I’ve been wondering about design differences between blogs and wikis. For example:
Most of the wikis I know use a variable width for the body text, rather than a narrow fixed width that is common on many websites (including blogs)
Most of the wikis I know have a separate discussion page, whereas most blogs have a comments section on the same page as the content
I think wikis tend to have smaller font size than blogs
Wikis make a hard distinction between internal links (wikilinks) and external links, going so far as to discourage the use of external links in the body text in some cases
I find the above differences interesting because they can’t be explained (or are not so easy to explain) just by saying something like “a wiki is a collaborative online reference where each page is a distinct topic while a blog is a chronological list of articles where each article tends to have a single author”; this explanation only works for things like emphasis on publication date (wikis are not chronological, so don’t need to emphasize publication date), availability of full history (wikis are collaborative, so having a full history helps to see who added what and to revert vandalism), display of authorship (blogs usually have a single author per post so listing this makes sense, but wiki pages have many authors so listing all of them makes less sense), standardized section names (a blog author can just ramble about whatever, but wikis need to build consistency in how topics are covered), and tone/writing style (blogs can just be one author’s opinions, whereas wikis need to agree on some consistent tone).
Has anyone thought about these differences, especially what would explain them? Searching variations of “wikis vs blogs” on the internet yields irrelevant results.
I have a bunch of thoughts on this, some quick ones:
The reading experience on wikis is very heavily optimized for skimming. This causes some of the following design choices:
Longer line-width causes a more distinct right-outline of the text, this makes it easier to orient while quickly scrolling past things
Since most text is never going to be read, a lot of text is smaller, and the line-lengths are longer to vertically compress the text, making it overall faster to navigate around different sections of the page
The content aims to be canonical and comprehensive, both of these cause a much more concrete distinction between “the article” and “the discussion” since you need to apply the canonicity and comprehensiveness criteria to only the article and not the discussion
Because of the focus on comprehensiveness, you generally want to impose structure not only on every single article, but on the whole knowledge graph. But in order to do that, you need to actually bring the knowledge graph into a format you can constrain, which you can only do for internal links, and not external links.
Most of the wikis I know use a variable width for the body text, rather than a narrow fixed width that is common on many websites (including blogs)
This is only because most wiki administrators use the default wiki layout/skin. For the major wiki systems, many layouts exist that use fixed body width. (e.g. Skins for MediaWiki, Skins for PmWiki)
Most of the wikis I know have a separate discussion page, whereas most blogs have a comments section on the same page as the content
In any decent wiki system, it is trivial to put (or mirror/transclude/etc.) the comments onto the main page.
I think wikis tend to have smaller font size than blogs
This is, obviously, trivially customizable.
Wikis make a hard distinction between internal links (wikilinks) and external links, going so far as to discourage the use of external links in the body text in some cases
As mentioned in another response, this seems to just be Wikipedia.
Has anyone thought about these differences, especially what would explain them? Searching variations of “wikis vs blogs” on the internet yields irrelevant results.
What would explain them is just some contingent design choices of the default layouts of some popular systems (e.g. MediaWiki) and some popular wikis (e.g. Wikipedia), and most wiki administrators not really giving a lot of thought to whether to deviate from those defaults.
Links to external sites should be used in moderation. To be candidate for linking, an external site should contain information that serves as a reference for the article, is the subject of the article itself, is official in some capacity (for example, run by id Software), or contains additional reading that is not appropriate in the encyclopedic setting of this wiki. We are not a search engine. Extensive lists of links create clutter and are exceedingly difficult to maintain. They may also degrade the search engine ranking of this site.
Elinks should be constrained to one section titled “External links” at the end of a page. Elinks within the main content of a page are discouraged, and should be avoided where possible.
If you want to link to a site outside of Wookieepedia, it should almost always go under an “External links” heading at the end of an article. Avoid using an external link when it’s possible to accomplish the same thing with an internal link to a Wookieepedia article.
Avoid using external links in the body of a page. Pages can include an external links section at the end, pointing to further information outside IMSMA Wiki.
[1.] Most of the wikis I know use a variable width for the body text, rather than a narrow fixed width that is common on many websites (including blogs)
[2.] Most of the wikis I know have a separate discussion page, whereas most blogs have a comments section on the same page as the content
[3.] I think wikis tend to have smaller font size than blogs
[4.] Wikis make a hard distinction between internal links (wikilinks) and external links, going so far as to discourage the use of external links in the body text in some cases
1. I’ve haven’t seen blogs with a fixed width for body text. (I’ve seen blogs which have a (front) page of fixed width views of articles, each which conclude with a “Keep Reading” link.)
2. Wikis think they’re a paper—similar works may be referenced via a number, that references a list of sources. (Perhaps there’s an official style guide they’re following/imitating that’s external.)
3. This seems to boil down to “Wikis are longer than blogs.” (Might also be the cause of 1.)
4. I don’t think I’ve seen this outside Wikipedia. It could be caused by wikis imitating encyclopedias/papers, or wikipedia. It could be an attempt to capture/hold attention.
I’ve haven’t seen blogs with a fixed width for body text. (I’ve seen blogs which have a (front) page of fixed width views of articles, each which conclude with a “Keep Reading” link.)
(All links are to individual post pages, not the blog’s front page.)
That’s ten examples, including a cooking blog, a tabletop RPG blog, a naval history blog, a regular history blog, an economics blog, etc. All have fixed body text widths.
I mixed up width and length, my bad. So variable width is when there’s text, and occasionally stuff on the sides like diagrams, and the text goes further out when the stuff isn’t there, and is pulled back when there is?
Fixed width vs. variable width simply has to do with the way in which the width of the main text column changes when you change the width of the viewport (i.e., the browser window).
To easily see the difference, go to GreaterWrong.com, click on any post, and then look to the top right; you’ll see three small buttons, like this:
This is the width selector. Click on any of the three icons to select that width. The left-most button (‘normal’) and the middle button (‘wide’) are fixed-width layouts; the right-most button (‘fluid’) is a variable-width layout. Try resizing your browser window (changing its width) after selecting each of the options, and you’ll see what I am talking about.
Variable-width is the web’s default, so it’s definitely not harder to do. Many very old websites (10+ years old) use variable width, before anyone started thinking about typography on the web, so in terms of web-technologies, that’s definitely the default.
I’ve been wondering about design differences between blogs and wikis. For example:
Most of the wikis I know use a variable width for the body text, rather than a narrow fixed width that is common on many websites (including blogs)
Most of the wikis I know have a separate discussion page, whereas most blogs have a comments section on the same page as the content
I think wikis tend to have smaller font size than blogs
Wikis make a hard distinction between internal links (wikilinks) and external links, going so far as to discourage the use of external links in the body text in some cases
I find the above differences interesting because they can’t be explained (or are not so easy to explain) just by saying something like “a wiki is a collaborative online reference where each page is a distinct topic while a blog is a chronological list of articles where each article tends to have a single author”; this explanation only works for things like emphasis on publication date (wikis are not chronological, so don’t need to emphasize publication date), availability of full history (wikis are collaborative, so having a full history helps to see who added what and to revert vandalism), display of authorship (blogs usually have a single author per post so listing this makes sense, but wiki pages have many authors so listing all of them makes less sense), standardized section names (a blog author can just ramble about whatever, but wikis need to build consistency in how topics are covered), and tone/writing style (blogs can just be one author’s opinions, whereas wikis need to agree on some consistent tone).
Has anyone thought about these differences, especially what would explain them? Searching variations of “wikis vs blogs” on the internet yields irrelevant results.
I have a bunch of thoughts on this, some quick ones:
The reading experience on wikis is very heavily optimized for skimming. This causes some of the following design choices:
Longer line-width causes a more distinct right-outline of the text, this makes it easier to orient while quickly scrolling past things
Since most text is never going to be read, a lot of text is smaller, and the line-lengths are longer to vertically compress the text, making it overall faster to navigate around different sections of the page
The content aims to be canonical and comprehensive, both of these cause a much more concrete distinction between “the article” and “the discussion” since you need to apply the canonicity and comprehensiveness criteria to only the article and not the discussion
Because of the focus on comprehensiveness, you generally want to impose structure not only on every single article, but on the whole knowledge graph. But in order to do that, you need to actually bring the knowledge graph into a format you can constrain, which you can only do for internal links, and not external links.
This is only because most wiki administrators use the default wiki layout/skin. For the major wiki systems, many layouts exist that use fixed body width. (e.g. Skins for MediaWiki, Skins for PmWiki)
In any decent wiki system, it is trivial to put (or mirror/transclude/etc.) the comments onto the main page.
This is, obviously, trivially customizable.
As mentioned in another response, this seems to just be Wikipedia.
What would explain them is just some contingent design choices of the default layouts of some popular systems (e.g. MediaWiki) and some popular wikis (e.g. Wikipedia), and most wiki administrators not really giving a lot of thought to whether to deviate from those defaults.
Here are some examples I found of non-Wikipedia-related wikis discouraging the use of external links:
Doom Wiki:
Sasukepedia:
Wookieepedia:
IMSMA wiki:
Feed The Beast Wiki:
Fair enough—thanks for the examples!
Upvoted for pointing out that it’s a difference in defaults.
1. I’ve haven’t seen blogs with a fixed width for body text. (I’ve seen blogs which have a (front) page of fixed width views of articles, each which conclude with a “Keep Reading” link.)
2. Wikis think they’re a paper—similar works may be referenced via a number, that references a list of sources. (Perhaps there’s an official style guide they’re following/imitating that’s external.)
3. This seems to boil down to “Wikis are longer than blogs.” (Might also be the cause of 1.)
4. I don’t think I’ve seen this outside Wikipedia. It could be caused by wikis imitating encyclopedias/papers, or wikipedia. It could be an attempt to capture/hold attention.
Most blogs have a fixed body text width. Observe:
The Alexandrian
Naval Gazing
The Scholar’s Stage
Ribbonfarm
Slate Star Codex
The Last Psychiatrist
The GiveWell Blog
Xenosystems
Overcoming Bias
Averie Cooks
(All links are to individual post pages, not the blog’s front page.)
That’s ten examples, including a cooking blog, a tabletop RPG blog, a naval history blog, a regular history blog, an economics blog, etc. All have fixed body text widths.
I mixed up width and length, my bad. So variable width is when there’s text, and occasionally stuff on the sides like diagrams, and the text goes further out when the stuff isn’t there, and is pulled back when there is?
Fixed width vs. variable width simply has to do with the way in which the width of the main text column changes when you change the width of the viewport (i.e., the browser window).
To easily see the difference, go to GreaterWrong.com, click on any post, and then look to the top right; you’ll see three small buttons, like this:
This is the width selector. Click on any of the three icons to select that width. The left-most button (‘normal’) and the middle button (‘wide’) are fixed-width layouts; the right-most button (‘fluid’) is a variable-width layout. Try resizing your browser window (changing its width) after selecting each of the options, and you’ll see what I am talking about.
Variable-width is the web’s default, so it’s definitely not harder to do. Many very old websites (10+ years old) use variable width, before anyone started thinking about typography on the web, so in terms of web-technologies, that’s definitely the default.