Mailing List Archive

On 5/19/06, Austin Hair <adhair@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 5/19/06, Delphine Ménard <notafishz@gmail.com> wrote:
> > The problem I see is that the monobook is the default design for every
> > single Mediawiki in the world. Which means that people have trouble
> > knowing whether they are on Wikipedia, on a mirror, or some strange
> > fake site, or on my grand-mother's wiki.
>
> Precisely. If you decide to install the most popular wiki software
> package out there, you have to go out of your way to make it *not*
> look like Wikipedia—at least the default logo isn't the MediaWiki
> flower anymore (actually, it is, but at least it's defaced by annoying
> text that compels people to change it quickly).

On another note, "visual identity" won't come from copyrights on html
or css, or even trademarking visual components—if someone's aiming for
the same look, he's going to rip it off, and it's going to be in a
more subtle way—he'd like to think he's being creative, after all.
The issue is with passive users who just like how pretty their new
wiki looks.

Austin
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> If you're a good designer, creating a
> good layout for wikipedia - do you really want any design ignorant
> admin
> later fiddling with it and maybe destroying it?

A check against this would be to encourage individuals to customize
their own views -- make the links to monobook.css (or whatever the new
name is) more prominant, etc. If the new layout was on by default for
un-logged-in users but logged-in users retained their current defaults
(monobook, usually -- but with a notice for about a week that there
was a new design available), I think it could work out well.
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On 5/19/06, Austin Hair <adhair@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 5/19/06, Delphine Ménard <notafishz@gmail.com> wrote:
> > The problem I see is that the monobook is the default design for every
> > single Mediawiki in the world. Which means that people have trouble
> > knowing whether they are on Wikipedia, on a mirror, or some strange
> > fake site, or on my grand-mother's wiki.

> Precisely. If you decide to install the most popular wiki software
> package out there, you have to go out of your way to make it *not*
> look like Wikipedia—at least the default logo isn't the MediaWiki
> flower anymore (actually, it is, but at least it's defaced by annoying
> text that compels people to change it quickly).

It should also be noted that the default MonoBook skin isn't even
appropriate for many wikis with its book background image. I'm often
disabling it on wikis I host. I support any effort towards either a
new Wikimedia skin, or a new MediaWiki default skin, as long as the
result is free content.

To get an idea of what is possible -- Novell makes extensive use of
MediaWiki, and has made the heaviest customizations I've seen so far
in the wild:

http://wiki.novell.com/
http://en.opensuse.org/
http://www.hula-project.org/
http://www.mono-project.com/

Given their strong open source commitment, they might even be
interested in collaborating.

Erik
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On 5/19/06, Erik Moeller <eloquence@gmail.com> wrote:
> To get an idea of what is possible -- Novell makes extensive use of
> MediaWiki, and has made the heaviest customizations I've seen so far
> in the wild:

The most extensive modification I've seen (or noticed) is Scifipedia
<http://scifipedia.scifi.com/>. It's possible to do a lot more, of
course.

Austin
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Delphine Ménard wrote:

>The problem I see is that the monobook is the default design for every
>single Mediawiki in the world. Which means that people have trouble
>knowing whether they are on Wikipedia, on a mirror, or some strange
>fake site, or on my grand-mother's wiki.
>
Congratulations to your grand-mother. It is encouraging to hear that
people of her generation have maintained sufficient mental alertness to
manage a wiki.

Ec

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On 5/21/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge@telus.net> wrote:
> Delphine Ménard wrote:
>
> >The problem I see is that the monobook is the default design for every
> >single Mediawiki in the world. Which means that people have trouble
> >knowing whether they are on Wikipedia, on a mirror, or some strange
> >fake site, or on my grand-mother's wiki.
> >
> Congratulations to your grand-mother. It is encouraging to hear that
> people of her generation have maintained sufficient mental alertness to
> manage a wiki.


I wish. ;-) Both my grand-mothers actually passed away many years ago.
Let's make that my great-uncle, who is an internet freak (I mean, 90
years and some and blogging!) He does not have a wiki though, and I
would drive myself crazy trying to explain to him how mediawiki works
anyway ;-). (which goes to support my point that userfriendliness is
not exactly our strong point ;-) )



Delphine
--
~notafish
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