Standardistas, Help Fix Wikipedia
Jens Meiert, April 13, 2008.
This entry is filed under Web Development, Accessibility, Usability, Design.
When it comes to professional web design and web development, not only the English Wikipedia is in questionable condition. And considering the value Wikipedia has as a contact point for rubbernecks and novices, it should be in our best interest to take care of the contentual and didactic quality of entries affecting our industry.
Thus I don’t only promise myself to watch for related Wikipedia articles and eventually fix and/or extend them, I ask you to contribute in your spare time as well. Let us all have a look at professional Wikipedia entries from time to time, probably starting with optimization of documentation like
- Accessibility,
- Cascading Style Sheets,
- DOM Scripting,
- Extensible Markup Language,
- Graceful Degradation,
- Hypertext Markup Language,
- Internationalization and Localization,
- Usability,
- Web Design, and
- Web Development.
Read More
Enjoy the most popular posts, probably including:
Comments
-
On April 13, 2008, 19:38 CEST, Nihiltres said:
It’s truly somewhat ironic that Wikipedia is lacking in this respect; Wikipedia itself is reasonably well designed and the great majority of all pages pass a World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) formal check as XHTML 1.0 Transitional. Of the few that don’t pass, the error is usually caused by trivial issues such as duplicate id’s.
-
On April 14, 2008, 16:27 CEST, mary said:
I have come across in the past so much information on wiki that I disagree with I have normally neglected to adjust and take the few minutes to make the much needed changes in some cases.
You make a terrific list of “professional entries” and I must say that I find “usability” to be a work of art.
How often do you find yourself referencing wiki for something and making adjustments to often times completely erroneous information
-
On April 14, 2008, 17:48 CEST, Duluoz said:
With all due respect Nihiltres - it’s not trivial for ID’s to be duplicated, nor is it acceptable to remain in a state of transitional mark-up. Code to strict standards or go home - I hate it when people get excited their sites pass a validation under a transitional doctype. Thats like getting excited about getting a C in math class. “Hey I passed.” Rrrrrr! - wrong attitude, but thanks for playing our game!
Very ambitious efforts Jens! I like it! What other sites might benefit from such actions?
-
On April 14, 2008, 22:17 CEST, Jens Meiert said:
Nihiltres, thanks for coming by! And from the perspective you mention the gap concerning content that touches our industry is indeed interesting though probably not too surprising, as Wikipedia is basically open and their users’/authors’ average expertise in the areas I mentioned will eventually be below current quality level. (I do love long sentences.)
Mary, yes, some articles will certainly mean some work, and reaching “consensus” will probably be the bonus level. And well, assuming that this has been an actual question, I tend to use Wikipedia for some references, but I also try/tried to keep away from possible “conflicts of interest”
[…].David, awesome comparison, like the “C in math class”
I “currently” have no other sites in mind, the problem’s probably that few sites have such an impact since perceived credibility like Wikipedia. Mmh.
