tarquin-
* it's overloaded. There is too much going on and
no clear indication of
what can be ignored and what must be read
Wikipedia is an encyclopedia and a wiki. As such, we have to find the
right balance between making Wikipedia easy to read for non-contributors,
and making it easy to use for contributors. I think our current balance is
pretty good already.
Britannica.com does not have to inform its readers
that they can participate, and it does not have to provide the tools
(navigational structure) for doing so. It is also English only. If
Britannica was like Wikipedia, it would probably look a lot like us ;-)
I like UnrealWiki's design, but I do not like the way the wiki elements of
it are fairly hidden at the bottom of each page. This would be
unacceptable for Wikipedia IMHO.
One thing we should do is make the interlanguage link bar smaller, maybe
also reduce the font size of all navigational elements. But I do not think
any radical changes are in order. Your library should get higher
resolution screens, though. Complex webpages always tend to look somewhat
sucky on low resolutions.
Compared to, say, a Certain Non-Free Encyclopedia
Beginning With B...
well, we suck.
I do not agree. I could write a whole essay about the suckage factors on
Britannica's frontpage.
1) text as images
2) fixed width design
3) unzoomable mini illustrations
4) "buy stuff" links all over the place
5) too many full sentences instead of short, descriptive links
6) redundancy: "browse" shows what's already on the frontpage
7) very few links directly to articles
...
312) no "edit this page" link ;-)
Regards,
Erik