User:M~enwiki/Wikipedia usability problems

Please feel free to comment, just
 * triple indent and sign.–MT 04:01, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

See also User:AxelBoldt/Wikipedia usability problems, and feel free to come up with your own list of problems and improvements.

Goals: Non-goals:
 * 1) present a single article in a clear way to a reader looking to find some specific information
 * 2) draw readers in to the community
 * 3) offer a usable and efficient (separate) editor interface
 * offer many ways to spend time checking out the site
 * make the default layout a power-editor layout

The main content is the article. Meta-content is refs, links, TOCs, infoboxes and other data, and part-of-a-series boxes. Chrome is the sidebar, header, footer, and sizing.

Wikipedia Chrome

 * The sidebar kills real estate once the user scrolls down one page: there's just a long white strip on the left.
 * On wide monitors, the lines of text are one foot long. This isn't solved by adding floats and blank margins, because on narrow monitors they push the text into very narrow columns. It's not solved by fixed width, because on wide monitors we end up with narrow content and giant margins on a site that's trying to display info. Something to think about.
 * Logo is potentially too large. I think we can tone it down on branding, and shrink that ball down or remove it. How about a W puzzle piece to the left of the text? Hell, just have the text. Branding is just self-advertisement, and humility looks nice.
 * The entire sidebar is for serious editors, not readers. Half of it is an invitation to have a random, casual look around the encyclopedia.
 * Languages should be a dropdown. We're either showing off, or trying to attract editors to other language wikis - but if that's the case, then where's the link to create the page for languages where it doesn't exist?
 * Convention for search boxes is the top right.
 * Navigation, interaction, and toolbox are confused. The groupings should be:
 * browse site: Main page, contents, featured content, current events, community portal, Random article
 * meta/about: about wikipedia, contact wikipedia, donate to wikipedia, help
 * article: article/discussion/edit/history, printable version, cite this page, what links here, related changes, in other languages, watch
 * editing: upload file, +create an article, special pages, recent changes, +Become an editor
 * The sidebar is (probably) infrequently used by actual readers. The ones readers might actually look for are edit/history, log in, about, contact, help, upload, create page, printable, cite, switch language - and then only infrequently.
 * The tabs at the top of pages are a wasted metaphor. What exactly is a "watch" tab? Or a "move" tab? An "edit this page" tab - maybe we mean "editable version of this page"? Do these really need to be up there as tabs?
 * "From wikipedia...", "<User:Someone", "This is an old revision" etc should be either removed or above the article title. The article title and lead are both the main content, why are we injecting chrome between them? This includes "for other uses" and our many cleanup boxes.
 * The footer is ugly, inconsistent across pages (old version vs edit, etc), and doesn't contain about/contact/etc.

Content

 * Infoboxes etc. - content and metacontent are often mixed. IPA/word origins/alternate names should be a footnote. The infoboxes, "part of a series on" boxes, and any other boxes take up ridiculous amounts of room for usually 6~ useful items of data. I don't think most readers are actually interested in the Aphelion of Mars. Though Wikipedia is not an almanac, we should definitely have a 'raw data'/almanac section, when needed. However, it should be at the bottom.
 * The TOC positioning/float often takes up ridiculous amount of space, often above the fold. This is what the "hide" feature tried to solve. Have a look at the standard layout. Unless you have a thin screen, floating the toc to the left after the first paragraph should look much better. If you resize the screen, you'll see that even this layout looks ugly, because of the short column of text in the middle. This is only a problem because of the "part of a series on" box, which I really think belongs much lower one two. Compare 'the standard layout' to 'two', in both a wide screen width (1280px) and narrow (900px - this was becoming uncommon, but rotated widescreens are becoming more common). Open them in two tabs, flip between them, scroll up and down.
 * Coordinates should be in the data section. I don't think anyone can actually resolve coordinates in their head, so it just doesn't need to be up there.
 * Collapsed anything (infoboxes, refs, etc) is confusing.
 * References etc. sections are huge.
 * Editor/suggestion boxes are too huge/wide. ("This section does not...")
 * Data and 'other topics in' sections are often mixed.

Proposals
Get rid of the sidebar. Have a header, content, and footer. Header: logo on left, several strips of actions on right:
 * Main page - contents - featured - news - community - random article - help
 * Log in - Donate ...
 * My user page - My talk - My watchlist - My contributions - Preferences - Log out - Donate
 * Upload a file - Create a page - Recent changes -

Then have the article border start:
 * Edit this page - Revisions and authors - Discussion - Other languages - more...
 * print, etc.
 * extra info like which revision this is.

The article heading
 * Lead on left, picture or minimal infobox on right. Infoboxes are constrained to a maximum height/width. Infobox has link to data section, if there is one.
 * TOC float left after first paragraph of lead.

The meta-content
 * Data/almanac section? Maybe this should just be a link to the relevant tabular page.
 * Refs, potentially collapsed.
 * Part-of-a-series, other topics in.

End of the article box
 * Footer, copyright, contact us, etc.

Sidebar
Given the above, is there any reason to have a sidebar? –MT 04:01, 29 December 2008 (UTC)