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Ask HN: Why are wiki's UIs not evolving?

30 points by throwaway13000 ↗ HN
I am trying to build a wiki based site and I see that most of the UIs are not keeping up with the times? Is it inherent to nature of wikis or is it just a coincidence? Eg: https://wikitravel.org/en/Altai_Tavan_Bogd_National_Park

Are there any good skins/theme for these (or any other) wiki's.

27 comments

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Sendotsh
If it ain’t broke...

I don’t really see how wikis could be improved by any modern design trends. They function well and are designed to be accessible by everyone on as many platforms and devices as possible.

throwaway13000
Functionality wise, yes, there is not much improvement required but looks like, fonts can be improved, spacing/whitespaces can be improved. We could have pagination. We could have some themes which remove sidebars, we could have wiki's that may be embedded in larger site and hence can reuse their stylesheets etc
PaulHoule
Why pagination? I think commercial sites are just paginated to make you click more times so they can tell the ad network that they gave more impressions.
Sohcahtoa82
> We could have pagination.

Pagination is a bug, not a feature. Screens are not books.

The only, I repeat ONLY, reason to use pagination on a web page (That isn't incredibly long, such as a table with hundreds of rows) is so you can serve more ads.

fabiomaia
> Pagination is a bug, not a feature. Screens are not books.

I like this.

narshaven
Very much agree with your thoughts.
dstroot
> If it ain’t broke...

Many of the comments below agree with this point. However I think the OP’s question is worth exploring. Good design that leverages fonts, colors, spacing, layout, etc. is supposed to make sites more usable and enjoyable. Why can’t we have a wiki that is easy to use/edit and looks nice and is accessible? These are not mutually exclusive are they? That being said, my recent wiki experience has all been using GitHub.

yur3i__
The current way wiki design is exactly that.
brianush1
To be fair, Wikipedia has some themes that look very nice and modern, it's still accessible, and the visual editor makes it easy to edit as well.
[dead] skaffolder
I suppose that the standard wiki makes it easier to recognize
PaulHoule
I guess my question is: what is wrong with that interface?

Is it missing a popup asking if you accept the cookie? If you accept the privacy policy? That the EU passed a law? That they want you to subscribe? That they can't send you spam unless you give them your email address?

If medium looked like that site, I wouldn't have medium blocked in my /etc/hosts file.

One trouble with Wikis is that the control of the content is not very tight, so if you want to make a layout which expects images and texts to line up in some complex way you are using the wrong tool.

throwaway13000
My point is that mediawiki based sites look like web1.0 (https://blog.hallowelt.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/Metrol...) vs lets say, confluence pages(https://marketplace-cdn.atlassian.com/files/images/0e313fe9-...) or (http://www.play-sql.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/Specifica...)

Confluence for example looks like it is a web2.0 software(more space, better fonts, markdown support etc)

Sohcahtoa82
As someone else said, if it isn't broke, don't fix it.

A wiki doesn't need to be Web 2.0. The content is nearly completely static once it gets rendered server-side.

wolco
More space = wasted spaced. Better fonts = bigger fonts wasted space, markdown support = no one asked for it

In web 2.0 or 3.5.. We hide information from the user and fill up the page with space for full screens while designing for mobile. Wikis want to expose information / link ideas.. encourage browsing pages. Most sites want you to scroll down aimlessly.

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MH15
All three of the designs you referenced have a lower information density and poorer design qualities than mediawiki. While mediawiki is not the "best" design it could be, you are going in the wrong direction.
h0p3
Tiddlywiki is very hackable. You can make it look however you want. Lots of different interfaces can be built in it.
eb0la
I remember having one Tiddlywiki on a pendrive... a long time ago :-)

I believe wikis should evolve to more advanced document types like "calendars", "tables", "databases" (like Filemaker), etc...

And you should be able to interface with that "semi" structured data somehow.

Just the mad idea of the day (tm).

h0p3
I ain't an expert with the tool, but I use it a lot. There are plugins for those advanced document types for TW, but they aren't stellar unless you know exactly what you want. The nodejs option (especially TW5-Bob), however, seem very well-suited to quickly hacking together interfaces to your underlying OS and whatever can be accomplished on the CLI. It might do more now than it did for you a long time ago.

I think wikis are hypertext bombs, and TW a rapid prototyping tool. That's how I try to use my silly wiki (https://philosopher.life/).

gjvnq
I did make a few CSS changes to my Wikipedia account. The mains thing I did were:

  * Serif font (Libre Baskerville).
  * Larger font size.
  * Fewer characters by line.
  * Hyphenation with left align.
Basically I tried to improve readability for me.
dredmorbius
What specific changes would you care to see?

I've made some modest styling changes (via Stylus) to Mediawiki: mostly a max-width main body constraint.

bctnry
Probably not relevant, we have wikiwand.com, so the UI somehow does evolve after all.
throwaway13000
Interestingly, wikiwand is exactly what was looking for. Thanks! Unfortunately, it is not open source.
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narshaven
Why change it when it ain't broke. See the aim of Wikipedia is to provide information in easiest possible way and I don't see a point of adding better UI smooth scroll, gradient nav bars, responsiveness. How it is present now is probably the MOST easiest for a user to understand.