"Rob Church" <robchur(a)gmail.com> wrote in
message news:e92136380706151806u7193ecffub4de3411b48285c2@mail.gmail.com...
On 16/06/07, Angela <beesley(a)gmail.com>
wrote:
don't look
like Wikipedia. To many people wiki=wikipedia and they
don't understand why a wiki would not look like that. It's not only an
The "wiki" == "wikipedia" thing is a bigger problem, of course. :)
issue of design, but of branding. People
associate the monobook skin
with a professional, neutral site and they want their wiki to have
that same branding.
Ick. Too many goddamn wikis using Monobook these days. Where's the
creativity?
Well, monobook looks pretty good. It's a nice layout and easy to navigate.
I remember the excitement when it was introduced - suddenly we look like a
proper website, rather than a relic from arpanet.
Given that monobook is the only skin in MediaWiki that looks even slightly
professional and modern, and given that it isn't particularly obvious how to
create a new skin, it is no wonder that it is so prevalent. For the general
public that use MediaWiki (i.e. non-WMF sites) some kind of style editor as
described here would be a great tool and would hopefully alleviate the
monotonybook woes. I'm not sure what, if any, benefit it has to WMF though.
However, I think if WMF introduced a _very good_ new skin for their wikis
then it would only be a positive thing! It shouldn't be a big departure
though - same basic page layout, but new imagery/colours.
- Mark Clements (HappyDog)