How did Wikipedia layout become so bloated?

ccountWSS about 4 hours ago 24 comments

FR version is available. Content is displayed in original English for accuracy.

Every single page is mostly sidebars, each has to be clicked 'hide' for every pageload(it does not save the state of sidebars!!) to reveal the article squeezed inside. For the "full sidebars on" default, it requires either a 8k screen or 30% zoom to even see an article content.

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Discussion (24 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews

Olreich•about 3 hours ago

Did you disable cookies or something? Table of Contents sidebar hides and stays hidden across page loads, browser restarts, etc. Appearance sidebar is the same. Appearance sidebar lets you set the article width as well, with the default being slightly slim, but the wide option being the full browser width.

The only way I can get it to reset is to clear my cookies, so its likely that.

sparky_z•40 minutes ago

I also have the sidebars constantly reappearing, and I don't have cookies disabled. It's really annoying.

countWSS•about 2 hours ago

Wikipedia.org :270 cookies, 110MB used. Never cleared or disabled any.

josephcsible•about 4 hours ago

It's especially annoying on pages that have big tables, where all the wasted space makes it need to horizontally scroll. Sometimes I wish that once a horizontal scrollbar appears, browsers would ignore max-width on that page from then on.

ateles•about 3 hours ago

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/legacy-wikipe...

davisr•about 2 hours ago

I use Redirector in Firefox to rewrite URLs to the old Wikipedia:

  {
      "description": "Old Wikipedia",
      "exampleUrl": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page",
      "exampleResult": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page?useskin=vector",
      "error": null,
      "includePattern": "^(https?://)([a-z0-9-]*\\.)wikipedia\\.org\\/wiki\\/([^?]+)(?!=\\?useskin=vector)",
      "excludePattern": "",
      "patternDesc": "Adds ?useskin=vector to any Wikipedia page",
      "redirectUrl": "https://$2wikipedia.org/wiki/$3?useskin=vector",
      "patternType": "R",
      "processMatches": "noProcessing",
      "disabled": false,
      "grouped": false,
      "appliesTo": [
          "main_frame"
      ]
  }

Figs•about 1 hour ago

I do something similar with Redirector, but a bit more involved (to also redirect mobile links to the regular pages + a few other cases):

    {
        "description": "Wikipedia Mobile -> Regular",
        "exampleUrl": "https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypernucleus",
        "exampleResult": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypernucleus?useskin=vector",
        "error": null,
        "includePattern": "https://([^.]+).m.wikipedia.org/wiki/([^#?]+)(#(.+))?",
        "excludePattern": "",
        "patternDesc": "Remove .m and add ?useskin=vector to end",
        "redirectUrl": "https://$1.wikipedia.org/wiki/$2?useskin=vector$3",
        "patternType": "R",
        "processMatches": "noProcessing",
        "disabled": false,
        "grouped": false,
        "appliesTo": [
            "main_frame"
        ]
    },
    {
        "description": "Wikipedia (Use Vector instead of Vector2022 skin)",
        "exampleUrl": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potato",
        "exampleResult": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potato?useskin=vector",
        "error": null,
        "includePattern": "https://([^.]+).wikipedia.org/wiki/([^#?]+)(#(.+))?",
        "excludePattern": "(https://[^.]+.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:.+)|(https://([^.]+).wikipedia.org/wiki/[^?]+[?].*useskin=.+)",
        "patternDesc": "Add ?useskin=vector to end",
        "redirectUrl": "https://$1.wikipedia.org/wiki/$2?useskin=vector$3",
        "patternType": "R",
        "processMatches": "noProcessing",
        "disabled": false,
        "grouped": false,
        "appliesTo": [
            "main_frame"
        ]
    },
    {
        "description": "Wikipedia (Use Vector instead of Vector2022 skin) -- Query String Redirect",
        "exampleUrl": "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Petabyte&redirect=no",
        "exampleResult": "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Petabyte&redirect=no&useskin=vector",
        "error": null,
        "includePattern": "https://([^.]+).wikipedia.org/((?:w/index.php)|(?:wiki/([^#?]+)))[?]([^#]+)(#(.+))?",
        "excludePattern": "(https://[^.]+.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:.+)|(https://([^.]+).wikipedia.org/wiki/[^?]+[?].*useskin=.+)",
        "patternDesc": "https://([^.]+).wikipedia.org/wiki/([^#?]+)[?].+useskin=.+",
        "redirectUrl": "https://$1.wikipedia.org/$2$3?$4&useskin=vector$5",
        "patternType": "R",
        "processMatches": "noProcessing",
        "disabled": false,
        "grouped": false,
        "appliesTo": [
            "main_frame"
        ]
    }

bananaflag•about 3 hours ago

I have been using MonoBook for years (early 2023 I think), I see nothing like that.

inigyou•about 3 hours ago

It might have something to do with Wikimedia Foundation and WP:CANCER.

josefritzishere•about 3 hours ago

reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Guy_Macon/Wikipedia_has_C...

squigz•about 2 hours ago

It seems a bit silly to base this entire analysis on Wikipedia page views without exploring what else the WMF does.

And in any event, I have a really hard time getting worked up about the relatively small amount of money they deal with - and use to do a lot of good for the world - while corruption and greedy corporations are as rampant and filthy rich as they are.

tosti•about 2 hours ago

Two wrongs don't make a right.

Corruption is fought best by not allowing it anywhere at all.

tdeck•about 2 hours ago

Personally I'm not worked up over it either, but I find the argument that this puts Wikipedia at risk persuasive. If it some point WMF racks up debts they can't pay and puts itself up for sale, these days probably Elon Musk or Larry Ellison would buy it.

chuckadams•about 3 hours ago

A quick reminder that reader mode works great with almost every WP article.

g8oz•about 3 hours ago

Is there some kind of extension to block their begging for donations banner?