This is an archive of past discussions about Wikipedia:Vector 2022. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.
Who decided to roll out this hideous design without even adding a way to turn it off without logging in? Who was responsible for this idiotic decision? And no, I don't want your bookmarklet or your Tampermonkey script! I want competent web design! 142.162.17.231 (talk) 01:39, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
Made an account just so that I could go back to the old version. Did they even test this with people before they rolled it out? It objectively looks much much worse. Cgidwani99 (talk) 02:05, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
Idk man, but this is unbearable. This design looks like it was made for tablets and smartphones. Both are evil. Please don't use your tablets and smartphones much you must be as uncomfortable as possible using a PC (also not Mac because macs are ridiculous, just PC not linux Chinese stuff etc.) and get up and get some exercise. It's the only way to stop the tiktok idiocy incoming when shcoolkids just have their gadgets access and think this is cool. This is not cool. We need to move. Please revert to classic or at least let me choose, this is terrible! --198.58.171.247 (talk) 02:49, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
The fact they hid the possibility of reverting behind an account is mind-blowing. Such a disrespect for the millions of unlogged users... 86.241.217.134 (talk) 03:50, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
If you think you are a better web designer, apply to the Foundation. Calling them idiots is probably not a good way to get the job. 331dot (talk) 16:22, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
Who said I was? If you read to comprehend, you might notice that I am in fact specifically criticizing the utter refusal to care about the vast majority of users. 142.162.17.231 (talk) 22:05, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
@ 331dot: He wrote "idiotic decision". That is about what they did, not the person. In my country (not USA or GB) this is a difference. The first you may say, for the latter you get sentenced and pay. -- Ping welcome, Steue (talk) 15:02, 28 January 2023 (UTC)
Any way to hide contents by default?
I'm trying to hide the contents by default from the left side, but so far it always shows back up when I go to a new page. Is there a setting in preferences that I'm missing or am I going to have to fiddle with CSS?
Read their username. They know, and made the account solely to do that. Such action should not be needed to fix this problem. Deadoon (talk) 02:33, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
literally had to make an account to this site just to change it back. Genuinely amazing. The website I thought I'd never have to make an account to because it wouldn't pull something like this. Dumbest shit imaginable. Thelaftwardbard (talk) 16:21, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
Yeah, take my IP, I'm not making an account. This change was the worst idea ever and every possible solution I've read so far is: "create an account and change preferences". I don't want an account now, the same way I haven't wanted an account for the past decade. I want (I'm sorry... I would like) to be able to use this website successfuly as I've been able in the past, without, for example, getting 50% total width cut from the sides of the pages. Of course, not being an account user means that discussion on these topics or even their existance is something that I don't hear about until such change is implemented and then I can obviously only feel the impact once it is live. So here's my two cents: Worst decision this website has made. Sorry to those who did it in good faith. Lastly, in favour or against, anonymous or with account, keep this civil - no need for "dumbest shit imaginable". 2001:8A0:FA43:C900:8DAE:AB96:8445:F41D (talk) 09:58, 20 January 2023 (UTC)
Exactly, people are having problems with keeping this civil. I don't hate whoever deployed this, They just made a bad decision. Whoever did this should find some sort of Compromise, for example have an identical copy of en.wikipedia.org specifically one for vector 2010, maybe v.old.en.wikipedia.org. Happy Editing! -I Followed The Username Policy (talk) 11:32, 20 January 2023 (UTC)
The presence of swear words in comments has been used as an excuse to ignore criticisms of the new skin, so be careful to remain civil, even though vicious curses are appropriate. Card Zero (talk)03:15, 21 January 2023 (UTC)
Swear words in comments should give a clear sign that users feel quite strongly about sudden changes that were never communicated to them beforehand. I really have problems myself to restrain my language about the absolute idiocy of several design decisions, as well as about the non-existent communication strategy concerning the rollout. This had impact on the global community, not just the en-WP on its own.
Certainly it is not all bad, but the design teams clearly have tested this on awfully tiny focus groups, possibly even influencing the answers too. WP has a userbase in the billions, and they gathered results from a few hundred voices. Yes, there have been early adopter languages, including French, which is HUGE. In this new presentation about the rollout here in the en-WP I see graphics from Wikimedia surveyers, that show 20% of French users still use the old skin, many years after it was deployed. And so they concluded that 80% of the users (including the new ones who never knew there was a better skin) embraced the change cheerfully??? Or possibly they even included IP users in French, who were given no choice? I don't want to know how many swearwords were used by French users back in the day, and how many of them resigned into the new look without learning how to change it? What is the ratio of French editors and powerusers on the old skin, vs. the ratio on the new skin?? This is like Facebook, making a cleverly hidden opt-out button, have the opt-in as the default setting, and producing statistics that the majority of users opt in, so everyone obviously loves the opt-in setting! Again: 20% of the French users have done the hassle to explicitly return to their old skin! Speaking from experience, people making such a deliberate choice are mostly the editors who are more active on the site. That number wasn't taken as a big warning sign, but as a sign of success - unbelievable! --Enyavar (talk) 00:44, 24 January 2023 (UTC)
Classic view
Please add because this is terrible. It's the worst layout ever, please don't just copy off French Wikipedia it's their problem you guys were cool don't do this. Just add a button to put back classic view. I even tried "classic.en.wikipedia.org" and it doesn't work... 198.58.171.247 (talk) 02:47, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
Thank you! But what about not having an account? I had my previous 6 accounts banned because some jerk banned me back all the way in 2009 and every time I write an appeal telling him to stop his buffoonery and look at how much i've contributed through my "sock puppets" I just get banned over. Please guys don't stand in the liberal ways they're always wrong. --198.58.171.247 (talk) 02:51, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
Admins are most welcome to correct me as needed, but as far as I'm aware having your account blocked doesn't mean you can't change your preferences; you just aren't able to make edits. —Tenryuu 🐲 ( 💬 • 📝 ) 02:54, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
Unless they've been prohibited from creating a new account from their IP address, they should still have access to their old account and its preferences. —Tenryuu 🐲 ( 💬 • 📝 ) 06:43, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
In case you haven't understood, the French wikipedia was just beta testing this awful layout for the English one. The French wikipedia served as guinea-pig. 86.241.217.134 (talk) 03:54, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
Feedback from a Reader
The new design isn't that bad -- though, frankly, it isn't that much better either -- but I dislike how the sidebar is delimited by whitespace, which is hard to visually distinguish at a glance and feels wasteful. How about using colors and/or borders instead? That's what infoboxes and the Main Page do, so it would more stylistically consistent as well.
And, the default color seems to be lighter than the old default, which is straining my eyes. Just my two cents, hopefully it can be considered for the next iteration of the design. vertesian (talk) 03:03, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
"Hello, may I speak to the head of this household please?"
@Admins please and sincerely.
Nobody just puts changes like this up. This is unethical. Even if a way to rever[t] exists.
I've been using Adblock since 2016. It's impossible for me to see your ads. Could've just as well called me to survey me on this, but in all honesty, we're adults not kindergarten children.
Therefore. Please hear this out. The way a proper telemarketer knows their campaign won't fail is not what Microsoft usually does to their system. This is forced and hated. The proper way is to leave the user an option to rever[t]. Always. Doen't need to be sophisticated, this is not rocket science. You seem to now incite unregistrered users to sign up or log in. Why? Having a Wikipedia account
gives out your identity in some countries where a manhunt can be opened for your "user" edits
prevents you from editing when you have been blocked indefinitely some decade ago but an Administrator who has children now and spends way less time on Wiki
forces you to disable any given configuration in your browser that you were previously accustomed to
This action alone goes against the values and principles of Wikipedia. A free encyclopedia that anyone can edit should not push forward their own incentives simply because they reflect a more adaptable "feel" to the current reality. Any free action should remain free and be given a possibility of undoing given any unwelcoming circumstances.
Now the next part is a personal address to Mr. Wales. Jimmy, you have asked us simpletons for money several times. Your donates were the reason I have to put up Adblock. But I have donated in the past, at least once, and you know it. So now, there is a favor I need to ask of you. Please be a man. Write a tweet about what happened and please do apologize. You can do it because if you believed in the idea that such a Wikipedia could exist in the first please, then I believe that you are not all rotten inside and have some humanity left. We, the users who were never forced to act on our own before, are asking you for this. You MUST apologize.
Also, please add a button in the bottom of the page to revert to whatever you called the previous layout. No log ins. No compromise. No surveys. Just add a damn button, Jim.
Sincerely,
- Shadiac198.58.171.247 (talk) 03:13, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
The width toggle is hard to find; persistence of setting is not available to logged out users
The FAQ says
In a wide browser window, click or tap the toggle that appears in the margin at the bottom-right corner of the window.
This toggle doesn't appear until the window is very wide - in my case almost 95% of the width of my monitor. That makes it basically undiscoverable. Even after reading the FAQ entry I thought it was simply missing, since my browser window was already (what I consider to be) quite wide. The toggle should be available either always or at least as soon as it would be relevant.
Also, there is no way for logged out users to persistently adopt either the old style or the unbounded width. Other people have complained about that as well, but I feel very strongly about this, so I am commenting separately to add my voice to those registering objection to this state of affairs. Most readers are not logged in, and forcing them to click a button on every single page is unreasonable. (And that's just to get unbounded width - there's no way for logged out users to get back the old style at all.) If technical limitations prevent accomplishing this currently, this change should be rolled back (at least for logged out users) until those technical limitations are addressed. Bakkot (talk) 03:19, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
The appearance of the button is also ambiguous; it looks like a fullscreen button (like what you'd get by hitting F11), rather than a "kill the whitespace" or "make my text box wider" button. But yeah, it should be visible even if the whitespace is fairly narrow. Excessive scrolling is already an issue for some articles; this just makes it much much worse. And as you've said, it shouldn't have to be clicked every time you visit a new page or the website. Currently it only persists on a per-session basis. Xander T. (talk) 21:57, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
"We have built a toggle for logged-in and logged-out users. The toggle is available on every page if the monitor is 1600 pixels or wider. Selecting the toggle increases the width of the page."
I'm on 1080p incognito fullscreen Chrome or Edge on Win10, the most vanilla computer setup imaginable, and the "fullscreen" button only shows up if I zoom out to 90%. If this is the intended function, the FAQ is wrong and the rollout is underbaked. If this is not the intended function, the code is underbaked. 2600:6C50:5300:F00:A0B4:AAF4:1ED:2DF6 (talk) 23:43, 20 January 2023 (UTC)
I suspect likely it also doesn't take DPI scaling into account, either. So even if you're on 1080p, if you're using 125% scaling or more, the button will never show up. And yeah, 1600px is ~83% of 1920, so add in the width of the scrollbar and it won't show up until like 90%. Xander T. (talk) 19:09, 26 January 2023 (UTC)
So much whitespace!
I like the table of contents remaining accessible as I scroll down, but I hate the amount of whitespace. It's ugly: it's unbalanced (really right-side heavy), it's too bright, and it reminds me of what various websites look like when they fail to load properly so it parses as "something's wrong here." Even just giving the sidebar a gray background like it used to have would probably make a big difference for the better!
It's disappointing to have a change like this pushed on me with no warning (while it looks like regular editors had a chance to comment on it prior, as a casual user I didn't know anything was coming until today.) I don't want to create an account just to de-uglify the website, so I may just browse less or stick to browsing from my phone from now on... 2601:601:9A7F:46A0:7DC8:9D1B:1AE1:1871 (talk) 03:24, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
To clarify, the shorter line length isn't what bugs me- actually I think I could grow to like it. What I dislike is the huge blank gap between the ToC/sidebar and the content, and the way that the lack of visual distinction between sidebar/UI areas and article area (ie, it being the same blank white throughout without borders or shading or anything) makes it look unfinished. 2601:601:9A7F:46A0:4C32:FEE:70A6:A36A (talk) 07:07, 20 January 2023 (UTC)
Let non-members turn off this awful skin
This new user interface is frankly, by almost any rational theory of web design, terrible. It forces everything into a cluttered column via an utterly absurd amount of whitespace on either side of the page, wasting most of the browser window. That said, as it is it appears that only those with Wikipedia accounts can select previous skins to use, which is ridiculous because I think it is far to say that at minimum 99% of the people who visit Wikipedia don't have accounts. Add an easily visible way for the average non-account user to opt out of this awful, ill-advised design choice if you don't want to lose a significant chunk of your casual readership, who will undoubtedly be turned off by this hostile and unpleasant design.
2601:405:4400:9420:DC22:E380:D2EE:15A9 (talk) 03:33, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
"which is ridiculous because I think it is far to say that at minimum 99% of the people who visit Wikipedia don't have accounts"
Exactly. They had a "poll" of about 300 users in which half supported and half opposed the change, and somehow they decided it was enough to force it on the millions of English wikipedia users... 86.241.217.134 (talk) 03:57, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
This is TERRIBLE! Undo this now.
I'm an amateur historian, independent researcher and audodidact who uses Wikipedia a tremendous amount as a starting point for research. (When I got surprised with this "new look", I was actually in the process of trying to find the name of a book I'd initially seen referenced on here and since forgot the name of on the early settlement of the upper Potomac valley in the mid 1700s so I can buy it) I've probably done 100k+ pageviews ever since I first learned of Wikipedia back in the mid-00s. This is absolutely TERRIBLE design. Information density is of critical importance to me and I hate that the "new look" limits so badly how much information you can see at once. I bought a large monitor for a reason! I created an account just to get the old look back. Not everyone has the tech savvy to do this. I urge you all to undo this and bring back the old design. IWantTheOldInterfaceBack (talk) 04:25, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
I agree. The fact that you need an account to turn this forced change off, and the insultingly absurd excuse used to justify this ("we somehow don't have the server capability to let IP users switch styles") shows the utter level of disrespect the wikimedia foundation has for the IP users that make up 99% of this site's readers, and probably also a good chunk of its editors and contributors.
If I need the table of contents, I can press the Home key at any time to jump back to the top of the page and get to it. I don't need it taking up 20% of my screen real estate at any time. And I certainly don't need the other 40% of my screen filled with empty space! --IWantTheOldInterfaceBack (talk) 04:35, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
Is the insistence on huge whitespace a precursor to ads?
There are a lot of websites that, like the new skin, stick the content in a narrow bar in the middle with lots of whitespace on the sides, and a very large portion of those use that whitespace for ads. And we all know that Jimmy Wales' donation-begging ads have gotten a lot more intrusive over the years. Despite the WMF folks' insistence that they know better than us and that the consensus against it should be overruled for our own good, I can't help but wonder if the real reason they are so firm in this is that it's laying a foundation to deploy advertisements in the new empty space they're creating. Whether more of the same "personal appeals", or even worse, third-party ads, I don't know. But when I look at the new skin, what I see is exactly the same style of layout that gets left behind after an adblocker does its work on a site full of ads. 2607:FEA8:2D24:8900:0:0:0:151C (talk) 05:01, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
2015 WMF fundraising banner in the sidebar2017 WMF fundraising banner in the sidebar
Wikimedia Foundation has been using the sidebar for donation ads for many years now, so it's safe to predict that it will happen again. That may or may not be an improvement: I'm not sure whether the variable width of the sidebars will make it easier or harder to make banners which don't cover content. Nemo20:16, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
Please keep Vector legacy (2010) as an option forever
I can't imagine editing the site much if all users are forced to use Vector 2022. Please keep Vectory legacy (2010) as an option - I would hate to see it lost. Uhooep (talk) 06:16, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
Many new skins have been added over the years and some have been default. Have any been removed from options? Especially, any that were once default? Taking away the Vector 2010 option would seem very odd. Jim.henderson (talk) 06:27, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
I sure hope not. I changed the skin back almost immediately. The new one is makes editing articles, and moving around on Wikipedia tedious.BabbaQ (talk) 08:18, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
I will repeat what I stated in another section here, ”if it’s not broken why fix it”. This new Vector is not an improvement for the editors or the readers of Wikipedia. --BabbaQ (talk) 08:24, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
Hi @BabbaQ: Vector 2010 (Legacy Vector) is 12 years old. Web design, as well as the expectations of readers and editors, have evolved in 12 years. Please read here for more information. We have been working with communities and tested prototypes for months. I don't want to persuade you to individually adopt Vector 2022, just explain why "if it’s not broken why fix it" is an important concept (I respect it) but sometimes is not the solution for all and everyone.--Patafisik (WMF) (talk) 09:08, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
Web design has changed to accomodate mobile users, but we already have a mobile portal for them.
Why does the desktop version of the site need to be degraded to match the experience for users that have already been catered to?
"Expectations of readers" is a narrow column for content that is flanked by vertical ad banners, why does wiki need to ape that for the sake of wasting most of the screen space?
Modern web platforms are *awful* because they're universally designed around being advertisement vectors, why does the modern day library of Alexandria need to emulate this? 159.196.149.163 (talk) 10:32, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
I don't know if it is intended, but that section doesn't really answer the question it sets itself. The question "Are the changes inspired by mobile design?" is not answered by "No. These changes are created specifically for desktop interfaces", which does not comment either way on inspiration and reads as a weird sidestep. I suggest a reword if that is not the intention. CMD (talk) 11:04, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
Your objective research very much appears to have produced garbage answers. I suspect it of being self-serving and supplying the answers you wanted to hear. That's the charitable explanation where you really sincerely did some research and aren't just lying to force through changes. Everybody can see that the new skin looks like the mobile site, whether you intended that or not. I think you did intend it, because elsewhere you mention (diff) something about ease of maintenance and unifying skins, specifically unifying the desktop with mobile. Card Zero (talk)03:21, 21 January 2023 (UTC)
Reposting for visibility
If you guys weren't aware, there is an entirely separate discussion going on at Village Pump (technical). My own immediate thoughts are at #The new format is godawful with specific suggestions on technical changes to improve general UX. Obviously nothing will get done without general support and, just as obviously, this is a thread for complaining while that is at least a thread for implementing actual coding changes.
If they ignored their own RFC to push this through on specious grounds in the face of general opposition I don't think complaining here now will be in any way helpful. There's always the possibility they can improve aspects of the code, however, so go ahead and vent there where it can be beneficial rather than solely therapeutic. — LlywelynII08:45, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
This user prefers the Legacy version of the Vector skin to the 2022 version.
{{User Vector skin legacy}}
Right now there are only about 5 or 10 users who have this up. From the discussion above, it certainly seems like more people want it and just didn't know it was around. — LlywelynII08:50, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
A couple of things:
How can I see how many Wikipedians have the Vector skin legacy template on their user pages?
There are also some other "SOHAPPYwithVector2022..." Userboxes available, like
I agree with all the people complaining about this new design. Why would wikipedia use such a horrible new layout for desktop version of their website? It might be ok for mobile, but for desktop? Just horrible. Please stop redesigning websites so they look pretty for mobile, and half broken looking on desktop. Mrj22classic (talk) 09:10, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
Unfortunately, this new skin is not very good, at least on my PC. In fact, I'd say it is objectively worse from both a reading and editing point of view. It is just less user-friendly. Thanks to those above who posted guides to allow me to get the old skin back. Otherwise I would have looked through the settings, for hours, in vain, due to my limited technical skills.
I had no knowledge that this change was upcoming. Which is a shame. It seems you had to be engaged on certain noticeboards to get advance knowledge of this? To the developers, sorry to criticise, I know you've had a barrage already. JohnmgKing (talk) 09:32, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
Featured Article star
Why was the Featured Article star moved down, out of alignment with the title? It looks out of place, this floating star above the infobox. Was anyone with a modicum of Wikipedia experience involved with this change? Seriously. ~ HAL33309:54, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
Not everyone wants to be logged into their account 24/7 just to read pages in the way that they've looked for over a decade
I have an account that I do use to edit when I feel like it, but otherwise I like to stay logged out because I'm scared of getting a notification that I've been reverted or accidentally editing a page somehow and messing it up and having the accidental edit permanently be associated with an account with a username that I use on multiple sites. (I don't worry about messing up a page while I'm not logged in because my IP range is almost always globally blocked since apparently the type of range I'm on is really popular with vandals.) I guess I just wanted to point out that people who simply refuse to make an account despite not having any reason not to aren't the only ones affected by this. It would really be a lot better of people who aren't logged in could still save skin preferences. Someone mentioned above that this is supposedly due to privacy, but it makes no sense how saving people's viewing preferences could possibly be a privacy violation. Evil Sith Lord (talk) 11:07, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
Evil Sith Lord I don't think it's the viewing preferences that is a privacy violation, but the means to enable such a function would require storing that information somewhere(like cookies or on Wikipedia's servers). 331dot (talk) 11:16, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
That's an incredibly janky and inconvenient solution and should not be the one encouraged. There really should be a cookie for storing skin, as well as a link maybe on the footer to revert back to the 2010 Vector.
The new Vector makes it look like I'm using a mobile site, especially with the hamburger menu, and I despise it. Only somewhat redeeming feature is the content headings. 82.3.101.179 (talk) 12:10, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
The UserScript/bookmarklet solution that are mentioned work for unauthenticated users by adding a parameter to the end of the URL. So surely you already have pages with multiple other skins cached and ready to serve?
HTTP cookies are sent as part as the request headers sent to the server before it even sends a response, so surely it's possible to select cached skin page depending on a cookie? There's already multiple cookies the site stores in the user's browser that (presumably) change the behaviour of the site and how it responds, so surely it shouldn't be impossible to do one for skins given what I mentioned at the beginning, assuming those pages actually are cached. 82.3.101.179 (talk) 18:51, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
@Zapipedia (WMF) As I already explained to your colleague, the bookmarklet "solution" requires two clicks to view every page. If it appears otherwise, that's just because you happened to view a cached copy of a page rendered in Vector-2010. The bookmarklet is useful, if, say, you're building a user script or a page with a complicated layout, and want to see how it's viewed in other skins. It's not, and was never intended to be, a way to read the wiki. Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 20:09, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
Or use a browser plugin, which is a much more accessibility oriented solution that others in that discussion obviously prefer. Rather than manually fix the page every single time. Someone even already published a dedicated plugin for it on the chrome webstore and that is being advertised on the wiki subreddit. Deadoon (talk) 13:03, 20 January 2023 (UTC)
I'm not entirely sure how add images to demonstrate this as I just made an account, but the new design takes the already badly formatted citations section and actually makes it worse. The citations section is incredibly useful to quickly get an overview of potentially useful sources for academic research. The problem is that there isn't much standardization to how they're formatted and they can be a bit of a visual mess and hard to read.The new UI makes this even worse by squishing them into the middle 1/3 of the screen. Using "fit to screen" fixes this by restoring it to the old format, but most people wont figure that out and frankly restoring it to the old, not very good format, isn't really a fix. Why did you send so much time and effort on a new UI which is even less reader friendly and actively makes this problem worse, that doesn't seem to be very well liked if this page is anything to go by, instead of fixing existing UI issues. You "fixed" something that wasn't broken and broke something that was broken even worse. Zapdragon23 (talk) 11:49, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
Hi @Zapdragon23: First of all: for "reposting this here from elsewhere" can you give me a link to the previous discussion? It should be better to use only one discussion to not disperse or repeat information. Please ping me when you answer, thank you.--Patafisik (WMF) (talk) 14:32, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
If I select log out I am taken to a page which says "do you want to log out?" and made to press a button.
The answer is always yes. Yes, I want to log out, that's why I selected "log out".
I wonder what the motivation for this change was.
And it says "device" instead of computer
Once logged out, there's the message "this device may be used to browse and edit Wikipedia without a username". What kind of devices are you thinking of? All mobile users are redirected to the mobile site, so it should say "computer", right? Remember those?
Card Zero (talk)12:24, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
I don't remember any computer which isn't also a device. Why be more specific when it's potentially (and likely) incorrect? Mobile users might be initially redirected to the mobile version, but the desktop version is easy enough to access on a phone. HerrWaus (talk) 17:38, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
It's because the redesign is blatantly making desktop look like mobile, and "device" is a word that suggests phones. There's a low-key culture war going on here. I wouldn't object if it said some other word, even an incorrect word such as "compoodar" or "complicater", I object because of the insinuation that desktop users don't matter.
By the way, why aren't desktop users automatically redirected from the mobile site to the desktop?
Also, being sent to the mobile site by default on a phone browser, and then having to select an option from the phone's browser every single time you use Wikipedia, is not easy enough. It sounds easy, if you aren't actually doing it. I had to do extensive technical digging to find a way to get my phone's browser to present itself as a desktop browser by default (I forget how). Card Zero (talk)03:27, 21 January 2023 (UTC)
This "device" question has been a mess throughout the industry for the decade and more that smartphones have outnumbered "real" computers. Consumers often make the distinction that way, due to the difference in user experience. But of course, "device" has been used in other senses for more than a century; for example since the middle 20th century engineers have often used it for simple electronic components such as vacuum tubes and capacitors. And my zoom camera is also a computer, though mine lacks Internet access, so it's not a "device" according to some modern usages. So, to me it doesn't seem proper to blame the new skin for this widespread vagueness. Jim.henderson (talk) 19:01, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
I think in this instance it means something. I suppose it would be melodramatic of me to invoke "all lives matter", but "device" here is basically doing the same job as that phrase: sidelining the pernicious minority by undermining identity. Yes, I'm afraid identity politics (and the generation gap) really are involved here, in a small way. "Power users" (an old-fashioned concept), stick-in-the-mud old people, non-consumers and those with long attention spans and lots of patience are in the out-group. Card Zero (talk)03:37, 21 January 2023 (UTC)
Trying out the new skin
I tried out the new skin -- and I didn't like it. The new skin left too much white space on my desktop PC screen. I don't use other devices for editing. I'm back to using the 2010 skin. Smallchief (talk) 13:12, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
@Zapidedia (WMF) Thanks. The fix you suggested improved things -- and I'll give the 2022 Vector another trial. One comment, however. For those of us who, despite many years of Wikipedia experience, are still basically computer-illiterate, the fix you pointed me too is not easy to find nor intuitive. It took me a while to figure it out. Perhaps you should give more prominence and provide step by step instructions for this fix? Smallchief (talk)
That link basically comes down to we (dubiously) have determined a default suitable for small screens and will enforce it on those with larger screens regardless of what you want. If you have a large screen you are in a minority so na-na-na we aren't listening. Martin of Sheffield (talk) 19:30, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
Vector 2010 bug?
I also returned to the 2010, and now if I hit the edit button it doesn't work, I have to first hit the edit source button and then switch to visual mode.Paradise Chronicle (talk) 14:04, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
@Paradise Chronicle, this is weird. First question: Did that happen once, sometimes, or every time?
Does it happen if you reload the page before trying to start editing? (I ask this because if you change your prefs and use the browser back button, then weird things happen, but they're cleared up if you reload.)
Sorry for the late reply, was a bit double checking and then also trying out the new skin. :)
This reply only is for the Vector skin 2010. It doesn't happen all the time, but sometimes. Currently the main edit button at the top of the tool bar works. But also there sometimes it didn't in the past. Maybe it has something to do with me using the script importScript('User:Enterprisey/edit-section-on-hover.js'). There I am only able to use the edit button of the first section. In the other sections I can't hit the edit button to edit but only the edit source button to edit. But after I was enabled to edit in source mode, I can change into visual mode by hitting the edit button at the top of the tool bar. I found a workaround and I am not bothered by it too much, but if others have the same issue, there might be something. Before the skin change the script and edit buttons worked all well. Paradise Chronicle (talk) 21:50, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
This is for the new skin Vector 22. The solution with the sections in a sidebar is great. But after I hid the sections by hitting the hide button beside content, can I also make them show themselves again? I can't see a button show. Paradise Chronicle (talk) 21:58, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
@Paradise Chronicle, I'm relieved to hear that it is mostly working at the moment. Are you using Firefox, by any chance? I sometimes have trouble opening pages in the visual editor at the English Wikivoyage in Firefox.
In the new Vector '22, are you talking about the bit that says "Contents [hide]" at the top of the table of contents? If so, it hides it right up next to the page tittle, in an icon that looks like three bullet points. If you click that, it shows a dropdown Table of Contents, and there's an option to put it back in the sidebar.
Yeah it's working more or less. What makes it work is the workaround or leaving the script away. I hope others can explain it better. I am using Safari. And yes I was talking about the bit that says “content [hide]“, thanks a lot. Your answer made wikipedia better for me. Paradise Chronicle (talk) 22:41, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
@Whatamidoing (WMF) and Enterprisey, I guess I found the solution and it seems to be an issue with the script. I changed to Vector 22 and noticed it doesn't work there, too. Same issue there. The main edit button at the head of the article and the one in the first section work fine, but at the other sections not. Edit source and quick edit to the right of the section edit buttons work fine.Paradise Chronicle (talk) 16:38, 20 January 2023 (UTC)
Table of contents if less than four sections
Hello. I've spent some time reading and editing with Vector 2022 today. So far my number one request would be to display the table of contents on the left for articles that have less than four sections -- even including articles with no headings at all, where the TOC would be blank. Or at least have this as an optional setting. Otherwise there's "visual whiplash" when navigating between articles with four or more sections, where the table of contents takes up a considerable amount of space on the left, and articles with less than four, where the text of the article is expanded on the left. For example, The Car Over the Lake Album vs. The Little Red Record. Thanks. — Mudwater (Talk)04:05, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
@Mudwater: I posted about this above, but haven't got a response. However, a temporary solution is to click the three line button, as the three line button opens the tools and this stabilises the left-side page width. CMD (talk) 04:12, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
@CMD: Yes, to click the three line button in the upper left, to display (un-hide) the main menu. That does fix the issue, but it has the disadvantage of moving the table of contents lower, so it's not initially visible until one scrolls down about a screen. Anyway, thanks. — Mudwater (Talk)04:22, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
Hey @Mudwater, thanks for your feedback. We completely agree with your suggestion regarding showing the table of contents on articles with less than 4 sections. This will be handled in https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T318186. Regarding your other suggestion: I think it would be pretty rare to have articles with 0 sections (?). In any case I will get data on that. If you're able to leave a comment on the task linked above with your thoughts that would be helpful.
@AHollender (WMF): Thank you. I will consider commenting on the task. About the blank TOC, that would be for an article with no headers, which I guess would be considered to have one section, the lead. Thinking about this a bit more, most articles have a header for References or Notes, so articles with no headers would be not too common. But it would be nice if the article width did not resize for those either. — Mudwater (Talk)22:27, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
@AHollender (WMF) Thanks for this! I have changed the preference to disable limited width mode, and I appreciate that most pages are then an appropriate width (even if there's still a bit much space between text and TOC), but it's awfully wierd that short pages without TOC are then full width, wider than they ever would be in the old skin. I don't want to be going between articles and tabs and having the page format change! Reywas92Talk02:06, 20 January 2023 (UTC)
@Aaron106: I'm pretty sure the only way to do that is to switch back to the old display. As you might already know, that's Preferences --> Appearance --> Skin --> select Vector legacy 2010 --> Save. Speaking for myself, I'm going to try the new way for a while. I'll probably get more used to it, plus as an editor I'd like to see what most of our readers are seeing. — Mudwater (Talk)11:29, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
Reading the sentiment survey, only 550 people were canvassed which seems outrageous for a site with this many users.
And of that, only 37 people actually said they liked it.
The vast majority of respondents were scrubbed for "foul language", and I can take a pretty good guess at the language being of the type to describe their sentiment about the new design.
But a 14% hit rate to justify pushing this to production seems like a bit of a joke.
Why do we need a mobile website being forced on to desktop users?
"he desktop interface does not match the expectations created by the modern web platforms" is a FEATURE, why isn't this redesign opt-in?
Why do we need to create an account to opt-out? Why couldn't it be stored in say, a cookie?
Even reddit has handled their garbage fire of a redesign better, you still have access to old.reddit.com if you don't have an account and don't want to use their improved advertising platform.
I'm not sure how to compute the sentence "Overall, users’ feelings towards the new skin were neutral to positive (with an average of 5.15/10)" (it seems WMF is using some peculiar definition of what a scale of 1 to 10 means; I've not checked whether the survey instructed people that a rating of 5/10 would be considered positive). Nemo20:47, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
On the original page: of 550 logged-out responses to the survey, only 152(27.6%) responses were "valid" because the rest contained foul language or incomplete responses. Of these 152 responses, only 60 found the old one easier to use. Again out of 152, 49 found both skins equally easy to use and 37 found the new skin easier to use. This is way more positive than what IP suggested, 37 out of 550. I do want to know what happened to the remaining 6 valid responses. Aaron Liu (talk) 00:23, 20 January 2023 (UTC)
If 72.4% of your users curse at you when you implement a change, how is that not immediate evidence that this is a clownshow of an idea that should be thrown out immediately? That's truly an outstandingly negative response.
I've never looked into wikipedia governance before, but if this is how this website is being run then I really have to re-examine the trust I had in the info here. Thelaftwardbard (talk) 15:05, 20 January 2023 (UTC)
@Thelaftwardbard Not all of them were just removed due to cursing.
Vandalism: instances of survey responses that contained unrelated content or foul language Unfinished responses: responses which did not answer all of the questions within the survey
So we don't have a breakdown of those categories at all? Removing a survey response because it was just script of Bee Movie is an entirely different thing than removing a survey response because the user hated the design so much they used curse words in the survey.
The former is obviously pointless and can safely be ignored. But if you're throwing out all of the anonymous responses given to a website on the internet that happened to use a no-no word, then you're just blatantly manipulating your survey results to remove criticism.
That they've apparently done this and then obfuscated the number of responses they've done this to seems to be so blindly stupid that the only way I can imagine a rational human being doing it is on purpose. Thelaftwardbard (talk) 16:07, 20 January 2023 (UTC)
Not counting contributions because of foul language would be:
trying to ignore how enraging this ENFORCED switch was
trying to ignore how RESPECTLESS re. our tradition of "discuss and consensus" this ENFORCED switch was and
falsifying a statistic.
This "falsifying a stat" would not really be upright or something they could proudly tell their grand children.
Making a survey so long that those who are already enraged loose the lust to continue is another very "smart" way to drive those enraged ones away, so the organizers don't have to count them. Or was it rather ignorance of the human nature which does not have the patience to answer "hundreds" of questions, even in good mood, much less [ in bad mood, and actually wanting to do some use or valuable edting of the wp ].
I'm not liking the new skin so far but I'm forcing myself to use it for a week just to see. I've disabled the limited width because there's simply no reason to cram the articles into narrow columns like that however it seems the edit preview hasn't got the memo, anytime I click "Show Preview" it loads it in the default narrowed view. This is something that needs to be fixed as I'm of the same option as plenty of others that the limited width look just doesn't work for actually using Wikipedia. – Mesidast (talk) 09:54, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
@Mesidast: I understand better now, I will add the information in the task and add the task in the watchlist of the Editing Team too (Preview pages concerning more editing then reading experience and the Web Team is part of the Readers department, but it is not important for you to know).--Patafisik (WMF) (talk) 13:12, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
I would back up @Mesidast's comments. When I edit an article and press "Show preview", there is a large white margin to the left of the Preview section. I also note that all the Language links appear on the left-hand side, as they did in the old Vector skin. As soon as the article changes are either saved or cancelled, the language links display once again at their new position in the top-right corner of the contents. Kiwipete (talk) 09:06, 22 January 2023 (UTC)
@Bluetpp (WMF) The "large white margin" issue has been fixed. However, the language links still appear on the left-hand side. I tried pasting a screenshot here, but got an error message that only administrators can edit this page. Is there some other way I can attach a screenshot? Kiwipete (talk) 08:28, 31 January 2023 (UTC)
Hi @Kiwipete, thank you for the update and for your comment! Language links should not be on the left side using Vector 2022. This task is open about this issue, please feel free to add more details like screenshot, browser and operating system at this task. Patafisik (WMF) (talk) 09:10, 31 January 2023 (UTC)
Why is Vector2022 default?
(moving this question from Teahouse +some notes). Hello from el and en.wiktionary. I have a username, but also keep a 2nd browser alongside, with no login. Table of Contents is so hard to find, plus other issues (cannot hop from one language to another etc). I have congratulated you on resisting Vector2022 here, but sadly, I see today that horrible new skin at my screen as default in the English Wikipedia. Especially, as per Wikipedia:Vector_2022.
[…] "suggest trying it for at least one week prior to deciding whether to switch to one of our older skins." […] "if you are unsatisfied, you can switch to any of our other skins at any time."
If any of you think that making a trial skin default is not a good decision, you could join the mediawiki discussions, like I did, at "Let the public decide" And always: please keep a visible button for switching to classic skin, not just found only at Preferences.
PS The "support-oppose" procedure is endless. Because de gustibus et coloribus non est disputandum. So, at least, Let the readers have choices. Thank you for your hard work, From el.wikt, Sarri.greek (talk) 22:50, 18 January 2023 (UTC)
Is it possible to change the skin while logged out?
I would like to be able to change the skin, but it appears that it is only possible to change the skin while logged in. I prefer to browse Wikipedia while logged out, and it appears I have no recourse to change the skin now? 2607:2400:110C:FFFE:2:0:0:93 (talk) 21:10, 18 January 2023 (UTC)
You must click it again each time you navigate to another page (if you would like to view the page to which you navigated in that special skin). Two clicks to view every article? That's not even a remotely viable solution. Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 21:31, 18 January 2023 (UTC)
Oh I see what's happening. The old Vector-2010 pages haven't completely flushed out of the caches yet. So sometimes you get a vector-2010 page, sometimes you get a Vector-2022 pages. This has nothing to do with whether you previously used the bookmarklet. Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 22:06, 18 January 2023 (UTC)
@SGrabarczuk (WMF) So is the conclusion really that I have to click the limited content width button every.single.time I visit a page if I don't want to create an account and log in everywhere I use the site?
Hey, I have good news - we'll change this today! If you click the full width toggle and refresh the page or open a new one, the content area will be in full width. Here you may learn more about this. In that announcement, we've explained the reason why the toggle wasn't working like that up until just now. SGrabarczuk (WMF) (talk) 17:05, 2 February 2023 (UTC)
That new skins needs to be reformatted to fit all desktop screens
That new Vector skin doesn't need to have all those white spaces on each side and it needs to be reformatted to fit all desktop screens like the legacy skin does. BattleshipMan (talk) 06:12, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
One other thing. The content table should not be on the bottom of the left navigation bar. It's very inconvenient and it's doesn't bode well for experienced users who used it to go to the certain sections of articles that need editing, BattleshipMan (talk) 18:16, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
{{Div col}} doesn't work properly — another quirk of the enormous white space of Vector 2022. What used to be double-column lists, now appear single column until you zoom out... a lot. Example: Rural crafts#Examples. This list (which uses {{div col}}) should easily be two-column, but isn't.
My normal zoom setting is 110%. Using V2022, that shows single column. If I zoom down two clicks to 90%, I see the two columns, but can't read the text (too small). If I zoom at 100% or 110% it's one column. If I zoom up a click to 125%, the table of contents (the whole left margin) disappears, the article body widens, and now I get a two-column list — but lose the table of contents. At no time does Vector 2022 show me three columns no matter how small I shrink the text.
In contrast, using Vector 2010 I see two columns from 90%-110%, three columns at 67%-80%, even more columns for smaller zooms, and I don't loose the columns (go single column) until I zoom up to 125% (and I still get to keep a table of contents).
The {{Div col}} example shows the enormity of the white space in V2022. Especially considering that the majority of Wikipedia article layouts have been designed with V2010 (at and near 100% zoom) and mostly using desktops and full browsers, the excessive white space of V2022 messes up the layout of almost every article that has more than just text and maybe a single image. This goes beyond simply column issues, but I'm using columns to illustrate the problem.
The irony is that these articles will have to be redesigned to look good in V2022 by editors who mostly seem to be reverting to V2010. (That includes me.) You might want to add some sort of "Preview with V2022" button for using during editing. Grorp (talk) 06:13, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
lol... Nope, not me. I'm not gonna go over any articles and redesign their Div cols and whatever else so they'll somehow look good in Vector 2022. I'm not even gonna bother with any kind of "Preview with V2022" button (if that ever comes into existence) when I edit and write new content. I'm sticking with Vector 2010 for the foreseeable future. If what I edit in Vector 2010 looks like crap in Vector 2022, ((shrug)) it's not my problem. Shearonink (talk) 07:48, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
@Grorp: thank you for your precise feedback, I will report it to the team but the behavior of the template probably is concerning more the Technical village pump then the Web Team ("We are working on the interface only. No work will be done in terms of styling templates, the structure of page contents, map support, or cross-wiki templates."). The Web Team has been working with the American Foundation for the Blind to improve accessibility of Vector 2022 but some changes are still in progress, look at T318373 and T310033 for further information. Waiting for the changes, for improve your comfort on Vector 2022 consider using the full width option (here how to set it).
Nor I. I'm not the least bit interested in cleaning up the messes made by this roll out. I posted a similar concern above about misplaced tables and images. The response was, "This is a longstanding issue that severely impacts our mobile readers...". It was already broke on mobile, that makes it ok to break it on desktop too? So was this intentional? In that, 'if we make it look like crap on desktop, it will force our editors to fix our mobile problems'. In other words, 'If it won't get fixed because it ain't broke enough...Break it more!' DB1729talk04:01, 20 January 2023 (UTC)
It seems the default for div col is 30em. That is over 420px for a single column which seems somewhat wide. For instance, references have a maximum width of some 320px. I'm not sure why it is that wide, but perhaps a discussion should be had to reduce the default. I also would advices to set an explicit default for this particular case. 30em is taken as a minimum width, which is much too wide for a narrow word list. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 17:08, 22 January 2023 (UTC)
Hmm, we should add a maximum column count option to div col I think, as it seems to me that this is why ppl do no like narrow columns for div col. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 17:12, 22 January 2023 (UTC)
IMO it is far too soon to make any changes to the default width of columns in the English Wikipedia based on known problems with the beta Vector 2022 skin. The WMF developers are changing the CSS of Vector 2022 every week, sometimes more than once a week (I know because I have to chase down problems with my custom CSS weekly after they change class names and sizes of items fundamental to the CSS layout). There are many bug reports and feature requests still pending that should fix the excessive space that many page elements take away from page content, and there is an RFC pending that could make the "wide" layout the default. We should not make changes to our pages and templates until those bugs are fixed and that RFC is closed.
I have customized Vector 2022 with a personal CSS file to have more reasonable padding, and even with the TOC (left) and page tools (right) sidebars showing and a browser window width of just 1,150 pixels, I see two columns of items at Rural crafts#Examples when an unmodified {{div col}} is used. Let's be patient and give the WMF staff a chance to fix more layout bugs. – Jonesey95 (talk) 17:56, 3 February 2023 (UTC)
If I pin tools on the right side, open any article, and go to the history page: there is an "Atom" feed link that is obscured by the orange feed icon. Were these meant to sit side by side rather than on top of each other?
@Steue: Thanks for pointing this out! You are right, it's associated with the use of italics in longer titles. But it might also happen for other elements, like bold text or links. I've adjusted the script to avoid this bug. It works fine for me now. Could you check whether the problem is also solved on your side? You might have to restart your browser or do a hard refresh (Ctrl + F5) so that the new version of the script is loaded. Phlsph7 (talk) 12:31, 28 January 2023 (UTC)
These customizations may break as the WMF developers tweak the skin's CSS, which they are currently doing once or twice a week. – Jonesey95 (talk) 17:24, 8 February 2023 (UTC)
This skin is horrific
If it ain't broke, don't fix it. The new skin is simply poor work compared to the old default. The lack of a table of contents causes infoboxes to push images down (and sandwiching issues also arise), and the TOC on the left squeezes everything together. It's horrible. Who came up with this crap? ~ HAL33318:35, 18 January 2023 (UTC)
There's nothing in that story, User:Patafisik (WMF) to indicate when we approved the transition on the English Wikipedia. Can you point to that please? Also there's no explanation on why regular users weren't notified, nor why there's no clear link to the FAQ, nor why you can't simply switch back with one click. The information all seems to be about the skin - not the very unacceptable way it's been communicated and implemented! Nfitz (talk) 19:15, 18 January 2023 (UTC)
Hey @Nfitz, the link to the request for comment is used twice; it appears in the third paragraph, in the lead section. You'll find more links to the relevant discussions in the section "A very brief timeline". We were consulting a number of experienced and trusted Wikipedians who are experts both in the policies and technical things, incl. ArbCom members, and they helped us announce the RfC by the book. So for example, it was announced in the Watchlist notice. But before that, for example when we were asking random Wikipedians for feedback (that happened five times), we were running CentralNotice banners. SGrabarczuk (WMF) (talk) 19:37, 18 January 2023 (UTC)
So glad 'trusted' Wikipedians were consulted because the community at large clearly cannot be trusted to make the right decision. Remember folks, WP:TINC. Melmann21:13, 18 January 2023 (UTC)
Hi, I'm not sure I expressed myself clearly - I was merely referring to the way how the RfC was announced. We were trying to do everything about the RfC in accordance with the policies and good practices. SGrabarczuk (WMF) (talk) 21:30, 18 January 2023 (UTC)
@Nfitz: That was it. There's even boilerplate at the top that they wouldn't implement this nonsense if it didn't get community support. — LlywelynII08:36, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
@Patafisik (WMF): I would love working with you guys so of course nothing but appreciation for your intentions and attempted work. If that story in any way reflects the team's thought processes and rationale, though, no, you guys were inside a bubble and not thinking about how any of this works in practice. It's also silly that you went out of your way to document "only" one-fifth changed in the pilot projects when it's abundantly clear that this system hides any way to change. One-fifth shows absolutely overwhelming opposition if it was this hard for them to find how to make the switch in the first place. Where's the honest story about how this improves the backend? since the UX is only screwed over here... — LlywelynII08:36, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
I completely agree with HAL. This design defies all modern web standards, and goes back to the really bad "best viewed in 800x600" times.
Responsive design means to adapt to the user's screen size, and not enforce a certain size on the user's device. Because you simply don't know what device the user is using, and whether or not the chosen margins look good. It might look nice on the designer's screen in a specific resolution, but now imagine an ultra-wide 4k monitor that now consist of 90% blank white space and suddenly the whole thing looks horrific. TwoThe (talk) 12:57, 20 January 2023 (UTC)
I gave feedback some months ago about the use of unlabelled icons in the top toolbar - as usual, I was totally ignored. Now you've rolled out the new skin with its usability issues still in place. "Mystery meat" - using icons without labels - is considered poor interface design - there's even a Wikipedia article on this, so you can't claim ignorance. It has the potential to confuse the user if they don't happen to understand your chosen hieroglyphs. Either add labels or allow the user the option to activate labels in their preferences. Cnbrb (talk) 17:03, 18 January 2023 (UTC)
Oh that was it!! I couldnt find the preferences button easily, the button for the page you need to access to remove this mode can't be easily found on this mode. The concept of using logos over text isn't that great. Franfran2424 (talk) 17:34, 18 January 2023 (UTC)
"We believe the icons are sufficient"... " Having buttons with text labels [...] to us felt heavy and crowded". Says it all really. Feedback ignored. Bad job, baffling design, meaningless icons. I've switched back to the old design - not using this usabliity disaster. Cnbrb (talk) 18:40, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
Well I think it's more like: we considered the feedback, ran some tests, and made an informed decision. But at the end of the day you and I aren't really having a conversation, are we? You're feeling upset and ignored, and I fear that no reasoning, data, or explanation will suffice. I am honestly sorry to have caused you frustration, it's not a good feeling. If I could make everyone happy all at once I would be a very incredible person : ) But for now all I can do is follow the data, the feedback of the majority of people, and the intuition of the design professionals. AHollender (WMF) (talk) 19:54, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
@AHollender (WMF) I agree that you can't please everyone, nor ever will. I'm beginning to get used to the new layout and don't have a problem with it. But I do see an inconsistency in that virtually all the main links on a page have Alt-text that appears when you mouseover them. Except, that is, for the key user icon, plus the link to the Mentor dashboard when it's clicked and the dropdown menu appears. All the rest of the sub-menu links have alt-text, so that seemed odd to me. Oh, and the languages link in article pages doesn't show any alt-text either on hover.
None of this bothers me personally, but it does seem inconsistent. And from a UX perspective, I do genuinely feel the need to question how these omissions will impact users with visual impairments? Some will be reliant on alt-text and screen readers to announce what an image or a button/icon is for. Surely the user icon is now an absolutely key navigational route to other pages, and should it not have alt-text on mouse hover like the rest of them?
Hey @Nick Moyes, thanks for pointing out those shortcomings. We've been trying to update all of the buttons in the interface to make sure they have the appropriate alt-text and titles. I've added those to our list. Cheers, AHollender (WMF) (talk) 22:22, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
@AHollender (WMF) You're welcome. Is there a published list of those, or shall we just ping you when we spot them? I could add there's also alt-text needed for the 'Preview' button when editing with Source Editor, as well as its associated 'Okay, got it' buttons for first time use of this and for the Cite and Links buttons in WP:VE.
BTW: Can you point me to a Commons Category containing all the new images and arrangement of icons and menu layouts? We're going to need these to update all the 'How to Guides'. It took ages to update everything here when all we had to worry about was the switch from 'Save changes' to 'Publish changes'. This is going to be a whole lot more complicated than that, I suspect. Thanks, Nick Moyes (talk) 23:40, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
Hey @Nick Moyes my apologies for the delay here. I was keeping track of them in a team Google Doc, which I've now moved to Phabricator. Feel free to add to the list: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T329534.
This is the Commons category I've been using throughout the project: Category:Desktop_improvements_project. I'm wondering if it might make sense to setup a sub-category that is specifically for on-wiki documentation images? Maybe that could help with organization a bit. Regarding icons, I don't believe many of them are on Commons. They are all available in Codex (https://doc.wikimedia.org/codex/v0.2.1/icons/all-icons.html) though it isn't super easy to download them. I've just sent a message to the Codex team asking them if they could either make it easier to download icons from Codex, or automatically upload all of them to Commons. AHollender (WMF) (talk) 17:05, 13 February 2023 (UTC)
Brilliant idea to drive user account creation metrics.
I want to applaud hiding restoring the old site functionality behind an account - I had never bothered to make one before and think it's a pretty smart way to pump those numbers in this economy. YourDesignIsSht (talk) 05:51, 27 January 2023 (UTC)
Same. I do unorinacally want to applaud this, most other sites wouldn't even hage given the option to turn back even if we paid for it. This alone keeps my respect for Wikipedia mostly intact despite implementing these changes and pretending that they are "Barely noticable".
I understand the reasoning for not enabling this customisation for offline users, and I really do appreciate being able to turn back to Legacy online. Sadly, it's very hard to stay online even if you tick the box for some reason, so it gets annoying having to sign in again all the time. Master Suuta (talk) 14:21, 3 February 2023 (UTC)
It's already hit the headlines: [2] I don't know yet whether I like the new skin or not -- but it isn't worth the 10 years of effort and the money it cost, as described in the Slate article.Smallchief (talk) 21:08, 18 January 2023 (UTC)
According to the article I linked, Senior Designer, WMF User:Jorm proposed a new skin and developed a prototype in 2012-- and the proposal has been floating around ever since. The title of the article is "Wikipedia Has Spent Years on a Barely Noticeable Redesign." Any estimate on how much the new skin cost in staff time and salaries? Smallchief (talk) 21:48, 18 January 2023 (UTC)
Why did you ignore majority user consensus from the fifth prototype testing?
I saw employees from Wikimedia Foundation reference the fact that the new design has been prototyped, and that user feedback has been collected. However, looking at the user feedback from that prototype testing regarding background and borders, it seems several options were clearly more popular than the ultimately chosen "minimalistic" option. In particular, option 9 seems very popular. However, 4 and 6 also seem the get more votes than 1.
I am wondering: Did anyone from WMF actually collect and assemble statistics from the user feedback, or had your internal user experience experts already made their minds up about choosing option 1 from the beginning irrespective of user feedback? I have some level of understanding that you guys want to modernize and improve the look of Wikipedia. However, it comes off as rather dismissive and condescending when every WMF employee in the discussion defends the new design as the result of some objective scientific process, referencing extensive prototyping and feedback gathering.
I have gone ahead and looked at the feedback gathering you guys are linking to. As far as I can see the feedback seems to more in favor of option 9 (light grey solid outside article background), as opposed to option 1 (minimalist).
In my opinion, the prototyping and feedback process you've gone for has been lacking in transparency. At the very least tally up some of the results from users' opinions and present the statistics. There's no point in having a prototype testing period if the results are already predetermined. The way your expert user experience designers have been defending the minimalist design as the obvious choice, I don't get the impression that any other design was actually ever in contention. Even the fact that it's called "option 1" suggests possible bias and indirect influencing of users in terms of what outcome was desired by WMF.
Personally I'd very, very much prefer to have something to anchor my eyes (either TOC line, or light grey article background) in the sea of whiteness that is the new design. Some light greyness would also go a long way to help against the third degree retina burns we've suffered from Vector 2022. The fixed width wrapping I'll get used to eventually. But please, listen to your users and the user feedback you got from your own prototyping regarding the minimalistic design. Lalush5 (talk) 19:56, 2 February 2023 (UTC)
Holy shit, I'd never seen these but every single one of them looks miles better than what we got, especially with how in the real version the background effect next to the article looks really weird on larger screen sizes, just a random column of grey on both sides.
the artciles seem to look really, really weird with the new appearance settings. can someone please fix this? Sm8900 (talk) 22:46, 9 February 2023 (UTC)
Userscript to restore the classical table of contents
I wanted to let you know that I wrote a user script to restore the classical table of contents (TOC) to be used with the new Vector 2022 skin. I saw many users complain about how the new TOC is handled (it's floating on the left, it's folded by default, and it does not number the sections). The classical TOC from the Vector 2010 legacy skin has a static position after the lead and before the first section. It is presented in a grey box that can be folded. The classical TOC can be used together with the new TOC or the user may decide to hide the new TOC by clicking on its hide-button.
The script can be installed by adding the following line to your common.js:
This would be quite an elegant solution but I tried it and I couldn't get it to work. Is it supposed to be used on the English Wikipedia under the Vector 2022 skin? For example, the first selector targets elements of the class "mw-table-of-contents-container" but for me, no elements are selected. If I use it, for example at Earth, all it does is move the floating TOC on the left a little up. Phlsph7 (talk) 11:16, 14 February 2023 (UTC)
Hi @Phlsph7, I'm reporting this to the Web Team, to give us some context can you write more about your configuration (e.g. browser, OS, display resolution)? It should be useful to understand what is happening. Patafisik (WMF) (talk) 13:10, 17 February 2023 (UTC)
@Patafisik (WMF): Thanks for looking into it. I tried it on Chrome, Firefox, and Edge. I got the same result for all of them. The OS is Windows 10 and the resolution is 1440x900. Phlsph7 (talk) 15:58, 17 February 2023 (UTC)
Thanks for taking care of it. Now it works: the table of contents is moved from its floating position on the left to a static position before the first section. Phlsph7 (talk) 08:41, 20 February 2023 (UTC)
The pace of bug fixing appears to have slowed
Immediately after deployment, WMF developers were on a good pace of fixing large and small bugs with Vector 2022, but the pace appears to have slowed. I appreciate that development continues (sticky right-side toolbar, hooray!), but I am already beginning to worry that Vector 2022 beta is being marked as "good enough", and energy is flowing elsewhere. I'm thinking in particular of T329174 (selecting the page title doesn't work when there is no TOC), which is nine days old and has not even been commented on by developers. It seems like a quick patch for this regression, although I am sure that I am not aware of the side effects. I am also thinking of T325219 (empty blank space above the page title), which is is two months old and also seems like a quick fix. And of course T294950 (show TOC during page preview), which has had no action since August, and which is quite inconvenient on large pages.
Hi @Jonesey95:, thank you for your interest in the Desktop Improvements project. The team is working on different tasks, iterations and monitoring data are going on, not all changes are eye-catching. Visual refinements and minor changes need time too. You can monitor what the team is working on by looking at the WorkBoard on Phabricator, clicking on Watch project. Patafisik (WMF) (talk) 09:05, 20 February 2023 (UTC)
Move the language choice close to the wikipedia logo. Language is page related, yet a switch to a different language leads to a whole other wikipedia, wikinews, wiktionary, ...
Hi @Uwappa: thanks for your interest in the Desktop Improvements project. A website logo linking to the Home page is very usual, a menu on the logo as you suggest would confuse many users. Some of those links are in the Page tools menu, which is actually persistent on the page. The Team has been working with communities and testing prototypes, for customization please look at the repository and at this section of our FAQ for more information.--Patafisik (WMF) (talk) 09:22, 20 February 2023 (UTC)
Finding buttons
I've tried out the new skin and I do like it quite a bit, but I'm having a hard time finding where various tools have gone. For instance, I've got something enabled in legacy that puts a line across the top of a user talk page that lets me easily check things like what ds alerts a user has been given and when. I imagine this is generated by some script I installed, but I've installed many and I don't know which one it would be. At any rate, in the new skin it doesn't appear. I've tried clicking around. Is it likely to be in a particular place, or is it likely the script and the new skin aren't playing nice together? Valereee (talk) 16:03, 19 February 2023 (UTC)
Okay, so this surprised me as the most recent RfC I saw seemed to not draw too much support, but I'm having a look at it. A few immediate things jumped out to me. I've read through above and haven't seen them:
Why does the default left side bar width differ for pages with no ToC? It's really weird for it to jump left and right. It doesn't jump too far, but it's disconcerting as I always look to the same place to start reading (well, I look to the 2010 place, but I'm trying to find a new place to look by default now and the jumping left and right is not helping with this).
What determines if the floating top bar appears or not as you scroll down the page? Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't. I think being in a diff view stops it, but I can't figure out the other reasons. It's not appearing on this page for example.
Why is the talkpage yellow bar notification now weirdly off to the right and on a separate line completely? There is a huge black space where it used to be, so it looked like a bug at first (before I realised the skin had changed), so I'd just like to check that this is the intended design.
If I click "hide" on the table of contents, the left screen goes totally blank. Where is the "show" button? (And for that matter, since there is now functionality for floating elements to move down the page with you, why don't the previous left-bar links also float down?)
Also, a much more serious problem: the watchlist icon (took me a few seconds to find it) is laggy? When I click on it nothing happens for ages. I thought it was broken and was typing this up saying that until it suddenly worked (deleting the early version of this comment). When I ctrl+click it the new tab opens immediately. (Also the watchlist icon is quite small and feels mobile-optimised, does anyone have a css fix to make it a wider button that I can click on with less precise mouse movement? Much obliged if so.) CMD (talk) 02:00, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
My talkpage and contributions are in a submenu now! The talkpage at least should definitely be there by default, it's one of the most important buttons a new user can have! (I'd like contributions too, but hopefully that can be fixed with a personal css. Talkpage is more important than userpage!) CMD (talk) 04:32, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
Hey @Chipmunkdavis, going to try to answer your questions:
The layout shifts because when there is no ToC we center the content. As you may have already seen below, once we do https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T318186 this should no longer (or extremely rarely) be a problem.
The sticky header appears on a per-namespace basis, which thus far as been determined case-by-case by asking ourselves: would people benefit from having the various tools (talk, history, etc.) available at all times on this page? Open to feedback about that!
Think I need a screenshot to clarify what you're seeing with the talk page / yellow bar notification.
That will be addressed somewhat by https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T311160. A few people have asked why we don't just collapse the ToC in place. We tried several approaches to that. First using a text label, which then ends up taking up a bunch of horizontal space and kind of defeats the purpose of collapsing the TOC at smaller screen widths (because you want that space back for the article). Then using an icon which felt like it was just kinda randomly floating on the side of the article. So we ended up putting it by the article heading.
Hm, I've never experienced that issue with the Watchlist and can't reproduce it. Are you still having that issue? I can't think of any obvious reason why it would be happening (aside from a slow internet connection or some kind of temporary slowness with our servers?).
Several community members asked us to remove the 960px max-width for certain special pages, particularly log-type pages (History, Recent changes, Related changes, etc.), in order to reduce line-wrapping. This was well before we added a full-width toggle. Maybe that's what you're experiencing?
Right so we've heard a lot of different opinions about which links should be outside vs. inside the menu. I don't have a very satisfying answer other than the most requests we've heard so far have been for the watchlist.
@AHollender (WMF): Thank you for the kind replies. If you don't mind I have some further feedback/questions
The layout shifts because when there is no ToC we center the content: I don't understand this. The most obvious effect of the new skin is that the width is fixed, so why...is it not? There are quite a few internal pages that lack ToCs completely as they lack sections, I don't understand why them jumping to the left is considered useful. The left column should be the same width with or without a ToC in the article.
The sticky header appears on a per-namespace basis Not all tools will be useful all the time, but one of the tools is for example the edit this page button, which seems almost always useful to have around? Add/remove from watchlist is useful across all spaces, and page history is nice to have around.
talk page / yellow bar notification I will leave a talkback notice on your talkpage.
taking up a bunch of horizontal space and kind of defeats the purpose of collapsing the TOC Okay, the heading icon. I had zero clue that was there at all, it is not intuitive. I don't feel the indicator will do too much, given it appears to only be visible if you are for some reason at the very top of the page. I don't understand the horizontal space comment at all, the amount of horizontal space does not change at all when collapsing the ToC (you just get a black void of the same width). There is an entirely separate button (near the Wikipedia logo) to collapse the left space, which is separate from the ToC hide button. What am I missing here? A randomly floating icon seems a very good solution, as the ToC is randomly floating so this would be a clear thematic and visual connection.
On the watchlist, if it's a slow connection to servers it's unique to the watchlist, as every other button/link works fine. Still happening, but if you say it's not a skin bug then not for this page.
remove the 960px max-width for certain special pages This is great for viewing the diffs themselves as they are in two columns, I do not understand why the article preview below the diffs is not constrained. One point of diffs is to see how the edit affected the article, this change breaks that partially by ensuring the diff view will not show how the article looks for most people.
which links should be outside vs. inside the menu Watchlist good! Definitely outside. Losing the talkpage link though, that's a really odd one. They are a crucial part of the community (talkpage links are the one thing that is mandated in all editor signatures for example), and should not be hidden away for new users.
The options under the "More" button are now very compressed with no space between lines. If someone has a css fix that separates them please let me know. Thanks, CMD (talk) 09:44, 22 January 2023 (UTC)
@Chipmunkdavis What exactly do you mean with "not fixed for me"? It's just because you would like a wider menu, or are you meaning that there is a bug somewhere? In this case, I suggest you to add a comment in the task, explaining what is happening. Thank you, Patafisik (WMF) (talk) 08:32, 20 February 2023 (UTC)
Hey @Chipmunkdavis, I am very sorry for the long delay here.
The layout shifts because when there is no ToC we center the content — I've created an image to try and clarify why we don't keep the space where the TOC was: on smaller screens it allows for the content to take up more space. On larger screens it is not necessary, so perhaps we could make it so that it only happens on smaller screens (though again, once we've done https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T318186 I don't think it will be nearly as much of an issue).
No TOC layout (Vector 2022)
The sticky header appears on a per-namespace basis — we just discussed this task yesterday, which is about bringing the sticky header to more namespaces: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T329673
Taking up a bunch of horizontal space and kind of defeats the purpose of collapsing the TOC — I've created two images to try and clarify what I mean here:
Showing how collapsing the TOC in place takes up extra space (Vector 2022)Showing how collapsing the TOC in place takes up extra space (full-width toggle on) (Vector 2022)
We could just have a floating icon, which would take up less horizontal space. Though it still takes up a bit of space, and to me looks kinda off. You can see that here: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T306660
Re: layout shifts: I am clearly on what is considered a larger screen. Given there is a fixed width to V2022 it should (right?) be easy to adjust the behaviour based on the size of the window. I hope it also applies to pages with no sections.
Re: collapsing TOC: One of the comments I've seen brought up about the new ToC system compared to the old one, repeated in that Phab about issues with a fixed ToC is "The main drawback here is that you cannot access the table of contents once you have scrolled down the page". If that is a genuine concern, please consider that the collapsed ToC does this in an even worse way. It moves the ToC higher on the page, to a place that it never was that is even further to scroll to than the V2010 ToC. It's really weird to read the logic about scrolling when it's a key component of the current V2022 ToC implementation.
How do you go to your job every day and do it wrong? Absolutely criminal. You should start refunding donations out of your outrageously inflated salaries. And I know your salaries are inflated because the value of the product you've produced is zero ($0) meaning any money you earned for it is tantamount to theft.
Hi @Reservationsatdorsia - thanks for your feedback. We understand that at a first glance it might be difficult to see the impact of this change. If you're curious, we have compiled some of our findings on the benefits of the skin for readers and editors on this page. We also encourage you to check out our project documentation for more information on individual features, the research and conversations the team has had with the community, and our overall goals for the project. OVasileva (WMF) (talk) 19:22, 18 January 2023 (UTC)
Reservationsatdorsia You are certainly entitled to disagree with what has been done here, but you owe these people an apology for your offensive comments. Unless you get hired by the Wikimedia Foundation, you don't have any right to insult them as to how they do their jobs. Disagree, even be angry, sure. But they are just people like you. 331dot (talk) 19:36, 18 January 2023 (UTC)
The idea that you can't criticize someone unless you're their cohort is frankly uneducated. What you're suggesting is akin to defending food staff not washing their hands because you don't work at a restaurant. It's an objectively bad decision to force this change on the users, no one has asked for this. They can't even deliver dark mode without requiring a log in, it's pure incompetence. BadChange (talk) 20:12, 18 January 2023 (UTC)
BadChange That isn't what I said at all. People can disagree and even be angry- but these "developers" are people too. It's their website and they can design it as they wish. This has been worked on and tested for years with input. I'm sure it's not perfect, but there are 7 billion humans on this planet all with differing ways of using the site. There are technical limitations to what you propose. 331dot (talk) 20:15, 18 January 2023 (UTC)
"Re "no one asked for this"- have you surveyed all 7 billion humans on this planet to know that's true? What you mean is you didn't ask for it. That's fine- use the old skin. But you have no way of knowing if that is true or not. I don't think the site needs to stay the same for all time to satisfy you. 331dot (talk) 20:17, 18 January 2023 (UTC)
I'm willing to bet most people are going to be upset by this redesign, regardless if its "objectivly good" or not, most people don't like change, especially not on stuff they're used to being the same for so long. (Just look at how angry people get at each YouTube redesign).★Trekker (talk) 20:21, 18 January 2023 (UTC)
> have you surveyed all 7 billion humans on this planet to know that's true?
Have you? As someone who actually imposes a change on their users, it is the developers' job to ensure the change is welcome by the users, not the other way around. And I don't remember any polls or announcements or even beta tests on Wikipedia prior to this change. (And no, I don't follow social media, in case if there was something there.)
Look, nothing is perfect for everyone, this is obvious. But the new design has glaring objective functional flaws, such as content being not viewable, and serious inconveniences for unregistered users, which are the absolute majority of users, I'm sure. If you can't provide a decent experience to most of your users then just do not apply this change, plain and simple. But frankly, I don't see the problem in having the preferences saved in a cookie or something. 2A02:2168:84D9:2200:D6CB:69C2:6A20:23C2 (talk) 22:23, 18 January 2023 (UTC)
You can certainly critizise, but you shouldn't say they ought to feel ashamed or are criminals just because you don't like their design. I'm not a fan of these changes either but your insults are uncalled for.★Trekker (talk) 20:21, 18 January 2023 (UTC)
I owe them nothing. It's not my problem that they have chosen to be terrible at their craft. If the wikimedia foundation hired me tomorrow, I would revert all changes, fire anyone associated with this debacle, and then resign to give ted talks about how now to ruin your core product. Reservationsatdorsia (talk) 20:22, 18 January 2023 (UTC)
They should do the honorable thing and resign. Web development isn't for everyone. Perhaps they could try their hand at digging ditches since they obviously love huge swathes of open space. Reservationsatdorsia (talk) 20:32, 18 January 2023 (UTC)
I don't agree that would be an "honorable thing". Maybe you should consider giving constructive criticism instead to actually improve the situation.★Trekker (talk) 20:34, 18 January 2023 (UTC)
Reservationsatdorsia Instead of saying how the developers are terrible human beings for trying to make improvements with community input as they see them, please offer specific criticisms in a civil manner since you seem to know more than they do. If you would care to read more about it, they have reasons for the open space. 331dot (talk) 20:41, 18 January 2023 (UTC)
revert to 2010 vector
stop trying to make desktop sites into mobile apps
Your projection documentation is a joke. You threw out nearly 65% of the responses to the sentiment survey because they used "foul language". Get this: if your re-design was bad enough to make the average wikipedia start sending you curses, that means your re-design wasn't very good. Reservationsatdorsia (talk) 21:15, 18 January 2023 (UTC)
@OVasileva (WMF): I know I'd love to have a job working for you guys so of course thanks for your dedication and attempted work. As noted on that page's talk page, though, the "data" it employs is apparently entirely specious, given that one-fifth of users changing when you completely hide the ability to change speaks to overwhelming negative response, not any kind of general support. — LlywelynII08:28, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
At the end of the day I worry that these conversations are not only unproductive, but also end up leaving all parties involved feeling badly. Without any kind of relationship and trust, it seems difficult (impossible?) to have constructive discussions about product & design. You all are suspicious of us, which is fine, so any information we give you, or any attempt we make to explain our process, is inadequate. Or worse, somehow further incriminates us in your eyes.
I know from past exchanges with volunteers it takes hundreds of messages back and forth to build any amount of trust, so I know that won't come soon here since I haven't spoken to any of you before. But that's okay. If anyone here is genuinely interested in digging into the details, learning why we made certain decisions, and getting to constructive conversation, I am very much available for that. If you just needed to vent your frustration, that's totally fine to.
I feel like all of my comments have been highly constructive. Frankly, I should send you a venmo request so you can compensate me for my consulting. If you prefer to pay in cash or check, DM me for payment instructions. Reservationsatdorsia (talk) 19:40, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
To be honest, I found them antagonistic and quite inappropriate. If you can't communicate without resorting to silly hyperbole and insults, then you're likely just to be ignored. I have left a polite reminder of this on your talk page. Nick Moyes (talk) 22:32, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
It's one thing to express feedback about the design itself – I've had some myself – but verbal abuse directed at people is unwarranted, unacceptable and undignified. And the fact you're using a burner account to do it suggests you know that. This section should be removed as a breach of WP:TPG. Ibadibam (talk) 18:41, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
My dream was to never have an account at all. I had to make one in order to get back to the good design. The people who made this godawful design are highly paid and highly educated professionals. They don't need you to defend them. They need to own up to the fact that they are a bunch of slaves to the trend of mobile designing everything. They need to admit they made a huge mistake and revert it. They won't do it because they're a bunch of cowards, though. Reservationsatdorsia (talk) 21:43, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
I think there are a number of things we could have done to make the transition easier on people. I'm sorry that it's causing you so much stress. As far as the design itself goes, again, if you become interested in some point about having a conversation about it I'd be happy to. Until then, I am also happy to be a punching bag for your frustration : ) It's more or less part of my job as the lead designer on this project. AHollender (WMF) (talk) 22:28, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
Nobody wants a punching bag. They want answers and solutions. Rollback to vector 2010. An easy, clickable button without needing a login to switch back to 2010. etc. Just admit that your design was bad and move on. Not everyone is cut out for design, but the post office is always hiring. Reservationsatdorsia (talk) 23:38, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
AHollender (WMF). Sir, you are obviously a galant person. And Members of the WMF staff. Noone wants to insult you. We understand your difficult position: you must follow your orders. But we seek your courage! Carry the message of this subjective matter (as this comment here) of courtesy towards unlogged, or when-unlogged readers, so much overlooked in the years of preparation of this switch. Stand up for us! At least, give us a little visible button on top of pages for switching to Classic Style. Is it so impossible? Thank you, Sir. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Sarri.greek (talk • contribs) 00:19, 20 January 2023 (UTC) fixed by --Patafisik (WMF) (talk) 13:10, 1 February 2023 (UTC)
Hello, I found a bug. When vector 2022 is selected and there is custom CSS on the Vector 2010 skin it will use this CSS. It will also use the CSS from the Vector 2022 page but it shouldn't. If you select one skin it should not load another's skin CSS. Pohm (talk) 06:50, 24 February 2023 (UTC)
.mw-list-item a and .mw-list-item a:visited use the same colour ?
I'm struggling to to understand the decision to make .mw-list-item a and .mw-list-item a:visited use the same colour in Vector 2022. In my editing I'm a big user of Special:WhatLinksHere/<pagename>, Special:RecentChangesLinked/<pagename> and similar pages and the visited / non-visited status of pages can be important part of my workflow. Links to these pages can occur in body text but also in Tools list. The colour of these links is now different depending on whether they're in the body text or in the Tools list. Is the rationale for this documented anywhere? Stuartyeates (talk) (09:17, 8 February 2023 (UTC)
Hi @Stuartyeates, thank you for your feedback. I can't reproduce it, I've tried to click on the links of the list in Special:WhatLinksHere/Earth, but visited links change color for me. Can you give me an example of page where it is happening to you, and an example of link in this page you are clicking on and which isn't changing color? and more details on your configuration (OS, browser, browser version, device) too? I will be glad to open a ticket on Phabricator for you whether a bug occurs. Patafisik (WMF) (talk) 08:59, 9 February 2023 (UTC)
Hi User:Patafisik (WMF). Yes, someone gave a technical answer over there, but I still don't have a design answer to my question of why normal / visited / non-existent links are not differently coloured in the navigation in Vector 2022. There's (not-unreasonable) documentation of the Vector 2022 link colour design at https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Reading/Web/Desktop_Improvements/Features/Link_colors but there's nothing about removing the differentiation in navigation links. In fact that's 100% focused on body text issues rather than page furniture. Stuartyeates (talk) 02:20, 24 February 2023 (UTC)
Those links have different colors, different from each other. If you see them with the same color perhaps there is a bug somewhere. Please check this adding ?safemode=1 at the end of the URL. Read also my first answer and provide details, thank you! Patafisik (WMF) (talk) 14:11, 25 February 2023 (UTC)
chat log
<Me> By the way
does wikipedia look different to you today?
<fiancee> it looked different yesterday
<Me>okay, so you noticed that
do you consider the new look a) better, b) worse, c) don't care
<fiancee> i don't like it
<Me>thank you, that's a data point
any particular reasons?
<fiancee> all the things that used to be in a sidebar on the left are now down at the bottom of the page. i don't like having to scroll down to get to them.
also not especially fond of this at the top <screenshot of the top of the front page>
<me>could you be more specific regarding "this at the top" ?
<fiancee> The gray 'Welcome' box. It's just sort of... there. It almost feels like an afterthought or something. I don't like all the negative space with the text just centered in there
<me> thank you. would you be okay with my posting an anonymized transcript of your specific points to the page where people are complaining about it?
As another anecdote, my coworker today dropped by my office and asked me if I had seen the new design. I've never spoken to him about Wikipedia before, but he had heard I was an editor. I told him that I had, and he responded that he /hated/ it. So, that's something.--Gen. Quon[Talk]16:11, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
Hi DS -- what things from the left sidebar did they mean are now at the bottom of the page? I see the language selector for the Main Page... – SJ +18:16, 20 January 2023 (UTC)
<her> <screenshot of 'Wikipedia's sister projects>
<her> <screenshot of 'other areas of Wikipedia'>
<her> <screenshot of 'Wikipedia languages'>
<her> I could be wrong, but I swear I remember at least some of this content used to be along the side of the page. Now all of it is at the bottom DS (talk) 17:20, 20 February 2023 (UTC)
Hi @DragonflySixtyseven, adding ?safemode=1 to the url this is still happening? Please provide your configuration (browser, OS, screen resolution) and screenshots too to help us to fix the problem. Wikipedia's sister projects are in the page Tools menu, moved to the right of the page, can you see them?
When searching for the target of a redirect or an anchor, the new research engine suggests the article containing the anchor, and, when clicking on a suggestion, it opens the top of the article, and not the place of the anchor or section.
For example, if I type "prime fie", for searching for "prime field", the seach engine suggests characteristic (algebra), without any indication that the search engine completed "prime fie" into "prime field". Moreover, when clicking on the suggested article, the redirect is not used, and this is not its target that is displayed.
This goes clearly against WP:LEAST. Even for experimented editors, this is especilly annoying in two cases:
When searching the exact spelling of a redirect for linking from another article (presently, one has to read the source of the article for knowing this).
When wanting to edit a redirect page (one has to know the exact spelling, to type it in the search engine, to go to the article by clicking on the search button – not on the suggested link –, and then to click on the link "redirected from"). Discouraging.
Want to chime in with a couple other unusual things I've noticed with the new search bar. (And I agree with the above comment on the behavior of redirects.) First issue is when the cursor is over a suggested term, hitting enter brings me to that page and not to whatever I've typed; if I begin a search with Alt+Shift+F and type the correct title and hit enter, if my cursor happens to be sitting on the left side of the screen (meaning arbitrarily over the suggestion list), I'm brought to the wrong page.
The other issue I've been having is somewhat hard to replicate, but it's happened a couple dozen times (using Chrome on multiple Windows computers). Sometimes when I hit enter from a search, it completely ignores what I've typed (whether it's a page that exists or not) and brings me to this blank page. Not sure what's causing it; possibly it has to do with how fast I'm typing (of course, now that I'm consciously trying to replicate it, it won't happen, but it did again just minutes before I decided to leave this comment). Hameltion (talk | contribs) 20:45, 20 February 2023 (UTC)
I think I just figured out how to replicate the second problem of blanking searches? It's kind of weird. If you type a long title and your cursor is on the suggestions list, then when the list shrinks because the search is specific enough there are fewer possible search targets, if the cursor keeps still but is no longer on the suggestions list, the search will fail this weird way. Hameltion (talk | contribs) 21:01, 20 February 2023 (UTC)
At the top of the page, there's a line "Web Team FY2022-23 Q3 Sprint 4". "FY2022-23" stands for the Californian fiscal year 2022-23, "Q3" means quarter 3 (January–March), and "Sprint 4" is the fourth of our two-week cadences in which we plan our work (see also: Timeboxing). Every two weeks, I'll be updating the link on the page wp:Vector 2022 (I'm not planning on doing that on this very talk page).
In short, how to interpret the board:
The closer to the right, the closer to marking a ticket as "done"
"QA in Production" means "we're checking if it works on wikis", and "QA" means "we're checking if it works in our testing environment". From the editors' perspective, everything to the left from that is in the "doing" phase.
We mostly (or even only) use these boards to document our design and technical work. We don't use them to document community-facing work such as posting updates and announcements.
Just in case you haven't been particularly active on Phabricator and aren't familiar with its etiquette, there's a rule saying that discussions not related directly to the subject of the tasks should take place elsewhere. In practice, if you're not sure where to comment, you're welcome to do so here or on the project talk page on MediaWiki.org. Thanks, SGrabarczuk (WMF) (talk) 02:28, 7 March 2023 (UTC)
New prototype. Visual separation between regions
Hi everyone. Thank you all for your continued involvement and participation in the conversation around the Vector 2022 skin. Over the past two weeks, we have been focusing on addressing one of the main concerns which has come out of the feedback around the skin so far - the separation of content and overall brightness of the interface. As we've shared before, we've been working on a few prototypes around this and have finally settled on a final prototype we would like to get your feedback on. We also want to have a conversation around how we want to measure the potential changes as compared to the current layout. We've posted more details and specific questions on the talk page of the project – we welcome your feedback and questions there! SGrabarczuk (WMF) (talk) 01:23, 9 March 2023 (UTC)
Move "What links here" from Tools menu to Page menu
Since "What links here" is relative to the page being displayed, it ought to go under the Page menu rather than the Tools menu. Largoplazo (talk) 16:34, 5 March 2023 (UTC)
I see "What links here" under "General", along with other page-related links. Where do you see a menu called "Page"? – Jonesey95 (talk) 18:22, 5 March 2023 (UTC)
Hi @Largoplazo: thank you for your feedback. Perhaps shorted names are confusing. The "Page tools" menu (appearing with the word "Tools") is the menu for links related to the page, instead the "Page" menu is a gadget called MoreMenu which is not the standard for all users: "this gadget adds up to two dropdown menus to the menu bar containing links to useful common tasks, user/page logs, analytic tools/statistics, and tools for administrator". MoreMenu is an option, it is not visible if not activated by the user, so it may be complicate to move within this menu something that have to be always available for all users. For suggestions concerning the MoreMenu please write on the dedicated talk page. --Patafisik (WMF) (talk) 10:08, 10 March 2023 (UTC)
This new glitch has happened to my account several times today. When I am toggling between pages/articles, my view has changed to Vector 2022 rather than (yes, it is in my User Preferences, thankyouverymuch) Vector Legacy. Anyone have any idea what's going on? Shearonink (talk) 14:35, 11 May 2023 (UTC)
Hello everybody. When I view articles, sometimes the table of contents initially displays with the subsections collapsed, and sometimes it initially displays with the subsections expanded. For example, The Beatles has the TOC subsections collapsed and The Beatles discography has them expanded. Why is it inconsistent in this way? What I really want is for the subsections (and sub-subsections, etc.) to always be expanded upon initial display of the article, so I'm viewing the entire TOC. In my opinion that would be way better. (I'm on a Windows desktop PC, and using Firefox.) — Mudwater (Talk)21:54, 12 July 2023 (UTC)
I don't know if it is documented anywhere, but T300973 made it so that the TOC is expanded if there are fewer than 20 sections. If you want the TOC to be expanded on all pages, see this thread from the archive. My custom CSS may have changed since that post. – Jonesey95 (talk) 23:54, 12 July 2023 (UTC)
@Jonesey95: Very interesting. Thank you. I wonder if the auto-expansion (and I guess numbering too) could be made into a built-in choice, under Preferences --> Appearance, for those using Vector 2022. — Mudwater (Talk)10:24, 13 July 2023 (UTC)
It's generally a bad idea to make things preferencces unless it's necessary, due to maintainability issues. There's an essay about it on MetaWiki or MediaWiki. — Qwerfjkltalk13:17, 14 July 2023 (UTC)
New prototype?
This is is the prototype I meant. I think that it is greatly superior to the current V22, and at the same time an improvement compared to V10. It would have been the right compromise between classical structure and innovation, and I think that the community would have unanimously welcomed it.--Æo (talk) 21:52, 6 September 2023 (UTC)
In the article are shown two screenshots of a different version of Vector 2022, respectively in the very first and in the very last images of the article, which in my opinion is far better than both the currently deployed version and the Zebra version. In particular, in the version shown in the article, the ToC is placed inline just as it was in Vector Legacy and the user's and reader's menus and buttons are better organised. What is this version? Will it be available in the future? Æo (talk) 13:41, 6 August 2023 (UTC)
Hey @Æo. Thanks for your continued interest in the project :) These mockups were made at the early exploratory stage in summer 2019, and only reflected the initial ideas of our designer and product manager. You'll see more of those in the Wikimania Stockholm research report. As you know, throughout the project, we did feedback collection rounds on a few prototypes, and performed qualitative user tests and A/B tests, which is how we've landed with what we've got now. These mockups naturally can't include that part of our job.
Currently, we're making first steps in our next project – you'll find information about it on the page Accessibility for reading (the project name and page title may change). Soon we'll be ready to send first messages about it to village pumps across the wikis. If you'd like to watch us more closely, subscribe to our newsletter to get notifications about the project updates! SGrabarczuk (WMF) (talk) 15:48, 7 August 2023 (UTC)
You should consider re-proposing those versions to the broader community. The current V22 has driven me away from Wikipedia. I am literally repulsed by the articles when I am not logged in (with V10). Æo (talk) 20:01, 7 August 2023 (UTC)
@Æo: There may be an add-on for your browser which switches to your preferred skin even when not logged in. I use one. Certes (talk) 20:16, 7 August 2023 (UTC)
That prototype in your screenshot looks really nice. I agree that a prototype like that would have been better received.
That "Search free knowledge..." HTML placeholder is really cool too. I'm almost tempted to file a ticket to change that on old skins. –Novem Linguae (talk) 15:34, 7 September 2023 (UTC)
This string is too long, ends on an orphaned line, and is no longer accurate (the sticky header means a language-links icon is always available in the upper-right, so there's no point in jumping your view back to the top of the page).
Current string:
On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. Go to top.
Interim proposal (close to the original, but accurate & grammatical):
Language links are at the top of the page across from the title.
A couple months ago, we were promised that new colors for V22 would be deployed, and there was an updated version of the Zebra prototype. What happened to that? Aaron Liu (talk) 20:45, 7 September 2023 (UTC)
Warning: excessively cynical response follows. The phabricator workboard for Vector 2022 shows a number of Zebra-related tasks. I did not see any with updates since July. By all appearances, Vector 2022 has moved into the "we found a new thing to work on" phase of the project, joining the Visual Editor (officially out of beta in the last month, after many years of stalled bugs) and many other projects about which someone was once very excited. I have resigned myself to living with my extensive custom CSS for Vector 2022 for the foreseeable future to fix the excessive white space, lack of contrast between areas, non-matching top-of-screen bars, and other basic issues. If you like some of the Zebra look, you might have to implement it yourself. – Jonesey95 (talk) 21:04, 7 September 2023 (UTC)
LOL, how did the Visual Editor exit beta? I just tested it a few days ago, and it's still garbage — nothing works besides basic functionality. And this list hasn't gotten any shorter. InfiniteNexus (talk) 00:35, 8 September 2023 (UTC)
Hey @Aaron Liu, thanks for the questions here. We've published an update on VPT. TLDR, to improve V22 further, we'll build dark mode and options for font size and typography, available for both logged-out and logged-in, on both desktop and mobile. Zebra turned out to be more tricky than expected :/ It will take more time to get it done, and right now, font size and typography is the priority. How do you feel about moving this conversation to VPT? SGrabarczuk (WMF) (talk) 13:06, 12 September 2023 (UTC)
It's been long enough; seems time for the 'Languages' section in the main sidebar, which now only has this message, to go away. Is there a way for individual wikis to hide that section, before it is removed altogether in V22? – SJ +04:23, 14 November 2023 (UTC)
Proposed decomissioning process:
Shorten message to "Language links are at the top of the page"
Propose hiding the language sidebar for V22 altogether: T353619
I don't think we'd get a majority for putting readers (and editors who haven't set preferences) through the pain of a second change of skin by rolling back. Of course, there's no way that the original release would have got consensus, which is why it appeared out of nowhere with no real consultation. Certes (talk) 20:13, 1 February 2024 (UTC)
the pain of a second change of skin by rolling back Well, I'm still reeling from the pain of the first change of skin. Yes, even though I am still using V10, having V22 as the default still creates a massive headache due to article placement issues! InfiniteNexus (talk) 20:34, 3 February 2024 (UTC)
I'm in a similar position but, unfortunately, our predecessors handed control of our configuration to the WMF who know what is best for us. Certes (talk) 21:42, 3 February 2024 (UTC)
If there was an RfC for the original change, I would have strongly opposed it. There are lots of readers online who have opposed it as well (I'm not putting links but you can look it up). Making the desktop site look like a mobile version is not beneficial at all. If I wanted to view mobile on desktop, I can just change it to mobile view. Not to mention the issues it has caused with 2010-installed editors not being able to see what most IP readers are seeing. ~WikiOriginal-9~ (talk) 14:31, 7 February 2024 (UTC)
Yes, that may become a serious problem in some articles such as those with wide tables. I don't preview my changes with 2022 or any skin other than my preferred Vector 2010, and I doubt that I'm alone in that practice. Certes (talk) 15:05, 7 February 2024 (UTC)
Vector legacy (2010). —Tenryuu 🐲 ( 💬 • 📝 ) 02:48, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
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You are invited to join the discussion at mw:Talk:Reading/Web/Desktop Improvements § Is there some A/B testing going on?. —Tenryuu 🐲 ( 💬 • 📝 ) 22:44, 25 May 2023 (UTC) —Tenryuu 🐲 ( 💬 • 📝 ) 22:44, 25 May 2023 (UTC)
