Don’t panic: Wikipedia retains all the features that internet users have appreciated for more than 20 years. They were only updated to make the site more user-friendly and welcoming for readers and contributors, the Wikimedia Foundation, which manages the online encyclopedia, explains in a blog post.
relocation
You may have noticed it on the French-language Wikipedia page for a few months now: the different languages in which an article is written can no longer be found at a glance in the left-hand bar of the page. You now need to click on a clickable menu located at the top right of the page.
It is the content field that contains the different sections of an article that takes the place of the languages.
” [Le sommaire] remains visible as you scroll down the page, making it easier to navigate to different sections. »
— A quote from an excerpt from a Wikimedia blog post
The myriad of URLs to other Wikipedia sections that were in the upper-left corner of the languages have themselves been fed back into a sandwich menu in the left-hand corner of the page that can only be viewed by clicking on it.
A more efficient website
Texts on Wikipedia now have a maximum width. The online encyclopedia justifies this change with research showing that limiting the width of long text leads to a more enjoyable reading experience and better absorption of the content itself.
One of the most notable new features is the site’s search bar, which has received a facelift. By entering letters, words or a group of words, the internal search engine displays suggestions with a picture and description that make it easier to find the desired item.
The update header that used to be attached at the beginning of articles is now anchored to page scrolling, a feature that should appeal to web users who contribute to the free encyclopedia.
A detailed approach
Wikimedia, which has a large following – the site gets almost 16 billion views a month – didn’t make these changes on a whim. For each of them, the organization has published a page (New window) that describes the context, the objectives, the scenarios, the constraints and the tests carried out to lead to the chosen solution.
If you don’t like these changes or, on the contrary, you want to express your satisfaction, know that the Foundation has provided a comment box to collect Internet users’ impressions of its new interface.