Dear kristianc,
You are comparing en.wikipedia.org with their redesign of www.wikipedia.org. Notice that the latter is, with respect to content, the same as their redesign: languages, search, and sister sites.
Secondly, in the screenshot you are looking at, the content of the article has obviously pushed down due to the activation of the “quote” mode. Honestly, I doubt you do not realize this and I can’t help but wonder what motivation you have to criticize their work so unfairly.
Re:Wikipedia Redefined
by michaelfeathers on Tuesday August 07, 2012 @05:42PM
(#4352491)
Google indexes wikipedia so I haven't seen the front page in years.
That's not a good reason for demolishing its UX.
But google search doesnt replace the wikipedia start page, only it's search feature.
If by Swiss you mean Swiss-German, there is a wikipedia for that language group (http://als.wikipedia.org/wiki/Houptsyte), but I'm pretty sure most Swiss-German speakers use the German wikipedia instead. I don't know about the situation for Swiss-French, Swiss-Italian and Romansh speakers.
Re:Wikipedia Redefined
by TazeTSchnitzel on Tuesday August 07, 2012 @07:08PM
(#4352875)
Why the Swiss? They speak French, Italian and German.
Deciding that users want to see your overbearing minimalism and your 'sound-great-in-concept-meetings-but-shit-on-paper' designs instead of you know, actual information on the front page of an encyclopaedia strikes me as an astonishing act of hubris.
The one piece of information given on the front page (the languages bar) is a nice curiosity, but utterly useless after about one visit. I'm sure the Swiss, the Swedes, the Danes, the Indonesians would also be delighted to find that their languages have been relegated to 'rollover' status.
As for the article pages, too much white-space, nowhere near enough information density. Did it not strike the authors, "Hey, hang on, the article is almost invisible on this page after all the crap we put in?" http://www.wikipediaredefined.com/img/27.png