There are few who would deny that Wikipedia is an incredible resource for information and a testament to the power of an intelligent global human community given basic interconnectivity and the tools to share knowledge. But it’s not perfect. From a design and usability standpoint, in fact, there’s a lot wrong. A number of sections and features on the site are downright baffling to use, and poor design is more than prevalent. I could go on for hours, but I’ll stick to one thing for the moment: something I noticed when I went to update my user-page this morning.

I am a contributor to Wikipedia, and I speak Japanese. To indicate that fact to people that visit my user page, there’s a box that lists the languages I speak and just how well. (This box, technically called a ‘userbox’, sometimes abbreviated ‘UBX’, is part of the Babel project, and was the first userbox template on Wikipedia. Since its inception, badges for every conceivable attribute have emerged.)

I don’t understand this box. What’s going on here?

The numbers don’t mean anything

The numbers are somehow meant to signify your proficiency at each particular language, but they are basically meaningless. The questions immediately raised are:

• Is 2 is a high number or low number?
• The range into which a number falls is unclear. Two out of what? Of five? Of ten? Of six hundred quadro-billion?
• There’s no way to tell the particular language skills actually signified by each number. What’s the difference between a ja-2 and a ja-3? Is it a difference in vocabulary size, conversational ability, etc.?

Furthermore, the scale isn’t limited to just numbers — there’s a ja-N for native speakers. Even more confusingly, I speak English natively, but the template Babel box posted for native English speakers uses only en, not en-N. (Incidentally, there’s also an en-N category). The system is totally inconsistent.

If you read the fine print, it turns out a lower number indicates a lower level of proficiency. There are many different metrics one could use for language proficiency (or any sort of skill, for that matter), and among them both high or low numbers could be used to indicate expertise or accumulated experience. You can be a first-class pilot (a low number) or a Level 64 Gaming-Warlock (a high number). Incidentally, the Babel box numbers are roughly based on the ILR scale, in which a lower number indicates lower proficiency. Contrast this with the Japanese Language Proficiency Test, where a lower number indicates higher proficiency.

The point is, the nature of the metric being used here needs to be made obvious by showing the bounds of the metric and the significance of each bound.

The explanatory text is unhelpful

The Japanese sentence next to the ja-2 box explains that I’m a medium-level speaker, but only people who read Japanese can understand that. (And what does speaking have anything to do with it, anyways? This is a website concerned with reading and writing.)

The design of the box is lacking

• Why is it titled ‘Wikipedia:Babel’?
• Is there any rhyme or reason to the color scheme?
• What does it mean to ‘Search user languages’?
• It’s aesthetically boring at best, ugly at worst.
• The syntax for creating userboxes is needlessly confusing.

It turns out that investigating the ‘medium-level’ link hidden in the explanatory Japanese sentence in my Babel userbox reveals yet another badge:

Confoundingly, this badge is a different color and is more explanatory, but it’s hidden away in the Babel userbox documentation pages. It doesn’t really even make sense as a badge in that context. I give up.

Why is it such a mess?

Clearly, the Babel userbox needs work. I chose to focus on this tiny little aspect of the site, but it’s indicative of a much wider swathe of design and usability flaws on the site in general. But why is this the case? Some insight into Wikipedia’s defects may be found in two places: Google and open-source software.

Those who find success in Google’s infamously minimal “non-design” point to its ability to sink into the background and make way for the important stuff — search results, emails, etc. Likewise, Wikipedia is about articles. Only the power-user needs to worry about things like revisions, categories, templates, and profile customizations such as the Babel userbox. The article (and editing it) are the strong idea, and Wikipedia has the momentum of quality, quantity, and notoriety, which, like Google’s search engine and email service, are enough to get beyond what’s lacking in the interface.

Open source software is plagued by poor usability. As an open-source software project, MediaWiki suffers from many usability problems. This is compounded by the fact that Wikipedia, the encyclopedia built upon it, is itself open to anyone. And those anyones are often experts, but not in the field of design or information architecture. Thus, amateur and suboptimal design is the standard.

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