Comments on: CZ has a new look

By: Petréa Mitchell

Petréa Mitchell — Sun, 23 Mar 2008 18:19:42 +0000

Oh, I didn’t mean to say that someone giving it a good look-over, wouldn’t say it looks professional in a general sense. But people just dropping by the site when it pops up in their search results will form judgements in seconds based on expectations they may not even be aware they have. Which is why you have to do a formal study just to find out precisely what the expectations you get in trouble messing with are.

By: Eugene van der Pijll

Eugene van der Pijll — Sun, 23 Mar 2008 00:15:49 +0000

Petréa’s reaction that this change affects CZ’s credibility is probably overstated. The new site looks more professional to me, and that can only be good for its credibility. (But, of course, tastes differ.)

But the new style does affect the usability of the site; for me, negatively. Several links have moved around, and that can be confusing for people who use both CZ and other MediaWiki-based sites. (Of course I mean Wikipedia; and with the current number of articles in CZ, most CZ users will also have to use WP). For example, I was at a talk page, and it took a while to find the link to the corresponding article.

Together with the readability loss (lines are just too close together to be read comfortably; I use Opera on Linux), this means I’d rather not use the new skin. And that means I’m less likely to use Citizendium, as there is no alternative skin available. Which is a shame…

Still, it does look good. Much better than the WP default (Monobook), and about equally good as (but very different from) Modern, which is my current WP skin of choice.

By: Petréa Mitchell

Petréa Mitchell — Sat, 22 Mar 2008 16:26:34 +0000

I understand the sentiment in wanting to make Citizendium visually distinct form its competitors, but I urge extreme caution. Like it or not, and I know you probably don’t, Wikipedia has set people’s expectations of what an encyclopedia on the Web looks like, and the more we move away from that, the more we risk giving new readers a first impression of not being a “real” encyclopedia. And that’s credibility we lose straight away, before they read a single word.

It would take a proper usability study to identify exactly which changes would turn significant numbers of people off– and it could be anything, whether changing the background or moving the search button or something absolutely no one thinks about before the study is done– and I know CZ doesn’t have that kind of money right now. So in the meantime, it would be best to only change things when we have a very, very, very good reason, and accept that even then, we will probably wind up losing a few potential converts.

This is not to say that that we shouldn’t look for ways to genuinely improve on Wikipedia’s usability. There are opportunities, especially in search. (Removing the “Go” button would be a great first step.)

By: t

Sat, 22 Mar 2008 02:43:16 +0000

I would like to see the article background even lighter than the current light grey - some people may like it different. Can you make an alternate skin of the same type with that simple color change?

By: Larry Sanger

Larry Sanger — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 19:51:04 +0000

Thanks. It’s long been our intention (hope, desire), but sometimes, things don’t happen simply because no one is motivated enough to do them!

By: Sage Ross

Sage Ross — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 19:00:32 +0000

It looks great. I think moving away from the Wikipedia look is a good thing for CZ.