HN Explorer

How did Wikipedia layout become so bloated?

24 points by countWSS ↗ HN
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.

10 comments

[ 0.27 ms ] story [ 8.8 ms ] thread
josephcsible
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.
Olreich
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.

inigyou
It might have something to do with Wikimedia Foundation and WP:CANCER.
bananaflag
I have been using MonoBook for years (early 2023 I think), I see nothing like that.
aristofun
I’ll answer deeper question “why” if you don’t mind.

Wikipedia itself has become corrupted and politically and ideologically biased in past years. It has been shown multiple times.

When you stop pursuing the truth and start pursuing an agenda - things get ugly over time. It’s a general pattern.

g8oz
Is there some kind of extension to block their begging for donations banner?
chuckadams
A quick reminder that reader mode works great with almost every WP article.
davisr
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"
      ]
  }
Bhagya1111
Wikipedia pages now have more sidebars than actual history.