile view. However, if you're using the desktop view and don't see the ToC, you probably may find it hidden in a drop-down menu next to the page title. You need to click the icon . Is this helpful? SGrabarczuk (WMF) (talk) 16:35, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
Vector 2010 worked just fine on smartphones, and many serious editors contribute that way, SGrabarczuk (WMF). That's why I have switched back to Vector 2010. The mobile view impedes collaborative editing of the encyclopedia. Cullen328 (talk) 17:10, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
Hi @SGrabarczuk (WMF). Why is the mbile view 'recommended' for mobile devices? Who made that recommendation? The desktop view is much easier to read, especially on the small screen of a phone. (I've always thought the whole layout of the mobile view was an error.) 37.247.31.205 (talk) 19:14, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
I agree with deprecating the mobile site. Back when I browsed on the phone I always used the desktop version (and I put a lot of effort into getting my phone browser to show that by default). Mobile users are funnelled to it without choice, and share links to m.wikipedia as a result. It makes a lot of assumptions about what mobile users need when the reality is that a phone is just a computer with a small screen (but with equal resolution and easy zooming) which doesn't allow hover text, using a clumsy input device (a finger). So the differences shouldn't warrant a separate site. And now apparently the mobile aesthetic is leaking through to the desktop site in the name of "unifying skins". Why not make the mobile site more like the desktop site, instead? And phase m.wikipedia out. Card Zero (talk)19:32, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
This is just a guess, but I think the only reason we still have mobile view is some tools like the VisualEditor and even the Reply tool do not function properly on mobile. These tools should be optimized to run on the limited RAM that mobile devices have, as well as different mobile browsers like Safari and Chromium. Aasim - Herrscher of Wikis ❄️ 19:58, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
My cheap Chinese tablet claims 2GB of RAM, which seems absurdly enormous to me in relation to doing anything with text (even involving Unicode and CSS). My cheap Chinese phone has 3GB, my cheap Chinese laptop has 4GB. And mobile devices readily swap everything out of RAM (leading to a gotcha for developers where switching away from and back to an app causes reloading and some loss of context), so it's not like something running in the background would hog it all. The mobile site should perhaps be reserved for very special use cases, like viewing Wikipedia on a dishwasher or a pregnancy test. Card Zero (talk)04:01, 21 January 2023 (UTC)
Why do you hate autistic people?
This new "skin" is revolting, and forcing people to sign in to set it back is wrong.
Give me an option like "old.reddit" does at least!
Or is it the case you hate us autists so much you are happy to cause some of us feeling of revulsion and hate towards this awful, poorly laid out, not advertised and anger inducing waste of time.
As another autistic person who isn't a huge fan of the redesign, I don't really appreciate being used as a bludgeon here. We're not a monolith.
Change happens; it's not an ableist attack, though some prior warning (where casual logged-out browsers like me would see it) would have been appreciated.
Seconded, also on the spectrum. This is a divisive change that was poorly broadcast, in defiance of community consensus, and overall smacks of more of the same "We know best" train of thought that led to the Media Viewer and Framgate debacles. You would think that by now the WMF would realise they're just about at zero trust with the community. At the very least they should come up with a way for unregistered users to choose whatever skin they want (be it Vector in either flavour or whatever else) other than relying on a bookmarklet. —Jéské Couriano (No further replies will be forthcoming.) 00:50, 21 January 2023 (UTC)
Reddit is a prime example of how a botched redesign split the community. They now have one community of old.reddit users, and another community of mostly zoomers using the new mobile-styled version, while breaking lots of functionality for both groups: videos play better for the old group (yes, the old group), css effects appear different, markup works differently, external links require escapes for special characters like brackets slashes and underscores but differently depending on the skin, and hence will always be broken for one group or the other. Some emojis don't display, some interface functions such as posting images are not always available, and the two groups lack a common reference point when talking about the interface.
Here's a portion of the Reddit megathread about the Wikipedia redesign. They observe, correctly, that it looks like the mobile site. They say "why did they make it look like mobile" and "it's nearly identical to the mobile version". In the same thread they compare it to Reddit's enduringly divisive redesign. Somebody notes "this new direction many web sites are going to". Somebody else says "So much wasted space. So much scrolling." The prominent differences in Reddit's new skin are similar to Wikipedia's new skin: less text is visible on screen at once (on Reddit, this is because the lines were wider spaced after the redesign), interface options are hidden behind icon buttons. Card Zero (talk)04:16, 21 January 2023 (UTC)
The new layout needs JavaScript to display the ToC. Without JavaScript I have nothing to see.
I don't enjoy sites that have fixed elements, but if everyone insists that the ToC needs to be fixed in place then there are ways to do that without using any JavaScript. 113.211.110.53 (talk) 15:56, 20 January 2023 (UTC)
Hi, thanks for your report. Could you give me some more details about what you're seeing on the page? The new ToC is available without javascript and appears in the same location on the left sidebar of the page. The only difference is that section collapsing of the ToC is not available without JS so all the sections will appear expanded by default. OVasileva (WMF) (talk) 19:08, 20 January 2023 (UTC)
I notice I also don't see any search box now.
From top to bottom I see
(Line 1) Three horizontal lines, Wikipedia logo, white space gap, "Q", "Create account", three horizontal dots.
(Line 2) 1cm of blank space.
(Line 3) Three vertical dots with three horizontal lines, page title, white space gap, "47 languages".
How to turn off the purple color at the watchlist?
I am confused. On Vector 2010, all titles on my watchlist are in blue, on Vector 2022 some in bright purple others in blue. I do not know what it means. What does it mean, how can I turn it off/on? Paradise Chronicle (talk) 21:38, 20 January 2023 (UTC)
Could it be your browser differentiating links that are in your browser's history (bright purple) and those that aren't (blue)? —Tenryuu 🐲 ( 💬 • 📝 ) 23:04, 20 January 2023 (UTC)
Probably, but also other wikilinks are in bright purple. And if so, only the recently edited articles appear in bright purple on the watchlist. I checked and one article I edited a while ago was in blue. I don't like the bright purple. On this pages explanatory paragraphs for example: preferences, Switch to old look, gadgets, request for comment, Village Pump etc. Skin, Wikimedia Foundation Web team, Tampermonkey and our FAQ are blue. Paradise Chronicle (talk) 23:25, 20 January 2023 (UTC)
I checked and one article I edited a while ago was in blue. Do you remember how long ago "a while ago" is? The new skin may have changed the styling to conform to your browser's, in which case links to the article you edited may have turned blue because it's no longer in your browser's history. If you click on a blue link, does it turn bright purple? —Tenryuu 🐲 ( 💬 • 📝 ) 23:35, 20 January 2023 (UTC)
Alright, this sounds like a browser issue. How you'd change the colour everywhere depends on which browser you're using, but some may require the use of third-party extensions. I haven't tried this method, but you could try customising the skin's CSS for yourself to see the effects on just Wikipedia.
Navigate to Preferences → Appearance → Skin = Vector (2022). There should be a Custom CSS link in its line that's red, as I assume you haven't touched it. Click on that and it'll bring you to a source editor.
Add the following code:
a:visited {
color:#3366cc;
}
to the editor and click Publish page.
That should make it so that when you click a link it'll stay blue whether or not you've visited the page before. Note that this only works on visited blue links, not red ones. —Tenryuu 🐲 ( 💬 • 📝 ) 00:03, 21 January 2023 (UTC)
You're very welcome! I'm honestly surprised to hear the old skin suppresses one of the innate features of browsers. —Tenryuu 🐲 ( 💬 • 📝 ) 00:29, 21 January 2023 (UTC)
The old browser never suppressed that for me. However, the color difference was somewhat subtle. Could Paradise Chronicle have simply not noticed until the update changed so many other things? V22's background is whiter than V10's.--User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 20:12, 21 January 2023 (UTC)
Thank you for the fullscreen button. It is really hard to find. With the fullscreen mode article looks pretty close to former design, but there are bugs in some cases(in safari 13.1.1 navigation menu doesn't hide, overlapping the main text) 217.170.123.124 (talk) 21:16, 21 January 2023 (UTC)
Here is some suggestions a browser addon, one of many monkey scripts,and some others functional methods collected here. These are the only ones that are practical and function solutions without making an account, since preferences cannot be saved otherwise. The expand box, vector url change, and bookmarklet only affect the page you are currently on and have to be reapplied every time you go to a new one, making them a highly impractical(imo) stop gap solution. Deadoon (talk) 03:51, 21 January 2023 (UTC)
Hey, what about they make whitespaces even larger and fill them with ad banners? (hah, just kidding that will be the end of Wikipedia) 212.5.158.161 (talk) 04:06, 21 January 2023 (UTC)
In Vector 2022, links that are in purple and blue are slightly lighter compared to Vector 2010 which is putting me off. Are you able to have to darker purple and blue link appearance back in Vector 2022. Aaron106 (talk) 22:39, 21 January 2023 (UTC)
@Aaron106: I suggest following the steps I outlined above in #How to turn of the purple color at the watchlist?, except when you get to step 3, you need to figure out what colours work best for you (I suggest using this site to pick colours). For "blue" links (ones you haven't visited), you're going to want to put in your Custom CSS:
Alas, not off the top of my head. I heard that the background is a little lighter compared to 2010, so you might not want to get the exact same colours due to contrast issues. —Tenryuu 🐲 ( 💬 • 📝 ) 02:45, 22 January 2023 (UTC)
I don't mind about the background, but do you know where I could find the colour codes for 2010? I wouldn't know where to look. Aaron106 (talk) 02:52, 22 January 2023 (UTC)
No, they are not. I tried the Vector 2010 colors, but I found that they did not have enough contrast for me. I just played around with a color wheel until I found colors that worked for me. – Jonesey95 (talk) 03:35, 22 January 2023 (UTC)
Quickest thing to do would be to switch back to Vector 2010 and find a link you've visited and one you haven't. If you right-click on them, a dropdown menu should appear with Inspect or similar as an option. Clicking on that should open a new panel to the side that focuses on the properties of the link you're inspecting, including a line for color. Copy the hexadecimal codes for them into the blank spaces above. —Tenryuu 🐲 ( 💬 • 📝 ) 03:04, 22 January 2023 (UTC)
'Save this page as PDF'
The option disapeared alongside other options buttons apparently having cut out by line width widening. The 'fulscreen' icon in the 'bottom right corner' is absent so I can not bring previous page width in place. Please tell what should I type in the address window of my browser to download an article page in PDF format? 176.59.128.178 (talk) 10:57, 22 January 2023 (UTC)
Sometimes you have to zoom out enough to get the to appear in the lower-right corner of your window. There should be an option to Download as PDF under the Print/export heading on the sidebar to the left. It may be hidden and you'd have to click the in the top-left corner. —Tenryuu 🐲 ( 💬 • 📝 ) 12:31, 22 January 2023 (UTC)
My browser is too old, so yes, I have no these 'bars' and arrows too on my screen. But I still can type some URL in my address bar. Sure, you know what it may look like. I appreciate you helping me. 176.59.128.230 (talk) 13:49, 22 January 2023 (UTC)
When I'm browsing Wikipedia in bed, I use my phone which works reasonably well as a small tablet as it has a 6 inch screen. I switch the mode to desktop and orient the phone so it's landscape. What I'm often reading are long discussions such as these current discussions about the new skin. I was expecting Vector 2022 to be better in this mode as it's supposed to be more responsive. But I'm finding that the floating TOC causes trouble when I'm scrolling with my left thumb as it contains lots of hot spots which trigger jumps to other parts of the page. Going back to 2010, I don't get this trouble because it has whitespace in the left hand margin and so the thumb can scroll that quite handily. So, Vector 2022 lacks whitespace where it's needed.
This is a show-stopper issue for me as most pages on Wikipedia are so long that lots of scrolling is required. On a full size desktop device, I use a mouse with a scroll wheel but these are not an option on a phone or tablet.
So you are scrolling on the left side of the page, and that is where the ToC is located and it causes your scroll flick not to be recognized ? Or are you just accidentally clicking the ToC items all the time ? Or both ? I'm assuming right side is just fine ? —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 16:58, 22 January 2023 (UTC)
Search box not visible at low browser widths
I was just editing an article at narrow width (since I was in a side-by-side view with another page) and realised there was no search box visible, it had to be brought up by clicking the magnifying glass. I then realised that the same issue occurs on the main page, and of course when viewed on a mobile phone (in Vector 2022 mode) as well. This seems a major limitation to me which ought to be resolved. Searching for articles is IMHO the most important functionality which needs to be visible for readers, particularly on the main page, but also else where. Please can this be enabled by default at all screen widths, without having to click a magnifying glass? Cheers — Amakuru (talk) 12:34, 22 January 2023 (UTC)
@TheDJ: huh? I am reporting because it's an issue affecting my editing, isn't that what this page is for? Whether it's intentional or not, my feedback is that there's a huge white space between the Wikipedia logo and the magnifying glass, and the search box was always visible on the old skin at this width, so I'm not seeing a reason that I can think of not to have it visible. Can you give me a reason why you chose to implement it this way? Cheers — Amakuru (talk) 17:24, 22 January 2023 (UTC)
Ok:
I didn't choose to
You can switch to the other skin if you want
It's one not even an additional click, no big deal
There is a key combination
Now the page works better for those with smaller screens
Guide for designers (, managers, politicians and all "similar")
1: People have tastes different from each other. Sometimes one person has different tastes within an hour.
2A: Respect the self determinism and the will of your client/the user of your product(s) - as much as is reasonable.
2B: It is NOT OK to force the will (ideas and whims) of a few upon the heads of the many and deny them their natural right to SELF determinism.
3: If a word or term has a special meaning in your environment, then define/explain it in such a way that it can easily be understod. A repetition of most of the words which already appeared in the main text is not a definition, it's a lazy or incompetent pseudo-definition. If you can't explain it in different words, you havn't understood it.
4: Make each definition available right where THIS word or term is, so that the user does NOT have to SEARCH for the page, chapter, paragraph and line where the definition really is. If a definition is longer than three words, a word/term as a link to the definition is best.
5: If you want your web site to be visited and read and used more than once, then save the users time:
think about the sum of all the time(s), needed by all the (thousands or millions of) users to find a specific definition.
And then think about the time the creators of your web site would need to make the definition available right where it is needed (either by a link or by a seperate button).
6: If you want to introduce something new, give the user the opportunity to decide by him/her-self whether he/she wants the new or the old version .i.e: give the user the opportunity to switch the new feature (as well as each other feature) on and off. This also applies to capabilities/functions which are not visible.
7: If you want to introduce several changes or new features at once, think about whether all of them need to be implemented together, or which ones could easily be switched on or off seperately without affecting the others.
8: If there is something to be decided/setted by the user, then make the setting device available by a button (titeled "Setting(s)") right where the "thing" is, so that the user does NOT have to SEARCH for the setting device, page, chapter, paragraph or line.
Sometimes a context menue is better. But then the existence of this must be announced at the beginning.
9: If something has to be decided by the creator of the product, like default values, then ask yourself: "Does this concern safety?" If the answer is "No", then do a proper survey and use the will of the majority as default. And do this for EACH feature seperately.
Fact: Every user can change the broadth of his browser window as they likes and feels comfortable with; and usually has already.
{ If this grammar re. "they" is not correct, feel free to correct it. (the author) }
Therefore it is not necessary to force a FIXED line length onto all users.
A Web site should be written/designed in a way that it automatically adapts all it's content to the broadth of the browser window.
A web site should not have a HORIZONTAL scroll bar, unless it contains a:
table which is broader than usual text or
a side pane (or two).
Any pane (whether side, top or bottom) should be collapsable; and should remain as the user made it (un-collapsed or collapsed) on ALL following pages.
The new non-scrolling sidebar is a migraine trigger
Yes, there's a button to hide it, but I have to press it again and again, and it keeps coming back. Yes, reducing the frame rate in a browser can help with most non-scrolling sidebars, non-scrolling elements, smooth animation, etc. But I can't get below 1 frame per second, and even at that rate, if I scroll with that particular sidebar open, I get increasingly disoriented, nauseous, and migrainous. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Accessibility but I can't link the exact section with this design. 173.73.0.102 (talk) 01:16, 22 January 2023 (UTC)
Whoever planned & introduced & approved this should be fired and/or stripped of any administrative powers. I don't know why every single damn website needs to redesign itself by adding massive amounts of empty blank space and making everything harder to read by getting rid of anything that makes it easier to read like borders. Revert it, delete the code and never speak of it again. Macktheknifeau (talk) 12:07, 23 January 2023 (UTC)
Why is this being forced?
Q3: Was there prior discussion?
A3: It was closed as 'consensus' was reached.
Q5: Can the old skin be restored
A5: We're talking about it but it's not a poll.
Not to mention the topic regarding removal of complaints...
Did any of the funds I donated to this website go towards this awful, forced redesign?
It's bad. The site looks and feels worse than it ever did. It went from elegant to ugly. The avalanche of complaints should be enough to immediately revert and rethink the design change rather than giving countless weak excuses for it: "Just simply create an account, log in, and change preferences; just click the fullscreen button to restore line width (?!); there was a 'consensus' with no need for any follow up discussion; harrumph harrumph harrumph..." As many have said, if it ain't broke don't fix it. It's hard to interpret this in any way other than as an abuse of power by certain users who apparently have no eye for design. I use this site nearly every day and didn't hear the first thing about a potential redesign. How about spamming a heads-up message akin to those desperate pleas for contributions that take up 1/2 of the page? The extra space on either side of the article is just an abominable eyesore and the layout of the "Contents" list replacing the navigation bar on the left side makes me want to puke. And when you click to "Hide" it, it's not obvious where it goes, it just seems to disappear, and you're still left with no navigation tools... I'm truly dumbfounded that multiple people supposedly tested this and thought it was BETTER than the last design.
Well, I guess I'm staying logged in from now on. I've switched to the "legacy" design and hope I never have to set eyes on this awful, terrible, no good, horrific, nauseating design ever again as long as I live. In the future, PLEASE don't do this again. Don't force a redesign on users without their knowledge, input, and consent. All I can do is beg for you to be reasonable and humane, understand that this deployment was a terrible mistake, revert it, and apologize for inadvertently degrading the user experience and causing all this grief when it was all completely avoidable if you had effectively communicated with your userbase in the first place. Ahazybellcord (talk) 17:43, 23 January 2023 (UTC)
Sidebar width
In practical terms, the sidebar (with "random article" and "what links here", etc.) has been replaced by the contents section. But this contents section is in a larger font than the sidebar was, and is 100 pixels wider. So it steals space from the actual article, which constantly annoys me. I can hide it, but I have to do that over and over again with every page I visit. I would like you to make the contents 100 pixels narrower, and perhaps in a small font like the old sidebar's font.
The available window space for me is smaller than for most people, because I was already using it for things, and here you are assuming that it's available for you to play with, but it's not.
In fact it seems that you're planning to add the tools back again on the right side, so just making the left sidebar narrower won't be good enough. You could ... hide both sidebars by default? I think I've reached the end of the potential to be constructive here. Just put the contents back in the article. Put everything back how it was.
Card Zero (talk)18:11, 23 January 2023 (UTC)
Support
Just wanted to say that I support the new skin. It only took a couple of days to acclimate myself to it. As someone using a laptop, it looks just fine and I hope it's the first step toward a truly responsive design. Savagemutt (talk) 19:11, 22 January 2023 (UTC)
I saw somebody on Reddit saying that they're happy that Wikipedia finally reacts to their large screen by ... padding with lots of empty space. To them, this is responsive web design: it responds by wasting space, which is what they want, because they're tired of making their window smaller. Basically they want a sort of inner platform effect where web pages choose small rectangles to restrict themselves to, so that they can browse on a huge monitor with a full screen window all the time, but see the equivalent of a small window on a small monitor. It's bizarre to me. I think, even if the idea of changing the size of a window is too much for people these days, this stuff could be taken care of by browsers, not by javascript on individual web sites and thousands of (S)UX designers. Card Zero (talk)18:47, 23 January 2023 (UTC)
I'm pretty sure a responsive design is one that adapts to the size of the window it's displayed in. The old design did that and this one doesn't unless you're logged in and spot the button (and correctly realize what it's for.). ApLundell (talk) 21:25, 22 January 2023 (UTC)
Screenshot of Page tools on itwiki, soon available on enwiki
Even if I hide the content on the left, there's still wasted space on the right side of the screen. And the search function displays search suggestions and images which produces slowdown! The new wikipedia interface is horrible and the people responsible for it should be ashamed of themselves.
2001:14BB:113:B4D5:C8FF:950:E786:9EA9 (talk) 22:30, 22 January 2023 (UTC)
But I am already using the right side of the window for something else. :(
That's where I keep my tabs (so I can see their full titles), which hasn't caused a problem on any other website. And the left side of my browser window is often occupied by fold-out things such as the built-in translator (I use Vivaldi which makes a lot of use of its sidebar). Now the default space for articles will get even narrower, and I will have to click in two different places with each article I look at just to hide the sidebars and be able to see it properly. Card Zero (talk)18:58, 23 January 2023 (UTC)
Pull-down menus
It's probably been said before: putting "Talk", "Sandbox", and "Contributions" on a pull-down menu makes no sensed to someone who edits content and uses a pad/mouse. And a pull-down to "Log out" ??? Sammy D III (talk) 13:13, 23 January 2023 (UTC)
Putting Log out in a dropdown menu makes some sense for some of those editors who tend to misclick, and alerts still pop up when someone edits a user's talk page, so it saves on real estate. I assume the WMF has analytics on how frequently those pages are clicked, with Sandbox andContributions being some of the least frequently used. —Tenryuu 🐲 ( 💬 • 📝 ) 17:01, 23 January 2023 (UTC)
"real estate". Talk about old blind-siding me. I wake up to find the new default is "phone". Well, I guess that's where people spend their time. I've taken my obsolete laptop and figured out how to go back to 2010. Have a nice day/night. Sammy D III (talk) 19:24, 23 January 2023 (UTC)
Let me restore the old skin without an account
I do not want to create a Wikipedia account. This redesign is terrible. Let people restore the old skin without creating an account. 82.39.92.2 (talk) 09:59, 21 January 2023 (UTC)
Some things that should be absolute minimum requirements if the default skin is not reverted to Vector 2010
Make the "log in" button visible on every pageview without having to click another button first.
Move the full-width toggle to the top of the page. Make it persistent across multiple page loads. (the argument that persistence is technically infeasible is an obvious red herring. WMF has a $100 million endowment. You can figure out a way to make this possible. Come on.)
Add a [Set a local exception for this global preference] option for 'Enable limited width mode' so that editors don't have to un-checkmark that mode every single time when visiting other wikis.
Unhide the Contributions link and the clock from the dropdown menu.
The Preview (when clicking 'Edit source') shouldn't show the article with limited width when 'Enable limited width mode' is already disabled.
The purpose was apparently to look more like the mobile interface. There is a data savings if the mobile and web interfaces use the same code. Microsoft and Ubuntu pursued having a phone OS that looked the same as a PCs OS session. Microsoft declared it a failure, and Ubuntu declared "it works as well as it's ever going to, sorry, and we're switching back to Gnome now." there is less savings in a website, and it isn't being taken advantage of here as far as I can tell. So why bother? because there hasn't been an update in 10 years? what ever happened to "if it ain't broke, don't fix it"? I don't think this is about improving the site from any servability perspective, nor about making anything better for users. I think this isn't about anything except a marketing move to "streamline the branding". 100.14.162.51 (talk) 22:37, 21 January 2023 (UTC)
Hi @IWantTheOldInterfaceBack: thank you for your feedback. The team is discussing and considering some suggestions made by the community, like yours, and resolving some issues that were pointed out. The release of the toggle at lower widths is expected in few days, here you can follow the process of the task opened about the persistent toggle, but it is not depending only by the Web Team so we are searching for a solution. To turn off the Compact Language Links please read this FAQ. To understand design choices for Vector 2022 please read our presentation and our FAQ.--Patafisik (WMF) (talk) 12:42, 23 January 2023 (UTC)
Hi @Some1: thank you for your feedback. In my global preferences I can check the limited width, doesn't you? Can you detail your request with an exemple, please, to allow me to better understand your issue? About the preview mode, follow this and this task on Phabricator.
Another suggestion if you're still reading this: In the left, floating Table of Contents, the section headings for the subsections should be a bit more indented (even by a couple of spaces), since now, all of the headings, including main headings and the subsection headings, look like they're about on the same "level". Some1 (talk) 00:51, 24 January 2023 (UTC)
Yes, its better to quit wikipedia from here onwards. The Wikimedia Foundation appears to have gone crazy. Let's show them they are nothing without the editors130.88.16.130 (talk) 14:16, 20 January 2023 (UTC)
Let's all calm down a little. Sure the new skin is absolute rubbish for desktop users, but with WP it is the content that matters. Talk of quitting and going off to a fork (most of which simply copy WP and don't add to it) is understandable but not helpful. Whether you are trying to find out last season's football scores (apparently of interest to some) or the biography of a 19thC Bishop (me, earlier today) WP is a fantastic resource badly let down by this malarky. Go to the RfC and press for change, scream about it here if you want, but keep editing and looking things up. WP is of global importance, way beyond the confines of where other uncensored encyclopaedias are easily available. Martin of Sheffield (talk) 12:26, 21 January 2023 (UTC)
"Sure the new skin is absolute rubbish for desktop users" - you DO realize that most editors and contributors are not working on mobile devices, yes? And that there are a literally hundreds of millions of readers-only, many of whom are also working on PCs and Notebooks? And wait, isn't there even a special mobile version for mobile users, that is designed for mobile use? Please just spare desktop and notebook users the whole mobile version, because they are not mobile devices. When my local newspaper started to have just 20% whitespace margin - as a deliberate design choice - I simply quit it. Multilingual people already lost the French wikipedia years ago as a trusted resource, the English wikipedia was still valuable until now. --Enyavar (talk) 01:05, 24 January 2023 (UTC)
What the [ Switch to old look ] button really does
It does not switch the skins, it simply opens the Preferences (menue).
Do you expect all those, who don't like your new skin to waste their time by trying to figure out which of these options is the one to really switch?
Make this button work IMMEDIATELY (meaning: directly), and
make it toggable!
I really get ANGRY about so much "far away-ness" from the user's expectations.
MAKE PROPER POLLS, before you change things,
make a SEPERATE poll for each feature which you want to change.
make these polls visible EVERYWHERE and
make these polls EASILY understandable.
Or better, only act at all, if unless:
a request is very reasonable or
there is a reasonable amount of requests FOR one thing.
And if there are changes,
OFFER them in the form: "You may switch to ..."
(toggable right on any page (where applicable)), but
DON'T FORCE changes on people.
Do you think you are Napoleon, or Cesar or any other of these hated dictators!?
Actually, that's an excellent suggestion. If a user is set to Vector 2022, display "switch to old look", and if they click on it, have it immediately set their skin to Vector 2010. And if a user is set to Vector 2010, display "switch to new look", and if they click on it, have it immediately set their skin to Vector 2022. Surely that would not be very difficult to implement, and it would be a big improvement. — Mudwater (Talk)03:00, 23 January 2023 (UTC)
My experience:
If I use e.g. a 7 mm high font on the full broadth of a 17 inch / 16:9 screen, I have no problem finding the next line. I even find it very appropriate.
And I guess some users even need/use much larger/higher fonts.
Imagine what they get to see when they are using a 15 or 20 or 40 mm high font on the new skin !
Look at the mess/chaos/shambles on this discussion page (and the related RfC) !
A: If an organiser uses one poll for one little feature, this has the immense advantage that (most of) the answers/comments are allready "sorted", meaning: they concern the same topic.
This way nobody has to undertake to sort them by topic.
We all do not have time (neither do we like/enjoy) to sort things which could be orderly from beginning.
B: Most people who come to the Wikipedia want to read articles. Some take the additional time to edit, or serve in other ways. But no one likes to spend hours or days to read a poll which is as long as a Thora roll (I hope the concerned do not feel offended, I don't mean to).
So a poll concerning only one little thing is short.:
To read and understand the full scope of the question takes rather little time.
So does the wording of a comment/argument.
C: A smart organiser of a poll starts sorting the arguments under sub headings, the moment the comments start to pour in.
Results:
C1:
(almost) NO double arguments.
As little to be read as possible.
C2:
Plus: The more arguments have come in and are sorted under a subheading, the less sorting work the organisers' team has to do.
This way, if a reader does not have to add anything to the argument, they can just add their signature (four tildes) under the argument which they want to support - or oppose;
takes very little time.
D: A smart organiser has a team which helps them do this sorting, especially in the beginning, when the new arguments are pouring in.
E: A neutral poll has THREE sub headings under each argument:
"Support",
"Don't support" (Oppose) and
"no opinion".
F: A smart organiser spreads the polls which are necessary for their project over time so that those who participate in a poll only have ONE (short) poll at a time. After participating in a SHORT poll the participant can go on to what they actually wanted to do. This way the good will of the participant is not over-strained.
The readers of a poll then also have the opportunity to not participate in a poll.
If a poll concerns several/many issues, the goodwilling user sees themselve pulled into a poll where they can not even see the end; so they feel like being lured into a trap --- un-comfortable feeling --- and like they can only participate if they have read all !. They feel: "They steal my time, more than I was willing in the beginning."
When I'm logged in (desk top, FireFox) and have hid the left and/or right pane, and my sight is somewhat scrolled down, there are NO [Un-hide]/[Un-fold] buttons visible.
At the top right corner I could find [Tools] and within that [ Move to side bar ], but this un-folds only the right pane.
I could not find a way to un-fold the left pane i.e. the new toc.
Steue, the ToC is collapsed into a button hidden to the left of the article title that only appears when the ToC is collapsed. CMD (talk) 03:30, 24 January 2023 (UTC)
The so called "Announcement" (banner) was published at the same time with the changes.
1. The intention to make these changes should have been published first.
2. Then there should have been polls for each feature which could be implemented alone.
3. And only if there had been immense/overwhelming agreement/support FOR these changes, should the organisers have given the order/agreement to create a task for these changes.
But I rather see the contrary: overwhelming DIS-agreement.
But if there had been overwhelming dis-agreement, the programmers should have never started to create code for these changes.
But if some users (whoever) did still want these changes AND some programmer(s) agreed to invest their time, the changes should have been made in such a way, that ONLY those who want these changes can switch ON their Preferences; but that the majority has NO HASSEL with these changes - as is with many offers which can be found in the Preferences.
There are so many offers in the Preferences, which are just friendly offers;
nobody even has to take notice of them.
Of course I understand that those programmmers who created these offers are not happy to see that their offers are used (and probably known) only by so few.
But obviousley these offers are only desired by such few.
So answer me two questions:
Who (usernames, org and major activities) (complete list) decided to push these changes on to all ?
And why did they think, this was OK and warranted?
As these are just user names, they should not have any problem to publish their user names.
They must have had some good reasons.
So they should have the guts to stand up to what they have decided and done --- and explain themselves.
I usually enter unlogged. I could not find a notice or announcement. I typed both at google and here at Searchbox 'Wikipedia announcements' 'Wikipedia-announcements' 'Wikipedia-news' 'our news' I thought a notice on all pages about the change of the look and discussions would be useful? I then found pages like Wikipedia signpost (I didn't know the word signpost means 'news') but there was no information about recent changes either. Thank you Sarri.greek (talk) 22:57, 22 January 2023 (UTC)
Grazie Patafisik (WMF) But I was addressing the hosts of Wikipedia. They have not posted a Sitenotice:
For our desktop guests: [link=information about the change of our pages by Wikimedia Foundation.
I do {alert|admin}? sysop? I come from el.wiktionary, and when we discuss serious matters, there is a notice everywhere (and we are only 10 editors around!) Sarri.greek (talk) 14:02, 23 January 2023 (UTC)
{alert|admin} of wikipedia, a Sitenotice should exist at both old and new Vectors directing to a special page with some explanation, we hope you will like it, tell us what you think, apologies for not being able to give you a transitional period with both Vectors, you can make account - a dis[c]ussion is going on here and here. It is a matter of savoir-vivre. Most people get a good feeling, and will come in more positive. +But make sure they understand that this change is not done by Wikipedia.
An announcement would have been the usual and expected as it is/was our tradition. But wikimedia-GOVERNMENT (I'm close to saying 'junta') sems to have forgotten about this. :((
Steue, i disagree.The hosts here, are the people of en.wikipedia. They are the ones that must address their own guests. The advert by wikimedia, is a typical commercial by an outsider. I presume, that all admins here are in such a state of shock, that they forgot to do it. Sarri.greek (talk) 03:04, 24 January 2023 (UTC)
Do I understand you right that by "advert" and "commercial" you mean the banner which appeared at the top of wikipedia pages, with the five people and saying:
We’ve made a few changes to your reading experience. These improvements will make Wikipedia more welcoming and easier to use. ?
Did they really need an outsider (who probably costed money) just to create two lines - and a little image?
Why do you "presume, that all admins here are in such a state of shock" ?
Steue, commercial, I meant a banner (sorry, my English is not good, what is it called: an advertisement). A shock to an administrator is when something happens in the domain he is responsible to guard, without any of the usual procedures (it comes from outside). Here, English wikipedia is not my project, i do not edit here. I just pointed out as a visitor and reader, that i had trouble finding out the project's update on such an important matter and the discussions now open to readers. I hope administrators will forgive me for interfering and i am sorry if i insulted. Sarri.greek (talk) 08:32, 24 January 2023 (UTC)
Words versus icons
I prefer words before icons in most cases.
Words communicate immediately and always.
Of icons only those communicate to which you are used to -- enough; but first you have to GET to be used to them. And those icons whom I come across seldom or use seldom, I never get used to, thus they require time again and again.
I HATE having to search for meanings which could be communicated easily IN the TOP user interface, IF the author/designer invested a little more time. This poor type of user interface (UI) I had more than enough of the Big Ones (MS, Sony (TV), Samsung (TV), even FireFox and Linux, and my cordless phone, and my cellular) as well as practically EVERY web site which I come across. None seem to be able to create an immediately understandable UI. And all this anger and frustration accumulates -- or does it multiply?
So, let us have WORDS, as default. And make icons optional for those who like them.
+1. Mystery meat navigation has been well established as an antipattern for **decades** now. This is the second biggest issue with the skin IMO, after the awful whitespace. IWantTheOldInterfaceBack (talk) 15:44, 20 January 2023 (UTC)
Agreed. This is an English language website, USE FREAKING ENGLISH. I should not need a hieroglyphics dictionary to tell me what a button does. And we DON'T need 73 square miles of whitespace. It looks like half the text has been lost. I am not a three year old, I can handle actual text. The new update looks like the "child's first encyclopedia" I had in the late 1970s. It is pathetic looking and insulting to the reader's intelligence.--User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 19:02, 20 January 2023 (UTC)
Absolutely. I have been lurking, quietly watching the uproar refusing to fall, and this is the one thing I want to join in on. I absolutely cannot understand why readers and IP contributors alike must be treated to an alien set of icons. ~GoatLordServant(Talk)19:07, 20 January 2023 (UTC)
Hi @Steue - thanks for your question here. Prior to using icons, our approach is to test them with readers and editors to make sure that they can recognize what the icon stands for. If an icon is not easy to recognize, we either switch it to one that is easier, or add a label for extra clarity. For example, in this research we did in fact notice that not all of the icons we were using are fully recognizable - specifically the icons for gadgets and contributions were confusing. Both of these less-recognizable icons (within the user menu) also have labels to make it clear what page they link to. OVasileva (WMF) (talk) 22:52, 20 January 2023 (UTC)
Eighteen people in Ghana, Indonesia and Argentina isn't really a representative sample, especially for something as variable and cross-cultural as icon legibility. In fact, I don't even think that's enough data to do any statistics on for anything but the largest effect magnitudes. Eniteris (talk) 12:22, 24 January 2023 (UTC)
I'm alright with the Alerts and Notices being icons (as I'm sure others are). But having texts for Contributions, Watchlist links etc. would be my preference. (Also, they should unhide the Contributions link and the clock from the drop down menu.) Some1 (talk) 22:10, 21 January 2023 (UTC)
scroll down thrice or more additional times, just to GET to see the whole new toc (especially on my user page, where I have a very broad and long toc), then
move my mouse pointer from completely right to almost completely left (on a 17 inch screen) (on a hand broad (10 cm) touchpad). (I don't even want to imagine, what "poor" guys with a wide screen would have to scroll --- if the horizontal limiting would be off), and
and then move the mouse pointer very precisely into the scroll bar.
In the old skin the toc uses 3/4 of the broadth of the window.
This is enough to show almost any item of the toc as just ONE line;
even if 4th level indented.
Plus the old toc uses the WHOLE height of the window.
These two things result in much more items being visible on one screen full.
However, sometimes I do find it useful if this new toc, which only shows the first/top level, shows where the currently visible text section is on this toc.
But I have already "automatic numbering of the headers", so this gives me already some orientation.
So I opt for (the OPTION !! to have) both:
the old big toc at the top, PLUS
the new smaller toc on the left.
However: on my user page I have many 2nd, 3rd and even 4th level headers.
They -- all do not show up in the new toc, so the use of the new toc is limited to the 1st level.
Still it does help a little on very long pages which I have never visited.
the sequence of the 2 groups (old skin left buttons, new toc), if they all are on the left pane. So the user can decide, which of these 2 or 3 or 4 shall be at the top and which one below. I would place the new toc above the old skin left buttons.
And, of course, the [ Un-fold ] button has to remain visible at the respective top, no matter how far one has scrolled down, like the headers of a good table.
the main issue you cannot hide on mobile the contents on the left, it is not saved. Which makes reading stuff impossible. So much for dynamic rendering. Valery Zapolodov (talk) 21:29, 14 January 2023 (UTC)
@Valery Zapolodov, if you're referring to Vector 2022 on a mobile browser, I've tried this and for me, it is persistent - when I make it uncollapsed and go to another page, it's still uncollapsed. When I make it collapsed, it stays collapsed. It doesn't work like that for logged-out users, because it's basically a preference, and there are no preferences for logged out users (that part isn't related to the skin at all). Could you confirm if you're logged in when browsing on mobile? SGrabarczuk (WMF) (talk) 21:09, 18 January 2023 (UTC)
We made the table of contents collapsible upon request from the community. We also decided to automatically collapse it at 1000px. However some people said that when they collapsed it, or when it automatically collapsed, they didn't know where it had gone. So we then created a task for adding an indicator to make it super obvious where it has gone: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T311160.
As a fall-back, until we add the indicator, we thought we should make the table of contents reappear if you switch pages or reload, in case people can't figure out how to get it back. However perhaps we should just skip to making the table of contents state persistent, and then add the indicator afterwards. AHollender (WMF) (talk) 16:56, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
Since you rerender the whole page anyway, you can insert the ToC back where it was before on old theme with a button to move it on the left. And yes, the default should be as it was before because when you read now on my PC ToC updates itself as you scroll, which is very not nice. It is a commond rule in web design to not do this. Also it appears to slow down because of that animation. Valery Zapolodov (talk) 16:53, 22 January 2023 (UTC)
@SonicIn2022 Have you tried for at least a week? Any overhaul would require a week to get used to. What specific grievances do you have against the new skin? Also, we’re not going to remove the old skin as your title “keep the old skin” suggests, you can always change it in settings. Aaron Liu (talk) 02:20, 15 January 2023 (UTC)
The Miraheze version hasn't had a lot of new fixes introduced yet, Miraheze is on 1.38 while the latest version is 1.39. Try it out on THIS wiki. Plus, what specific grievances do you have towards the new skin? The possibility that it hasn't been bought up in the mentioned rfc is very low. Aaron Liu (talk) 15:19, 15 January 2023 (UTC)
I can't even log in on the redesigned site in NetSurf (no javascript; can't use the "hamburger icon" even if I wanted to). And it renders poorly. Using it for a week would be torture. Wyatt8740 (talk) 19:45, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
Agreed. I absolutely hate the redesign. I think it's important to remember that the web consists of more than mobile devices. The new layout on desktop browsers is terrible. I literally thought I had accidently loaded the mobile version and then thought there must be a bug that keeps serving me the mobile version. I was shocked to learn this was the new layout. I really hope this will be fixed. Wikipedia is far too important to be this degraded on desktop. In my view all of the changes should be reversed on desktop. At the very least give us an alternate URL that can serve the old design. Something like Reddit did with old.reddit.com when they moved to their mobile-first redesign. 75.35.176.54 (talk) 21:21, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
The official oh-so-visible faq says this:
Anonymous preferences would make the pages load too slowly. Most traffic comes from logged-out users. To handle that, we have a few "caching servers" which only save and send "snapshots" of web pages. These "snapshots" are up to 7 days old, are a replacement for generating web pages, and are the same for all logged-out users. This allows us to serve pages quickly. Preferences require generating different versions of web pages. Making this possible for logged-out users would overload our servers. We don't want to do that also because we need to reduce cache fragmentation. The only possible way of providing preferences for logged-out users now is making the settings load always after the page. This takes much more time to load and looks odd. For example, if a logged-out user was to see the dark mode in action, then immediately after loading each page, they would first see the light interface for a short moment, and then the interface would become dark. — mw:Reading/Web/Desktop Improvements/Frequently asked questions
Desktop should not be forced to use a mobile design. It's as wrong as forcing a mobile device to use a desktop design. The web is intended to allow any device to connect and view content. It's a great idea that works well when web designers accept that their content will look different on different devices. This current design is complete failure to consider the needs of desktop users. It should be reverted entirely on desktop. 75.35.176.54 (talk) 22:20, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
The same FAQ also talks about how the thing isn't mobile influenced. I do agree that the white(not the limited width grey) is too excess though. Aaron Liu (talk) 22:38, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
Then the FAQ is lying. It's not believable that this wasn't mobile influenced. It looks exactly like the Wikipedia mobile site on a desktop browser. In fact I thought for sure there was some bug that was erroneously serving the mobile site to desktop. I was shocked to learn this was an intentional case. It's one of the all time worst redesigns in the history of the Web. I can't overstate how much I hate it. 2600:1700:1471:2550:4920:A572:D62A:79E4 (talk) 02:39, 24 January 2023 (UTC)
Are you saying that this is somehow worse than the Reddit redesign and the MySpace redesign?
How is this any more mobile influenced than v10? I mean the design is horrible on a phone and the only thing I see designed for mobile is the responsiving, which has also been done on v10.
Literally just made an account to say I find it distasteful it as well. So much wasted screen real estate. The fact I had to make an account to revert it makes for a very negative user experience. Scerttle (talk) 08:30, 20 January 2023 (UTC)
Agreed. Forcing me to create an account in order to disable a skin when you can literally EDIT the pages without one is absolute madness. TheDelmain (talk) 03:53, 21 January 2023 (UTC)
No, because LocalStorage has been a thing in browsers for about decade, and cookies were invented nearly 30 years ago. Saving a piece of data on my machine to describe how I want to interact with a site is basically how the internet is designed. The back-end servers need have no understanding of what local preferences I have set. Meanwhile, allowing a completely anonymous user to change what content is on a website for literally everyone else on the planet is completely backwards from what the internet does.
I realize the entire anonymous-editting-of-wikipedia thing is settled, which is why it's insane to me that a more easily solved issue isn't. TheDelmain (talk) 17:04, 21 January 2023 (UTC)
No, I read all the FAQs, and the dismissive, patronizing response isn't appreciated either. The FAQs are all prescriptive and based on compromises that the people advocating for this change have decided to back, so of course they agree with the position that the people who wrote them are proposing. The FAQ answer prioritizes the things that the people who want to make the change want to prioritize.
This is a thread arguing for why those priorities and compromises are wrong. It's a circular argument to just go "no look, see". TheDelmain (talk) 20:01, 21 January 2023 (UTC)
The FAQ is not supposed to agree with any position and it doesn't (save for Q4). Q1 does answer the question and says that allowing logged-out users to change the entire skin by loading after the page loads is kinda uncomprimisable because it'll bring about very unpleasant glitches (such as flashing). You can't really say that not being able to apply skin after the page loads is wrong. I agree that there should be two snapshots of every page but you were talking about applying the old skin after the page loads. Aaron Liu (talk) 20:19, 21 January 2023 (UTC)
Why are you so interested in forcing this horrible redesign on everyone else? Don't you have anything better to be doing? People are trying to get a very serious problem addressed here and you're just trying to muddy the waters. What's your goal? 2600:1700:1471:2550:4920:A572:D62A:79E4 (talk) 02:45, 24 January 2023 (UTC)
Just see my reply to Delmain right above you, especially the last sentence. I believe that not allowing anons to edit would be absolute madness. Plus, are you accusing me of muddying the waters just because I think the design is good? Aaron Liu (talk) 14:04, 24 January 2023 (UTC)
All they need to do is make the "Toggle limited content width" (the button on the bottom right) persist if you clicked it without having to log in. That was the only major noticeable change to me. Mrzev (talk) 15:57, 22 January 2023 (UTC)
It's outrageous this hasn't already been reverted. I'm seriously becoming downright angry about this. Just put it back the way it used to be when Wikipedia worked fine, before it was needlessly "fixed" by the people "helping" in the same way cats and small children do - not at all. Just fix it already! 2600:1700:1471:2550:4920:A572:D62A:79E4 (talk) 02:27, 24 January 2023 (UTC)
You can easily fix it on your end by creating an account. Your preferences will be remembered across any device you use. —Tenryuu 🐲 ( 💬 • 📝 ) 04:40, 24 January 2023 (UTC)
I hate it too, and I've hated it on French Wikipedia since I first saw it (some years ago, so don't preach about "getting used to it" -- it's been terrible for years!). It's a massive waste of screen space that now appears bloated more than practical. It's been terrible since it started and even using the "expand width" button still leaves less than half the content per screen of the old design. And don't tell me that account preferences cover this problem, because half or more of my browsing is not logged in. Please immediately improve this design to match the old design in terms of content-per-screen area (or of course just reintroduce the old design). Damn I feel like I need to zoom out my browser just to read it properly. Oh and the Table of Contents is much harder to find and use, it may as well just be deleted entirely. Spartan S58 (talk) 23:56, 18 January 2023 (UTC)
I hate when people try to reinvent the wheel. The new interface is just annoying for us not invested. The skin should be turned off by default.--Blockhaj (talk) 00:54, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
The new skin is an abomination. "A fresh new look!" has been the bane of Internet users since the beginning. If something works and looks good, DON'T CHANGE IT! I see absolutely no benefit to the new interface being the default. Ambarenya13 (talk) 03:17, 20 January 2023 (UTC)
I see some benefits In Vector 22, the sections are displayed in the sidebar which before were within the article. If one chooses to hide it, it will optionally be accessible over the bullet menu left to the article name. Then the dropdownmenu at the person in the upper right, which provides much more space in the toolbar. Then also a direct link to the uploaded media in commons is good. Paradise Chronicle (talk) 09:27, 20 January 2023 (UTC)
This!
Such big spaces around centered column of text is ridiculous. Turn it off by default!
New theme is a waste of space and nothing more. You want to provide the better experience via new navigation - well, make it hide-able. Without any unnecessary spaces around article. 217.170.123.124 (talk) 22:39, 20 January 2023 (UTC)
I've been using the new skin for a week and I HATE IT. The narrow format is so much less usable due to dramatically lowered information density. I HATE all of the empty space to the left and right, and the forced scrolling even for short articles. It's ugly and stupid. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.48.244.10 (talk) 01:19, 22 January 2023 (UTC)
If I hide the menu, it turns into one of those Google-influenced three-line menu icons. This is dumbed-down mobile phone iconography. When I started using mobile phones (grudgingly) it's meaning was mysterious to me. On the English Wikipedia, why can't it just be a button that says "menu", you know, in English? Isn't this a site for people who can read? Similarly, if I want to log in now, I have to press a button that looks like three dots. In what way does three dots mean "log in"? Is this another icon with a familiar meaning to the young and stupid? It doesn't mean anything to me, and why could it not be a button written in English which says "log in"? And then there's the contents on talk pages: when hidden (which I will be doing all the time because the changes take up too much screen space) it becomes an icon consisting of three lines with bullet points, which you're supposed to infer is some kind of menu different from the first kind of menu, and thus means "contents" ... right? But what would be wrong with a button that says "contents"? This site is not for an international audience. The articles are not written in pictograms. Why do the buttons have to be like that? Card Zero (talk)20:19, 18 January 2023 (UTC)
Doesn't matter how long it has been in existence, I hate the 'Hamburger button'. It is very inconspicious and usually looks like some graphic element or decoration. It is not at all intuitive to find if you don't know where to look.
I general, I support the new look as the old one produced unreadable walls of text in large displays: however the new one is over-minimalistic. "Clean" web design is a mean, not an end. Here is a hint to new UI designers who want to hide stuff behind drop-down or hover-the-cursor menues: DON'T. They suck. Put the damn links where I can see them.--78.27.85.86 (talk) 11:41, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
Hey @Card Zero and others — thanks for your feedback here. A few things:
I agree it's best practice to use an icon + a text label for buttons. We try to sparingly use only icons.
In the cases above — main menu, personal tools menu, etc. — we believe the icons are sufficient. Whether we like it or not these icons have become ubiquitous, and are used on all major websites. This doesn't necessarily make it a good design pattern in some fundamental sense, but it means that in fact most people are familiar with those icons and their meanings. We have tested this with people on usertesting.com. They are easily able to locate the menus and find items within them.
Because Wikipedia is served in over 300 different languages, using labels creates a lot of variation in terms of the size of those elements. For example, we currently have a button with a text label that allows you to pin the collapsed table of contents back to the sidebar. In English the button label is "move to sidebar", whereas in German the button label is "In die Seitenleiste verschieben", which makes for a pretty wide button.
Another thing to consider is the visual effect the buttons have on the overall interface. For example, in the sticky header we tried out using buttons with text labels, icon buttons, and buttons with icons + text labels. Having buttons with text labels in the sticky header, sitting at the top of the screen, to us felt heavy and crowded. In the past we've been able to get away with using smaller elements (styled as links) for buttons, which can help with this. But these days we have a design system and accessibility requirements we have to adhere to, which ultimately controls the size of buttons.
With respect, the Wikimedia ethos is not to serve "most people", but to serve "all people". We strive for maximum accessibility, even when it sacrifices aesthetic conciseness. Ibadibam (talk) 18:24, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
There is currently hover text for "main menu" (the hamburger button), but the three dots have hover text "more options", which is completely uninformative. (It tells us only that the button won't do anything immediately.) It could say "user", but that's also vague, and it would be best if it said "log in/out, user talk page, contributions", maybe on three lines. It's not like there's any shortage of space for mouseover text. Don't imagine Wikipedia users are unwilling to read. The third button should have hover text saying "contents", but it doesn't have any. Also, forget about "best practice" (see criticisms), consider what's best for this site.
Like the IP editor above said, "clean" shouldn't be a goal. If there's one website (note: not an app) where content matters over form, it's Wikipedia. We're not selling anything, and we're not trying to impress anyone. If "clean" helps you find information, that's good. If it hides information it's awful. Who cares if icon buttons are "sufficient"? We can do better than sufficient. You had no reason to get rid of the text buttons at all, other than trendy aesthetics. If people complain about being confronted by too much text, they didn't mean those little bits of text. If people complain about Wikipedia not looking "modern", ignore them.
Your example of "move to sidebar" invalidates itself, because that's a text button you've added. You haven't replaced that one with an icon, despite your reasoning that it would be long in German.
"Having buttons with text labels in the sticky header, sitting at the top of the screen, to us felt heavy and crowded" – I don't mean to be brutal, but nobody cares how you feel. We want Wikipedia to display information. Some people will complain how it "feels", sure, but why give them credibility? Designers are the wrong people to redesign it.
"We have a design system and accessibility requirements we have to adhere to, which ultimately controls the size of buttons" – what's this "design system"? A way of passing the buck? I assume this is about unifying skins in order to enable further tinkering across different languages of Wikipedia. Do you imagine we want that to be easier for you? We don't. You can have 20 different skins and deal with it, and if that slows down your tinkering, so much the better.
Accessibility requirements, I would have thought, require you to keep text, for screen readers.
How about backing down, dropping your pet idea, and putting the text back? That would be a remarkable thing if you could manage to do it. You seem to have an implicit mission of making Wikipedia look cool: I don't think anybody was consulted about that. Wikipedia should look comfortably unremarkable, like a good font. Card Zero (talk)19:08, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
Agreed - This log in problem (the 'hamburger menu') is especially a stupid and problematic change because it prevents users on browsers like NetSurf that don't use Javascript from logging in and returning wikipedia to a state of usability. Wyatt8740 (talk) 19:44, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
I don't think it's just JavaScript. When I disable javascript on waterfox the entire page functions fine though many dropdowns don't open and take me down the link. Aaron Liu (talk) 22:31, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
Are you currently adapting Vector 22?
I have just seen some temporary changes. Once I had the tools all lined up in the right white space but only like for three clicks. Now the tools are again between page/user and twinkle. Then I believe some adaption to the TOC of the article but also of the menu, both to the left white space were also happening but there then a large field appeared which was a bit transparent. It occupied like a quarter of the screen. Now all is calm again.Paradise Chronicle (talk) 21:32, 23 January 2023 (UTC)
They seem to have updated the skin as of today. From what I notice, 'Tools' now appear in the right column (was empty), and the main menu has increased font size and spacing, and also the empty margin between the menu and main content seems to have been shortened – hopefully it stays that way. The menu has a hide option on top and the "back" button (which was actually a menu button) on the top left has been removed (good).
I wonder where we can read about all changes that are being made and if they are kept track of – many of the complains that have been made are simply invalidated by minor changes like this all the time. —Jetro (talk) 22:14, 23 January 2023 (UTC)
I didn't like the new skin at first, but I held off commenting until I tried it for a fair period of time. I think the update the team just rolled out is a positive step. My two biggest dislikes were the TOC being almost 'hidden' and the large amount of whitespace being quite jarring. I still think the mystery meat navigation design will make things harder for new users rather than easier, but overall V22 is an improvement imho. Resequent (talk) 20:14, 24 January 2023 (UTC)
No one thought for a one single minute about functionality. Look just at the toolbar: "Create account" is always visible (thoug you use it once), "Log in" is hidden behind 3 dots menu (thoug you use it everyday).
And so on looks everything in this project. Some kid just have though, that everything, everywere shoud look as on it's smartphone. No! It shouldn't. We still use non-modern PCs with non-modern, non-fresh BIG screens. Really. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Freja Draco (talk • contribs) 12:57, 23 January 2023 (UTC)
"These changes are created specifically for desktop interfaces"
It is not true at all! Desktop has much space to use, much space where you can place useful elements. You don't need to hide them and eforce user to click more times. It shows that you completely don't understand how to make responsive interface, using the capabilities of the device. And that you think that mobile style is the only possibility. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Freja Draco (talk • contribs) 20:16, 24 January 2023 (UTC)
I want to preface this comment that I am one of several users unhappy with the handling of this project. I don't consider the skin's layout to be useful. As a silver lining, I'm glad there's a way to switch back to the old skin, but that means logging into wikipedia on every browser that I use.
Now for the actual topic: the following graph: File:Usage of non-default skins on English Wikipedia 2.png that is displayed in this section is somewhat misleading. At a glance, the graph itself makes it look like Vector 2022 is favored by 44.2% of users. However, the title makes it clear that the graph is showing usage among non-default skins prior to the switchover. Problem is that nowhere in the graph does it say what percentage of total users had opted to use a non-default skin. (It could be anything from 99% to 50% to 10%.) Having that information would paint a better picture of how many users voluntarily chose to use the new skin over the then-default skin. Well, I say users but that is another assumption I'm making: are these numbers based on users, visits, sessions? The graph is not clear about those units.
Finally, it would be nice to see what the current usage is after the switchover, especially how many users (like myself) have opted to remain using the Vector 2010 skin. I also wonder how many new users were created because of the skin and if there has been any change in the number of visitors to the site (since some people may simply choose to vote with their feet; if they can). There aren't many options besides wikipedia unless someone has a Vector 2010 mirror out there somewhere.
Anyway, I'm writing this to urge this project's leadership to provide more transparency on the larger effect and impact of the change on the user base (that is the forest as a whole), and not just the smaller technical details (the trees). Wikipedia as a whole can only benefit from such openness. --Stux (talk) 23:04, 24 January 2023 (UTC)
3 menus for: page, user, wikipedia
Currently there are 3 menus
on the left hand side,
right hand top, some with icons
and above the page
There are also 3 scopes:
page, the things wikipedians work on
user, the logged in wikipedian
wikipedia as a whole
Suggestion:
Make a one-to-one relation between a menu and its scope.
Create three menu's, each menu connected to one and only one scope.
Article tools moved on the right on itwikiHi @Uwappa: thank you for spending time to detail your suggestion. Vector 2022 is actually considering the reorganization of links, if you have not yet, I suggest you to look at our features page, in particular to the Page tools one and our long-term solution. In few weeks the article tools will move to the right of the screen.--Patafisik (WMF) (talk) 13:22, 23 January 2023 (UTC)
Thank you. I had a look and it looks very promising! The article tools on the right offer a clear distinction with the general Wikpedia menu. Also good: the Wikipedia menu and the page tools can collapse, allowing max horizontal space for the page content.
Still some suggestions:
move 'special pages' to the wikipedia, contribute as it is not related to one specific page.
Combine wikidata and interlanguage links into one: interlanguage links
Combine the three page menu's (languages, tabs above, menu right) into one:
group objects together: article, talk, 150 languages, more (interlanguage links, what links here, related changes, page information, wikimedia, wikiquote, wikisource)
also group actions on those objects: read, edit, view history, add to wachtlist, more (permanent link, cite this page, download as PDF, printable version)
when not yet scrolled, show icons with text in page menu, so icons are familiar after scrolling.
when scrolled down, simplify page menu into icons, keep it in view, for example top center, replacing the search bar. Keep the entire user menu visible, unchanged.
in an iconised menu, show current icon with selection emphasis.
on watchlist, keep user menu in view when scrolled down
The icon menu in the desktop version, right hand top corner changes scope when scrolling.
unscrolled it is user focussed: user, alerts, notices, watchlist, more. No choices for page.
scrolled, it changes into a page menu (talk, history, add to watchlist, edit, 123 languages) and pushes all user choices into a dropdown. Also, the page choices change sequence,
unscrolled tabs: 123 languages, talk, edit, history, add to wachtlist
scrolled icons: talk, history, add to watchlist, edit, 123 languages
This change upon scrolling makes it hard to learn what the menu is about, user or page.
Suggestion:
Keep the user menu right hand top corner when scrolled down.
upon scrolling, show the page related menu center top, same sequence as tabs
keep some space between the two menu's to keep them distinguishable, easier to learn.
When I'm at 100% character size on my laptop I have the toggle box at the bottom-right to flip between narrow and wide modes. When I reduce the size to 90% (ctrl minus) it's still there. However if I go to 110% (ctrl plus) it disappears. Is this a bug or just a "feature"? Apologies if this has come up before. Nigej (talk) 09:16, 24 January 2023 (UTC)
Hi @Nigej: thank you for reporting this. I can reproduce it. Probably it will be fixed soon when this task will be closed, I will write a comment about what is happening when zooming in the task to be sure this behavior of the toggle will be considered.--Patafisik (WMF) (talk) 10:05, 24 January 2023 (UTC)
So it is a feature. Currently the box only appears at 1600px and above, and presumably by increasing the character size I go under that value and it disappears. Can't quite understand the logic of it, but I see its being considered. Nigej (talk) 10:20, 24 January 2023 (UTC)
Done by a bot. How can a BOT decide - correctly - which topics and which contributions are no longer needed?
And don't even dare to come with the explanation/excuse of "too long to handle easily"; this would be completely paradox and absurd, thinking about all the complaints which this "easy to handle" new skin has already caused.
I've seen discussions with much more than 200 contributions.
I get the impression that someone (very skilled) just could not stand this SHIT STORM any longer and simply reduced the number of uncomfortable complaints. In my eyes this archiving was a MIS-USE of rights and skills.
I DEMAND to undo this archiving!!
Instead, if you wanted to do something valuable FOR this discussion, you could sort the contributions under the appropriate headings.
And then you could create a sub-page for each main topic.
Hi @Steue:, thank you for reporting this, can you give the diff of this change to allow other users to understand what is the problem you are pointing out? If this was done by mistake by a bot, probably the better way to restore discussions is to ask directly to the the user driving the bot. Patafisik (WMF) (talk) 12:15, 23 January 2023 (UTC)
But basically: At the top of this page, just above the first topic, there is the Archive box. Within there click on the the "1" and you see the missing contribs.
The history of this archive page (not the history of the current (first/front) page) tells when it was done and by which bot.
Already fixed. Someone set the auto-archive to 24 hours without a new post in the thread (on Jan 18 or earlier, couldn't find the actual diff), and someone else changed it to 24 days. --SarekOfVulcan (talk)15:31, 25 January 2023 (UTC)
V22 should include the section of the article in search results when one is searching for a term that redirects to a specific section of an article.
One thing that V22 did was remove redirect names from search results, instead only displaying the article that said redirects would point too. This is somewhat bad for redirects that pointed to specific sections in an article, which under the current system appear to just redirect towards the article itself and not the specific section.
Due to the new UI within the search bar, I understand partially why they did this and don't think we should revert to the previous system as such, however, I propose that future installments of V22 include the name of a section that a redirect points too (e.g, searching "First Prussian Revolt" would point to Prussian Revolts, and under that would be "First Prussian Revolt" in gray text).
A similar practice should be applied to article previews. I've always found it somewhat goofy that Wikipedia search and article previews will just highlight the article itself even if the specific link or search term points to a specific section of the article. A similar system should be implemented for article previews from links that point to specific sections (the best I can think of is replacing the excerpt of the article's lead with the excerpt of the section), as well as anchors and the like. Knightoftheswords281 (talk) 00:37, 25 January 2023 (UTC)
@Knightoftheswords281 I've moved this to the page where the skin team may see it. This would require software work, so it isn't a proposal we can just do anything about directly here on the English Wikipedia right now. — xaosfluxTalk10:08, 25 January 2023 (UTC)
That discussion is related, yet I suggest something different. Let me phrase it differently. Suppose you land on a page via a deeplink to a h3, e.g. Sun#Coronal_heating. What should the TOC show with selection emphasis after landing? Currently the TOC shows h1 Sun#Observational_history with selection emphasis, although the text of h1 is scrolled out of view in the article text. That is confusing, the TOC shows a selected h1 which is scrolled out of view in article text. I suggest the TOC should show automatically expand the h2 and h1 parents of the deeplinked h3 and show the h3 with selection emphasis. Uwappa (talk) 16:33, 25 January 2023 (UTC)
Language links
I beg you to move the language links back to where they belong, in the left margin, in stead of hiding them at the top to where you have to scroll and then open a bar which covers half of the text of the article. 37.247.31.205 (talk) 19:09, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
Absolutely support. We used to call them interwikis and they served well making Wikipedia a great multi-language project. Now I bet, most readers don't even guess that other language versions on the same topic exist. I think hiding information, making it less accessible is against Wikipedia's core principles. Language links must be visible and easily accessible to all users: without drop-down menus, searching, suggested languages (edited: Do you suggest me which language to read??), regional grouping etc. —2dk (talk) 14:27, 20 January 2023 (UTC)
I believe WMF did some testing last year to see how much the new language drop-down links improved switching between languages and found instead that the drop-down links made users more confused and less likely to switch languages. As a result they were planning to try out some new variations of the language links and run usability testing again. Is Vector 2022 using the version that tested poorly, or are we testing out the new language links right now?
Please remove that ugly, badly positioned box on the left that says "On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. Go to top." And what does "this Wikipedia" mean anyway? Nolanugalde (talk) 17:14, 25 January 2023 (UTC)
There shouldn't need to be a toggle. Displaying a useful amount of data at once should be the default. While you don't want to cram every square nanometer of space like some sort of exam cheat sheet, you also don't want to waste an entire billboard on a three letter word in 12 point type. The V22 skin veers far too much toward the billboard end of that spectrum. --User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 20:51, 25 January 2023 (UTC)
Make full width toggle more noticeable
I really struggled to find the button for this, because I have a really big widescreen monitor that's in landscape. As the article states, the button is on the bottom right, which is probably the last place my eyes will naturally go. The size does not scale with the size of the margins or your monitor. I almost didn't believe it when other articles said the toggle existed. It blends in because it's the same color as the margins, and it's also really tiny.
I personally suggest moving it to the top of the page where it will be more easily noticed. A lot of other clickable stuff to change the reading experience (such as picking a language) is at the top, so for consistency's sake, why isn't this at the top too? Also, can this preference not be stored in a cookie? Why do I have to manually toggle it for every page?
I've seen and tried it now. It changes the appearance of the right-hand margin but its symbology and position is not consistent with the << toggle at top-left which adjusts the appearance of the left-hand margin in a similar way. It might be better as a >> at top right. Andrew🐉(talk) 19:14, 21 January 2023 (UTC)
Where is this button supposed to be? I literally cannot find it. No matter what I do with my zoom level. (And certainly it would be useful at my default zoom level.) ApLundell (talk) 02:50, 22 January 2023 (UTC)
Oh ffs. I see it now. It's floating outside of the page and outside the toolbars. With all the content crowded in the middle of the screen I somehow didn't think to look at the bottom right of the screen.
I'm sure it's true that I'm very stupid, but I would like to suggest that it is also true that the button is terribly placed. It seems obvious to me that it should be with all the other buttons, and not floating out in space by itself.
Until the WMF changes the settings to be more persistent across pages, I suggest creating an account to access those preferences; users are under no obligation to edit if they have accounts. Alternatively, they could try some custom CSS styling through a third-party extension like Stylus. I remember seeing a few users offer up their own custom CSS to do things like reduce the amount of white space on the sides. —Tenryuu 🐲 ( 💬 • 📝 ) 19:18, 23 January 2023 (UTC)
One reason for not seeing the button may be that it clashes with other symbols on some pages. For example, see WP:ITN/C or my talk age which use the {{Skip to top and bottom}} template to put arrows at the bottom right to help navigation to the top or bottom of long pages. I'll put that template on this page, so you can see for yourself. Andrew🐉(talk) 11:20, 23 January 2023 (UTC)
Inspect elementing the side menus and the top bar to "lightgray" significantly reduces strain on my eyes. Would adding a lightgray shade help anyone else? 67.249.219.170 (talk) 23:48, 24 January 2023 (UTC)
I have made some progress toward this and other improvements to the Vector 2022 skin in User:Jonesey95/common.css. Caveat: the WMF has been patching this beta skin every couple of days, which has introduced changes to the CSS classes and the page structure with every update, so I haven't been able to keep up, and my pages do not look as clean as they should. Editors are welcome to copy any or all of my CSS adjustments at their own risk. – Jonesey95 (talk) 05:36, 26 January 2023 (UTC)
Modern Skin
I've used the "Modern Skin" for years and preferred it to the other skins available. Briefly tried the new skin and though bleugh, so wanted to go back. I now find its no longer an option. I'd like to restore it if possible, any help on how to do it would be appreciated. WCMemail14:10, 25 January 2023 (UTC)
That won't help here, as modern is a deprecated skin, which will be remove somewhere in the future. As such it can no longer be selected in the preferences. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 16:01, 25 January 2023 (UTC)
I'm not a fan of text, I mostly come to Wikipedia for the white space. So as you can imagine, I was very pleased with the new layout. But the problem still remains that there is a lot of the page which is sadly being taken up by pointless text. Is there a way to shrink down the articles even further? Ideally, I'd like a single column of words, one word wide, down the center of the page. Xyzzyplugh (talk) 11:36, 23 January 2023 (UTC)
Vector 2023 is scheduled for release on 1 April. By default, it will show just one character per line, but we are assured that there will be a "widescreen" toggle to show a whole word. (Longer words may not be supported initially.) Certes (talk) 11:44, 23 January 2023 (UTC)
My understanding of how the above will be implemented:
A month or two before April 1, WMF will do an RfC explaining how the default will become one single character per line. They will explain how so much better it will be for us.
No matter how many opposes they get, as long as they get at least one editor to support and a couple admins to state something to the effect of, 'go ahead with your plan as long you fix the issues everyone has with this', they will go forward and implement and not bother to fix the issues.
Then when everyone says they hate it, those concerns will be dismissed as, 'people are just set in their ways' and 'people will complain about anything new' and 'nothing will ever change if we listen to all these complainers'. DB1729talk20:46, 23 January 2023 (UTC)
There's a quick fix for this. While reading an article, you can just click "edit" and then remove the text manually until you're satisfied with the amount left. The design team will likely be rolling this out automatically sooner or later, but for now you have to do it yourself. Like most aspects of the redesign, it doesn't carry over between articles, and you'll have to do it each time you load a new article. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 00:39, 24 January 2023 (UTC)
Thank you so much Xyzzy for starting this section. It seldom happens, when I'm on wp, that I get to lough. Especially on this page. And thank you to all the others who contributed to this.
I hope we keep the old version for ever or even revert to it. I usually view the site on a desk top using Google Chrome (sometimes Firefox) I found the new version had too much white space and the text looked smaller even if it wasn't . I couldnt see why anybody would want such wide margins After a few days I changed back with relief. The new version does have one advantage; it tells me that I am not logged in very easily since you can only revert it for when your logged in,
I didnt like the watchlist button being hidden behind an icon. Words are much easier to read. Unfortunately the log in button is still hiddden behind the dots when it is most required. Even if you have to keep the new version please could you change that bit so I can see the words "log in " Spinney Hill (talk) 00:55, 26 January 2023 (UTC)Spinney Hill (talk) 00:06, 27 January 2023 (UTC)
I'm afraid the phabricator page went over my head but I think it is probably ot meant for my situation. I happen to be over 60 (ie 68) and I found no problem with the old layout.Quite the reverse I think. I think the use of white space is important but it is a matter of paragraphing, size of print,the space between the lines and space between words. That's what makes the difference. Spinney Hill (talk) 00:23, 27 January 2023 (UTC)
Hi @Spinney Hill - thanks for your feedback. In the near future, we're hoping to explore some of this in the new skin - specifically allowing users to configure their font size for the site, so that it's more comfortable to read. OVasileva (WMF) (talk) 00:35, 27 January 2023 (UTC)
Wow, Wikipedia.
I'm not saying that this change was bad, but you could have handled this better. Put a notice up at the top of the articles like you do with your donations. That would have better than just doing the change with no reasoning.
Wouldn't be surprised if I wake up tomorrow and my skin has been force-changed to Shitstain 2022
It seems that the many problems I am experiencing on my iPad mini are the result of a lack of support for the venerable Safari 12. Please tell me that this is but a temporary oversight. Downsize43 (talk) 07:17, 21 January 2023 (UTC)
Technically an unsupported browser. If I can find some time, I’ll see if I can dig up an old device and figure out what is going on. Mobile view should still work though right ? —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 12:58, 21 January 2023 (UTC)
Hi @Downsize43, can you confirm that this ticket and screenshot is describing your issue ? I couldn't get access to a device with Safari 12, but this is what I found with Safari 13. That should hopefully be fixed. If you have additional problems, can you try to accurately describe them for me please ? —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 16:50, 22 January 2023 (UTC)
Hi @Downsize43, the fix that was discussed in the ticket should now be live. If you have other problems where Safari 12 is not matching other browsers, you are welcome to report those and I will see if I can help. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 20:12, 26 January 2023 (UTC)
@TheDJ: Sorry for the late reply. The hiding and redisplay of the menu is now correct. As previously reported somewhere in another thread, the menu does not float. The only other item to report is that the use of the menu to open at a section goes one line too far, thus hiding the section heading. No big deal for me, but other users may find it confusing. (I love my old iPad mini, which Apple will no longer update. I do 90% of my editing on it while seated in a comfortable chair. I will only use the new skin to check layout etc. before I publish.) Regards. Downsize43 (talk) 07:22, 29 January 2023 (UTC)
How was this work commissioned?
As someone with some experience in IT Project and Product Management, I'm interested in how this piece of work was commissioned, what were the original value statements and outcomes that initiated it. Doing some research it looks like the project had a "kickoff" at Wikimania 2019, however it seems that what actually happened there was the beginning of research and discussion to understand what the specific changes a project to "improve the desktop experience" would be, and that the project team was already in place at this point. It also seems that research was initiated in May 2019, but without a clear Project Scope.
When and how was it decided work was needed to "improve the desktop experience" in the first place? What was the "problem statement" that made this work necessary to solve initially, and how was this tested to ensure it wasnt change for change's sake? During the research stage was there ever a question made of the value of the project and whether it was actually required by the business or customers?
Did this perhaps come from the same "Movement" in 2017 from the Wikimedia Foundation that also included a project to rebrand the Foundation with an ill-founded plan to change the Foundations name to Wikipedia that had to be dissolved by a newly elected board. Is it not a case of Foundation employees justifying their employment by paying consultants to identify new projects for them to constinue to manage and hire further consultants for? Impish3000 (talk) 21:05, 27 January 2023 (UTC)
There weren't any specific goals for this specific project (after all, the Wikimedia Foundation has been operating without an annual plan for years now). But the Wikimedia Foundation has been working for many years on some sort of skin changes so in they had they push out something, even if along the way we lost track of what the changes were supposed to accomplish. Nemo15:38, 29 January 2023 (UTC)
Reformatting for Vector 2022
Some articles are being reformatted to squeeze into the limited width available in Vector 2022. (Improvements by RCraig09 popped up on my watchlist, but I'm sure others have been helping out too.) Are we ready for such changes, or should we await the RfC on restoring Vector 2010 as the default skin? Do we want to keep a list of such edits, perhaps via a category, so that we can revert them if Vector 2022 ceases to be the default skin (or even if Vector 2022 remains but with full-width as its default option)? Certes (talk) 11:43, 28 January 2023 (UTC)
@Certes I looked at one edit this user made, and thought it was an improvement. Could you cite in support of your argument some changes where reverting to old Vector would leave the recently-made edits leaving the page look a lot worse? Personally, I feel minor edits that improve layout with the new skin should stay, as that is the skin the RfC was about in November 2022, and which gained community approval. I suspect much of the hot air surrounding the recent skin changes is equivalent to traditional users saying WP:IDONTLIKEIT. Our aim should be to facilitate ease of use by the vast numbers of Wikipedia readers out there, and worry less about the far small number of us active editors who might prefer to use old Vector skin. Nick Moyes (talk) 15:13, 28 January 2023 (UTC)
I'm not making any argument, just asking questions. Edits which improve the layout under both V22 and V10 (or at least make it no worse) should stay, regardless of which skin becomes default. I admit to disliking the new skin, but I think we're allowed to DONTLIKE matters of presentation rather than content. One could equally argue that those who imposed Vector 2022 DONTLIKE Vector 2010 and have presented us with a fait accompli by changing it to their preference unilaterally. Certes (talk) 19:03, 28 January 2023 (UTC)
The changes I've made (mostly image presentations and quote boxes) were necessitated by the "narrow column of text" appearance of the new format. Even if I could change my own experience of articles, I would still have to adjust the content for the millions of readers who would be trapped in the new format. It's not just that WP:IDONTLIKEIT: friendly buttons at the top make more sense than occupying space in the wasteful right margin. —RCraig09 (talk)19:49, 28 January 2023 (UTC)
RCraig09, it might be better to wait until the RFC about Vector 2022 and its related question about default width are resolved. Also, the WMF developers are continuing to change the underlying CSS structure of Wikipedia pages in Vector 2022, about twice a week on average, so changes you make today may not end up how you want them to look. – Jonesey95 (talk) 15:59, 29 January 2023 (UTC)
User:Vector2010
Here's a radical idea. Create a new account (or usurp Vector2010, which made one edit in 2014), set its preference to the old skin, block it globally, and print its password. Yes, reveal its password, to let anyone log in with it. We'd have to deny it access to Special:Preferences and any other loopholes I've not thought of, and prevent Special:Logout from logging out that user's other sessions. Does that idea have potential as a temporary measure, or even as long-term Plan B if the rollback fails? Certes (talk) 22:24, 26 January 2023 (UTC)
Strong Oppose. There'd have to be a very strong compelling reason to ignore all rules, especially when this absolutely goes against Wikipedia's policy on shared accounts. If for some reason this does happen, the account would have to be indefinitely blocked from editing or even access to its talk page to prevent the inevitable vandalism.A lot of the complaints are coming from being required to log in, and having a dummy account like this doesn't resolve them. —Tenryuu 🐲 ( 💬 • 📝 ) 22:46, 26 January 2023 (UTC)
Fair comment. Yes, I was assuming a block on anonymously defacing its own talk page, and the other preventative measures may not be possible in MediaWiki (or enwp's configuration of it). Perhaps this should be one for the ideas lab, but it seemed more topical here. Certes (talk) 23:03, 26 January 2023 (UTC)
The idea may be a non-runner for technical reasons, but I'm not sure it'd breach policy. It will result in ... sanctions (up to and including the account being blocked), which I advocated anyway, and Exceptions to this rule can be made for non-editing accounts. Certes (talk) 11:33, 27 January 2023 (UTC)
It's a creative idea. It would have to be done carefully, but as long as the account cannot edit, I don't see why it should be a problem. I don't think that it would breach policy as WP:SHAREDACCOUNT says that Exceptions to this rule can be made for non-editing accounts [...]. We'd just have to tackle any logistical issues first, but apart from that, I don't see why not. Tim O'Doherty (talk) 16:55, 29 January 2023 (UTC)
A diff page for the Guadalajara article that since Vector 2022 is very wide
I've noticed that some diff pages are displaying way too wide to fit onto my browser window even when I expand the browser to the full width of the screen, which ordinarily I don't want to do anyway. At the moment I'm having this problem with Guadalajara. Here's what this looks like to me at 100% zoom in Chrome on Windows on a monitor with maximum 1920px horizontal resolution.
I assume this isn't intentional, and wonder whether it can be fixed, so that a diff page displays within the same horizontal space that it used to, the same as ordinary Wikipedia pages.
This is bug T328196, which cropped up due to an apparent change made just before the developers left for the weekend. I have found that enabling the "limited width" mode makes it better for most, but not all, pages. I assume that the developers will see it when they arrive to work in about 12 to 15 hours and realize that they have some high-priority patches to work on. – Jonesey95 (talk) 00:31, 30 January 2023 (UTC)
The "government" changed our Preferences settings to "Vector 2022"
The Wikimedia Foundation and its bureaucrats are the "government" of Wikipedia and yes they are responsible for forcing the mess that is Vector 2022 on everyone. They should have rolled it out more gradually, starting with registered users who can opt-out much more conveniently. (Anonymous users cannot fully opt-out without creating an account. Additionally, the page width override and TOC location customization "workarounds" are not preserved across page requests.) 2600:1003:B854:C3F4:98E:F450:6FD7:DE6A (talk) 07:34, 30 January 2023 (UTC)
If the "government" did not exist, you would not be able to write this here, because the site servers are maintained by that alleged "government", without which the site wouldn't exist and neither would your rant above. —CX Zoom[he/him](let's talk • {C•X})07:47, 30 January 2023 (UTC)
No, this isn't acceptable. This isn't Google, we don't need that cruft nonsense at all, and you've broken the connection between the page name and the anchor links that editors depend on to be able to quickly copy/paste links to sections. At minimum, you need to keep the page name and the section anchors together. Better still, get rid of this needless index cruft and—if you're replacing the /wiki/ in the URL anyway—use /w/ for the Vector 2022 version as long as it stays up and /w2/ /ow/ /wbetter/ or whatever for all the alt versions people are switching to... assuming it needs to be mentioned in the URL at all and can't be pulled out of users' accounts. (I assume this is due to all the backlash from readers who wish to remain anonymous.)
This is what you get when you have software engineers who know nothing about what they're working on and just copy/paste material from github. No, they don't deserve all of the hate coming at them lately (I'm sure mostly they're just carrying out orders from above in an unhelpful slightly broken way), but this problem here is something you'd never run into if any of them were involved in actually working on Wikipedia themselves. Get more of those people involved and pay more attention to all the negative feedback you get during the testing phases. — LlywelynII15:01, 29 January 2023 (UTC)
@LlywelynII: I don't think this has anything to do with Vector-2022. There are oldformat=true links showing up pages that haven't been edited in years; see this search. I'm curious as to what is causing this, though. Perhaps some user script or browser extension? Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 21:14, 29 January 2023 (UTC)
You would be mistaken. I don't have Wikiwand and this mistake wouldn't be happening without Vector and the resulting kludges.
That's fine: I know it's not all your fault and you're trying to help. (Thanks!) Of course this is a Vector issue, though. Without it there would be no misplaced "oldversion" in the URLs. — LlywelynII00:43, 30 January 2023 (UTC)
@LlywelynII: I literally just tried the Firefox extension (in a new browser profile!), and it did exactly this. Furthermore, the string "oldformat" doesn't appear anywhere in any source code hosted by the WMF. This, of course does not rule out some other extension with similar behavior to Wikiwand. Perhaps even one whose engineers who know nothing about what they're working on and just copy/paste material from github. So again, if you want this fixed, again please explain how to reproduce this problem, step by step. Step #1 should be restarting your browser with all extensions disabled. Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 01:24, 30 January 2023 (UTC)
@Suffusion of Yellow: To reproduce, you view an article like this version of IBM ThinkPad TransNote and observe that the link for 600 MHz has oldformat=. It was added in this edit, presumably by an editor who was using Wikiwand at the time. The problem results from an editor having inserted an external link which (a) is malformed and (b) should have been an internal wikilink anyway. It appears with Vector 2022, Vector 2010, or any other skin, and has nothing to do with the skin change. Certes (talk) 01:38, 30 January 2023 (UTC)
Jeez, really struck a nerve, huh? Anyway, it seems to be fully resolved as below, assuming someone is acting on Certes's discovery and plan of action. — LlywelynII12:55, 30 January 2023 (UTC)
LlywelynII may not have Wikiwand installed, but some other editors do. Wikiwand adds &oldformat=true to some Wikipedia URLs, and those other editors have copied a few of these URLs into Wikipedia over the years. I also see them using Vector 2010, and would still have done so before the rollout of the new skin. Vector 2022 has faults, but it is not the cause of this problem. We should remove the parameter from any external links containing it, but most of those links should be replaced by internal wikilinks anyway. Certes (talk) 01:19, 30 January 2023 (UTC)
So it happened, it doesn't involve my (non-)use of Wikiwand, but it isn't a general problem and there are ways to code fixes to places that create this? Great~ Much better than I was expecting, thanks. — LlywelynII02:37, 30 January 2023 (UTC)
Hey @Downsize43. Is this still happening? If yes, is it possible for you to add ?safemode=1 to the URL and try again? If it's happening even with safemode, what's the width of your screen? What browser are you using? SGrabarczuk (WMF) (talk) 14:51, 1 February 2023 (UTC)
I have since raised this on the Vector 22 page under the heading Safari 12 problems. User TheDJ is looking into it and another issue. I am using Safari 12 on an iPad mini. Downsize43 (talk) 06:35, 2 February 2023 (UTC)
After flip-flopping a few times and then reviewing the preferences, I've been using Vector 2022 for a while to get the hang of it. There's a learning curve because:
a) some features are changing (e.g. tools on the RHS)
b) some gadgets are being adjusted to fit the format (e.g. UTC live clock)
c) the behaviour varies depending on what you're doing
One big issue for me is navigation to the top of the page, in order to access a menu to do something, search or go elsewhere. This seems to be a particular issue on long talk pages such as discussion boards. If one scrolls down the project page (WP:Vector 2022) then a floating menu appears at the top of the page. But if you scroll down the corresponding talk page (WT:Vector 2022) then you don't get this and I'm not understanding why.
There are workarounds for this. These include clicking the (Top) section in the TOC sidebar, which is what I mostly use that for. The other is to add {{Skip to top and bottom}} to the page, which is what I've done here. This adds some navigation arrows but that's not as powerful as the floating menu.
I'm not understanding why talk pages are treated differently and so this seems confusingly inconsistent. Am I missing something?
As far as I'm aware, the sticky header only appears in certain namespaces, like Article:. It'd be nice to customise it to user preference as to which namespaces it shows up. —Tenryuu 🐲 ( 💬 • 📝 ) 13:57, 2 February 2023 (UTC)
This is a known bug. We have asked for the sticky header to be enabled on all pages. The WMF appears to have misheard us and will enable it on all Talk-space pages soon, which is a partial fix. It still won't show on File pages, for example, so the bug remains open. – Jonesey95 (talk) 17:06, 2 February 2023 (UTC)
Fixed. The software update that was applied today has made the sticky header available on this page. You may notice that the sticky header does not contain the same contents as the top-of-page header, which is confusing (to me). Even the "User" menu, the little torso and head icon, uses the same icon but has different contents. When I filed a bug about it, I was told that it was deliberate and that it would not be fixed. – Jonesey95 (talk) 21:45, 2 February 2023 (UTC)
Can't say that I've noticed a difference in the sticky header or the dropdown menu. The WMF may have changed some things around in this one day. —Tenryuu 🐲 ( 💬 • 📝 ) 05:43, 4 February 2023 (UTC)
Width issue
The Vector 2022 update looks alright, however the default appearance with "limited width mode" is a major waste of monitor space. I recommend that limited width mode is disabled by default when the update goes through. Cards8466416:18, 15 January 2023 (UTC)
Hi @Cards84664. Thanks for your general support. Of course, you're free to disable the limited width permanently in your preferences. (Un-check the option "Enable limited width mode" or click the toggle in the bottom right corner of the screen.)
In the future, we, the Web team, would like to talk about the possibility of increasing the default font size (of course, having addressed a number of issues with tables, navboxes, infoboxes, etc.). That would be implemented together with an increase of the (still limited) default width. I'm not encouraging (or trying) to start this conversation now, though.
For times when limited width was needed there was an exceedingly easy solution in the old UI: resize the window. In the old system snapping the window to one side of the screen had the same effect as this, without forcing it on you in the many cases where it makes for a worse experience.
In the new UI, the large amount of white space and the narrow article leaves the reading experience feeling very squeezed, claustrophobic, and even oppressive. If you're talking about increasing the font size that's going to make it even worse. 2607:FEA8:2D24:8900:0:0:0:151C (talk) 18:44, 18 January 2023 (UTC)
Per https://uxmyths.com/post/2059998441/myth-28-white-space-is-wasted-space - the examples given as "Some beautiful websites with generous white space" now use minimal whitespace compared to uxmyths.com or the new mediawiki skin - it may have been true a few years ago, but the new thing seems to be using the entire screen, but limiting the size of each "section" of the page such that the entire page can be filled with these "sections", rather than just using a minority of the screen for the content and keeping the rest blank, which is what uxmyths and vector 2022 both seem to do. 1rre (talk) 19:03, 18 January 2023 (UTC)
In your link to UX Myth #28, there are no viable sources given, save for one mention of a "lab research PDF" from Wichita State University, and that link is broken. It is plausible the blog post in question was skewed in favor of advertisers to better accommodate ad space, something WMF does not need to concern itself with. Please endeavor to remove this link from the FAQ to prevent the spread of confusion or misinformation. 129.222.219.66 (talk) 13:16, 21 January 2023 (UTC)
This study was conducted on only 24 participants ranging from 62 to 80 years old (mean 69.67). I would question the pertinence of this study in regards to the wider Wikipedia audience, which obviously spans a more varied age range ; are more comprehensive studies of whitespace's effect on reader comprehension available to support this choice ? 92.150.8.209 (talk) 11:14, 22 January 2023 (UTC)
Actually, after further investigation into this study, it didn't even pertain to whitespace in the first place, only to "multimedia interface in hypertext perusal", that is, the use of images and/or animated graphs to increase retention scores. The cited 20% increase seems to have no reliable source. 92.150.8.209 (talk) 11:29, 22 January 2023 (UTC)
Sorry but your answers are no where near satisfying! Every time i got a mobile link on desktop i had to delete ".m" asap and it always directly felt horrible and distracted me a lot. Your efforts to make articles more readable is honorable, but there has to be some compromise and for me that means, there need to be permanent options for users that are not logged in (i just created this account to add my suggestions/input here).
I'm open for change and for a line limit if it is done right/permanently changeable by anonymous users.
I'm not old yet but i'm also not so young anymore and for now i'm one of those preferring always a dark mode over a white mode. That might be my biggest issue with the "wasted white space". Yea it might not be wasted, but it irks/irritates me so much i was willing to create an account and write this for the first time in many years.
So i have to admit, that i definitely need more time to adjust to this different design but i rather not like to do it with the current design.
So i would like to get input about how would it be to make a line limit JUST for TEXT!
The idea and practice of not needing to adjust my eyes from one line to another "like a tennis match" is good, but squashing it even smaller together with a huge ugly, irritating, annoying white space on both sides (left with moving(good!) context menu seems too big too on a 16:9 and 8:5 monitor) is not acceptable for me.
So would it be possible to exclude pictures, graphics etc from this line limit without braking too much of a "clean" design?
This might be a better approach were the line limit for reading is preserved, actually it better, and reaches better readability while at the same time reducing some of the whitespace around. (If a paragraph is too small it might reduce readability again because i have to jump a lot with my eyes, even so i don't have to jump a long distance!)
Somewhat Agree. I understand whitespace is a critical, yet subtle part of web design, however there are times where I would like more text on screen at once, such as if I'm multitasking and cannot easily scroll the page. Perhaps a toggle button on the page between limited and unlimited width mode that dynamically resizes content (while keeping you where you were on the page) would be useful. Of course, I also understand that it is likely too late to even consider including design elements like that, but that is something I would appreciate. Deathstar3548 (talk) 22:14, 15 January 2023 (UTC)
@Deathstar3548 - thanks for your question! Such a toggle button is currently available. The button is available on the bottom right side of the screen and it is persistent as you scroll down the page. You can also set the width to default to full with from the appearance section of your preferences by unchecking the enable limited width mode checkbox. OVasileva (WMF) (talk) 15:28, 16 January 2023 (UTC)
Wider tables benefitted from the wider screen. The sideways compression has produced an amateurish appearance for such tables. It would be more useful to restore the former version as the default and make the new version an option for those who may find it useful. DMBanks1 (talk) 17:36, 18 January 2023 (UTC)
Having to reset view from garbage mode where 40% of screen is wasted, to normal usable mode where entire screen is used, for every single page opened is just... I don't have words. I don't want to insult anybody, but that entire article that is being linked as reason for whitespace, is one massive [citation needed]. I can write an article that says exact opposite, and without actual peer-reviewed scientific research done on the subject, both will jsut be unsubstantiated tosh.
I have witnessed many pages change their UI, and every single time when the UI was changed into "modern" tablet-and-phone-friendly version, it just got objectively worse to use. Same operations would require more input actions (like clicking the hamburger to get the menu - why? why not just have it there all the time? That would be a PERFECT use for the space the new design is wasting with limited mode. But no, all the apps have to be Apple copycats and not have any UI elements at all apparently. Because got forbid there is any UI in the UI. All we care about is looking modern, and functionality be damned.
Can someone explain to me, why is the current trend to ignore existing technology stack that makes splitting the page into normal version and mobile version trivial, and instead PC users are forced to use garbage mobile interfaces? Wikipedia was one of last web pages that had true and functional UI. UI that was subject to the functionality it was to facilitate. This new UI is the other way around. Everything is upside-down - the functionality is subject to the design and "modernness" of the UI.
Yes, the old UI was not great for mobile - that's why pages are supposed to have mobile versions, not have the UI gutted for PC because many people prefer to caress their phone screens.
I completely agree, the limited content width mode is a waste of space. It makes the content too condensed and difficult to read, as it requires more scrolling and doesn't allow to fit as much content on the same screen. On some pages the content is unreadable in this mode (e.g. see the table in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AVX-512#CPUs_with_AVX-512).
Also, requiring user registration in order to be able to fix the now-broken page design is unacceptable. Wikipedia should remain freely readable by unregistered users. And by "readable" I mean the user should not have to disable the limited content width mode on every page he visits or install browser extensions to revert to the old skin that actually works.
Completely agree. My desktop browser is using like 50% of available space for no good reason. Developers please stop and think about how your web layout will look on more than just phones.
Agreed, the previous design was fine, why fix something that's not broken? It's also inconvenient to look at new redesigned table of content, the previous design had a more intuitive approach. Hate the new design. 37.150.86.27 (talk) 06:33, 23 January 2023 (UTC)
Even with limited width mode disabled the Vector skin wastes a lot of space. I have made some minor CSS tweaks in my own CSS file to fix these problems, and I offer them to the community or to the developers to consider, either as a permanent change or to incorporate into your own personal CSS. See User:Anachronist/vector-2022.css. ~Anachronist (talk) 00:01, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
It is possible to minimize eye movements AND use the available space. Use columns, like newspapers do for a long time already. Ideally a column would be so narrow that a reader could see all words in one eye fixation, of multiple lines. This would allow the brain to process text in parallel. Yes, not does much matter of words the sequence. The current solution does not allow fast parallel reading. Words of one sentence on one longer line require horizontal eye movements. With long lines the eye sees words of previous and next line, but the brain has to ignore those. What a waste. Use narrow columns for fast reading and maximum usage of screen space!
@Uwappa — columns are an interesting idea that other people have suggested. However columns don't work unless you have pagination (like newspapers, or PDF journal articles do). If you don't have pagination it becomes very difficult to decide how tall to make the columns. Try testing your idea out on an article with a long section. AHollender (WMF) (talk) 17:10, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
Thank you. On screens the alternative seems easy: max column height could be viewport height, 100vh.
Unfortunately there seems no CSS tag available to specify max column height. So, I see your point, long sections will create columns that are higher than the viewport.
seemed promising, with css that can go both ways, with and without columns depending on viewport height, but :( that example uses a height hardcoded in px (pixels). So I see your point, the column idea is appealing, but the implementation is tricky.
An idea for an article with a long section:
Apply a set of columns per paragraph, the html p tag.
A new paragraph will start new columns.
blank line after a paragraph for vertical separation.
The idea put to the test, with a real life example, the long intro of Elizabeth_II, four paragraphs:
Significant events included Elizabeth's coronation in 1953 and the celebrations of her Silver, Golden, Diamond, and Platinumjubilees in 1977, 2002, 2012, and 2022, respectively. Although she faced occasional republican sentiment and media criticism of her family—particularly after the breakdowns of her children's marriages, her annus horribilis in 1992, and the death in 1997 of her former daughter-in-law Diana—support for the monarchy in the United Kingdom remained consistently high throughout her lifetime, as did her personal popularity. Elizabeth died at Balmoral Castle, Aberdeenshire, in September 2022, at the age of 96, and was succeeded by her eldest son, Charles III.
Please test the example above: make your window smaller and wider. Test it on a mobile and computer monitor. The columns will adapt. Uwappa (talk) 05:59, 21 January 2023 (UTC)
The example is extremely unintuitive. I have never seen such a design anywhere, in print or on the web. I cannot imagine anyone would prefer this to Vector 2022. Stockmausen (talk) 14:09, 21 January 2023 (UTC)
I actually started a realistic look at this a couple months ago. See User:Izno/columns.css. (You can add it today with mw.loader.load('https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Izno/columns.css&action=raw&ctype=text/css','text/css'); in your personal skin Javascript. I provide no guarantees of support from this import, so consider this permanently alpha status.)
It mostly works on Wikipedia because we do a pretty decent job of sectioning our pages.
However, the fundamental issue you will run into is getting everything that should span across a column to do so, or to be outside the flow, like infoboxes. (I think they can be possibly, I just don't know how.)
I could see a community gadget supporting something like this, if someone wants to take it further or wants to work with me to develop it out, just to see what's possible. (I won't use it, so you'll need to tell me what's broken. Or fork it for yourself and work on it. :) Izno (talk) 07:28, 22 January 2023 (UTC)
how to KEEP the old skin?
Here we go again - there is a FAQ entry for turning off the new skin, but complete silence as to what I should do today to ensure I'm not switched away from my preferred skin: Vector legacy.
I'm not interested in Monobook, Timeless etc. I'm not interested in having a look at the new skin, even for a second. How do I decline the switch? CapnZapp (talk) 18:57, 15 January 2023 (UTC)
I believe you'll be switched, but you can immediately go to your preferences and click Vector legacy (2010) to go back. It's right above MinervaNeue and Monobook. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 19:56, 16 January 2023 (UTC)
CapnZapp - Femke is correct. We cannot decline. Declining this feature is not an option. Vector 2022 will be the default, all editors/readers will be switched over to Vector 2022 and then folks who don't want Vector 2022 will have to manually opt-out. Shearonink (talk) 00:21, 18 January 2023 (UTC)
Just another example of the atrocious attitude WMF has towards its users then. With fiasco after fiasco where the engineers foist new functionality upon users (structured discussions, flow, banners you can only get rid of by overly technical changes, and a general insistence to dumb down the interface) with zero thought of asking them, allowing them to choose, and/or properly documenting "what if I don't want to?" it is clear the value put upon customer relations is next to zero. But thanks to you two for clearly stating and owning up to what the dev team clearly couldn't be bothered to! CapnZapp (talk) 07:00, 18 January 2023 (UTC)
Honestly I don't see a very easy way to do this. The dev team have said that adding a new preferences option requires a lot of work so I don't think they'd be willing to add something new just for a week. Aaron Liu (talk) 13:08, 18 January 2023 (UTC)
Hey @CapnZapp I understand where you're coming from, and I'm sorry you're frustrated. I agree that we should have made it easier for people to avoid getting their skin switched automatically.
I don't think your characterization of our team's process and efforts here is quite fair. Over the past 3 years we've engaged deeply with over 1,900 individual community members (I'm talking pages upon pages of phab task discussions, talk page threads, etc.), and hundreds of logged-out users. The feedback we've gotten has been overwhelmingly positive, and of course there are people who don't want change. We have been mindful of the second group of people all along, and have tried to make it as easy as possible to opt out at all points in time. We're far from perfect, but the characterization that we don't care, have an "atrocious attitude", and aren't constantly trying to do better is inaccurate in this case. AHollender (WMF) (talk) 17:20, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
"and have tried to make it as easy as possible to opt out at all points in time"
This is not true.
If this was true you would have made this change an "opt-in for logged in users" only change.
You did not.
You chose to enforce the change on everyone with the feedback of less than 3000 people.
3000!
On a website that has millions of logged out users each day.
I use Wikipedia daily, multiple times.
I never log in, and i never once saw anything mention about how you were plotting to ruin the wiki experience of millions of desktop users to make wiki look a bit flashier on mobile.
I you had done a proper consultation you would have been told to not do it.
Which, of course, is why you all carefully limited who would find out about this change until it was too late to object or do anything.
Duplicitous is the correct word for this series of choice made by the WMF.
Shame on all of you for being dishonest.
Give us Old Wiki back and set this silly "modernist" design as an opt in for the people who want tons of white space on the screen pointlessly. 82.9.90.69 (talk) 10:56, 20 January 2023 (UTC)
They acted the decision on a misguided community closing of WP:V22RFC. In that closing two very esteemed community members misguidedly decided that if certain things were fixed there would be no need for another consultation and the thing could just roll out. They did do a proper consultation. Plus in the week before this change there were banners everywhere telling people there was going to be a skin change. Aaron Liu (talk) 12:27, 20 January 2023 (UTC)
To add: obviously I realize that I could have switched temporarily to Minerva or Monobook just through the switch and then switch back. But why isn't even a single engineer asking the question "why do we force users that want no change to do change?" :-( CapnZapp (talk) 07:03, 18 January 2023 (UTC)
Sigh, another site getting a new UI that normal users didn't even heard of, I guess the "don't fix it if it ain't broken" philosophy does not apply to the IT field. I am switching back to the legacy version. WZNGT (talk) 07:20, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
Did I miss something? I thought this was supposed to happen today...so when - today, January 18th in this timezone - is Vector 2022 going to come online as the default? Shearonink (talk) 15:33, 18 January 2023 (UTC)
Nevermind...it seems to have just switched over at least on some pages...yuck...too much whitespace. Enabling my Vector Legacy preference in 3...2...1 Shearonink (talk) 15:55, 18 January 2023 (UTC)
Oh CapnZapp, you might have to search around to find your Preferences. In the previous Vector iteration Preferences were laid-out in a single line across the top of the page. With Vector 2022 they've been moved to the very top right-hand corner, in sort of a drop-down menu arrangement or button. Shearonink (talk) 16:02, 18 January 2023 (UTC)
When grey space appears there’s a bottom right button to go full width, unless you’re talking about the lack of dividers which I agree is a problem Aaron Liu (talk) 22:26, 18 January 2023 (UTC)
HELP! I am a user with accessibility needs. On my desktop (my main way to view Wikipedia), the new skin is awful! I cannot easily click the silly, tiny hamburger menu button in the top left corner.
I shouldn't have to click on that tiny thing and THEN wait for a drop-down and THEN read through the drop-down for the link that I want (e.g. the "Permalink" link). With the old skin, I would just click the link that I wanted, in one step!
I don't want to have to have an account just to be able to read Wikipedia in a usable way. Please provide a way to use the old skin without having to sign in! 92.40.213.220 (talk) 00:44, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
"This is because of the limited capability of our servers. The logged-out users can use browser extensions allowing them to personalize their interface, or they can create an account." This is an utterly BS excuse and I think you know it. With the insane amount of money the wikimedia foundation brings in through its yearly begging campaigns, saying that they can't afford to direct some of that to having the server capability to let anyone switch to a different CSS style (perhaps by redirecting some of the funds away from being passed on to third party organizations that the original donators didn't even know about) is simply insulting.
@Aaron Liu: you said, If you click the hamburger one time without closing it afterhand the site should remember your choice and have it stay until you click the hide guillemet. Unfortunately, this does not work. If I click the hamburger once to open the drop-down, and then go to a different article (either by clicking a link in the article, or by clicking "Random article"), then the drop-down disappears.
At Wikimania 2006, the WMF and the community reached consensus: Many Wikimedians live in situations (or parts of the world) where having a Wikipedia account is a liability. No-one should require an account in order for Wikipedia to be usable for them.
The strain on servers isn’t from the new skin, it’s from saving IP preferences. You should also see the other section I gave to the IP above. Aaron Liu (talk) 12:47, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
@Aaron Liu: I have now read that section. Either the WMF should find a fix for that issue, or should revert to Monobook instead of adding needless UI obstacles (as Vector 2022 does) to the experience of disabled users. 92.40.213.220 (talk) 18:59, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
Here we go again - there is a FAQ entry for turning off the new skin, but complete silence as to what I should do today to ensure I'm not switched away from my preferred skin: Vector legacy.
I'm not interested in Monobook, Timeless etc. I'm not interested in having a look at the new skin, even for a second. How do I decline the switch? CapnZapp (talk) 18:57, 15 January 2023 (UTC)
I believe you'll be switched, but you can immediately go to your preferences and click Vector legacy (2010) to go back. It's right above MinervaNeue and Monobook. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 19:56, 16 January 2023 (UTC)
CapnZapp - Femke is correct. We cannot decline. Declining this feature is not an option. Vector 2022 will be the default, all editors/readers will be switched over to Vector 2022 and then folks who don't want Vector 2022 will have to manually opt-out. Shearonink (talk) 00:21, 18 January 2023 (UTC)
Just another example of the atrocious attitude WMF has towards its users then. With fiasco after fiasco where the engineers foist new functionality upon users (structured discussions, flow, banners you can only get rid of by overly technical changes, and a general insistence to dumb down the interface) with zero thought of asking them, allowing them to choose, and/or properly documenting "what if I don't want to?" it is clear the value put upon customer relations is next to zero. But thanks to you two for clearly stating and owning up to what the dev team clearly couldn't be bothered to! CapnZapp (talk) 07:00, 18 January 2023 (UTC)
Honestly I don't see a very easy way to do this. The dev team have said that adding a new preferences option requires a lot of work so I don't think they'd be willing to add something new just for a week. Aaron Liu (talk) 13:08, 18 January 2023 (UTC)
Hey @CapnZapp I understand where you're coming from, and I'm sorry you're frustrated. I agree that we should have made it easier for people to avoid getting their skin switched automatically.
I don't think your characterization of our team's process and efforts here is quite fair. Over the past 3 years we've engaged deeply with over 1,900 individual community members (I'm talking pages upon pages of phab task discussions, talk page threads, etc.), and hundreds of logged-out users. The feedback we've gotten has been overwhelmingly positive, and of course there are people who don't want change. We have been mindful of the second group of people all along, and have tried to make it as easy as possible to opt out at all points in time. We're far from perfect, but the characterization that we don't care, have an "atrocious attitude", and aren't constantly trying to do better is inaccurate in this case. AHollender (WMF) (talk) 17:20, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
"and have tried to make it as easy as possible to opt out at all points in time"
This is not true.
If this was true you would have made this change an "opt-in for logged in users" only change.
You did not.
You chose to enforce the change on everyone with the feedback of less than 3000 people.
3000!
On a website that has millions of logged out users each day.
I use Wikipedia daily, multiple times.
I never log in, and i never once saw anything mention about how you were plotting to ruin the wiki experience of millions of desktop users to make wiki look a bit flashier on mobile.
I you had done a proper consultation you would have been told to not do it.
Which, of course, is why you all carefully limited who would find out about this change until it was too late to object or do anything.
Duplicitous is the correct word for this series of choice made by the WMF.
Shame on all of you for being dishonest.
Give us Old Wiki back and set this silly "modernist" design as an opt in for the people who want tons of white space on the screen pointlessly. 82.9.90.69 (talk) 10:56, 20 January 2023 (UTC)
They acted the decision on a misguided community closing of WP:V22RFC. In that closing two very esteemed community members misguidedly decided that if certain things were fixed there would be no need for another consultation and the thing could just roll out. They did do a proper consultation. Plus in the week before this change there were banners everywhere telling people there was going to be a skin change. Aaron Liu (talk) 12:27, 20 January 2023 (UTC)
To add: obviously I realize that I could have switched temporarily to Minerva or Monobook just through the switch and then switch back. But why isn't even a single engineer asking the question "why do we force users that want no change to do change?" :-( CapnZapp (talk) 07:03, 18 January 2023 (UTC)
Sigh, another site getting a new UI that normal users didn't even heard of, I guess the "don't fix it if it ain't broken" philosophy does not apply to the IT field. I am switching back to the legacy version. WZNGT (talk) 07:20, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
Did I miss something? I thought this was supposed to happen today...so when - today, January 18th in this timezone - is Vector 2022 going to come online as the default? Shearonink (talk) 15:33, 18 January 2023 (UTC)
Nevermind...it seems to have just switched over at least on some pages...yuck...too much whitespace. Enabling my Vector Legacy preference in 3...2...1 Shearonink (talk) 15:55, 18 January 2023 (UTC)
Oh CapnZapp, you might have to search around to find your Preferences. In the previous Vector iteration Preferences were laid-out in a single line across the top of the page. With Vector 2022 they've been moved to the very top right-hand corner, in sort of a drop-down menu arrangement or button. Shearonink (talk) 16:02, 18 January 2023 (UTC)
When grey space appears there’s a bottom right button to go full width, unless you’re talking about the lack of dividers which I agree is a problem Aaron Liu (talk) 22:26, 18 January 2023 (UTC)
HELP! I am a user with accessibility needs. On my desktop (my main way to view Wikipedia), the new skin is awful! I cannot easily click the silly, tiny hamburger menu button in the top left corner.
I shouldn't have to click on that tiny thing and THEN wait for a drop-down and THEN read through the drop-down for the link that I want (e.g. the "Permalink" link). With the old skin, I would just click the link that I wanted, in one step!
I don't want to have to have an account just to be able to read Wikipedia in a usable way. Please provide a way to use the old skin without having to sign in! 92.40.213.220 (talk) 00:44, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
"This is because of the limited capability of our servers. The logged-out users can use browser extensions allowing them to personalize their interface, or they can create an account." This is an utterly BS excuse and I think you know it. With the insane amount of money the wikimedia foundation brings in through its yearly begging campaigns, saying that they can't afford to direct some of that to having the server capability to let anyone switch to a different CSS style (perhaps by redirecting some of the funds away from being passed on to third party organizations that the original donators didn't even know about) is simply insulting.
@Aaron Liu: you said, If you click the hamburger one time without closing it afterhand the site should remember your choice and have it stay until you click the hide guillemet. Unfortunately, this does not work. If I click the hamburger once to open the drop-down, and then go to a different article (either by clicking a link in the article, or by clicking "Random article"), then the drop-down disappears.
At Wikimania 2006, the WMF and the community reached consensus: Many Wikimedians live in situations (or parts of the world) where having a Wikipedia account is a liability. No-one should require an account in order for Wikipedia to be usable for them.
The strain on servers isn’t from the new skin, it’s from saving IP preferences. You should also see the other section I gave to the IP above. Aaron Liu (talk) 12:47, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
@Aaron Liu: I have now read that section. Either the WMF should find a fix for that issue, or should revert to Monobook instead of adding needless UI obstacles (as Vector 2022 does) to the experience of disabled users. 92.40.213.220 (talk) 18:59, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
Congratulations on Vector 2022, I like it! I think I was getting much of the appearance already because I had checked "Automatically enable most beta features" in Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-betafeatures; I assume that preferences section had toggle(s) for the new appearance that are gone now that it's about to become the default. I don't know if this is worth mentioning on the page. -- Skierpage (talk) 06:32, 16 January 2023 (UTC)
@Skierpage - thanks for your question! Yes, the preferences page allows you to switch the new skin on and off (as well as to choose any other available skin). It's located in the appearance section of the preferences page, under skins. OVasileva (WMF) (talk) 19:38, 16 January 2023 (UTC)
Feedback
This may have been pointed out by someone else but I have noticed that the sidebar menu is mostly present when you directly search for a page, if you click on a hyperlink in a page you are currently reading you will still (sometimes) see the classic UI. Not sure if this is by design or is it is a bug that is being worked on, just an observation. I personally have no issue with the new look and feel.
I have not tried this new skin , but if it is anything like the change on Simple English Wikipedia I will find it difficult for a while. That appearance, makes editing and moving around on Wikipedia tedious. I could be wrong and the new Vector is brilliant. But my general feeling is that ”if it’s not broken why fix it”. We have a great design of the Wikipedia at present. --BabbaQ (talk) 08:40, 16 January 2023 (UTC)
I tried out new Vector 2022 and didn't like it, nor any of the other skins. It looks and navigates too much like a mobile website. I don't use mobile devices except to maybe look something up when I'm on the go. I would never edit using the mobile interfaces. So I switched it back to Vector legacy. At least I feel confident now on how to access Preferences and switch it back after the auto-change (which hasn't happened yet, even though it's January 18 today). Grorp (talk) 01:32, 18 January 2023 (UTC)
”if it’s not broken why fix it” Since Wikipedia isn't fueled by adverts, this drive towards new and more users, and subsequently the constant desire to dumb down the interface that is excellent for experienced Wikipedians is incomprehensible to me. Unfortunately it appears WMF is hiring engineers that constantly must dabble to justify their existence :-( CapnZapp (talk) 07:07, 18 January 2023 (UTC)
I don't think the interface was dumbed down. They just moved a ton of things. The closest to dumbing down I can think of is moving a bunch of buttons under the user which does look better to me. Aaron Liu (talk) 13:19, 18 January 2023 (UTC)
I don't like it at all, either. The notion that they are limiting width of content when most desktops use widescreen monitors is absolutely wild. This skin is a step back for sure. Melmann16:33, 18 January 2023 (UTC)
I agree. In what way is this better? The proportions of the various elements aren't well judged. And a bit more white space, fine, but why this much? There just isn't enough on the left in the navigation menu in 9 cases out of 10 to justify it. 90.255.40.15 (talk) 18:11, 18 January 2023 (UTC)
I'm glad people are saying this. I seriously doubt that after the obligatory week of adjustment that most people are going to suddenly prefer the version to the old. Bad call from Wikipedia. YouCanDoBetter (talk) 20:59, 18 January 2023 (UTC)
No it isn’t. The opinion was split in half and summarized by two notable editors not involved with the foundation. I’ll quote it:
The most substantial concern, and the only clear blocker, was the issue of fixed-width. The idea of using a community-maintained gadget is deemed insufficient. It should be possible to achieve a full-width experience using a WMF-maintained toggle, which is clearly visible and available to both logged-out and logged-in users. There were also notable concerns about non-intuitive icons in the sticky header and the behaviour of the language selector, which we believe need to be addressed to achieve a firm consensus.
If all the concerns outlined above are satisfactorily addressed then we see community support to roll out the change, and in our view no further RfC would be required, although the Web team is free to hold one if they wish. Since the discussion was dominated by fixed-width we can’t say for sure if the other concerns are blockers. As such, our close aims to be conservative, given also the scale of the change and that each opposing editor likely did not list every concern which they agreed with if it was already raised by others.
So my first impressions on the new skin is that the wikipedia header image, and the three bar menu should move down the page with the sidebar to make it easy to access regardless of how far down on the page you are. Also, I think the light grey box used in that menu should be extended to the navigation menu as well, so that the white space is broken up rather than just feeling misaligned. A little bit of subtle cues goes a long way to making things readable. Lines are good. 12.192.193.186 (talk) 21:07, 18 January 2023 (UTC)
BabbaQ My experience is that the Vector 2022 is rather good for editors but I am not sure if also for readers. But for me navigating through long discussions it's great to be able to just click on the top button in the left sidebar. Then the scripts are at times shown larger than before which also helps. I was also hesitant at first, but the good sides of the change appear more and more. Just the process of the first RfC was a bit strange with a majority of opposes turned into a support. I sort of agree with the closers launch, but still the majority was against it and I can also use Vector 2022 voluntarily.Paradise Chronicle (talk) 12:12, 22 January 2023 (UTC)
I agree with Melmann here. It feels like opposition to the change was uniformly written off as 'non-substantive' or whatever, and then this was pushed through. "Consensus-based"? Given that passionate opposition was ignore just 'cuz, I don't think so. (And this says nothing about the way it was rolled out...)--Gen. Quon[Talk]16:44, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
@BabbaQ @Grorp @Melmann and others: as a member of the WMF firstly I can assure that we never make changes for the sake of change, to follow trends, or to justify our existence. Making changes to the Wikipedia interface is extremely difficult technically and culturally. We are very far from a world where changes are made carelessly.
The fact of the matter is that we've done our homework here (years of it), and the large majority of editors we spoke to (over 1,900 in total), and the large majority of readers (hundreds), have given us overwhelmingly positive feedback. If you take the time to read through the various rounds of feedback we collected (1, 2, 3, 4, 5) you will see this for yourself. This includes feedback on line-length, and other seemingly controversial topics. On top of that the data is very clear: people are searching more, engaging with the table of contents more, and generally exploring knowledge more deeply. On top of that we are now meeting more WCAG requirements than ever before, including most importantly their requirement around line-length. There are of course people who don't like change, don't like the foundation, and don't like the new interface. And these people inevitably scream the loudest in all possible places. This can be misleading, because it makes it seem like everyone hates the changes, and then you conclude in your mind that we must be evil because we're ignoring all of these people. This is far from the truth. We make decisions based on research, data, accessibility standards, and feedback. If you take the time to see the full picture I am confident you will come to a different understanding here.
Also, regarding the RfC, to set the record straight:
A bunch of people who had not been engaged with the project showed up and expressed very harsh first impressions, mainly regarding the fixed-width (which is now configurable)
The RfC had a favorable closing, which is done by the community and is the way that the outcomes of RfCs are determined (not by counting votes)
Our team followed the instructions of the closing of the RfC
I hope this helps you all make a little bit more sense of this frustrating change and time. I know from past experience that it takes hundreds of exchanges with volunteers to start to build any kind of trust, so I know you won't trust me for a while. But I promise you that our team wants to make the website better for everyone, and wants to help the Wikipedia movement continue to grow. If we take the time to zoom out a little bit I think we'd all realize that we're on the same team here, working to make free knowledge accessible to as many people as possible.
I've been around to know that no conversation on Wikipedia goes anywhere without assuming good faith, so I will give you the benefit of trusting that you earnestly believe what you have written here, but those words do not communicate to me and other detractors in the community what you think they do.
This all feels to me like you saying "We've got our carefully selected data and carefully selected feedback that works for us, and supports what we want to do, and community's feedback is not relevant unless it serves to further the plan that we have laid out." You have a majority negative RFC and instead of going away, making changing and coming back to do another RFC to bring the community on board, you press on because you think that the community's opinion is wrong, and the community simply lacks the grand vision that being on WMF payroll bestows upon you. This was clear when the community had to pull you back from displaying false and misleading claims during the last donation drive, and it is evident here. Did you maybe consider that people who just showed up 'out of nowhere' to take part in the RFC may have first encountered the theme during the RFC or that RFC may be a venue where they felt they can engage with the WFM as RFC is one of the primary consensus building tools on Wikipedia? Or is any discussion that goes against WMF automatically subject to canvassing?
The way I see it, as WMF your core challenge, which will define the long-term success or failure of this project, is whether you can halt and reverse the constantly shrinking editor and admin pool. Editors are fleeing the project, and the last thing you need is a divisive change that ultimately achieves nothing, like this one. The fact that you (as in WMF) don't see that the pathway towards that goal starts with listening to community more, not less, is evidence of how far your reality is removed from editors' reality. Melmann18:57, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
you press on because you think that the community's opinion is wrong isn’t right, what happened was the people from this community that closed the rfc represented it as “if you change this this and this then you can change it to the new skin without an rfc”. The first bullet point does sound like "The opposers just weren’t accustomed" though. Aaron Liu (talk) 19:12, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
@Aaron Liu ah, thanks for calling that out. Good point about my phrasing. I guess what I was trying to get at is that deep, constructive conversation doesn't happen when people shout at you about their first impressions of something. The unfortunate reality is that interfaces are complex, as is the whole wiki-ecosystem, so it takes a long time to build shared context about a project and the possible tradeoffs. I'm not claiming to know more than volunteers, just that I have spent the past 4 years learning about their workflows, and it seemed like people showed up to the RfC (without previously engaging in the project) and made snap judgements. So it didn't feel mutually respectful, or that we were similarly informed about each other's perspectives.
As you mentioned, we clearly listened to the people in the RfC. I guess my bigger point was: arguing about whitespace is in the end relatively trivial, compared to something like editor retention, pageviews, etc. AHollender (WMF) (talk) 19:43, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
@Melmann "the constantly shrinking editor and admin pool" — I completely agree that this should be a top priority. I think we (WMF + Community) should have shared goals around top level metrics like editorship, pageviews, and other straightforward but important factors. Without that kind of common ground we end up spending a ton of energy arguing about white space and icons. I think it's unfortunate that the conversations here, and on the RfC haven't been focused on high-level goals like that.
To your point about new editors — our current theory is that by simplifying the interface we've created the opportunity to emphasize key entry points like Create account, Edit, History, or others. Our plan now is to run a bunch of experiments to figure out which entry points work best for newcomers to the site. AHollender (WMF) (talk) 19:39, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
You didn't hear the opponent, again. It was you (WMF) who introduced the divisive change (despite vocal opposition) and now you reproach users of "spending a ton of energy arguing about white space and icons". Sad. 2dk (talk) 23:01, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
Desktop/mobile/app mode
I get the impression that this skin is desktop browser only; is that right? But my understanding is that the majority of users use the mobile browser view, right? So what about that mobile interface – is there any change? Myself, I am increasingly aware of such mode changes as I switch from phone to Chromebook to Android/iPhone apps on both. And note that my Chromebooks have multiple monitor sizes including a swivel screen which will go portrait (HP Chromebase). Many people use multiple devices and so there ought to be some common approach to avoid confusion but my impression is that each interface is designed and developed separately. Anyway, this documentation should do more to make it clear which mode is being changed. Andrew🐉(talk) 20:56, 16 January 2023 (UTC)
Hi @Andrew Davidson - yes, you are correct, the change is only to desktop browsers. Thanks for calling that out! I made it a bit clearer on the page. In terms of mobile - yes, the majority of the users are on the mobile site. While we didn't focus on mobile for this project, there are many other projects across the team as well as WMF product that work on mobile specifically. Over the last couple of years, the main focus there has been on editing on mobile, but we are planning on making some improvements to reading on mobile as well in the upcoming year. While building the skin, we also considered bringing it closer in visual design to the mobile site, so that people reading on mobile can still recognize Wikipedia in its desktop form as well. We also aimed to reduce code for skins overall so that it's easier in the future to build features and adapt them across both desktop and mobile skins. OVasileva (WMF) (talk) 23:40, 16 January 2023 (UTC)
Hello. I sometimes use Wiki on mobile, but nearly always for reading only. The editing experience on mobile is atrocious. But I think the better approach is to just accept this - I don't see a complex system like this ever being able to be edited on mobile (unless we get reliable AI guided voice editing or some other science fiction concept). Focus instead on serving your core experienced desktop users. That the mobile experience is simplified and catering to the new influx of users is fine, since it is next to useless for us veterans anyway. Making the desktop experience more like mobile is most emphatically not fine. Please forget any ideas to make desktop grow your user base, and instead consider treating desktop as your "power user" interface. Thank you. CapnZapp (talk) 07:13, 18 January 2023 (UTC)
Deployment notification?
I've just learned that Vector 2022 is being deployed as a default to all users in just a few hours. Apologies if I somehow missed it, but was there ever a sitewide notification to inform users of this major change? Not everyone watches the Village pumps, or subscribes to Tech News, or participated in the RfC, and I am certain there are those who are not even aware of this skin's existence. I feel like there should have been a push notification, or a talk page message, or maybe even an email sent out to all active users as a heads-up earlier this month or this week. Seems very abrupt in my opinion, many editors are likely unprepared by this change and will probably be taken aback when they log on to Wikipedia tomorrow. The Web team should brace themselves for pandemonium during the next 24 hours. InfiniteNexus (talk) 07:40, 18 January 2023 (UTC)
Indeed. Strange that the RFCs establishing this change were not advertised on Watchlists, only the deployment. And the original November RFC seems to have more opposition than support, yet was nodded through anyway. I find the new UI dreadful, all that wasted white space, it's made French Wikipedia much less pleasant to visit. — Amakuru (talk) 08:22, 18 January 2023 (UTC)
Yes. I noticed 'a banner' at the top of the page but completely ignored it since I have banners turned off. For the umpteenth time I logged in and saw this banner reappear, I finally read it... 24 hours before the scheduled changeover. I receive dozens of emails a day telling me about this or that notice on my watchlist, but not a single email about an interface change. I receive little red marker when someone uses my account name on a talk page... but not a single red indicator appeared at the top of my screen. The only notice was what looked like an advertising banner; colorful and easily 'tuned out'. Grorp (talk) 08:24, 18 January 2023 (UTC)
Knew about it from Tech News that today was the day. I too have banners turned OFF. I don't remember seeing a maintenance or special banner (which cannot be turned OFF) though. I already had Vector legacy (2010) selected, and was surprised that I was affected. Not sure if I had to... but after resetting it a couple of times in Preferences/Appearance, as far as I can tell, all seems good once again. :) — WILDSTARTALK16:31, 18 January 2023 (UTC)
I had to reset my preferences to legacy three times (it was starting to get annoying) but it seems to have stabilized now. DB1729talk16:42, 18 January 2023 (UTC)
@SGrabarczuk (WMF): It's not too late, I strongly suggest the Web team send out talk page messages to all active/regular users acknowledging the change, providing guidance on how to switch back to the old skin, and including links to more info and to give feedback. InfiniteNexus (talk) 18:04, 18 January 2023 (UTC)
@SGrabarczuk (WMF): - please do more than just talk about it. I logged on for the first time in a week, and thought I must have done something to break the system. From my perspective after a career in software, making such a major change and keeping it secret from the users is beyond bizarre. Users, including casual editors and readers, need to be advised of the change and how to restore basic aspects like a Table of Contents. Or if some power has decided to remove functionality for some reason, at least let us know.--Gronk Oz (talk) 06:55, 23 January 2023 (UTC)
Main page
I assume the big change has now taken place, and was expecting to see it immediately when I fired up Wikipedia as a logged-out user. However, I noticed that the Main page, and indeed talk pages etc, still have the old skin, while it's just the articles themselves are switched. Is that intentional? Cheers — Amakuru (talk) 16:19, 18 January 2023 (UTC)
Heh I always thought admins would already know about any WMF/skin changes moreso than the rest of us. Nice to see your question here... yeah I noticed that the Vector 2022 skin seemed to be "live" on some pages and not on others...hope my Preferences choice holds throughout the complete changeover. Shearonink (talk) 16:25, 18 January 2023 (UTC)
He he... being an admin gives me a few extra shiny buttons, but it doesn't come with a magic connection to the inner thoughts of the WMF . No doubt some admins and others do have their ears glued to the ground and also live their lives through Discord and IRC and wherever else, but personally I just find things out (or not) the same way everyone else does. Cheers — Amakuru (talk) 16:28, 18 January 2023 (UTC)
@Amakuru, @Shearonink - Thanks for your question. It will take around 24 hours for the change to propagate across the majority of pages. This means that certain pages will show the new skin, while other pages will show the old skin. This gradual release process protects our servers and ensures there is no risk for site performance. In terms of preference choices, the staged rollout we performed affected local preferences for about 1 hour. Now that the rollout is complete, preferences are now stable. Apologies for any disruptions! OVasileva (WMF) (talk) 17:49, 18 January 2023 (UTC)
Right? Are they planning on improving the new skin further because dear lord it sucks... why did they roll it out half-baked? VQuakr (talk) 17:16, 18 January 2023 (UTC)
Thank you for this assurance. I was very surprised that the new skin was given a name which duplicates one already in use, and concerned that this presentation might herald an attempt to deprecate the existing Vector skin. I'm pleased to read that the skin which many prefer will remain supported. Certes (talk) 21:29, 18 January 2023 (UTC)
New Skin - poor implementation and communication
I was quite surprised this morning to see this new skin appear. I don't know how this was supposed to be communicated, but I saw nothing until after the change. Which seems odd to me, given that it's hard to miss the donation requests.
Also, there's been no communication to undo this. It showed some kind of return to old skin (can't remember the phrasing), but when you press it, it takes you too a dialogue, rather than switching to the old skin. In the dialogue, there's no indication which of the multiple skins available WAS the old skin! Finally, when you realize that the old one was probably Vector 2012, and you select it, it again doesn't stick, and you have to realize that you need to page way, way down to a save button.
Why isn't the save button beside the change? Why isn't there an indication of which WAS the old skin? Why not just have the button to change back without going to the dialogue? And why not have some kind of banner alerting people to the change, and to a clear simple FAQ?
I'd suggest rolling back this poorly implemented change until communication and implementation are improved! Nfitz (talk) 16:46, 18 January 2023 (UTC)
I'm not at all happy with these changes. Until they have been fully tested, I also think we should return to the old presentation.--Ipigott (talk) 16:52, 18 January 2023 (UTC)
Yeah. What's the point of enforcing this new skin? I can't recall anyone ever complaining about the old skin. The new one feels half-baked and claustrophobic. Almost as bad as using the mobile site on desktop. Elli (talk | contribs) 17:02, 18 January 2023 (UTC)
There is a banner and there have been many updates up to this point (and an RFC).
From the left menu (sidebar), select the link “Switch to old look”, then select your preferred alternate skin (note: the previous default skin was Vector legacy)
Open the user menu from the button at the top right corner of the page, then select preferences. Go to the appearance tab on the preferences page and scroll to the Skin section on the preferences page
Sure, if one can find the FAQ. With no communication to ordinary users, there's no indication of a FAQ. There isn't even a link to it at preferences! The management of this transition (which I'm not convinced is even necessary) is beyond dreadful. Where did we approve this transition, BTW. I know there were certain improvements and preconditions that had been set before this happens ... and it appears that they haven't been met yet! Nfitz (talk) 19:10, 18 January 2023 (UTC)
Hi @Nfitz - thanks for your feedback. If you're interested in learning more about the process and communication here on English Wikipedia, we've written up a summary on the project page here. On this page, you'll also find some instructions on the different ways you can opt-out of the skin. We are currently running banners to all logged-in users that link to this page so that everyone has a chance to see the opt-out instructure. Thanks @Shearonink for adding the clarification about the save button! OVasileva (WMF) (talk) 19:19, 18 January 2023 (UTC)
We need to put this crucial information somewhere that everyone will see it, preferably in flashing bold 96-point capitals. I would even go as far as a banner on the Main Page, though that's mainly aimed at readers who can't easily opt out (and must be banging their heads against their screens in millions trying to do so). A watchlist notice explaining concisely how to continue enjoying the last 13 years' experience is the least we should do. Certes (talk) 21:35, 18 January 2023 (UTC)
Somewhere at least. User:Shearonink says there are banners running - and yet I've not seen any. If only I had an extra account to test if my change of skin nullified the banners before I had a chance to see them. Nfitz (talk) 23:34, 18 January 2023 (UTC)
No you didn't - looking carefully, following the mention of the words were "Thanks @[[User:Shearonink ...] and in my haste reading wiki-markup I assume that was your comment!
Hey @Nfitz - you're correct. The current banners are only appearing for people using the new skin, both logged-in and logged-out. The banners that announced the timing of the change and linked to the project page here with more information were showed to all logged-in users, regardless of skin preference up until we started deploying the change earlier today. OVasileva (WMF) (talk) 00:09, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
Use 2010 Vector as an IP
Is there a way to restore the 2010 vector while logged out? I do not log in on my work computer, but do visit the site for information during the day here, and this is not something I want to use. 174.3.240.143 (talk) 16:59, 18 January 2023 (UTC)
Short of adding ?useskin=vector to the end of the url for every page you visit or logging in to an account (Alt or main) there is no way for logged out users to see the old skin. Terasail[✉️]17:02, 18 January 2023 (UTC)
This does work. The only annoying thing is that if I want to copy a URL and say use it to create a link in a document, I generally would have to hand-edit the URL to now *remove* the extra `&useskin=vector` parameter, unless I now want all such links to include it for all time. Eblon2 (talk) 22:40, 20 January 2023 (UTC)
We're working on that here. I expect add-ons for the popular web browsers will appear within days once the world wakes up to this change. Certes (talk) 21:37, 18 January 2023 (UTC)
As someone who isn't used to change and doesn't like it, I like this change. I am not going back. I'm already used to this format via the French Wikipedia. Electos242 (talk) 17:16, 18 January 2023 (UTC)
Chacun à son goût. I've coped with this interface for some time on the French wiki and have seen it slowly creeping in on the Scandinavian languages too but for the type of editing I do every day, I find the 2010 interface much more efficient. That's not to say the 2022 interface could not be improved on the basis of editor reactions.--Ipigott (talk) 17:28, 18 January 2023 (UTC)
Same here. I, of course, saw the notices about the RFC and implementation decision, but mine actually changed early (a week or two or three ago?), and I've been quite pleased with it. Based on the research-backed rationales, it seems like a no-brainer. — Fourthords | =Λ= |17:25, 18 January 2023 (UTC)
I like it too (once I realised where the watchlist link was), I have edited here for 16 years, with more than 200,000 edits and spend about 7 hours a day here, the new look is bright and spacious, well done. Theroadislong (talk) 12:34, 20 January 2023 (UTC)
But why did you need to search? "Watchlist" is pretty intuitive, the upside down flag of Togo means absolutely nothing (apart from to Togo of course). That was one of the key reasons I reverted. Trying to memorise obscure icons isn't something that comes easily to me, I far prefer English words. Martin of Sheffield (talk) 12:41, 20 January 2023 (UTC)
TOO BRIGHT!
Putting it simply, the previous version had a greyish background whereas the new-and-unexpected one is VERY BRIGHT. I've reverted my interface for the moment until I can track which are the right css defs to make it darker. --AlisonW (talk) 18:02, 18 January 2023 (UTC)
Agreed. I found the greys pleasing, and the "BLASTING WHITE AT YOUR EYEBALLS ALL THE TIME" look of Vector 2022 actively unpleasant. --Kizor22:43, 18 January 2023 (UTC)
Hey @AlisonW — the easiest way to do this would be adding whatever background color you want to .mw-page-container, and then adding a white background as well as some padding to main#content. That will at least get you most of the way there. Let me know if you'd like more help in getting that setup.
I tried the main page while logged out on my laptop. I have a 1080p screen, and I just measured with a ruler: the whitespace portion of the page was 18cm wide, while the actual main page content was only 16cm wide. Is it intentional that this layout shows more whitespace than content on the screen? Clay (talk) 18:05, 18 January 2023 (UTC)
Hi @Patafisik (WMF): 1. None of the reference websites listed in that FAQ have a ratio of less than 1 when it comes to width of content vs. width of whitespace, as is the case with this new layout. 2. You can't personalize very easily when you're logged out. 3. This is the first impression that people get of Wikipedia now, just a tiny sliver of text with massive walls of whitespace surrounding it.
I don't want to beat a dead horse, since I have seen the discussions elsewhere about this issue, but it just plain looks bad in this aspect. Clay (talk) 18:55, 18 January 2023 (UTC)
Hi @Patafisik (WMF): I tried the new skin after realizing that the "whiteout" look was not due to my browser acting up (I use Wikipedia daily and didn't know about this rollout). I was dumbfounded by the choice to make the site look like I was browsing from a mobile so I started personalizing my experience since I'm using a desktop PC. After a while I realized that I was removing all the new features and simply switched back to the old skin. None of the explanations in the FAQ look convincing ("reducing eye strain", really?) Rizzardi (talk) 08:32, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
Article tools will move soon at the right
Hi @Rizzardi: thank you for your feedback. I respect your choice and I don't want to persuade you to use Vector 2022, however I would like to give you some links: about the limited content width you can find useful references in the page dedicated to the feature and in our Repository (e.g. Computer text line lengths affect reading and learning by Peter Orton, Ph.D. IBM Center for Advanced Learning).--Patafisik (WMF) (talk) 12:52, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
Hi @Patafisik (WMF): The article by Peter Orton has been written in 2007; it contains the line "Isn’t reading text on a low resolution computer monitor difficult enough?" that shows that the research is somewhat dated. The articles listed in the Research section of the MediaWiki have been published in the following years: 2005, 2002, 2001, 2013, 2002, 2003, 2004 (the most recent, written ten years ago, addresses the problem of line length in the context of dyslexia). Modern monitors have exceptional resolutions, it seems strange to base one's design choices on decades old research. Rizzardi (talk) 14:15, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
Yeah, this looks god awful. I have been using and editing Wikipedia for a very long time but this makes it repulsive. --Tumbledee (talk) 17:38, 20 January 2023 (UTC)
Im positive
I think the skin is as good as it is as logged in users can go back to the old skin. For readers it's much better and I read lots of people that were actually positive. People just need to get used to it. Coldbolt (talk) 18:05, 18 January 2023 (UTC)
The Platypus article, showing the relative width of the infobox in relation to other features of the page.
I understand that the new theme has been in development for a number of years, but did anyone on the development team ever think about the interaction between the new restricted width and infoboxes? The already limited width is even narrower and harder to parse when an infobox is alongside. And yes, before I get a response, I do know that I can change my own preference on width or switch to the old theme, but this looks ridiculous for a logged out user. Eilidhmax (talk) 19:35, 18 January 2023 (UTC)
Hey @Eilidhmax — by any chance might you have some userscript or gadget affecting the width of the infobox? I have not yet been able to replicate what you are seeing. For me in looks like this:
Platypus article on Vector 2022
Can you try viewing the article in a private/incognito window?
In general: the max-width takes into account the most common infobox sizes. Unfortunately, since we don't yet have global templates, there is a lot of variation in the widths. One way we might overcome this in the future is to make the max-width based on the width of the infobox, or just make some exceptions if the page is using a specific infobox template that is extra wide. AHollender (WMF) (talk) 19:45, 18 January 2023 (UTC)
Why why why is there all that wasted white space, especially on the right side of the article window...what purpose is there to push the information/the text aside in favor of...white space? That wasted space is present regardless if editors/readers toggle the relative width. Or not. Don't readers, Wikipedia customers, come to the site to, oh I dunno...read?!? Shearonink (talk) 20:22, 18 January 2023 (UTC)
Oh GOODY. Now at least I know what New! Improved! feature is headed my way. Lulz I think I'm going to cling to Vector 2010/Classic Vector for a good long while, maybe until it is pried from my cold dead editing fingers. Shearonink (talk) 21:06, 18 January 2023 (UTC)
I've tested and it's related to my chosen thumbnail size - a) why does that break this? and b) why is there no indication of what the default option is? Eilidhmax (talk) 20:38, 18 January 2023 (UTC)
Do not force the creation of a user account
I, amongst doubtless thousands of others, was surprised to find Vector2022 as the appearance of wikipedia this morning. I doubt most viewers of wikipedia were aware of this project, and in particular that this redesign was going to arrive.
I do not particularly like Vector2022, finding it annoying and a solution in pursuit of a problem. However, new UIs being generated for no apparent reason is a common trend, and I begrudge that fact.
What was particularly galling was the lack of ready options to revert from Vector2022 to legacy Vector 2010. The only options available at present time are to either append "?useskin=vector" to every single wikipedia URL, a loathsome process (though doubtlessly one that will soon be automated by browser extensions), or to create an account and revert the appearance in preferences. I chose the latter, and am not particularly pleased by that. I did not want a wikipedia account. I am not of the invaluable sort who edits and contributes to this resource. I do not care to log-in to a website that I do not really interact with outside of base research and answering questions.
Please implement an option to revert to Vector 2010 without the need for a user account. A great many of those who use this website will be grateful. DoubleSashed (talk) 19:39, 18 January 2023 (UTC)
Thank you @DoubleSashed for your opinion. The reason why logged-out users can not save their preferences on Wikipedia is strictly related to the privacy policy (we just don't collect that data) and the architecture of our servers (what you see as a logged-out user is mostly a cached version, and not a version generated directly from the database). So as a logged-out user, you may use a bookmarklet. Copy that code and just replace "monobook" with "vector". Here you will find more information on that. SGrabarczuk (WMF) (talk) 20:08, 18 January 2023 (UTC)
@SGrabarczuk (WMF): Can you clarify the privacy issue, or point me to the discussion where it was raised? I just started a brand-new, private browsing session, visited en.wikipedia.org, and found six cookies, called "enwikimwuser-sessionId", "enwikiwmE-sessionTickLastTickTime", "enwikiwmE-sessionTickTickCount", "GeoIP", "WMF-Last-Access-Global:" and "WMF-Last-Access". How would adding one more cookie called "enwiki-skin" or whatever, be a problem strictly related to the privacy policy when all these other cookies aren't? Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 20:47, 18 January 2023 (UTC)
Nonsense. You can save one cookie with the preference. There is no privacy involved. This is such a cockup, seriously. As someone who has been a donor for over a decade I'm frankly annoyed that I have to now manage accounts on ALL of my devices just so I can read a page that is laid out properly. G4zeroj (talk) 00:21, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
While this is a solution, it is far from accessible. Please consider adding an option for laypeople.
As it was put in the RfC: "We can't pretend the settings are accessible to everyone when the user would have to go through all the steps of creating an account and logging in to use them. That would be a dark pattern." --Kizor20:59, 18 January 2023 (UTC)
@Jdlrobson: Win 10 Pro/Chrome 109. Does the issue occur with your gadgets / user scripts disabled? sort of. It appears to be related to the TOC. If I expand the TOC enough to get a scrollbar, mousewheel will briefly scroll the TOC instead of the entire webpage, then switch to the entire page regardless of where I am hovering, then not scroll at all from mousewheel input (or, I'm seeing now, from left clicks on the light gray portion of the scrollbar or the direction arrows). But it's not totally frozen; keyboard input and click-drag on the scrollbar still have effect. The behavior is the same in normal mode as with safemode. VQuakr (talk) 20:05, 18 January 2023 (UTC)
The Help Desk and Teahouse are getting flooded with questions about this; is there some sort of blanket announcement message that could be sent out, perhaps directing people here? 331dot (talk) 19:41, 18 January 2023 (UTC)
@331dot - thanks, that's a good idea! We're currently running banners to all users. For logged-out users, it's directing them to a landing page with general information about the skin and links to give feedback on the main Mediawiki page for the project. For logged-in users, it's linking them here. Potentially we can add a link to this page on the landing page of the foundation site too so logged-out users can see both conversations. OVasileva (WMF) (talk) 19:51, 18 January 2023 (UTC)
No banner here. But I do get one for the next Wikimania Conference, if I run an incognito tab and then log in. Nfitz (talk) 23:55, 18 January 2023 (UTC)
I'm on the fence
This feels like it was meant for mobile users. Some thoughts
1) So much space on both sides can be used/employed for viewing.
2) For logged in users, a contributions link and should be visible with one-click, not as part of a drop down
3) for me, I rather see all the left hand column stuff as is, without having it "hidden" behind one button.
Ebbedlila They are trying to balance the needs/wants of new users with those of longtime users. That's probably the reason for the drop down menu and left hand column stuff. 331dot (talk) 19:44, 18 January 2023 (UTC)
Well, the FAQ's answers are disappointing. I'll have to look for external options to bring back the previous layout because I'm not interesting in logging in just to re-enable the old skin. Despite what the FAQ claims this new layout clearly has the trappings of mobile-friendly web design. There's simply too much wasted empty space and less text displayed on screen. - 60.49.61.239 (talk) 21:37, 18 January 2023 (UTC)
Regarding the space on the sides: the starting point was introducing a limited line-length (more on the reasoning behind that here). With that change implemented, anyone on a big screen has a lot of blank space. We don't see that as an issue in and of itself. However it does present an opportunity. Next week we'll be releasing an update, which uses some of that space for page tools (see prototype here). Until we think of super high value uses for that space, we don't plan on filling it just to avoid having blank space.
Regarding the personal tools being in a menu: we're looking into options for showing more of those tools outside the menu at larger screen widths. The data regarding the usage of those tools indicates that people don't use them more than once or twice during a session, so I don't think there is much of downside to having them in a menu. On a higher-level this is an effort to clean up and organize the interface, and then reevaluate what the highest utility features are (which might be existing things, or new things we haven't built). For example imagine we develop a dark mode, and want to put a button/toggle in a consistent location for logged in & logged out people — now we would be able to do that. AHollender (WMF) (talk) 20:14, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
Limiting line length strictly worse. In HTML body if you resize the window, the text will flow to match the new width. If you prefer a narrower (or wider!) width, simply resize the window. Setting a line limit removes that ability from the user. It seems like there was a huge amount of effort for what is a very limited impact based on "data" (I am skeptical of reasoning from the general to the specific when it comes to usability. The array of devices and individuals is so broad and high dimensional doing any kind of data analysis is going to fail. And judging by the response and feedback it has.) Eblon2 (talk) 22:33, 20 January 2023 (UTC)
It seems like this was based on the fundamental assumption that Wikipedia is primarily experienced as long-form reading material. (The research and examples used to justify the decision all/mostly fall into that category.)
If there are specific concerns you have, please discuss them. Most if not all features are present, just in different places. This has been studied and developed for years to balance the needs/wants of every human on this planet, all of whom use the site differently. There may be browser extensions you can use to restore the old appearance, but without those, you will need to create an account to be able to use the old appearance. 331dot (talk) 19:48, 18 January 2023 (UTC)
If the driving factor behind the change to Vector 2022 is usability, then why make the option to change back to the more familiar skin so esoteric? It's not impossible (or frankly difficult) to let the user change the skin (drop-down menu at the bottom of the page?) and save it as a cookie. Keep all traffic with default skin settings (i.e. no cookie) on Vector 2022, but redirect traffic to the ...?useskin=skin version of the page if a cookie is detected. This a.) avoids the caching issue, since most IP users won't care enough to change from the default, and b.) from my understanding, can be done entirely in a couple lines of client-side javascript.
If Wikipedia wants to promote usability, they should recognize that not everyone has the technical ability or freedom to create a Wikipedia account, create bookmarklets or install browser extensions. Those people should have the ability to choose what skin is most usable for them.
I love how IPs, the main target of this change, are saying "this doesn't look good" and the first things you recommend are things most people probably won't know how to do, or won't bother to do. Nothing can be simple for the targets of the change(especially considering how in the RFC, it was stated it would be difficult to poll them). Ijustlikeproperspelling (talk) 02:05, 20 January 2023 (UTC)
Every article that has a table of contents on the left, balanced with a vertical series of images on the right, will now have to be redesigned. Like 2022 Formula One World Championship. There are a lot of pages with this type of design that are now 'broken'. However, redesign or don't-redesign, it will look bad in one skin or the other. Your Pluto#Mass and size example looked equally bad on both skins on my computer... until I zoomed out (on legacy) and the images/tables fell into place; but on the new skin they never fell into place no matter how much I zoomed out. Grorp (talk) 20:28, 18 January 2023 (UTC)
The lack of space between the lead section and rest of the content makes every article look like a stub
Of all the changes this one is the one I'm least a fan off, it really does not jive with what I've become used to. Having the TOC below the lead section was easy on the eyes Imho. ★Trekker (talk) 19:58, 18 January 2023 (UTC)
Its happening when I'm logged in and editing, I don't think its an issue tied to an IP but just an issue I personally have with the new visual.★Trekker (talk) 20:31, 18 January 2023 (UTC)
Hello! Thanks for your feedback - this is an interesting opinion, a rare one! I guess this is a bit of a tradeoff - sure, the previous look had some advantages the current one doesn't. But its disadvantages are the reason why we believe the change is an improvement nevertheless. You may learn more here about the tests we did, versions we compared, and related stuff. (And just as Jon, I'm curious if there are any specific articles where this looks particularly odd.) SGrabarczuk (WMF) (talk) 20:18, 18 January 2023 (UTC)
I was reading this article and it took me a longer while that I would like to admit to realize that the TOC was now located by the side of the article. But really I don't think its a problem for one specific article as much as its a major break now compared to how I was used to looking at articles. Generally having a TOC separate the lead from the rest of the article was an indication to me that a page was not a stub but a more extensive article (but that may have been a personal bias of mine in the end) so now with that gone each time I glance at a page and there is no TOC I immediately get a 'stub!' alarm in my brain.★Trekker (talk) 20:31, 18 January 2023 (UTC)
I can kind of see the reasoning for moving the TOC, but I think there should still be more space between the lead section and the rest of the article. Perhaps the Wikipedias in other languages do it differently, but on en-wiki, the lead section is supposed to be a summary of the body, which I feel means it should be somewhat set apart from the rest of the article. And adding a little space after the lead section would at least reduce the image-crowding problems that other editors have complained about. A. Parrot (talk) 17:44, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
I would have to strongly agree with the comments above... this new change is not being clearly communicated. A (en.wikipedia-)global significant change has been made/published to the wikipedia layout today. There should be a front-and-center page saying, at the least, "To learn more about the global reformatting of wikipedia, check out *page*". It should be EASY to find, not just for active editors, not just for logged-in users, but for EVERYONE browsing Wikipedia, even anonymous Wikipedia viewers. (and ideally, even for people using a no-javascript browser). I had to spend a couple of minutes wandering around Wikipedia to find out what was going on ("Is my browser broken?"), and it would have been a lot longer if I wasn't already familiar with the behind-the-scenes parts of Wikipedia.
Bsammon (talk) 20:15, 18 January 2023 (UTC)
Some pages that don't mention this highly visible change, and I would suggest they should (maybe just a one-line "see here for more information"):
As a very active editor and admin I also had no idea this was happening, I thought Wikipedia was having a server issue. But lets not focus on what has happened, lets focus on the future. Canterbury Tailtalk21:12, 18 January 2023 (UTC)
Hi @Bsammon - thanks for your feedback and sorry to hear you weren't aware of the changes ahead of time. For logged-in users, we have been running banners asking people to try out the new skin for the past couple of months. We also ran banners to all logged-in users announcing the time of the change with a link to opt-out instructions and other information. Throughout the process, we've also sent out two watchlist notices - one during the RfC here on English Wikipedia, and another one last week about the upcoming change. We are also currently running banners with more information to all users, logged-in and logged-out. In the future, we can consider what additional notices might make information about the change even more visible. OVasileva (WMF) (talk) 23:02, 18 January 2023 (UTC)
Add my name to the list of people who saw no such banners - I use Wikipedia almost daily, logged-in and logged-out. The last banner I saw was the donation banner. Frankly, the fact that an administrator of all people was unaware that this change would be happening should be proof enough that you didn't do nearly enough to ensure people were informed of this change and given the opportunity to comment. WalnutBun (talk) 02:54, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
I read Wikipedia logged out. Yesterday, when I first noticed this change, I used at least 30 minutes trying to fix my browser, because there was NO WARNING about this change. The banner telling about this change was not there until maybe 60 minutes later.
You need to warn people about changes like this. There was no advance warning for logged out users.
You should go back to old system now. After that reate a proper test version which you advertise widely and then ask feedback also from users who don't have wikipedia account. Make changes based on that feedback and try again. 2001:14BA:2BF7:F700:B26:BF56:169:9663 (talk) 08:10, 20 January 2023 (UTC)
When I click this link here in the new skin - 2012 Africa Cup of Nations knockout stage#Zambia vs. Sudan - on Google Chrome (Windows 10), it loads the page and initially seems to go to the correct anchor, but then for some reason the page moves down, followed by the menu bar sliding on top of it, leaving the reader too far down the page. The top of the section linked should be visible. Cheers — Amakuru (talk) 20:54, 18 January 2023 (UTC)
While I'm here, might as well report this too - I've noticed a few times that when I scroll down a long page using the scrollbar, after a while the text on the page starts to appear in bold rather than the usual font. When I left go of the mouse button to release the scrollbar, the bold persists for a second or two and then disappears. — Amakuru (talk) 20:59, 18 January 2023 (UTC)
Oh, so many complaints! Well, of course it is to be expected; Wikians tend to call ourselves "progressive" but try tampering with our old and trusted ways, and hear us snarl! And yes, despite using the new skin on Simple English for many months, I still have a complaint.
My old eyes are fading, though not yet to the point that calls for special treatment. I just have to crank up my font size a little, to see easily. Problem is with how the side menu works. Yes, the option to hide it or see it is definitely good. Trouble is, when I click to see it, it pops up above the page. Is an optional top menu a bad thing? you may ask. It's a good thing if it's a proper top menu, and that's what's wrong. It's just a properly formatted side menu, but moved to the top where its format is not proper. Top menus, like bottom menus, ought to spread out across the page, not stick up far above. The format should be redesigned; I'm surprised if I'm the first to be whining about this particular feature as it's got to be a nuisance to some other editors besides us cranky old people.
One possibility might be to pop the menu to spread across the same line as the newly abbreviated top menu, making it take a few lines, along with all the features that used to be there and are now in a submenu. But anyway the side menu, when it must pop to the top, ought to become a proper top menu. Jim.henderson (talk) 21:12, 18 January 2023 (UTC)
That means your page is less than 720px wide and the layout switches to a mobile compatible safety net.. You are pretty far zoomed in, or your screen is not big to begin with and you are zoomed in. I too hope that this will get some attention soon, as it doesn't really feel like what most people would expect. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 21:21, 18 January 2023 (UTC)
If I'm understanding what you are describing correctly, this will be addressed next week by phab:T302073. The current plan is to deploy to Italian and Vietnamese tomorrow and if no issues, to roll out the change to English and others next week. This will make the main menu a dropdown on tablet-like devices. Jdlrobson (talk) 22:08, 18 January 2023 (UTC)
My physical display is 1920x1080 which would be plentiful except that I am doing Opera zoomed at 200% font so as to see clearly, so your assumption is close enough to being correct. Same happens with other browsers. Anyway I am hopeful. I fail to understand, from the short description, that the linked Phab is relevant to this particular gripe, but that doesn't mean it isn't, and anyway an industrious team is clearly at work and we can reasonably expect it to turn out well. I think I'll take a look at Italian tomorrow, though I don't know the language. Thanks for your attention. Jim.henderson (talk) 00:10, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
Significant backlash
As I predicted hours before the deployment, there has been absolute chaos since the major UI change, and we're not even 12 hours in. Someone should seriously consider starting a new RfC or petition to restore the old default skin at least until a majority of the community's concerns have been addressed and there is strong consensus to adopt Vector 2022. The closing comment on the previous RfC that said an RfC would not be necessary after the fixed-width thing was addressed was misguided, in my opinion. InfiniteNexus (talk) 21:32, 18 January 2023 (UTC)
I am looking at the reactions from Twitter (search "Wikipedia layout") and they largely echo the comments here. It seems the WMF is being more dogmatic about the whitespace issue than it is willing to work with the community. Clay (talk) 21:45, 18 January 2023 (UTC)
What regular person is going out of their way to tweet that they like the new wikipedia skin? They will only load twitter up if they have some complaints that they want to be heard... Terasail[✉️]22:28, 18 January 2023 (UTC)
People regularly comment on things when they like them, especially on Twitter where everything typed is treated as a throwaway comment. If you actually search the above on Twitter, you will even see some positive comments mixed in there. Clay (talk) 22:31, 18 January 2023 (UTC)
It seems to me that the pro Vector 2022 people are dismissing a lot of the concerns as a kneejerk reaction to change. What are the odds that some of these reconfigurations are actually fixed? WikEdits5 (talk) 19:59, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
I agree on the creation of a new RFC as well, the WMF has been so hush-hush about this rollout and did not bother to mass-notify anyone until the week of deployment. Any opinions expressed before today were of the very active technical users and clearly does not represent the overall consensus of actual editors and readers. Cards8466422:15, 18 January 2023 (UTC)
I strongly agree. I saw some post by a defender (designer?) of the new UI somewhere above on this page, claiming that "the majority" was favorable to this change, while linking a page in which about 160 people had expressed their opinion. This doesn't represent the millions of wikipedia readers (most of whom have no account) anyhow. Just give unlogged users a (highly visible) way to revert to the old UI and gather data about how many people reverted. Then you'll know if your new UI is liked or not. 86.241.217.134 (talk) 03:40, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
Hi @InfiniteNexus - thanks for your feedback. If you're curious, I wanted to point you to to this section which highlights the conversations and collaborations with the English Wikipedia community both before and after the RfC. These conversations helped us in determining which changes to make to ensure we're meeting the needs of both the community and our readers. In addition, we'd like to point out that the skin was very popular across many logged-in users over time, many of whom were not part of the more technical members of the community. Prior to deployment it was the most popular non-default skin, with more active editors using it than any other non-default skin (such as Monobook, Timeless, etc). Hope this is helpful! OVasileva (WMF) (talk) 22:23, 18 January 2023 (UTC)
The point is a lot of people are hating it despite community consensus, the changes that are made is irrelevant. What matters is a lot of people hate it for some reason so there should be another rfc to let their voice be heard and do “damage control” Aaron Liu (talk) 22:40, 18 January 2023 (UTC)
300 people (half of which opposed the change) is what you consider a "community consensus" on a website used by millions? Even if we only considered active users with an account, this wouldn't even be 5% of the community... 86.241.217.134 (talk) 03:45, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
Hi, RfCs don’t operate on !votes, they operate on consensus. In this case the consensus appears to be that if the issues brought up by the opposed are resolved then it can be deployed. The problem here is that these issues appear to have been resolved controversially.
300 is already quite large for Wikipedia RfC standards, and it’s a large enough survey sample. If 300 random people have achieved consensus why would the millions’ opinion be much different? Aaron Liu (talk) 12:59, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
Of course there was selection bias. As a heavy user of the website but not an editor, I had no idea this was going on. Only those deeply plugged into the interminable bureaucracy had any idea this was happening. Pretending this is not the case does not help your cause. Furthermore, it's very different to talk about potential future changes than to actually react to the impact of them. For example, see the House voting 60 times to repeal Obamacare when Republicans held it but not the Senate, and then failing to get it repealed when they had a full trifecta. IWantTheOldInterfaceBack (talk) 13:20, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
No. All accounts who were active enough should've seen notices plugged in several places, such as {{centralized discussion}}, watchlist notices, the village pump, arbcom elections, admin newsletters, the signpost newsletter, responses at the help desk and teahouse, etc. Though the average reader that doesn't care about signpost wouldn't know about it, almost all editors with a changed watchlist have seen the publicizing of that rfc. Aaron Liu (talk) 13:25, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
@Aaron Liu: I'd call myself a very, very active editor and I was totally blind-sided by this sudden switch; many other editors who are fairly active are saying the same thing, too! So stating that "all accounts who were active enough should've seen notices" about it is completely wrong.--Gen. Quon[Talk]16:48, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
Agreed. I'm here every day and similarly did not know about it until it was implemented. I would have opposed things in the RfC, but it doesn't seem like it would have mattered since the majority that opposed implementation was ignored anyways... Tkbrett (✉)19:36, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
I found out about this redesign only after the pages I'm viewing started changing appearance. One page could be Vector 2022, another one Vector 2010, so I basically had two themes depending on which article I was viewing (nice deployment). I thought it was a bug, so I went to preferences, noticed Vector 2022 enabled, cursed a bit (I hate when my settings are changed without my consent), and went back to Vector 2010. It was a couple days ago, and only now I've realized this was actually a site-wide change in defaults. Granted, I'm not that active in "meta-pedia" stuff, but I visit here almost every day, and I was completely unaware about all of this. RoadTrain (talk) 23:44, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
Also I'll repeat what I'm saying, a lot of people hate it now that it's actually implemented so YES THERE SHOULD BE A NEW RFC Aaron Liu (talk) 13:27, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
Support Changing back to the previous skin, until many issues can be addressed, and communications can be improved. Nfitz (talk) 23:59, 18 January 2023 (UTC)
Support Bringing back Vector 2010. People can say "consensus" how many times they want but in the end its clear that incredibly few people were actually involved in forcing this on the majority who don't want it.★Trekker (talk) 13:09, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
I fail to see how that makes this section the formal discussion, in fact this entire talk page is mainly comprised of people seeking consensus but not in a !vote format. Aaron Liu (talk) 15:22, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
Yesterday I stared and then dived for my preferences; thank you for making it so easy to revert back to Vector 2010! As others appear to be reacting with similar dismay, I would support an RfC. (I understand that there is some consideration being given to enabling non-logged in users to choose between formats, as well; please follow up with this!) Butterfly or Chuang Tzu? (talk) 23:59, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
If there is consensus for an RfC, where would be the appropriate venue? I don't think it should be this page, the RfC will likely grow pretty large, and the section will likely get lost in the swarm of new complaints that will keep coming in during the next several days/weeks. InfiniteNexus (talk) 00:55, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
We can see the way the original RfC (Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Deployment of Vector (2022)) was done. The starter first drafted it in sandbox, moved it to the subpage to continue drafting, finished it up and started it, and at least requested watchlist notices. I'm not sure what other publicizing was involved atm but ither ways of publiciizing it include asking at the village pump technical while drafting on how good the rfc looks, publicizing it at other village pumb sections, including it in {{centralized discussion}}, and adding a sitenotice. Aaron Liu (talk) 02:20, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
Loving it!
Just a note on the other side of the "backlash" that I'm loving it. I thought maybe I had gone to the mobile site instead, but it looks great to me. It'll take a little getting used to, but all great things do. -- Michael Scott Asato Cuthbert(talk)22:23, 18 January 2023 (UTC)
Not ironic, I wager, knowing MSC :) Who is exacting in music + aesthetics, so I'd take this as a positive signal. – SJ +16:22, 20 January 2023 (UTC)
Thanks SJ -- and, yeah, that's my name. Some people were named before The Office came out. But I am pretty cheery and not so bright just like my namesake. Just hopefully a little less cringe inducing. And yes, my comment was real. (Yeah, there are a few glitches here and there (like the "v" overlapping "Common edit summaries") but nothing unexpected for a new system.) -- Michael Scott Asato Cuthbert(talk)23:44, 23 January 2023 (UTC)
Vector 2022, go to hell.
I am pissed off that this format change was changed on accounts that have specifically chosen to use Vector classic over the others. I've looked at and previewed this and the other skins before and I've rejected vector 2022 and all the others for layout spacing and button placement reasons. Only Vector classic is functionally pleasant to use. I reverted today's unwelcomed change in my settings immediately this morning and I will NOT be supporting this Vector 2022 mess. The spacing of various elements is utter crap in this design. Too wide, bloated, and roomy on the sidebar, and a fucked up narrow squish fest in the read/edit pane. Not pleased with the user account navigation buttons all hiding in a drop down menu.
*IF AND ONLY IF* the left sidebar was brought back to a reasonable width (vector classic widths or so), with the edit pane reclaiming that same amount, AND the account navigation buttons were restored to the top right of the site as they appear in Vector classic, THEN I might be supportive and try out the skin, but these two issues are nonnegotiable details that I will not compromise on.
Some website design changes/overhauls I have loved and been supportive of (on other websites), but this Vector 2022 is currently a farce and I will openly reject it until the end, or until the critical issues stated above are corrected. Until then, Vector classic user for life. Respectfully, Zinnober9 (talk) 22:45, 18 January 2023 (UTC)
Poor use of space
Why are the left and right 1/4th of my screen completely empty with this new look? This is an incredibly inefficient use of screen space, I think it's fine as an optional skin but this should NOT be the default for users. IAMspecials (talk) 23:24, 18 January 2023 (UTC)
Hi @IAMspecials - thanks for your feedback. Generally, we've limited the width of the content, as this makes it easier to read and also more likely to retain or remember the content which was read. If you're curious, we've added more details in our FAQ about the academic studies we looked at as well as our internal work and thinking around this. That said - the width is configurable and you can change it if you wish. We've left some instructions on how you can configure the width of the content in the new skin on the project page. OVasileva (WMF) (talk) 23:36, 18 January 2023 (UTC)
You are incorrect, User:OVasileva (WMF) - reducing the width makes it harder to read. And then there's the over-use of white; and my gosh, WTF would I want to see the TOC all the time? And why not use the left-hand side to show languages, instead of having them under an extra click underneath a mystery icon that you have to scroll up to to get? I can only conclude that the interface was designed by someone who can only read Wikipedia in one language! Nfitz (talk) 00:48, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
No, it doesn't. Reducing the amount of information on the screen makes the website harder to use and nearly unreadable. If I want less information on my screen at a time, I will simply narrow the width of my browser window.
People who want less width can narrow their browser window. Why force this on us all? Most people will never bother to make an account like I did.
@IWantTheOldInterfaceBack Keep in mind that everyone can just press the button on the bottom right to stop make it narrow, this was also addressed in the previous RfC. A ton of studies have shown that keeping line width between certain numbers does make reading easier by reducing the movement of eyeballs. I agree that there is way too much stuff replaced with white though. Aaron Liu (talk) 13:09, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
I don't see that button on my 1920X1080 screen unless I zoom out for some reason. Can we make it visible for everyone? –dlthewave☎03:29, 20 January 2023 (UTC)
You can also search for it in preferences, this is addressed in the faq and the corresponding section in the article. I do agree that it should be more visible, @OVasileva (WMF) could you file/search for a phab ticket for us? many thanks! Aaron Liu (talk) 04:06, 20 January 2023 (UTC)
Thanks! I have Windows scaled to 125% (this is very common) so perhaps it thinks the display is below the threshold to show the button. –dlthewave☎04:35, 20 January 2023 (UTC)
and interwiki languages
I just logged in after quite some time just to point out that the new design is horrible. One of the great things about WP was that you have the languages right at your fingertips and you can easily switch between them. WP is the best context specific translation tool for technical terminology. Dictionaries are way to general, especially when a word can have multiple meanings. WP articles are about one specific thing only. Switching the language brings you to the proper equivalent page in that language. Hiding the languages behind a drop down field makes things much more complicated. I don't get why so many websites think they are improving when they actually make things less intuitive by hiding stuff or remove descriptive text and replace them with some sort of icon that nobody can identify what it should represent. The same thing happened to some online banking sites. They really should talk to their users if they want to make improvements, because the designers either doesn't use it at all or have a closed minded view on how you may use it. For the time being I may stay logged in where I can actually change the skin... --Bunny99s (talk) 01:55, 23 January 2023 (UTC)
1. You can use Wiktionary!
2. I get the argument that this detriments people who constantly bulk oen multiple languages but not that it is unintuitive. It already has a search bar. How is it less intuitive or more complicated? Aaron Liu (talk) 02:38, 23 January 2023 (UTC)
Thank you @Bunny99s: (see just above) @Aaron Liu:, For encyclopaedias, perhaps interwiki languages are used more rarely, as for subjects Bunny99s mentioned. ++ Also, comparing to mother-language subjects But for other projects:
_Dictionaries (wiktionaries): we hop from language to language all the time. Readers for curiosity. Us editors, because it is our duty to see, to compare
_Texts at wikisources have interwiki languages with arrows which open Frames with translations.
This gets my subscription and an exclamation point. I often switch between languages to find translations, variation of content, differences and commonalities between languages. The sidebar is on the left, I can quickly click through sixteen language versions that are always sorted in the same way, and observe how different the articles are. Okay, I mostly used English, German, French and Spanish. (French became unusable some years earlier, then Portuguese also stopped working, so I stopped using those languages). But the en-WP is the hub of all language versions, you cannot not use English as a comparison baseline. --Enyavar (talk) 00:03, 24 January 2023 (UTC)
Cool. Right now, I failed to see your link towards that setting. I found how to set the skin in English, and it didn't affect the French. So I set that too, finally, after not having found the options to do it in French all these years. But where can global preferences even be found? Must I switch into some metawiki? These gears and options are all HIDDEN from us regular users who just want to edit on a formerly great collaborative platform. Which is my whole point in hating that everyone gets opted-in into new look-and-feel schemes, as if this were some shady social business like facebook. Some guys straight out of the blue just come without any announcement and break a working media platform used by millions! I am sorry for typing so angrily, I get that you just want to help me here. All the best, --Enyavar (talk) 05:57, 24 January 2023 (UTC)
It’s alright. On the first tab of preferences, straight after you click in it, the last preference under “Basic information” is a big white button that says “Set your global preferences”. Or if you just want to go straight to it go to Special:GlobalPreferences. Aaron Liu (talk) 13:50, 24 January 2023 (UTC)
Some Feedback
- Putting the table of contents on the side is great, that is really going to improve the navigability of longer articles.
- On that note, I do really disagree with where the language settings went. Not only are they hidden beneath an additional menu when they were immediately available beforehand, the new menu is in my opinion in a bad location and does not match with the surrounding style at all.
- As has been mentioned in other comments, more 'mystery meat' icons are a really bad idea for a layout that has as one of it's goals to meet the needs of those that have been newly connected to the internet.
- I think that the editor options at the top of the article should go back to being above the title page instead of inbetween the title and the contents, as they are generally not of interested for most users.
- The enlarge width button on the bottom right, aside from being a mystery meat icon, really should remember it's state between pages, but I guess that might be an issue caused by the rollout.
- Personally I would love to see the available whitespace created by decreasing the article width be used for something else instead of being simply empty. I understand text being not full width is better for the reading experience (even if remain doubtful that it actually leads to better information retention), but I think the free space should be used for information that is not necessarily part of the article. In my opinion, in would be worth experimenting with putting pictures and other information boxes to the side, so that the information density can be increased without making the reading experience go back to widescreen mode. Maybe don't experiment on the main branch next time, however:
- This update came maybe not out of nowhere but it does feel fairly underdeveloped yet, see for instance the issues with tables and images being placed like by a poor LaTeX compiler when they start conflicting with the new article width.
- I am unsure of what I think about the new search function. Adding a short sentence to the result that shows slightly more desciptive information that just the name is one hand a nice feature, but on the other hand again either decreases the amount of search results that can be on screen or makes the search bar result much longer. Personally, I also don't think I will need it, but it might be a neat feature for others.
- The whole skin does not feel like a cohesive whole, as the feel of the old skin is preserved inside of the new article column, but outside of that it looks very different, mostly in how the site responds. Personally, I prefer the old skin where there was not a small animation responding to every mouse move and click, but I think having these two parts coexist on one page is much worse. Compare that to something like wikiwand, where the whole UI feels like one design. 2A04:8400:C180:8601:FDA5:78AC:7FEE:8530 (talk) 00:09, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
I do agree that the table of contents on the left-side is solid; it makes navigation easier. But the default white space and the 'mystery meat' icons are steps way, way backwards.--Gen. Quon[Talk]17:16, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
Whitespace flooding, low contrast/visibility toggle, poorer readbility in general, and account creation requirements to be able to have persistent settings?
These changes in total make wikipedia an eyesore to me.
There is significantly more whitespace and enlarged margins, even when in the expanded view. The table of contents takes up twice the space of the old side bar, which means it is encroaching upon the body of articles, the right side margin is even larger as well, which compacts the body more.
The toggle should be an actual toggle, as in a persistent setting. Not something that goes away when you go to a new page when logged out.
The toggle should also be put in a much more visible location. Fandom places it bound to the upper left side of the content, in a bold symbol that is eye catching as well. Instead what is here blends into the square nature of a screen or browser window and becomes lost.
When logged out the constant switching between layouts is disorienting.
If this was intended for readability and accessibility I'd give it a 2/10. It makes it worse across the board, with no notable benefits beyond the table of contents being bound to the side. Since this was pushed through despite the opposition to it I have a bad feeling for the future of the project. Deadoon (talk) 00:40, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
Requests for comment/Reverse deployment of Vector (2022)
As said in Significant backlash above, a couple of people have talked about starting an RFC in order to reverse the deployment of Vector (2022) and leave the old design as the default due to backlash.
"The bureaucracy is growing to meet the needs of the growing bureaucracy".
I don't edit Wikipedia or participate in its governance, in fact I created an account just to get away from this new godawful redesign. But surely if it's this unpopular someone trusted can just set up a poll or something and then use the results to determine whether to revert back? IWantTheOldInterfaceBack (talk) 04:30, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
Support reverse deployment of Vector 2022 and blocking whichever switched it without communication and consensus. Nfitz (talk) 01:11, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
Support - I support this informal RfC, and I support starting a properly formatted one. There needs to be more discussion regarding the default deployment. Perhaps the new Vector 2022 skin is better for our readership, but it's not so good for editors who want their tools easily available. It is hard to find things! Netherzone (talk) 01:18, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
I don't think this deployment will be reversed, even if we really wanted to. Also we need to give WMF time to fix out all the little kinks that come with deployment before we can say for certain that this skin is terrible. The skin appears to works mostly well for readers, but for editors there are still bugs that need to be ironed out. This might be a case of Wikipedia:Office actions. We might come to consensus to express disapproval for the rollout, but I don't think much will change technically otherwise. If the deployment is reversed, it may just be delaying the inevitable.
One of the things I would suggest is slow, incremental change, so that the same skin can get improvements, improvements, and improvements without having to do a complete rewrite of a skin. Just like Windows or iOS or Android gets incremental updates, the same should be done with this new skin that I don't think should be even called Vector 2022. Aasim - Herrscher of Wikis ❄️ 01:41, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
A hypothetical RfC wouldn't close the door on Vector 2022 being deployed in the future. It's just that this launch happened way too soon and way too fast, when so many editors didn't even have the chance to weigh in. If the deployment is indeed reversed, the Web team is welcome to start a follow-up discussion and keep tweaking Vector 2022 until the majority of editors are fully satisfied, and then they can send out notices to all active users (they already do this for things like ArbCom elections, I would argue a default skin change is just as important) to alert them of another RfC. If there is strong consensus to deploy it, sure, let's do it; if not, they can repeat the whole process again. InfiniteNexus (talk) 01:54, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
No, I can say for certain that it's terrible because it launched without an integrated ability for non-logged-in users to change it. Simple as. 142.162.17.231 (talk) 22:08, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
Anonymous preferences would make the pages load too slowly. Most traffic comes from logged-out users. To handle that, we have a few "caching servers" which only save and send "snapshots" of web pages. These "snapshots" are up to 7 days old, are a replacement for generating web pages, and are the same for all logged-out users. This allows us to serve pages quickly. Preferences require generating different versions of web pages. Making this possible for logged-out users would overload our servers. We don't want to do that also because we need to reduce cache fragmentation. The only possible way of providing preferences for logged-out users now is making the settings load always after the page. This takes much more time to load and looks odd. For example, if a logged-out user was to see the dark mode in action, then immediately after loading each page, they would first see the light interface for a short moment, and then the interface would become dark. — mw:Reading/Web/Desktop Improvements/Frequently asked questions
@Awesome Aasim No, this was not office actions. It was from an interpretation of the consensus from two esteemed editors that closed WP:V22RFC. If the rfc to undo this passes we should be able to ask the foundation to revert this. Aaron Liu (talk) 22:42, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
Hey, you'd like to talk to the Web team about specific issues, which we'd be happy to discuss, feel invited to our office hours, an open meeting on Discord tomorrow (Thursday) at 20:00 UTC, on the Open Meetings voice channel. I'd also like to encourage you to take a look at basic documentation pages like mw:Reading/Web/Desktop Improvements and learn more about the decisions that have been made. Thank you! SGrabarczuk (WMF) (talk) 01:26, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
The problem isn't just that Vector 2022 is difficult to navigate and not aesthetically pleasing, it's that the Web team failed to properly communicate these changes to all active users prior to today's launch. That's why you're seeing all these complaints rolling in, a lot of folks didn't even know this was happening until this morning, and they may not have been aware of the previous RfC or Village pump discussions. InfiniteNexus (talk) 01:45, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
InfiniteNexus The change was communicated to me, there were notices beforehand. If they weren't aware of the prior RfC or other discussions what makes you think they will be aware of the new one? No matter what changes were made, some group of people was bound to be upset. It is impossible to please everyone or expect that the website will never be changed ever. 331dot (talk) 16:20, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
The new RfC should, in my opinion, be advertised to all active users on their user talk pages in a similar fashion to ArbCom election notifications. Because that did not happen last time, only a minority of Wikipedians were aware of the proposal, and many did not get a chance to weigh in. Furthermore, the closers wrote (bolding my own): As such, our close aims to be conservative, given also the scale of the change and that each opposing editor likely did not list every concern which they agreed with if it was already raised by others. We encourage the Web team to be sure they have addressed the community’s concerns on these issues before moving forward. I don't think that happened. The Web team also chose not to start a second RfC after implementing the fixed-width toggle, so they never got the chance to hear the other concerns editors had with the skin (beyond fixed width). InfiniteNexus (talk) 17:37, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
Support: Vector 2022 is dreadful, I have already switched my account global preference back to Vector 2010. There is a strong demand and need for a new RfC widely advertised to all users, both registered and unregistered.--Æo (talk) 16:16, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
Draft RfC question
Should Vector legacy be restored as the default skin on the desktop English Wikipedia site, with the possibility of Vector 2022 being deployed at a later date if there is consensus from the community to do so?
One of the problems with the rollout is that it did not come out as expected. Those that had Vector 2010 set as their skin were suddenly forced to Vector 2022. Now almost everyone is on Vector 2022, no one asked, and the people remaining on Vector 2010 are those that opted out. If we were to roll back to Vector 2010, then all the people who would prefer Vector 2022 would wonder why their skin was forcibly changed. It is a lose-lose situation unless if WMF somehow backed up the skin preferences for all editors before changing the skin for everyone.
The rollout should have been done such that the default be changed without tampering with other people's preferences. Granted, logged out users would still be complaining, but logged in users would not have any trouble. People who have had their preferences forcibly changed should have their previous preferences restored. That is the least I can ask for. Vector 2022 is fine for those that are logged out, but I am opposed to changing people's settings just to get people to use a specific skin.
Editors that have been here long enough to witness the transition between Monobook and Vector 2010: Was the change done with or without consensus, and were your preferences left intact after the defaults were changed? It might have been a long time so most people probably do not remember, but it is worth asking anyway just in case. Aasim - Herrscher of Wikis ❄️ 05:41, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
Looks pretty good to me, I do have some changes for the grammar though:
−
, with the possibility of Vector2022beingdeployedata laterdate
+
with the possibility of deploying Vector 2022 later
I also recommend including the keep skin workaround, maybe something like
You may keep your current skin by changing the skin in global preferences.
Should Vector legacy be restored as the default skin on the desktop English Wikipedia site, with the possibility of deploying Vector 2022 in the future if there is consensus from the community to do so?
I don't think the "keep your current skin" guidance is relevant to the question, but we can add it to the background info below it. InfiniteNexus (talk) 19:48, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
I think it should make three clear points as a prerequisite to any reintroduction:
1. The reintroduction must not be done without clear, broad community consensus on the finalized version of the skin.
2. There must be a way to persistently change the skin and toggle page width for logged-out users.
3. The skin must receive a name of its own. Having to disambiguate between Vector (2010) and Vector (2022 2023) is convenient for exactly nobody and serves only to confuse less-active users. 142.162.17.231 (talk) 22:18, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
1 is unclear, I think it should be changed to "another RfC on the updated version of the skin".
Any concerns about the skin and future deployment can be expressed in the actual !votes, not the question. Again, per WP:RFCBRIEF, the RfC question must be brief and neutral. InfiniteNexus (talk) 00:13, 20 January 2023 (UTC)
Noticed the skin was not deployed in a good manner
From what I am seeing above, Vector 2022 was enabled even for logged in readers using Vector 2010. I don't think that was a smart move. Sure, those logged out will be able to try out Vector 2022, but there is no need to force switch it for everyone else!
Some other pieces of feedback:
The right sidebar is empty. The right sidebar would be a good place to put links to widgets like recent changes and the page history.
The toggleable full width is botched a bit. Content should start out with the two fixed-width sidebars, and then the content be expanded into full width upon touching. There should not be lack of symmetry.
On the topic of full width, certain pages like the Main Page should be full width to start, to avoid awkward situations like the site notice eating into the sidebars.
Please also maintain consistency from page to page with navigation. The navigation buttons should not move around when moving from page to page.
Also what happened to making Vector 2022 responsive? The current Minerva does not serve everyone well either. Provided that the responsive design is only turned on for readers and new editors, I don't see a reason not to do this. Aasim - Herrscher of Wikis ❄️ 01:33, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
Okay so I am going to give Vector 2022 a chance. Maybe in a week or so I find it easier to use. In its current state the skin has a long way to go before it matches or exceeds the functionality of Timeless. Aasim - Herrscher of Wikis ❄️ 13:50, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
Hey @Awesome Aasim. Thanks for all your comments here. Allow me to address only some issues now.
Dark mode - as a side-effect of the technical work done in the course of building Vector 2022, it will now be easier to build the dark mode. But this would be a separate project. Currently, we don't know when it'd be possible for us to work on it.
Now, there's the page tools menu (what links here, etc.) in the right sidebar. Later, we'll make it sticky, so it will work just like the ToC.
What do you mean by consistency from page to page with navigation? What should not be different?
What do you mean by responsiveness? What's the behavior you expect that is not happening?
For point 1, I appreciate that a proper dark mode will be in the works. I ended up forking MediaWiki:Gadget-dark-mode.css with a couple of changes for me using dark mode on Vector.
For point 2, thank you. One other improvement I'd make is having the left toolbar be sticky, rather than the table of contents. It is very nice to be able to access these tools whenever needed. I'd even make the top toolbar with all the edit/new section buttons sticky. Of course, there can be a table of contents button that expands upon clicking, as well as an inline table of contents that can easily be moved to the sidebar.
For point 3, what I mean by "consistency" is that the buttons stay in the same place from page to page. Currently, when the right toolbar is hidden and you click "history", the "history" button moves all the way to the right into the sidebar.
For point 4, I was discussing how the Vector 2022 skin should scale and resize appropriately to work on a mobile device, as per Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Deployment of Vector (2022)#Mobile screenshots. This behavior can of course be turned off by those who do not want it. By doing this and making all the desktop version of tools like VisualEditor be officially supported on mobile, the Mobile Frontend that is currently present can be entirely removed. There can still be a "Mobile view"/"Desktop view" button at the bottom, but that would just turn the responsive behavior off and on, rather than just switching between two very different versions of the site.
There is currently a discussion at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. The thread is Vector-2022. Thank you. Lemonaka (talk) 20:32, 19 January 2023 (UTC) Lemonaka (talk) 20:32, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
) 08:37, 20 January 2023 (UTC)
. Is this helpful? SGrabarczuk (WMF) (talk) 16:35, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
I'm honestly surprised to hear the old skin suppresses one of the innate features of browsers. —Tenryuu 🐲 ( 💬 • 📝 ) 00:29, 21 January 2023 (UTC)
in the lower-right corner of the screen which will disable limited width. If it isn't there you may need to zoom out on your browser to see it. Alternatively, create an account and uncheck Preferences → Appearance → Skin preferences → 
Enable limited width mode. —Tenryuu 🐲 ( 💬 • 📝 ) 23:38, 20 January 2023 (UTC)
to appear in the lower-right corner of your window. There should be an option to 
in the top-left corner. —Tenryuu 🐲 ( 💬 • 📝 ) 12:31, 22 January 2023 (UTC)
Moved from Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)
You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Film § Awards and accessibility under Vector 2022. RunningTiger123 (talk) 19:05, 3 February 2023 (UTC)
Fixed. The software update that was applied today has made the sticky header available on this page. You may notice that the sticky header does not contain the same contents as the top-of-page header, which is confusing (to me). Even the "User" menu, the little torso and head icon, uses the same icon but has different contents. When I filed a bug about it, I was told that it was deliberate and that it would not be fixed. – Jonesey95 (talk) 21:45, 2 February 2023 (UTC)
dropdown menu. The WMF may have changed some things around in this one day. —Tenryuu 🐲 ( 💬 • 📝 ) 05:43, 4 February 2023 (UTC)
. No doubt some admins and others do have their ears glued to the ground and also live their lives through Discord and IRC and wherever else, but personally I just find things out (or not) the same way everyone else does. Cheers — Amakuru (talk) 16:28, 18 January 2023 (UTC)
