User:Tom-/Main Page rant

This is a draft rant. I haven't finished it yet. Please give me the opportunity to finish it before flaming me. Thanks.

My view on the new Main Page? It's pathetic.

What has months of discussion, votes, fights, arguments, debate, flames, bashing and nonsense actually achieved? Erm, let's see...


 * 1) Tweaking the header and design of the boxes
 * 2) Adding the featured picture with far too much text
 * 3) Adding more text to sister projects and other languages
 * 4) Adding more unclear, cluttered and ill-thought-through "help" links
 * 5) Making the page take longer to download

So overall? In my opinion, it's generated more usability problems than it's solved.

You might be thinking I'm moaning just because my original proposed design didn't get used, but nothing could be further from the truth. I'm not really a designer, and I don't pretend to be. I was hoping that others would take my original idea and turn it into something better.

I'm pissed off because Wikipedia's design and usability has become stuck in an endless loop of mediocrity. And it's all because of one bloody notion: consensus.

Consensus is great in articles. That's because, in the main, what goes into an article is either right or wrong. True or false. Black or white.

But you cannot do design by consensus. It doesn't work. It never will. Design is about expression, opinions, free-flow of ideas. Not endless discussion and compromise. If you set up a web design company comprising of 100 people all arguing about every single aspect of a page's layout it'd go bust within a month.

Wikipedia's design and usability will never really get better as long as it's attempted by consensus. Some things simply don't follow the ideal view of everyone working together in harmony.

Sometimes someone has to take control. Has to lead. Has to guide, to decree, to dictate. Of course the community at general should have a voice, but simply because a few loud-mouths who don't know anything about how real people actually use computers and the web dislike a design doesn't mean it shouldn't be implemented.

I'm afraid I currently have very little time to enter into any further discussion of this issue. I'm starting a new job and having to move my life to a new place, so as you can imagine Wikipedia isn't at the top of my priorities.

But please, I beg the community: find a better way. Wikipedia has always been about innovating, but this Main Page debacle has shown that the community is becoming like an old person stuck in their ways and afraid of any real change, just in case it happens to upset someone.


 * I swear, Ayn Rand wrote something about this in one of her books... &mdash; 0918 BRIAN &bull; 2006-03-19 22:06