Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Rollback of Vector 2022

The following is a Requests for Comment (RfC) discussion on whether Vector legacy should be restored as the default skin on the desktop English Wikipedia site.

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Vector 2010 (legacy)

Vector 2022

Background

On January 18, 2023, at 15:17 UTC, the Wikimedia Foundation Web team deployed Vector 2022 as the new default skin for all users on the desktop English Wikipedia site, after implementing a set of changes specified by the editors who closed this RfC. This replaced Vector legacy, which has been the default since 2010. Since Vector 2022's deployment, there has been backlash from both users who expressed concerns with the new UI, with complaints at Wikipedia talk:Vector 2022 and mw:Talk:Reading/Web/Desktop Improvements. Many editors were also unaware of this change until the launch, and/or did not participate in the previous RfC. This raised questions as to whether there was consensus to deploy Vector 2022, though the Web Team did engage in a multi-year-long process to research, design, collect feedback, and iterate on the redesign.

Please note that registered users can change their skin by going to the Appearance tab in Special:Preferences. Anonymous users do not have the ability to change their skin. For a list of frequently asked questions, please see Wikipedia talk:Vector 2022/FAQ and mw:Reading/Web/Desktop Improvements/Frequently asked questions.

RfC: Should Wikipedia return to Vector 2010 as the default skin?

The following discussion is an archived record of a request for comment. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

It's important to preface this close by reminding all participants that Wikipedia is not a democracy and that we follow a policy of consensus. This means that the closers should take into account more than just the amount of yeas and nays, but also the strength of the argument put forward by each editor. The same argument will often be repeated by multiple editors, as to show they agree with each other, and in cases like that !votes may be counted to help assert which side raised the most compelling points.

While most experienced editors are already familiar with what makes for a strong argument, this RfC saw a large influx of new editors, most of whom are readers who wanted to make their voices heard. Many of these readers are not familiar with Wikipedia's policy of consensus. The strongest arguments are those based on our policies and guidelines, while the weakest are those based on subjective opinion, and here is where we should start our discussion. This request for comment came soon after the change of the default skin, and many !votes were based on personal opinions about how Vector 2022 was better or worse than Vector 2010. While these are usually considered weaker arguments, they were not entirely discarded but were not given as much weight as other points.

There was an extensive discussion of the surveys and research presented by the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) to support the proposed changes. While some participants believe the surveys organized by the WMF were skewed positively toward the new skin (such as by removing answers containing foul language), others saw the surveys as a reason to support the deployment of the skin. Those in favor of maintaining Vector 2022 also commented on the fact that the skin has been active on a number of smaller Wikipedias with varying degrees of acceptance.

As some participants noted, it's likely that very few of those commenting in this RfC have any experience with UI design and, as such, the opinions presented here are only that, opinions. The only concrete facts we have are the studies presented by some, which, for the most part, agreed with the changes brought by the new Vector.

Another point of contention was the fact that, while it is trivial for registered users to change back to the old skin if they dislike the changes, unregistered users do not enjoy that option. Many of those supporting the rollback were sympathetic editors who saw this as problematic. The only refutation offered to this was that the new skin was shown to be, according to the aforementioned studies and surveys, an improvement for readers, especially due to the reduced text width.

One of the most common points raised by those supporting the rollback to Vector 2010 was related to all the problems, bugs, and other issues that showed up when the new skin was deployed. Some of these problems were known since the previous RfC, which happened late last year, with the closing statement making it clear that the deployment of Vector 2022 depended on some of these problems being fixed beforehand. Many participants saw this as a failure by the WMF to follow our procedures.

Throughout the discussion, users posted links to Phabricator tickets showing that many of the problems being complained about were being worked on. During the time the RfC remained open, WMF employees also posted several replies, which included a list of concerns they had addressed and would be addressing in the future. Not only did these fixes mean the WMF eventually managed to comply with the conditions of the previous RfC's close, but it also raised the question of how strong each of the !votes focused exclusively on these issues were.

That is not to say that those opposing the rollback presented solely strong arguments. Besides the "I like it" style !votes, there were also fait accompli (or sunk cost fallacy) arguments, meaning that, since the change has already happened, there is no point in going back. Some also argued that choices like this are outside the community’s hands, per WP:CONEXCEPT.

At first glance, we have a clear numerical advantage for those supporting the rollback to the old skin, but many of these !votes were based exclusively on specific issues with Vector 2022, such as fixed text width, the large amount of whitespace, and the overuse of icons, as well as some accessibility issues. Others commented on bugs they encountered while using the skin. The WMF has fixed several of these issues–for example, the fixed width toggle not persisting–and more changes are likely to come.

Taking into account all that has been discussed above, we see no consensus to rollback the default skin on the English Wikipedia to Vector 2010. While those in support of rolling back had a numerical majority, their arguments were relatively weak and the WMF's changes to Vector 2022 since its deployment has addressed the concerns of many. Since we see the changes made by the WMF as compliance with the previous RfC, this means the previous close stands.

With regards to the second question presented in this RfC, arguments presented by both sides were very similar to the first question, in that some like the new limited width and others do not. Some of those supporting an unlimited width noted that many articles contain galleries, tables, etc., and were negatively affected by the new width. There was a lot of discussion on whether scientific papers reached any form of consensus on the best width, with both sides presenting studies with opposing views on the issue. The large amount of whitespace was one of the main concerns of those who supported the rollback of Vector 2022. Since the arguments are equal in strength, there is rough consensus to make unlimited width the default.

As we well know, consensus can change, and one of the suggestions made during this discussion was to open a new RfC in six months' time, after readers and editors have had time to adjust to the new skin. Editors interested should try and work alongside the WMF to acquire statistics, such as additional surveys, that could be used as the basis for the new RfC. This would also allow for more focused questions to be asked to participants, such as how to present the table of contents, one of the more contentious changes to the design, or if the default width should remain as is or be changed back to fixed-width.

Signed,
Isabelle Belato ^🏳‍🌈 01:46, 16 March 2023 (UTC)
— Ingenuity (talk • contribs) 01:47, 16 March 2023 (UTC)

---

Should Wikipedia return to Vector 2010 as the default skin? ~ HAL333 20:32, 19 January 2023 (UTC)

Note: This RfC was moved from Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals) on January 21, 2023, with this edit. This page's discussions were moved to the /Discussion subpage on February 14, 2023, with this edit. InfiniteNexus (talk) 07:18, 20 February 2023 (UTC)

Support rolling back to Vector 2010

1. Support as nom The WMF unilaterally forced the 2022 vector skin upon the community, despite a community wide discussion that found there was no consensus for such a change. The ONUS was on the WMF to convince the community and they failed. And the argument that we editors are but a small portion of Wikipedia users is dead on arrival: IP editors and readers are unable to use anything besides the 2022 skin. The WMF had decided that they have no choice, and no voice in this affair. The 2022 skin itself is inferior to its 2010 predecessor. It's indulgent, made by people with at most a modicum of editing experience, and poorly made, with excessive white space and spawning sandwiching and myriad other issues. Let's return to what worked. Let's return to what billions of readers of Wikipedia have been completely content with for over a decade. In brief, If it ain't broke, don't fix it. ~ HAL333 20:32, 19 January 2023 (UTC)

   So Wikipedia should never change, for all time? 331dot (talk) 20:43, 19 January 2023 (UTC)

   I commend your straw man. ~ HAL333 20:51, 19 January 2023 (UTC)

   Can you answer the question? Because that is what you are saying. That no change should ever be implemented because it doesn't please everyone- which is impossible. 331dot (talk) 20:58, 19 January 2023 (UTC)

   That is not what he is saying. There is a significant difference between not pleasing everyone and displeasing a large part of your community. Your argument is empty. I logged in for the first time in ages just to revert this unnecessary change that no significant majority wanted. IronRook (talk) 23:54, 19 January 2023 (UTC)

   Nothing on Wikipedia is determined by a majority vote, but by a consensus along with a weighing of arguments. I can't think of any potential change that wouldn't displease many people- that's a recipe for changing nothing. 331dot (talk) 00:12, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

   An such consensus to apply vector 2022 as default did not exist in any way. The community does not clearly support this. Tvx1 01:34, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

   The RfC to deploy had neither of those. No consensus, and as the closing editors noted, the weight of arguments went against the issue of fixed-width, ie. making editors and readers use limited width instead of allowing them to use full width if they prefer. If all the concerns outlined above are satisfactorily addressed[...], the editors wrote. The WMF has not done this. Instead they added a button readers would need to push on every single page, every single time the readers follow a link or come in from Google or navigate to our site. This is comically inadequate, and it's hard for me to understand why readers would actually do so, instead of being frustrated into giving up and unhappily accepting what they find an inferior viewing experience. As 24.251.3.86 said on mediawiki, it's "far too burdensome to be useful or practical, and as such, basically may as well not exist for all the good it does." --Kizor 01:57, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

   readers would need to push on every single page, every single time the readers follow a link or come in from Google or navigate to our site This is false. The toggle stays, at least for me. Aaron Liu (talk) 02:05, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

   Not for me. Going from 2023 Antiguan general election to Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla to Felipe Pérez Roque to Communist Party of Cuba in an incognito window, I have to toggle full width each time. --Kizor 02:15, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

   incognito is probably the issue, I assume this is implemented with cookies. I'm not sure whether or not this is a problem for the ethos goals though I'm more inclined towards "this is a problem". Aaron Liu (talk) 02:18, 20 January 2023 (UTC) The actual problem is that it doesn't save preferences for those who are logged-out. omg this is so simple why didn't i realize earlier Aaron Liu (talk) 02:30, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

   It does not persist for me, and I have cookies enabled. I use Brave btw. Regardless, it is unsurprising to be behaving differently on different systems, something the developers would have to investigate. Jeremy Jeremus (talk) 02:21, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

   @Jeremy Jeremus@Kizor I just realized the factor was whether or not you're signed in. This is obviously a massive problem that probably won't get fixed (save for defaulting to max width) by WMF because of the § Why are there no preferences for anonymous users? section in the faq. Aaron Liu (talk) 02:29, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

   Reader here (I do not log in, and can't, for various reasons), I'm not enjoying the new design. I had to click that "max width" button 10 times already today. I would prefer the absolute minimum amount of whitespace, I don't get what the point of the padding is, I want to use my whole monitor to read articles. 74.199.75.192 (talk) 04:07, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

   That is factually wrong or at least, ideally. Transcleanupgal (talk) 19:00, 22 January 2023 (UTC)

   Both links are to essays, which may be considered as advice, but by no means are they policies or guidelines. —Tenryuu 🐲 ( 💬 • 📝 ) 23:59, 22 January 2023 (UTC)

   Change should require at minimum a majority, ideally a consensus. There is neither here. There is nothing but WMF's abuse of power by forcing this unwelcome change on the user-base, and absolutely refusing to address our grievances about it. Clear as day that WMF are a problem. 2600:1700:1471:2550:6002:A2:F43C:2665 (talk) 22:12, 10 February 2023 (UTC)

   So you see the world so black and white. If people don't agree with you, then label them as change adverse. That is sad.

   I'm not saying that they should never change, but I fail to see how this is a step in the positive direction.

   The whole point of wikipedia is to easily convey information to anyone that enters the site. I fail to see how putting such a large white space around the data while making the date about 5/8 its original size on a PC is a positive direction. Now everytime I go to wikipedia, which is very often, I have an extra step. Now I need to zoom in on the page so that I can read it easily. Unfortunatly this has some undesireable side effects.

   If the whole point is to make it work better on phones, don't penalize PC users. Make your software smarter so that it detects which platform it is on and renders the page appropriatly. 134.243.253.241 (talk) 14:38, 24 January 2023 (UTC)

   @HAL333, despite a community wide discussion that found there was no consensus for such a change. The ONUS was on the WMF to convince the community and they failed. - from the closure of the community wide RfC: we see community support to roll out the change (though it should be noted that is preceded by [i]f all the concerns outlined above are satisfactorily addressed then).— Qwerfjkltalk 20:44, 19 January 2023 (UTC)

   @Qwerfjkl: That's a pretty important if there, isn't it? Makes it a conditional consensus, with the condition being (paraphrased) "concerns in relation to the width, non-intuitive icons and the language selector need to be resolved in a satisfactory manner prior to roll-out".

   Considering that the width, the non-intuitive icons/buttons and, to a lesser degree, the language selector behaviour are the three major returning themes of the many, many complaints across the various relevant noticeboards and talk pages, they clearly have not, in fact, been resolved in a satisfactory manner.

   Ergo the condition has not been fulfilled and therefore there is no community consensus for this specific roll-out of Vector 2022. AddWittyNameHere 21:11, 19 January 2023 (UTC)

   @AddWittyNameHere, the main issues noted in the closure were the width and the ToC. There were improvements to these (improvements that I don't have the time to find).
   This is hardly, in any case, a damning closure against V22, nor the WMF forcing it on editors. It may not be perfect, but it's hardly worth another huge RfC that is hardly going to be constructive. — Qwerfjkltalk 21:20, 19 January 2023 (UTC)

   @Qwerfjkl: You are right, I forgot to add the ToC as another major concern (which happens to also be another recurrent subject of complaints. Such a coincidence). Both the non-intuitive buttons and the language selector behaviour were also explicitly mentioned in the close though. And sure, I don't doubt there have been improvements. That does not make the issues satisfactorily resolved, at this point in time.

   I fully agree it's not a damning closure against V22 or eventual roll-out. It's a "most of the base concept works, but this, this and this needs to be fixed before it's ready to go live as default setting".

   Some complaints, especially from the daily en.wiki editors? Yeah, that's a given with any large change, and doesn't prove much of anything. But when large amounts of IPs and new accounts (read: Wikipedia's readers, rather than editors) go out of their way to find some page where they can register their dissatisfaction, and this dissatisfaction almost always is about the very issues that were highlighted as "fix these first, deploy after", that's a pretty clear clue that things were not, in spite of however many improvements may have been made, fixed in a satisfactory manner.

   Whether an RfC is, or is not, a good idea at this point is a second matter. I can see both good reasons for and against it, and which side wins out largely depends on whether or not the WMF can be expected to actually satisfactorily fix these issues now that the skin has been deployed; and on whether or not there is any chance of such fixes happening anytime soon. (Personally, I suspect "yes and soon" for issues that lean towards the 'it's a bug' side of things, but am not quite so sure when it comes to the rest of the issues, especially because communication from WMF employees so far does not seem to actually acknowledge that certain things are issues in the first place.) AddWittyNameHere 22:01, 19 January 2023 (UTC)

   @AddWittyNameHere, I'm not entirely sure V22 was perfect when rolled out (in fact: it wasn't), but now that it's here, I guess we're stuck with it. Let's just hope that the bugs are resolved and we have a fully-functioning skin (not that V22 isn't functional, and I've never encountered any bugs, but others have).
   Ironically, the main complaint I have is that V22 is too wide. I've somehow enabled something that widens V22, but I prefer it narrow, and I catch glimpses of it when pages initially load. — Qwerfjkltalk 22:10, 19 January 2023 (UTC)

   Also, regarding the large number of complaints, that is probably inevitable, no matter what we do. — Qwerfjkltalk 22:21, 19 January 2023 (UTC)

   Qwerfjkl, I think I can concur with a good portion of that at least from a practical perspective, and the parts I don't quite agree with probably aren't worth further arguing about here, so let's just agree to partially disagree?

   Re:your width issue, check your preferences, tab "Appearance". Is the box before "Enable limited width mode" checked? If not, check that to re-enable limited width. AddWittyNameHere 23:01, 19 January 2023 (UTC)

   @AddWittyNameHere, I agree. And no luck, I have limited width mode enabled. — Qwerfjkltalk 18:58, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

   I think it's the expand button. It doesn't seem to be around any more. — Qwerfjkltalk 13:06, 22 January 2023 (UTC)

   WP:FAIT - just because it's been done does not inherently mean it cannot (or should not) be undone. WalnutBun (talk) 01:57, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

   That closure does not accurately reflect community consensus. More people opposed than supported the proposal. There was no clear support at all, but rather strong division. A closure review is warrented here. Tvx1 01:37, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

   It's hideous, it makes me register just to revert it. It doesn't read well and it lacks the navigation features. It's also bad enough to stop me donating to the foundation.

   2A02:A450:F52:1:E9B8:23B6:ADAA:FDD2 (talk) 19:19, 25 January 2023 (UTC)

   I agree. I also made an account just to get rid of it. Tarkalak (talk) 07:37, 15 February 2023 (UTC)

2. At least temporarily go back Get feedback from outside of the ivory tower. Fix any clearly identified shortcomings. Then maybe try again. North8000 (talk) 21:06, 19 January 2023 (UTC)

   North8000 Community input was solicited and not just from an ivory tower, and there was an RFC that led to the deployment. Disagree with its conclusions if you wish, but it was done. 331dot (talk) 21:08, 19 January 2023 (UTC)

   I was referring to on the specifics. E.G. whether or not to bury and hide very heavily used choices, separating out the question of having all of that blank space etc. North8000 (talk) 21:17, 19 January 2023 (UTC)

   @331dot It's not like I care since my skin is set to Vector 2010 still, but RfCs that close with 154 supports and 165 opposes should not be considered a success. LilianaUwU ^{(talk / contribs)} 21:18, 19 January 2023 (UTC)

   LilianaUwU Nothing on Wikipedia is done by a majority vote, but by consensus and a weighing of arguments. 331dot (talk) 21:24, 19 January 2023 (UTC)

   And weighing the arguments you still do not get a consensus in favor in any way. Tvx1 01:38, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

   You are, of course, entitled to your opinion and to disagree with how the arguments were weighed. But they were. 331dot (talk) 01:53, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

   The arguments were weighed by "we're going to do this anyway regardless of the consensus." So I guess at least in that regard, you're correct. The arguments were weighed, they were just irrelevant. LeperColony (talk) 01:49, 25 January 2023 (UTC)

   How about RfAs, there the majority counts. The vote counters failed in the close of the RfC on the launch of Vector 2022 (even though leaving enough room for an optional RfC before the launch) and the width issue isn't clearly visible either as there are numerous editors questioning about it. I haven't found it either, not that I care though. I actually like the Vector 2022 more and more but I can also use it if it is optionally enabled. Anyway, there is now a new RfC and we'll see the outcome. Paradise Chronicle (talk) 01:27, 21 January 2023 (UTC)

   In AfDs majority also often counts. If there is no clear consensus, there is no consensus. Paradise Chronicle (talk) 14:42, 21 January 2023 (UTC)

   It was done and then disregarded. The consensus was opposed to the changes. Nice try. LeperColony (talk) 01:48, 25 January 2023 (UTC)

3. Support with an asterisk - a solution that I believe would be of the most benefit would be a button on the sidebar to toggle Vector 2022 and Vector 2010, with the starting position being Vector 2022. I've found that Vector 2022 makes WP annoying to navigate on desktop in non-editing capacities, but I recognize that people do enjoy it. However, the freedom of choice for non-users is absolutely nonexistent, and should be rectified. Very weak support. I dislike the change, but with the point made by Terasail and the fact IPs are unable to choose skins, I can only give a weak support. This is a no-win situation, seemingly. Lucksash (talk) 22:30, 19 January 2023 (UTC)

   Non users have the same choices users have. According to the information about the skin, there are privacy issues that prevent allowing IPs to choose a skin. Not everything in life can be a choice. 331dot (talk) 22:56, 19 January 2023 (UTC)

   My mistake - should have done some reading on the nitty gritty coding. Lucksash (talk) 23:10, 19 January 2023 (UTC)

   What do you mean by privacy issues? I was on the Discord call today and was given to understand that the issue was related to caching - i.e., the site served to logged-out users has to be the same for everyone so that it can be cached. There's no mention of privacy on either the main Wikipedia page or the WikiMedia page.

   (I note that it should be possible to have a persistent setting for at least the amount of whitespace (which seems like the main objection) implemented purely client-side, without significant effects on performance or privacy.) Bakkot (talk) 01:20, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

   there are privacy issues that prevent allowing IPs to choose a skin
   But surely this is fixed by allowing IPs to default to Vector 2010 by choice? By cookie? In essence, opting in to be de-anonymized only insofar as which skin you use. The only argument against this that I've heard is that it uses more server juice. And I find that argument extremely weak. How much server juice will be used by more clicks, more accounts, and more protests from anons who hate this and accounts who default to the old skin? — Shibbolethink ^{(♔ ♕)} 18:12, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

   @Shibbolethink, it's explained further below, but this require caching each page in both V22 and V10, which would be very expensive. It can't be stored as a cookie or similar to avoid a flash of unstyled content. — Qwerfjkltalk 22:05, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

   Now that I think about it, what's preventing the site from reading cookies first before serving pages?(Note that I"m only talking about max width mode here) Aaron Liu (talk) 22:21, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

   To save even more cash, we could stop employing telephone sanitizers web designers.  Card Zero  (talk) 05:40, 21 January 2023 (UTC)

4. Strong support – The new style is aesthetically bad and has far too much white space (in what appears to be an attempt to mobile-ify the desktop view); there was no proper consensus for rolling it out; and the old version was not broken and did not need replacing. CuriousCabbage (talk) 22:33, 19 January 2023 (UTC)

   So nothing should be changed on Wikipedia ever, for all time? 331dot (talk) 22:49, 19 January 2023 (UTC)

   I say this with as much respect as I can - but do you realize how ridiculous that response is? I'll let you look through Template:Fallacies to see where your comment falls. To help: Just because I may not like a particular new commercial for some product, doesn't mean they should stop making commercials or new products. But hey, to continue to follow your line of thought, maybe we should never have webpages; or computers; or electricity; or technology. All because some edit to some website that you like and someone else didn't was merely suggested to be reversed. - jc37 23:02, 19 January 2023 (UTC)

   I find it interesting that people won't answer the question but are criticizing me for asking it. It's not a fallacy because that's what you are implying with "if it aint broke". Something doesn’t have to be broken for it to be changed. I have seen far more comments that Wikipedia looks like it was designed in the 1990s than comments it should stay the same. I am undecided on the skin, but I'm trying it out. There is no change that will please everyone. 331dot (talk) 23:11, 19 January 2023 (UTC)

   Not what I was implying at all. But to respond to someone else saying that they didn't think the style needed wholesale replacement with "So nothing should be changed on Wikipedia ever, for all time?" is very much ridiculous to the extreme. I don't believe anyone is saying that. This change is really a package of changes, and in this case, the package would appear to have issues. If I'm served a gourmet meal, but the bread has mold on it, it doesn't mean that I never want another gourmet meal. - jc37 23:25, 19 January 2023 (UTC)

   If you are saying changes should be made piecemeal, fair enough- but there is still the issue that no change will please everyone, and doing it piecemeal just draws out the process without making it better. Better to rip it off like a bandaid. The frustration I have here is those saying this was done without community input by dictators in an ivory tower- which is demonstratably false. Disagree with it all one wants, propose all the changes you want, propose ideas for better commuication, that's all great. But seeing the people who worked on this be attacked and insulted and cursed or told "they don't know as much as me with 30 years of experience" for doing their task is sad to see. I just want to see people be civil and have understanding. 331dot (talk) 23:38, 19 January 2023 (UTC)

   Changes shouldn’t be made just for the sake of it either. Your reasoning is utterly fallacious.Tvx1 01:41, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

   They haven't changed it for the sake of changing it. There are reasons, if you'd care to read about them. Feel free to disagree, but this was not done without a reason. 331dot (talk) 01:50, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

   Every improvement implies a change. But not every change implies an improvement. Have in mind. 37.134.90.176 (talk) 08:55, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

   I've been following 331dot's comments, and they're so consistently fallacious that I can only assume that they're an actively malicious vandal. "There was an RfC" Yes, that nobody saw. If you're going to make a sitewide change, post a link to it on EVERY page for a month. 2601:645:0:41C0:D1A0:EB6A:A0C7:18BD (talk) 19:47, 21 January 2023 (UTC)

   2601:645:0:41C0:D1A0:EB6A:A0C7:18BD, please assume good faith. — Qwerfjkltalk 20:36, 21 January 2023 (UTC)

   You can't assume good faith when his reductio ad absurdum questions are posed in bad faith from the start. 73.119.237.50 (talk) 01:03, 27 January 2023 (UTC)

   That's not what I said. But there is nothing wrong or incompatible or broken or outdated or aesthetically displeasing about the previous skin, and all this new skin changes is (i) to add more white space which makes pages harder to read; and (ii) to make the tools menu collapsible and thus more inaccessible and difficult to use. It may well be that in five, ten years time a restyle is needed to keep the pages looking fresh, or to incorporate some new technology or technical capability which becomes available. But Wikipedia at the moment still looks clean and is still easily usable. This specific re-skin only worsens things which were not broken. CuriousCabbage (talk) 00:31, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

   any chance you can stop repeating the same nonsense non-arguments? 82.9.90.69 (talk) 01:51, 21 January 2023 (UTC)

   Correct. Nothing should be changed on Wikipedia ever. Safari on macOS (talk) 19:25, 22 January 2023 (UTC)

   This is exactly my experience. It's so much wasted space on desktop, which is primarily how I use Wikipedia, and it is much more difficult to read. It seems to definitely privilege mobile devices at the expense of desktop devices. The new look does have an ancillary effect, which is I signed up for a Wikipedia account because that's the only way I could find to return to a more pleasing, easier-to-read version of Wikipedia. I will definitely spend less time on Wikipedia because it's just more difficult to read now. Shoutandecho (talk) 17:03, 23 January 2023 (UTC)

5. - Support I think this change was poorly made. I'm not against change, just not this one, it should still be worked on and a lot of things corrected. I'm French, I'm suffering this bad design for 2 (?) years now. Of all the thing I resent the WMF for is the total ignorance of negative comments, and a focus on the opinion of a carefully selected few editors. Up until V2022 landed in the French Wikipedia, I was a simple reader like any others, and I think the focus on editors is disheartening, us reader should have a voice in that too, in my point of view this has been decided behind closed doors. DerpFox (talk) 22:36, 19 January 2023 (UTC)

   There is no content to read without editors. The process was an open process with years of comment and studies. 331dot (talk) 22:53, 19 January 2023 (UTC)

   Yes? and? Does it make the editors more important than the readers? No, it doesn't. And now if you could please stop trying to silence any dissenting voice from official WMF official version of things, it would be nice, thank you. DerpFox (talk) 23:11, 19 January 2023 (UTC)

   I am not silencing anyone and I take offense at the suggestion. I am responding to comments in a civil manner as part of a discussion. I won't be silenced either. 331dot (talk) 23:15, 19 January 2023 (UTC)

   @DerpFox, did you notice that one can now get from the bottom of this discussion to the top of the discussion within a one click at the left sideboard by hitting the button (top)? That the sections of an article are now displayed in the sideboard to the left or in the bullets beside the article title without separating the lead from the body? For me those things weigh in much more. There are other features as well that seem good to excellent. Paradise Chronicle (talk) 09:07, 21 January 2023 (UTC)

6. Support for now. Major technical issues like mousewheel support and permanent IP settings should have been addressed prior to rollout, the "mystery meat" icons are untenable, and the language buttons are a tremendous step backwards. These issues need to be fixed behind the scenes, not live post-rollout, and this was clearly communicated to WMF in the previous RFC. VQuakr (talk) 23:34, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
7. Support until the issues are worked out, especially the squished content. This was very predictable and very preventable. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 23:42, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
8. Strong support. To say that the new skin is horrible is a very polite understatement, you know. Why on Earth they've even started designing this? — Mike Novikoff 00:00, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

   If you haven't already, please see WP:VECTOR2022 for more information. 331dot (talk) 00:14, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

   It's not really interesting. The question was just rhetoric. I'm sure there's a lot of links and even shortcuts to justify the horror, but it's still one. A horror. That I've turned off ASAP. Thanks that we have a link to do so, at least. — Mike Novikoff 04:49, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

   You know, I've just been robbed of Twinkle (for I can't support ES6), so I'm already laying back and thinking of England. Now you want me to try a DP? BTW, it seems to be too much of 331dot around, please stop bludgeoning. — Mike Novikoff 05:27, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

9. Support so long as it remains impossible for logged out users to revert persistently, which if I gather correctly seems to be the case for technical reasons. Jeremy Jeremus (talk) 00:21, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

   In the interest of consensus, I will pose my argument more clearly. I hope this cuts through the naysaying and unconvincing opinion-flinging and gets us closer to an end to this discussion: 1) The opinion of all readers is important, not just active people with accounts, and certainly not just the devs or their donors. Not everyone who uses Wikipedia can read logged in, and active people can change their settings anyway. This doesn't necessarily mean a global poll is the best way to find out what's best, but I wouldn't be opposed to one, so long as the interpretation of the results and methodology is pre-agreed. 2) Consensus was not reached and the people who called it made a big mistake thinking there wouldn't be greater backlash. Because of this, there is no legitimate reason to say Vector 2022 being default is justified as fait accompli. The only reason it would remain this way with no attempt to reach consensus properly is because powerful people can get away with it. 3) As far as I can tell this would not be a very technically difficult thing to reverse, and the devs apparently testing on users with no way to opt out other than just not use the website is very annoying. I see no reason why this could not be done at least until consensus is reached for real, except that the people with the keys are irrationally attached to Vector 2022 or they have business interests keeping them from doing so, neither of which are in the service of this website's purpose. Jeremy Jeremus (talk) 18:22, 24 January 2023 (UTC)

10. Strong support – Vector 2022 is an eyesore and much more difficult to navigate than Vector legacy. The skin also breaks many pages whose layout was not optimized for Vector 2022. The Web team failed to clearly communicate the change to all active users ahead of time, resulting in the flood of complaints at WT:VECTOR2022 in the past two days. The fact that many editors were unaware of this change until the launch, and/or did not participate in the previous RfC, raises questions as to whether there was consensus to deploy Vector 2022 as the Web team suggests. InfiniteNexus (talk) 00:46, 20 January 2023 (UTC)
11. Strong support Shinanoki (talk) 01:08, 20 January 2023 (UTC)
12. Strong support: I am not as active an editor as I was for a while, but I'm still known as 'the guy who edits Wikipedia' in a lot of places I hang out. The past day has been seeing just a massive tidal wave of opposition from a broad spectrum of readers acrosss...everyone I know, frankly. Absolute eruptions into "this is awful" well beyond what you get from most website layout changes. Readers who prefer desktop dislike the aesthetic of the mobile site (there's a reason you get those bots designed to remove m. from mobile links, given it's apparently beyond our capacities to do it on purpose), and they loathe a new skin that intends to copy the aesthetic of the mobile site. Opt-out stats poorly measure reader opinions on skins, because readers don't have accounts and can't be reasonably expected to make them for every context they read Wikipedia. I have not anywhere across thousands of readers from various walks of life heard a single positive word about the new skin, not even as pushback. I also retain all the many complaints I've personally had about this skin for the past two years; the language icons are terrible, the lack of genuine options in the sidebar are terrible, the image formatting is shot, the amount of whitespace is distracting, the community does not actually support the change, etc. (Every not-community-based one of these I've seen repeated vocally and angrily over the past day.)
    If Wikipedia was a more typical website, it would be fairly trivial to solve the skin issue; we could simply add a dropdown menu for all readers to select their preferred skin. The problem is that Wikipedia cannot under its current ideological/philosophical framework do this, as the compromise would require cookie tracking to allow it to persist between sessions. This results in people who complain to info@ getting told to 'just make an account', which is not a scalable solution (and ignores the fact readers tend to be reading Wikipedia on things other than their home computers, where they still want to see their preferred layout). My ha-ha-only-serious solution is "automatically generate an account for each IP address". If this seems untenable to you, fair enough -- these changes being controversial and hard to individually reverse is precisely why it's bad to force them on literally billions of people! Vaticidalprophet 01:13, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

    You have surveyed thousands of readers? I'd be interested in seeing the results of that. 331dot (talk) 01:24, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

    That's not how it should work. That should happen before not demanded after pushing it out... - jc37 01:30, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

    The Foundation did do surveys and testing. 331dot (talk) 01:31, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

    See mw:Reading/Web/Desktop Improvements/Repository/Sentiment Survey Aaron Liu (talk) 01:33, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

    It is interesting to see how polarized the Overall Satisfaction responses were, yet the Introduction section was written back in September anticipating Vector 2022 becoming default inevitably and irreversibly. Jeremy Jeremus (talk) 01:40, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

    Their survey only polled 152 people, and of those only 24% told them "the new skin is easier to use than the old one". Not only is that nowhere near a representative sample, but they went ahead with this with just a 24% positive response? WalnutBun (talk) 01:43, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

    What makes you think this discussion will be more representative? It's usually people that are dissatisfied with something that speak the loudest about it, more than people who don't have an issue. 331dot (talk) 01:46, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

    You keep saying things like this, but when the complaint is "The process used to generate this action was bad," a response of "The next process may also be bad" is quite unconvincing. The right way to do this is with broad surveys of all types of users, not 152 people (apparently mostly editors?). 72.49.221.183 (talk) 04:03, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

    I would argue that this RfC should be announced on the Main Page, and on Wikipedia:News, to solicit opinions from as wide an array of users as possible. As it concerns a radical redesign of the entire site, I am of the belief that the original RfC should have been advertised the same way. Everyone should have had the opportunity to weigh in - and I would argue that relying on people to seek it out on a page they may not know even exists is not conducive to generating a true community consensus, especially on matters that truly affect every user of the site. WalnutBun (talk) 20:53, 21 January 2023 (UTC)

    I wouldn't even say the Main Page would be helpful; I visit Wikipedia pretty much every day and never look at the Main Page. Put it on one of those banner notices - I regularly see complaints about requests for donations, so people must be paying attention to those HerrWaus (talk) 12:16, 22 January 2023 (UTC)

    This percentage is very large compared to the amount of people who voted that the original skin was easier. The plurality here voted neutral which is why this percentage is so small Aaron Liu (talk) 04:22, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

    In cases such as this, when considering a radical redesign of an entire website used by hundreds of thousands each day, a neutral response to a survey should be taken as preference for the current design - not as a go-ahead to change things. At minimum, a plurality should have been required. WalnutBun (talk) 20:38, 21 January 2023 (UTC)

    One thing that immediately sticks out to me here is that responses with "foul language" were removed. Strong negative responses often use foul language; I am curious how many of the dropped comments were actually irrelevant and how many were "this design is fucking terrible".

    OVasileva (WMF), is the raw data from this available? ℰmi1y_⧼T·C⧽ 08:28, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

    Good catch, I missed that. Something else to point out is that they clumped the neutral and positive responses together. There's no valid reason for doing that other than manipulation of the reader's perception - it makes it seem as if more people agreed with the change than truly did. A truly neutral article would have more clearly separated the three categories of responses.

    Furthermore, rereading the article shows that they also removed "responses which did not answer all of the questions within the survey". How much feedback was discarded simply for not having filled out the entire form? WalnutBun (talk) 20:48, 21 January 2023 (UTC)

    This A/B survey is an example of a biased conclusion and a misleading intrepretation of the results for their goal.

    After initially discarding most (398/550 = 72%) of the responses the breakdown of the remaining (valid) results was as follows:

    • 60 responses reported the old experience as easier to use.
    • 49 responses reported that they find both skins equally easy to use.
    • 37 responses reported the new experience as easier to use.

    Note that adding these three responses gives a greater number of total responses (146) than the amount actually reported (142), which does not give me confidence in the overall accuracy of the report.

    Despite the valid responses preferring the old experience by a ratio of 1.6 to 1 (60:37), the interpretation provided was that "The majority of respondents reported that the new experience is easier to use or that the new and old experience are equally easy to use". While this is true, as 86/142 is indeed a majority, it could have equally been stated that "The majority of respondents reported that the old experience is easier to use or that the new and old experience are equally easy to use". These figures would then be 109/142, a much more convincing figure.

    Given the wording of the interpretation chosen in the report, the authors appear to have misled the reader with their conclusion that the new (V22) experience was preferred over the legacy skin. Loopy30 (talk) 05:03, 27 January 2023 (UTC)

    As a reader who has been using this site for over a decade, what survey? I have never once seen any mention of a survey. It's all well and good claiming that there was a public survey but it may as well have been inside a filing cabinet behind a locked door with a sign reading "beware of leopard". As mentioned above, the survey polled 152 people which by wikipedia's own page is 0.00014% of registered users and who knows how many unregistered ones. I had to create an account just to revert this pointless change. DutriusTwo (talk) 16:03, 21 January 2023 (UTC)

    @DutriusTwo, nice Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy reference. — Qwerfjkltalk 19:15, 21 January 2023 (UTC)

    I don't understand what you're saying over here. Before what? Aaron Liu (talk) 01:32, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

13. Strong support there was not actually consensus for rolling this out in the first place and the new skin is clearly worse than the old one. Since developers are unwilling to allow logged-out users to choose between the two skins, we should go back to the skin that people prefer and are used to. Elli (talk | contribs) 01:13, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

    It's not a matter of willingness, there are privacy issues with doing so; that information would have to be stored somewhere. 331dot (talk) 01:18, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

    There is absolutely no privacy issue with using a client-side cookie for a setting like that. Elli (talk | contribs) 01:27, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

    See Wikipedia talk:Vector 2022#Do not force the creation of a user account which is where I read that claim. 331dot (talk) 01:38, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

    If you check the thread you link to, you will find that the WMF representative admits that they don't have the technical background to know whether this is the case and are simply repeating information they've read elsewhere. They even admitted that before you posted this. To be clear, there doesn't need to be a trade-off between user privacy and having this feature. 89.102.98.143 (talk) 19:35, 24 January 2023 (UTC)

    See Privacy and Electronic Communications Directive 2002#Cookies. Currently Wikipedia is maybe the only major website left that doesn't have to display a giant "do you consent to cookies?" pop-up to visitors from the EU. This would change that. – Joe (talk) 05:41, 21 January 2023 (UTC)

    Your claim is untrue. There is no requirement to show banners for theme-setting cookies. Most of the banners you see are on sites unwilling to stop tracking their users. Moreover, there are 6 cookies currently served to logged-out visitors, including one that appears to contain a geolocation and a bunch of others with timestamps. Clearly a cookie for tracking a skin or dark theme preference is no more privacy eroding that those already in use. 89.102.98.143 (talk) 19:26, 24 January 2023 (UTC)

    No, it has nothing to do with privacy. See mw:Reading/Web/Desktop Improvements/Frequently asked questions §§ Why is the opt-out link not available for logged-out users?​ and Why are there no preferences for anonymous users?. Aaron Liu (talk) 01:30, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

    I concur, this new skin primarily affects logged-out frequent readers and the least disruptive option should be default for those not logged in. Jeremy Jeremus (talk) 01:22, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

14. Support at least temporarily, based primarily on the "public's" reaction. I do personally prefer 2010 but personal preference isn't the point. The existence of a well advertised RFC in the past does not preclude responding to negative feedback now. With that said, I hope to see the WMF/whoever to respond quickly with either changes to the skin based on feedback or a reversion while they tweak it. SpinningCeres 01:23, 20 January 2023 (UTC)
15. Support. My biggest issue with this rollout is how it wasn't publicized at all - or, at the very least, not well. I use Wikipedia almost daily (both while logged-in and logged-out) and I can honestly say that I saw no sign of this change even being considered before it suddenly rolled out, and I'm not alone: Wikipedia_talk:Vector_2022 is full of people (and at least one wiki administrator) that were also blindsided by this change. WalnutBun (talk) 01:37, 20 January 2023 (UTC)
16. Support in the strongest possible way. This action is one of the worst I have seen by the WMF. A RFC was held to gauge support and was ignored completetely. The changed was forced through unilaterally and if the WMF has any remote respect for their community they roll that back asap.Tvx1 01:51, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

    The RfC WASN'T ignored completely, in fact the problem was the community closers misguidedly decided that if the changes proposed by the opposing side were made then the rollout can be done without any new rfc. The foundation simply acted on this misguided closing that they trusted because it wasn't from the foundation. Aaron Liu (talk) 02:01, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

    Then a closure review is warranted.Tvx1 02:04, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

    I'm newer to Wikipedia than you, is there some specialized closure review? Otherwise doesn't this rfc suffice as a closure review? Aaron Liu (talk) 02:07, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

    RfC closure reviews are usually conducted at WP:AN, but this RfC will do. InfiniteNexus (talk) 03:51, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

    There's nothing wrong with WMF in this case, the RFC was closed too fast, which make this misunderstanding. Lemonaka (talk) 02:03, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

    Sure the WMF are in the wrong. The closure clearly stated a follow-up RFC was warranted, WMF just ignored that and unilaterally forced the change. Tvx1 02:07, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

    That was exactly what the closure said against, to quote and in our view no further RfC would be required Aaron Liu (talk) 02:11, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

    BTW, even there is a consensus to change back, I believe WMF will not take that. If they really said

    in our view no further RfC would be required

    , then everything is useless.@Aaron Liu Lemonaka (talk) 02:17, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

    @Lemonaka Again that was not from WMF, that was from two esteemed editors unrelated to WMF that closed the thing. Aaron Liu (talk) 02:22, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

    rollback to old version I know that nothing wrong from WMF, but previous RFC is clearly no consensus.
    BTW, I believe if this case is getting hotter and hotter, Arbcom should be noticed. Lemonaka (talk) 01:57, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

17. Support. As a casual user who's used wikipedia for over a decade myself, I've found the new UI to be aggressively frustrating. I feel like I've been forced to create an account for a website I never had to before to use regularly just to be able to revert the changes. If somehow this rollout could be performed without necessitating account creation to roll-back then It could've gone over a lot smoother with the entire community. As it stands, with no ability to revert without logging in, I find these changes as hostile towards casual users, which appears to be contrary to the entire point of the rollout of changes in the first place...— Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:600:9681:ffa0:7002:7aac:8a4b:b978 (talk) 01:58, 20 January 2023 (UTC)
18. Support until there's an easy way to revert to the old interface without having to create an account. For example, Reddit still maintains old.reddit.com (the old interface which is imo better) alongside the (re-designed) reddit.com -FASTILY 02:07, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

    The easiest way is to use a redirector extension such as fastforward and redirect every /wiki link to https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Page_title_with_underscores&useskin=vector and redirect every /w link to a link with the &useskin=vector suffix. Aaron Liu (talk) 02:10, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

    How disconnected and out of touch do you have to be to think that that's the "easiest" way? You're just another one (Personal attack removed) up in his ivory tower who thinks he knows best and that all the people who dislike the change are just backwards idiots who "don't like change." 198.21.192.40 (talk) 23:57, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

19. Strongest possible support - mystery meat navigation, breaking things that don't need to be broken, taking control of text width away from the user, pointless whitespace, reduced information density motivated by dubious statistics in a typical runaway example of Goodhart's Law in which measures gradually gain perceived importance until the design is being made in service of the metrics instead of the metrics in service of the design... this redesign has no good features and many bad features. As an autodidact, independent research and amateur historian who views dozens of pages on here per day, and thus something of a power user despite the fact I don't edit the encyclopedia, if I didn't have the technical savvy to create an account to avoid this awful redesign I would have already started looking elsewhere for information as much as possible. IWantTheOldInterfaceBack (talk) 02:22, 20 January 2023 (UTC)
20. Support until non-logged-in editors can opt out. Any website that I have to create an account just to read is dead to me. Accounts are for interaction. I don't want to remember another fricking password. Now I happen to have an account here. I happen to interact here. This isn't about me, or most people who can find this page. It's about the person who just wants to read about French history or the Higgs boson, and just got this foisted on them, and is going give up on us forever as just another crappy unusable website. Give. Readers. A. Choice. This isn't impossible. If it's non-trivial then revert the change temporarily. Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 02:23, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

    Most people will be viewing on a phone and so won't see the new skin anyway. If readers cared so strongly about the skin as you suggest, they'd make an account to change it. Garuda3 (talk) 19:49, 23 January 2023 (UTC)

    Most people don't get much further than Google when it comes to reading wikipedia. its all about perspective. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 08:48, 25 January 2023 (UTC)

21. Support Core issues I have with the change are the massive whitespace which serves no purpose and is an overly harsh color for high contrast monitors, the lack of persistence of core settings unlike other wikis with the limited width feature, the poor visibility of the expand button due to it's thin design and it's placement within the otherwise unutilized whitespace where it blends in, and the expanded view having less body visible than the 2010 version. Since there are warnings on the top, I had to find the original discussion on vector 22 on reddit of all places from there I found the solution was to make an account(had one, never really used), or to use third party scripts.Deadoon (talk) 03:08, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

    Hey @Deadoon, just sharing an update that we're almost done with the work that makes the full-width toggle persistent for logged-out folks (https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T321498). Regarding the whitespace, a certain amount of whitespace surrounding text has been proven to help readability, but beyond that the additional whitespace isn't really meant to serve a purpose in and of itself. Rather it's the side-effect of following the WCAG criterion and best research on line-length. I recognize it's bothersome to a lot of people; I think because they feel that the space is wasted, or they simply don't like how differently the page now looks. However, I think it's a bad idea to fill the space just because people don't like how it looks. I think we need to remain focused on utility, and perhaps try to be more constructive about coming up with ideas for stuff to put there that would increase utility. Curious if that makes sense? Cheers, AHollender (WMF) (talk) 02:20, 26 January 2023 (UTC)

    @AHollender (WMF) Rather than fill it to appease, why not fill it to provide functionality or as part of formatting? Like moving infoboxes, images and captions over to the sides, and make expanded captions possible. Rather than simply restrict the reading area, expand the capabilities.

    One major issue I have with the whitespace is that it is simply unbroken and excessively bright, dark empty areas or areas with things that break up that brightness is far more appealing and less harsh on the eyes when used on higher brightness and contrast displays. This compounded with the placement of the expand button being in the least visible part of the white space makes it blend in and can be quite hard to see. I actually had to look up details on this change because the ones that were directed to me by the normal articles were useless. That is how I ended up on here(through about 4 redirects and disjointed discussions) from the reddit. Deadoon (talk) 12:29, 26 January 2023 (UTC)

    @Deadoon thanks for your response. In short: yes, I agree we should be looking into those kinds of changes/options, and Vector 2022 opens up the possibility to do so. We've now implemented CSS grid, and have way more flexibility to think about the layout of the page, and how we format content. We strongly believe that by limiting the line-length we've already significantly improved the reading experience for most readers (i.e. Vector 2022 is a big step in the right direction already). Will we continue to iterate, to make the experience even better? Yes, 100%. How long should we have waited before introducing Vector 2022 to English Wikipedia? This is a very difficult, and contentious topic. But my main point to communicate there is: we didn't make this decision carelessly. If you look through the project documentation, our deep collaborations with various communities, etc. I think you will find that to be true : ) AHollender (WMF) (talk) 13:53, 26 January 2023 (UTC)

    Its actually made it much worse for me. ScrewV22 (talk) 12:46, 29 January 2023 (UTC)

22. Support Viewing Wikipedia while logged out is painful because while an article used to take up 80% of my screen now it takes up about 50% or so. What a waste of screen real estate. RPI2026F1 (talk) 03:17, 20 January 2023 (UTC)
23. Conditional Support I am unable to find any of the cited papers that support the claims about whitespace being good in the FAQ for the redesign (Lin 2004 or the Wichita State lab study whose DOI number goes no where). I made an account after almost 18 years of daily use because I was displeased with the whitespace. I would be moved to change my opinion if someone could actually show the empirical studies that support having whitespace for the sake of reading comprehension without sacrificing reading speed. I can get that this is a design principle that many sites have occupied, but I do not see why Wikipedia must join in on such a trend. What is sleek today is aged tomorrow. Vector 2010 seems to me to be a timeless design. Guidethebored (talk) 03:25, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

    I believe when I saw the WMF folks cite the sources they were saying the sources said that it slowed down reading speed in exchange for reading comprehension. I recall the WMF folks said they saw this as an acceptable tradeoff. Cost-free tradeoffs are very rare. I strongly disagree with them on this one. IWantTheOldInterfaceBack (talk) 04:22, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

    Below, someone linked me to the two articles: Wichita State and a different article about line length.

    I feel inclined now to change my Condition to Fully Support. The Wichita State study does not apply to Wikipedia; it compares no margins or margins. Wikipedia already had a margin which of course assisted in readability. The other article suggests no correlation between line length and adult reading comprehension. Its Full, Medium, and Narrow paragraphs were variably rated by the metrics of perceived ease of scrolling, concentration, and presentation, with no clear winner at all there. I personally would need to see more to be convinced. Guidethebored (talk) 15:52, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

    I found Lin 2004 here. I'm not sure if it's accessible to everyone, but the tested text was in Chinese (Taiwan) and done on 24 participants aged 62-80 recruited from those taking an introductory computer class from a social welfare institute. Eniteris (talk) 12:51, 24 January 2023 (UTC)

    @Guidethebored, @Eniteris - thank you for your questions around the research. We have collected a number of research studies that we referred to as well as other general information on limited width such as the WCAG accessibility guidelines on width on the feature page of the project. There, you can also learn a little bit more about our rationale behind making the change. Hope this is helpful! OVasileva (WMF) (talk) 17:41, 27 January 2023 (UTC)

24. Strong support. A total step backwards in terms of readability. A majority in the last RfC were opposed to it and only 24 percent of those polled thought the new skin was easier to use. Tkbrett (✉) 04:11, 20 January 2023 (UTC)
25. Support – I just can't get around the fact that the October/November RfC ended with 154 support and 165 oppose and they went forward anyway. I realize 'not a vote', but I read those comments and I don't see how the closers came to those conclusions. And when I read that closure Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Deployment of Vector (2022)#Discussion I thought it at least meant some things would be fixed before roll out. Well, none of the issues I mentioned in that RfC were fixed. DB1729^talk 05:05, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

    Hey @DB1729 thanks for being involved in both the previous RfC and this one. I'm sorry that the personal tools menu is causing you frustration. Out of curiosity, which tool in that menu do you use most often, and how many times per visit/session would you say you use it?

    Regarding the previous RfC: I think the closers of the last RfC identified that the main cause for opposition was the limited line-length (which you mentioned was your "big no-go"). In response to that we built a toggle/setting so that people can switch to a full-width layout if they prefer. In another few days this toggle will be persistent for logged-out people as well (https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T321498). We hope that satisfies the community members' concerns there. After the RfC we spoke to the folks at Fandom who faced a similar opposition during their recent redesign, which resulted in them building a toggle. They shared data with us, showing that 0.1% of people use the toggle to make the content full-width (https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T319449#8379920). We also reached out to Mary Dyson, the leading researcher on readability for on-screen text, who assured us that limited line-length leads to a better reading experience all around. Given that information, combined with the WCAG criterion, and ample research, we feel quite confident that the default experience should be limited-width. AHollender (WMF) (talk) 02:30, 26 January 2023 (UTC)

    @AHollender (WMF): I'm sorry that the personal tools menu is causing you frustration. Out of curiosity, which tool in that menu do you use most often, and how many times per visit/session would you say you use it? I've never bothered to track how many times I click on each link, but I assume you mean from the drop-down menu. That would easily be my 'Contributions' link. I actually have a shortcut in my browser, I use it so often. Beyond me why anyone would want it to be hidden in a dropdown. I mentioned the watchlist in that previous RfC. Why use a symbol instead just calling it a 'Watchlist'? BTW, "Frustration"? I currently choose not to use V22, so it's not causing me any frustration. How are you doing? I suppose I am "frustrated" and opposed in general to the notion that replacing perfectly descriptive text with vague and ambiguous symbols is somehow an improvement. Are the symbols designed for illiterates or mind readers? I think the closers of the last RfC identified that the main cause for opposition was the limited line-length (which you mentioned was your "big no-go"). Like I said in the previous RfC, right after "no-go", the problem is the reduced width breaking the layout of tables and images, evident on countless articles including in the article the WMF chose to present to us as an example for that RfC. How tables are positioned on the page in relation each other has nothing to do with "reading experience". Implementing a skin that misplaces countless images and tables is sloppy and careless. When I raised this concern on another thread, the response was this,[1] implying the idea is for us (regular editors) to fix the problems the new skin has created. (I have no interest in doing that, fwiw) DB1729^talk 15:46, 26 January 2023 (UTC)

    @DB1729, I think these tables may have already appeared broken on the mobile version of the website. — Qwerfjkltalk 16:45, 26 January 2023 (UTC)

    Yes that's what was said. So then it's ok to break them on the desktop too? DB1729^talk 16:47, 26 January 2023 (UTC)

    @DB1729, no, they should be fixed on both. Just because editors can't see a broken table doesn't mean it should be ignored. — Qwerfjkltalk 16:52, 26 January 2023 (UTC)

    Well then I guess they had better get rid entirely of the wide-text skins I continue to use if they want me to care about such things. DB1729^talk 17:20, 26 January 2023 (UTC)

26. Support on desktop, the whole thing now looks like a cheap mobile site. Very difficult to navigate and unrewarding UX. Juno (talk) 05:10, 20 January 2023 (UTC)
27. Strong support. Frequently used tools (even by the casual, no account user) are now hidden in dropdowns and menus. This not only wastes time by requiring that the user open the menu and then scroll to his selection, but makes it less likely that such features will be discovered at all. It would be one thing if the saved space were used efficiently, but instead we get trendy white space. At the very least, input should be sought from casual and non account users with page banners seeking feedback. Kilometers to Verona (talk) 05:26, 20 January 2023 (UTC)
28. Support Employing this mobile version for everyone is just a scam for desktop readers to create accounts. Алхимик Темногорск (talk) 05:52, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

    Hi @Алхимик Темногорск. Thank you for your feedback. Just to clarify, the Vector 2022 skin is not used on the mobile website. The mobile website uses the Minerva skin, which you can also explore in your preferences. OVasileva (WMF) (talk) 17:46, 27 January 2023 (UTC)

    Hi @User:OVasileva. Vector 2022 skin is not used on the mobile websit, BUT Vector 2022 is a mobile skin itself, and it is used for a destop users, that is wrong, and that is what we are talkin about. 83.30.229.13 (talk) 16:54, 29 January 2023 (UTC)

    83.30.229.13, it's not a mobile skin. — Qwerfjkltalk 22:06, 29 January 2023 (UTC)

29. Strong support. Thank you for opening this RFC, which has saved me the trouble either of finding a query I posed a couple of years ago after this change was imposed on some non-English WPs or of raising a new one. I have immediately reverted to Vector2010. I detest Vector2022 for two main reasons. (1) It makes switching between languages difficult and tedious. I cannot emphasise this strongly enough. I want the list displayed alphabetically on the page, not in some sort of thematic drop-down menu; so that I can immediately see whether or not there is an equivalent. This isn't an issue of simply switching between favoured languages, but of multilingual searching, which I do more than most or possibly anyone; see my UserPage. (2) I want a properly usable ToC on long pages such as WP:ANI, not a difficult-to-navigate floating list.
    I only noticed the change because I bought a new PC three days ago, and my preference was not carried over onto it. Thank you again; you have saved me a lot of frustration.
    I am by no means against change, but am strongly in favour of easy-to-find options; and this isn't one. Narky Blert (talk) 06:08, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

    Hey @Narky Blert, thanks for sharing your opinions on Vector 2022. Two quick notes:

    • We're exploring various options with the language switcher, one of which is making the language menu pin-able. You can see a prototype of that here: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Prototype_of_pinning_the_language_menu_to_the_sidebar.gif. Another option might be a setting to allow for alphabetical sorting. The research we did was quite clear regarding newcomers being able to find the language switcher much more easily with it in the new location. We're confident we can find a solution that serves everyone adequately!
    • We've gotten similar feedback about the TOC on specific admin pages, one of which is WP:ANI. We will be working on this task soon, which should improve the situation: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T317818

    Curious to hear any thoughts you might have on the above. Cheers, AHollender (WMF) (talk) 02:35, 26 January 2023 (UTC)

30. Strong support The primary audience of Wikipedia is unregistered or logged-out users, who are the ones unable to change the appearance of the website. I logged in today for the sole purpose of reverting this visual change, and there is likely a spike in logged-in users since this change was implemented. Reddit has their "old.reddit.com" domain that allows logged-out users to use the older appearance, and I see no reason why Wikipedia cannot use a similar method aside from complete dissociation of the website from its community. The ability for the majority of users of Wikipedia to be able to revert the appearance should have been a bare minimum for the implementation of Vector 2022 as the default. This should not be the default appearance until Wikipedia can give unregistered site viewers a simple method of reverting the visual changes that does not constitute logging in or creating an account. GalacticRuler456 (talk) 06:15, 20 January 2023 (UTC)
31. Strong support There was never a consensus for Vector 2022 anyway. Vector 2022 looks god awful for readers and has worse usability for editors (frequently used links now hidden in dropdown menus). And WMF will tell us that sudden spike in new registrations (because really a lot of people hate the redesign and there is no different option to change it back) would be a success of the new skin, lol. --Icodense (talk) 06:34, 20 January 2023 (UTC)
32. Support At lease please put the expanded, inline, contents section back. For example: https://imgur.com/a/TULEHvp. --LDF092 (talk) 06:48, 20 January 2023 (UTC)
33. Support I'm a random user who was sufficiently annoyed at a previous poorly implemented feature change to make an account to complain, and here I am again to yet another ill considered design choice. The design is a mistake. Clearly it is the mobile version of the site erroneously being shown to web users. Why else have tiny text in a narrow strip and vast areas of empty space on either side? Either create a proper web version of the site or revert it back. Ikaruseijin (talk) 07:22, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

    Hi @Ikaruseijin - just to clarify, the Vector 2022 skin is not used on the mobile website. The mobile website uses the Minerva skin as the default. If you're interested in learning more about the decision to limit the width of the text on desktop, the team has published their research and documentation on this project page. OVasileva (WMF) (talk) 18:21, 27 January 2023 (UTC)

    @OVasileva (WMF) Except that it was clearly designed for mobile purposes given the text takes up 1/3 of the page, with wide areas of white space on either side... Why else all the dead space and constrained text except to fit on an iPad/tablet or smartphone? The only alternative explanation is that it was poorly designed, not properly tested and vetted, and should not have been used. Ikaruseijin (talk) 02:37, 28 January 2023 (UTC)

    @Ikaruseijin Please read mw:Reading/Web/Desktop Improvements/Frequently asked questions § Why is the width of the content limited? Aaron Liu (talk) 14:44, 28 January 2023 (UTC)

    Yes I have read it already. Utter nonsense. I find the older layout with its wide text to be much easier to use and read than this narrow view. The narrow view is cramped and I find it a chore to get through. I have to switch lines again and again in rapid succession and I lose my place vertically in the paragraph and have to re-read to find it again. It actively disrupts my reading and so it takes me longer to understand the content. Web users have been trained for years to read text this way and suddenly you decide to switch standards because of some vague nonsense that does not jive with the experience of... anyone I know who uses the internet to learn about things. So I reiterate: the new layout is poorly designed, not properly tested and vetted, and should not have been used

    To add emphasis to my position I posted on social media a screen shot of the current Wikipedia main page appearance and I received NO positive comments and everyone who did comment thought it was a terrible design and difficult to read.

    I am an average person, not an editor on Wikipedia. I opened an account specifically to lodge complaints since Wikipedia has NO other means to receive bug reports or complaints about features and Wikipedia has a habit of introducing ill considered features and pats itself on the back for making things difficult for people. This is me going out of my way and inconveniencing myself as well as wasting my time... If I am here complaining you can be sure thousands of others who couldn't be arsed to go to the trouble I have feel the same way. That should tell you something. But you're not listening. Ikaruseijin (talk) 10:33, 29 January 2023 (UTC)

    It actively disrupts my reading and so it takes me longer to understand the content. Well you're among the minority of people then. I'm not saying that your opinion cannot be weighed I'm just saying that they decided to cater to most people.

    {tq|I received NO positive comments}} There will always tend to be more negative comments about anything. If one is content they don't comment anything. If one thinks the thing is really really really good then they'll comment. If one think that it's bad they will comment. Wikipedia has NO other means to receive bug reports You might be interested in our phabricator. Aaron Liu (talk) 15:16, 29 January 2023 (UTC)

    On a side note, a skin designed for mobile doesn't have to enforce a limit on the width of the main text flow, because the device does so by itself. More indicative of mobile-friendly designs are pages composed of modular blocks whose relative positions don't play a role in their function, so they can be easily rearranged to fit within the available space. Vector 2022 isn't a lot different than the original Vector in this respect. I agree the greater reliance on icons is influenced in part by mobile designs. isaacl (talk) 18:00, 28 January 2023 (UTC)

    I am glad you know about these things because I don't. All I can do is relate how the design feels. That is what I was expressing. It feels like it was designed for mobile; poorly designed and improperly formatted for the desktop web experience. Which is what the new layout is: Poorly designed and improperly formatted. Ikaruseijin (talk) 10:42, 29 January 2023 (UTC)

    Sure, I was just responding to your question "Why else all the dead space and constrained text except to fit on an iPad/tablet or smartphone?" In fact, since smaller screens have less room for content, whitespace is usually reduced on these devices, so if a given design didn't consider larger screens at all, the content would fill the whole space. I appreciate you dislike aspects of the design and that's fine to discuss on their own, without worrying about whether or not the whitespace is related to a mobile-friendly design. isaacl (talk) 22:26, 29 January 2023 (UTC)

    Hi, @Isaacl. I've been wondering about this for a while. Why do so many people think V22 looks like mobile? Your point about no big margins on mobile matches my thinking. Is it the icons? (Apologies for posting to an old thread, I've been taking a break from WP "inside baseball".) ⁓ Pelagic ( messages ) 08:48, 26 February 2023 (UTC)

    Icons, it's thinner, and its simpler-looking. Those are the likely three that cause people to think this is a mobile-oriented redesign. Cessaune [talk] 10:11, 26 February 2023 (UTC)

    I think people are eliding their comments a bit in their reaction to influences from mobile design. As I mentioned, the use of icons is in part influenced by mobile designs (internationalization is another influence). Collapsible menus have always been around on desktop-focused web sites since Javascript support (and later, additional CSS features) was added to browsers, but due to limited screen space, mobile designs typically either have moved lengthy menus to the bottom of the page or made them accessible through a collapsible menu. Simpler-looking interfaces were of course not invented for mobile (Google being the obvious example), but at an instinctual level, less stuff on the screen might be equated with how pages appear on mobile, even if the reasons are different (design choice versus screen size limitation). isaacl (talk) 17:44, 26 February 2023 (UTC)

    I think there should be a discussion if this design is even better than Minerva. This is such a mobile focused design (even if that wasn't what they meant to do) that I think Minerva is actually a better desktop design than vector 2022. 2601:246:CD80:8210:148C:E4F4:B7FF:B83F (talk) 19:13, 27 February 2023 (UTC)

    It's more than just icons and simplicity, although those certainly contribute to the mobile feel. Mobile-first designs typically add more vertical scrolling to make up for the reduced horizontal content area, as well as use mobile-first semantics like hiding everything behind icons (because you don't want to waste screen real estate with words on a small phone screen). Also, extremely width-limited sites are usually indicative of a web developer creating a site for a narrow screen without understanding how to implement responsive design properly. Basically, just imagine a site that looks fine on a phone but rendered on a much wider desktop monitor with no code changes. It'll look like a phone layout in the middle of the screen with massive amounts of whitespace on either side. And that's exactly what Vector2022 looks like on high-res displays. Trynn (talk) 22:47, 27 February 2023 (UTC)

    Yes, as I mentioned, collapsible content and iconography are characteristic of mobile designs. But a site that looks fine on a phone that wasn't designed to accommodate larger displays won't have massive whitespace, because whitespace is reduced for phone-oriented designs in order to maximize the amount of content shown. Web pages aren't like the old iOS phone apps that were simply scaled up to fit onto on iPad screen. I understand and appreciate why some dislike the whitespace with Vector 2022, and we certainly should discuss this. We needn't worry, though, that the motivation was to make the page fit onto a phone display. isaacl (talk) 23:16, 27 February 2023 (UTC)

    Web pages aren't like the old iOS phone apps that were simply scaled up to fit onto on iPad screen But that's exactly the point. Properly responsively designed pages shouldn't look like old iOS phone apps scaled to fit on a larger display, but Vector 2022 does look like that. That's a major part of the criticism that it looks like it was designed for a phone. Trynn (talk) 22:23, 28 February 2023 (UTC)

    The irony is that pages improperly designed only for phone displays have the opposite issue: excessively wide content areas. isaacl (talk) 02:10, 1 March 2023 (UTC)

34. Support unless Question 2 is adopted Taking on one of the primary concerns of the original RFC as an opt in toggle is ridiculous. 'You can turn the horrific amounts of whitespace off!' should never be the response to feedback. They should be gone by default. Make a toggle that says "Research supported way to read!!!!" that reintroduces them. Parabolist (talk) 07:25, 20 January 2023 (UTC)
35. Strongly support: I spent a couple of hours trying without success to revert to something I could navigate easily (e.g. Watchlist on the page rather through an opaque drop-down menu). But you have to understand more than I did to do so, e.g. knowing what CSS, Monobook and original Vector meant. Some of the new features are in fact welcome (for example, putting contents in the sidebar rather than below the lead), but overall, the new design is vexing, frustrating and hard to navigate. If technically possible (in an easier and less-confusing way) let editors choose what's useful or preferable for them. —— Shakescene (talk) 07:41, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

    @Shakescene While it isn't clear at first glance, the watchlist is already at the top, it's represented by a button with three lines and a star to the left or the user dropdown. Aaron Liu (talk) 12:43, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

    This is one of my gripes about the new version: why use icons when words will work much better. Why add some of the clear links at the top of the page into a dropdown box (I use the Sandbox a lot and I now have to go through two clicks when one used to do. If I want to go to my watchlist, I have to look at the unclear icons and try and decipher them. - SchroCat (talk) 14:39, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

    Similarly, I often use "Contributions" to continue working on articles I recently edited, and Vector 2022 places that two clicks away instead of the 2010's skin one click. ~ HAL333 22:32, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

    Same for me. Æo (talk) 22:35, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

    It's incredibly isn't it. In the chase for mobile clicks they've forgot that humans on this site use English words, not emoticons. Macktheknifeau (talk) 12:16, 23 January 2023 (UTC)

36. Strong Support I'm a user who uses Wikipedia several times a day for professional, personal, and casual purposes. I usually stay logged out, as I have no reason to log in unless I would want to participate on a talk page or edit a protected page, which is a rare occasion. I have two major things to say about this. FIRSTLY: the first time I heard about this new skin was today, when it happened, but apparently discussion has been going on about this for months? This discussion obviously excluded the vast swaths (likely the vast majority?) of users like me - people who use Wikipedia constantly but don't ever log in and keep up with the community. This, to me, is evidence that whatever conversations were had were failures - how can daily users to this site have been unaware that this was in the works for months if the conversations had were adequate? SECONDLY: Why is this layout leaning so hard into a mobile-oriented layout? Doesn't the mobile site already exist for people who wanted this layout? My first reaction to this update was to assume I had wandered on the mobile site by accident. If an article has a lot of pictures (like most articles about topics that are even sort of noteworthy), you can barely read a full sentence that isn't split in half by a line break. The last few minor things I have to say: 1) At least the custom-preference option gives me a reason to stay logged in now. 2) I will not, in the future, be donating to the WMF whenever they ask if decisions like this are going to be made with no meaningful (once again, I'm on this site every day and had no clue about this) notice or feedback beforehand. 3) Even Monospace is a better skin than this new one. To conclude, please just revert the default skin back to Vector 2010. People who actually wanted this new one can change their own preferences to reflect it. Teddybearearth (talk) 07:46, 20 January 2023 (UTC)
37. Support Regardless of the merits of the skin itself, this was forced through with an extremely shaky interpretation of consensus, and should be reverted until there is actual consensus. ℰmi1y_⧼T·C⧽ 08:56, 20 January 2023 (UTC)
38. Support for all the support reasons given above, because opposes and badgering like "the devs know better" are not convincing (certainly considering the track record of the WMF devs), and because the new design is a poorer, unintuitive experience, with issues like rarely used options prominently displayed (in text mode even, not as an icon) hile much more common tools are hidden behind obscure icons; all the issues with the "language" dropdown (too many to enumerate here); and the basi, extremely poor design choice to have an extra band of menu items between the article title and the body of the article, creating a "top menu - underlined title - underlined second menu - text" order which makes absolutely no sense. Fram (talk) 09:19, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

    Personally I think moving the second menu below the article title makes sense. It's the article container. Aaron Liu (talk) 12:51, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

    It's mixing contents and menus in an unnecessary and distracting way (I have just switched back to Vector22 to check my reply, and it is even worse than I remembered, with a menu on top, one on the same line ("languages"), and one below the title! I also again checked the "languages" dropdown, and oh boy, what a total mess (test on Prix-lès-Mézières). "Worldwide", I get Spanish, Portuguese, and French. Then a subsection "America", where I get the same languages, plus things like "Veneto" (in America?). Then a subsection "Europe", which suddenly goes in two colums, with a gap in the left side column for no discernible reason. In the section "Africa", French is missing. And so on... testing on Barack Obama: the "Worldwide" subheader means that instead of a neutral, alphabetical order, you now get an order decided on by some developer (I know, they know better, we should shut up) which means that very small constructed languages come near the top (in the "Worldwide" section), while major languages like Japanese are near the bottom. On articlees with few languages, like Miguel Escalona (Chilean footballer), you get a shortened search in the languages, with the text "search for a". Yep, clearly tested, works as expected. Fram (talk) 13:32, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

    I still don't see how it's distracting, it's alright for me. I don't get the shortened "search for a" bug and I like to idea of it but WTF is this sorting? Aaron Liu (talk) 13:39, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

    Good for you if 4 instead of 2 places to find menu items isn't distracting, nor the "underline the title, then underline the menu below it as well", nor the "hey, we have text menu items, and icon menu items, but we didn't have a text + icon yet, let's use that for "languages"!" anomaly. The infallible developers seem to have mistaken the old "tab" design of the "article / talk / ..." menu line for aun underlined one, and when putting it below the title, have somewhat recreated that look which no longer has any meaning here, and only distracts (the old menu had "article" and "read" in white as active "tabs", and things like "talk" and "edit" in gray as inactive tabs: the new vector tries to achieves this by bolder underlining vs. less bold underlining, which just looks amateuristic. The more I use it, the more I see small issues indicating that this product isn't finished at all; e.g. in the old design, if I open Twinkle (the "TW" drop down) and then "More" (the "Move" dropdown), these stand next to each other: in the new layout, the Twinkle one partially obscures the Move one. Another issue: in preview, you get no TOC??? That's seriously annoying. Fram (talk) 14:41, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

39. Support The way the change was approved in the first place looks dubious to me. This was a big enough change to justify posting to everyone's talk page asking for an opinion. But it was hidden away on some noticeboard, frequented by some, but not enough to justify the change. Even then, there were many in opposition, with a suspicious concensus. Wikipedia may not be a democracy, but it is a community project and the community was not sufficiently consulted on the change- simply because most people weren't aware. JohnmgKing (talk) 09:36, 20 January 2023 (UTC)
40. Strong Support. I did not create this account to change Wikipedia's skin back to the good one from this horrid pseudo-mobile "New Reddit" one - if you'd make me do that, you clearly don't want me here, so I'm not even going to bother - I created this account to let you know that this entire debacle demonstrates that you have great contempt for your users, laundered through hokey pseudo-science of the worst sort, and if you're really going to force this nonsense on everyone, ruining what remains of the good that people have created through this institution - something legendary in the whole history of humanity, like a modern day Library of Alexandria, as a particularly shining subset of the internet as a whole - then you are all deep, deep in an unrecoverable stage of collapse. I dearly hope you reconsider. Make me feel like a curious young researcher gathering information on all the most fascinating topics in the world, not like a bored dying man with dementia in a nursing home reading insultingly ugly large print magazines about nothing. Good night. Your Design Is Bad (talk) 09:49, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

    Moved this comment up from the Wikipedia:Village_pump_(proposals)#Vector 2022 Post-Deployment Update from WMF Team section. --Kizor 10:14, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

41. Support reversion. The many responses I see, from editors and readers, range from "What happened?" to "Please revert" to the unprintable. I see very little praise for the change. Many developers have obviously worked long and hard on Vector 2022, and I thank them for producing an alternative skin which some people will prefer. However, it is very far from being the popular choice and should not be the default. Certes (talk) 10:43, 20 January 2023 (UTC)
42. Strong support The new layout is a complete joke. Extremely bad, utterly useless. If you do not bring back the old layout, wikipedia is going down for sure. I will stop contributing and using wikipedia from now onwards if the old layout is not brought back.130.88.16.130 (talk) 10:42, 20 January 2023 (UTC)
43. Support in the strongest possible way. I do not like a bit of the new skin. I do think vast majority of users and editors feel the same as I. I edit both with and without login. How do I permanently go back to the old skin without login? I am simply unable and uncomfortable to edit in the new skin.Sunlitsky (talk) 10:56, 20 January 2023 (UTC)
44. Support. Not even sure if my IP status allows me to comment, but the new requirement for needing JavaScript to view the Table of Contents is bad. For safety and security I don't have JavaScript enabled on any site, so I can't currently see any ToC, nor can I widen the view with the box icon. Thus diminishing the utility of Wikipedia. Plus having useful links hidden behind unnamed icons that require extra clicks just to see what is there is annoying and time wasting. 113.211.110.53 (talk) 11:17, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

    Indeed. It is terrible practice to require JavaScript. There are numerous problems with JavaScript, not least of which is security. Plenty of people globally disable JavaScript because it's dangerous. There is no good reason for requiring it on Wikipedia. 2600:1700:1471:2550:6002:A2:F43C:2665 (talk) 22:50, 10 February 2023 (UTC)

45. Support The new version has too many problems, especially with regards to inflexibly-wasted screen space. Cosmetic and usability changes are fine, but this one is measurably less useful in many ways than the existing skin. --Jayron32 12:04, 20 January 2023 (UTC)
46. Strong support. I reverted to Vector 2010 immediately. The old Vector provides for much easier work regarding languages (without having to open a menu to see whether a language version is available), has much less whitespace, and is supported by the developed tools. In addition, I find the mixing of various grays on the same page (sidebar vs the article) a poor design choice. Vector 2022 can remain available to opt in, but it is definitely less usable and less aesthetic than the legacy skin. The only thing that I like about the new skin is the availability of the TOC when scrolling. It is sad that the Foundation has unilaterally imposed its decision on the community without a proper consensus but has not supported it where it really matters (for example regarding tech for Commons). If there is a demise of Wikipedia, it will stem from the ever-increasing gap between the Foundation and the community. --TadejM ^{my talk} 12:14, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

    I would in particular highlight the lack of a static TOC as the key element breaking visually the layout for pages. For example, the header of sl:Wikipedija:Pod lipo (Slovene version of the Village pump) seems very fine with Vector2010, but with Vector2022 it has enormous empty space. In addition, the ToC ID-s used by both headers differ, so the Template:Skip to bottom does not work with both versions and an anchor has to be inserted manually. Very appalling. Many users keep using Vector2010 and it is extremely difficult to design the layout solidly for both skins. --TadejM ^{my talk} 05:35, 11 February 2023 (UTC)

47. Support As I said in the previous RfC on the matter, Vector 2022 has far too much whitespace and no clear reason for it, particularly when viewing the skin on a large desktop monitor. The toggle to enlarge the page to fill the width of the screen is entirely too small and virtually impossible to notice until you are told that it's there (I know because I tested this, and spent several minutes looking for it). Hiding the languages menu behind an English language dropdown is also of little help to users. In general, there is too much hidden behind icons that, while they may be plainly conspicuous on a mobile display, need to be hunted down on a normal wide display computer screen. Vector 2022, in my humble opinion, should be recalled (at least for desktop users), at least until the Foundation figures out a way to make it possible for unregistered users to select their preferences and have those preferences persist across sessions. The majority of unregisted users do not want to create accounts simply to change how Wikipedia looks; if they wanted an account, they wouldn't be unregistered users. If we want new people to create accounts, it should be done via improving Wikipedia (in all the many ways we might do that), not by telling people to register in order to fix what they perceive as a failure to improve Wikipedia. Pinging @HumanBodyPiloter5. silvia (BlankpopsiclesilviaASHs4) (inquire within) 12:19, 20 January 2023 (UTC)
48. Support. The new design is worse just because of the major waste of screen space. Endianer (talk) 12:27, 20 January 2023 (UTC)
49. Support on behalf of all the people who don't edit here who have expressed their loathing of it. XOR'easter (talk) 13:29, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

    I'm also hearing from people that font rendering now changes in the middle of scrolling. This whole "update" is strange and under-tested. XOR'easter (talk) 01:29, 22 January 2023 (UTC)

50. Strong support. What a waist of space on the screen. If you want to change to a different language only 10 out of 100 are shown. For the other languages you have to scroll inside a tiny mini window. --Boehm (talk) 13:37, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

    Note: After switching languages a few time it will recommend you the languages you like and there is a search bar. Aaron Liu (talk) 13:40, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

    No, nothing will be recommended, because I usually clear cookies after closing the browser. And by the way, I do not have a prefferd language. I just want to select myself. Everything was fine before the change. --Boehm (talk) 14:22, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

51. Strong support: There has been a strong negative backlash against Vector 2022 from both registered and unregistered users (e.g. here and here). The new interface has many problems: the width, the lateral TOC, the general impression that it is designed for mobile, amongst many others. Ultimately, the community does not seem to like and approve the new interface.--Æo (talk) 14:19, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

    Further strengthening of my support: The more I experiment with V2022, the more I think that V2010 is far better. Even the elimination of the azure lines that in V2010 clearly traced the boundaries between the article/encyclopedia and the user tools/menus is a step backwards into utter confusion; please restore an appropriate functional differentiation between the parts of the Wikipedian "organism".--Æo (talk) 16:31, 31 January 2023 (UTC)

52. Support: This shouldn't have been pushed out as the default skin for unregistered readers without the accessibility issues being properly addressed. Hey man im josh (talk) 14:20, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

    Hi @Hey man im josh - if you have a moment, could you specify which accessibility issues you are referring to? This will help us triage specific concerns. Thank you! OVasileva (WMF) (talk) 18:37, 27 January 2023 (UTC)

53. Strong support - Every single response I've seen to this change from unregistered non-editors has been overwhelmingly negative, which throws any of the suggestions that this was a change for the sake of readers and that the editors participating in the discussion were a biased sample out of the window. HumanBodyPiloter5 (talk) 14:23, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

    For everything, comments will be biased towards negative, since if a reader looks and thinks there is no problem or there’s an improvement they won’t bother leaving a comment unless it’s exceptionally good. There were also reader surveys that indicated more readers liked the new skin. Aaron Liu (talk) 14:43, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

54. support – I find the new version interesting but ultimately inferior. – zmbro _{(talk) (cont)} 14:41, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

    Or at least make an .old.wikipedia handle with the old skin (it is not perfect either, but much better than this mobile device oriented, hard to read, wasteful, eyeburning white design for a desktop users), this push of new skin onto users looks realy forced and not needed. IJustCreatedAccountBecauseOfThis1diocy (talk) 14:02, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

    As said in the FAQ this is very hard for the resources. Aaron Liu (talk) 14:50, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

55. Support while question #2 not being addressed. As an IP reader and editor, aside create an account or programming tweaks, the only way I've found to use the old good UI is to append «?useskin=vector» to every requested URL. 37.134.90.176 (talk) 15:01, 20 January 2023 (UTC)
56. Support the old 2010 skin as the default. At minimum there needs to be a way to one-click revert (session lasting) to the 2010 skin, and this needs to be available to all users. Not just logged in users. Most users never log in. Wikipedia is dramatically degraded on desktop browsers currently. This really does need to be fixed. 2600:1700:1471:2550:4102:7C99:2804:8FC3 (talk) 15:19, 20 January 2023 (UTC)
57. Support - The new skin, Vector2022, inferior to Vector2010. The new version may be better for readers, but it is awful for those of us who edit regularly. My tools which were previously visible above the page content are buried now in drop down menus with silly icons that don't make sense to me, I am wasting time looking for things that are now in illogical places. The left hand side bar is definitely NOT an improvement, it's just bad design, and those tools have also disappeared, replaced in some instances with the TOC. The TOC should remain in the article content. I tried it out several times before the offical roll out, and have been testing it since it became the default, and I am convinced that the new skin is NOT an improvement. Vector2010 was not broken, so why "fix" it? Please restore Vector 2010 as the default skin, and call Vector 2022 something else. Netherzone (talk) 15:46, 20 January 2023 (UTC)
58. Support, I guess... but nothing stopped WMF from deploying the skin regardless of the previous RfC. So I don't expect anything else than this one being chucked away with the usual "resistance to change" argument. At this point I oppose the misguided design goals more than anything else. —  HELLKNOWZ ∣ TALK 16:07, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

    Again, WMF deployed it according to the misguided closing consensus of the rfc, not against it Aaron Liu (talk) 16:20, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

    I didn't say anything about deploying according to or against RfC. I specifically said "regardless of .. RfC". —  HELLKNOWZ ∣ TALK 17:03, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

    I am confused, doesn’t regardless of… mean they ignored it? Aaron Liu (talk) 17:06, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

59. Support in principle, even though it will never happen. The real solution is to create extensions for Scalar that will restore the core fratures of Vector.small jars tc 16:17, 20 January 2023 (UTC)
60. Support. Tastes do differ, I personally dislike the new layout although believe there are many who accept it. But the way the changes are enforced is plainly insulting. For a long-time editor like me this has been immensely frustrating and I imagine how it feels for unregistered users. The changes must be rolled back. The communication did not happen. The visible and clear notification (not a banner) must be placed in the header, on the main page, everywhere, with an explanation: what is going to happen and what to do. The toggle to switch on or off must be accessible for every user. No dark patterns. A simple form must be proposed to all users: Do you prefer this one or that one. No bad-faith interpretation of metrics. The way it was done it is humiliating. — 2dk (talk) 16:19, 20 January 2023 (UTC)
61. Support - WMF has fundamentally failed to to bring the community on board with this change. The skin has many well discussed issues: limiting width of content area is absolute nonsense, hiding tools and buttons behind additional clicks makes the experience worse, hiding optout in preferences and then claiming that the optout rate is not high is deceptive, the TOC is worse than before, there are notable bugs, to name just a few. This is all compounded by the fact that logged-out users are not left with any means of using the old skin, and that the width button is non-persistent for logged in users.
    Further to this, WMF has show that it has no interest in consensus building or engaging with the community, as is very evident by the fact that when they had an RFC go against them, they ignored it, and decided that no further RFC is necessary since it obviously would not result in the correct answer.
    This design is the very definition of form over function. The rollout could have been done much better, by progressively rolling the theme to more and more users and carefully listening to the feedback and monitoring the optout rates. Given that this is a product by paid designers working full time for years, it shouldn't have resulted in such poor reception. WMF should revert this change and try again later when their design is approved of by the community. Melmann 16:23, 20 January 2023 (UTC)
62. Support - It has been said that this skin is better for readers, however the needs of readers depend on the device and its screen. It is obvious that the skin is something of a port of the mobile interface to a desktop one, an unfortunate but increasingly common trend in today's user-facing interfaces. This is a disservice to desktop users. The driver is not usability, rational design or aesthetics but unified software development, an efficiency (cost-cutting) prerogative. The underlying thinking is that most users read most output on mobile/small/haptic-optimized screens, and they are not going to be bothered much by the change to desktop interfaces. This may not be the case with Wikipedia articles which may be longer and more complex with added media that can be visually and logically better accessed with a larger screen, so that one gets the full impact of the article rather than constantly scrolling (apparent) fragments. This new mobile-to-desktop trend is also ill-suited to interactive sites with anything more than very simple user input. For highly interactive, user-input-intensive functions such as writing prose, adding media, logically arranging an article etc. it is supremely unsuitable. Not all change is good, or even neutral, and one person's progress may be another person's regression. 208.253.152.74 (talk) 16:51, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

    The new skin was not designed with mobile in mind, see the FAQ Aaron Liu (talk) 16:56, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

    Ok. But this RfC is an example of my previous comment. Anyone who can follow this discussion on a 6-inch screen with the same comfort and comprehension as in a 26-inch screen is a better person than I am. 208.253.152.74 (talk) 18:29, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

    That's a blatant lie, and they know it. This entire new skin was designed with two things in mind: ad space and mobile users. 198.21.192.40 (talk) 23:47, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

    Hard disagree. There is zero chance this skin was designed for ad space. If the WMF ran third-party ads on Wikipedia, then the WP:FRAM controversy would look like a drop in the bucket. —pythoncoder (talk | contribs) 06:42, 21 January 2023 (UTC)

    Well, never say never. The re-landscaping of screen real estate certainly allows the future option for adding all kinds of extraneous material, including ads. Like every bureaucracy, WMF keeps finding new things to do, subtly, incrementally (and sometimes unilaterally) expanding its scope beyond what has been originally put forth. Language is an ally: the more slogan-like it is, the more obfuscating, vague, and therefore expandable its meaning is. 172.254.255.250 (talk) 16:23, 21 January 2023 (UTC)

    I really don't see any reason for WMF to add ads. On one hand it violates a frick ton of policies, guidelines and ethics, on the other hand they are already financially sustainable. Plus since most Wikipedia frequenters (at least editors) have adblockers that would cut the WMF a lot of money. Even if they still use donation drives after putting up ads there would be a ton less people donating because ads are already upthere. Aaron Liu (talk) 02:26, 29 January 2023 (UTC)

63. Strongest possible support - What actual advantages does this skin provide that cannot be implemented in a hybrid of Vector 2010? Color blind friendly purple clicked links? TOC on the left sidebar? Images in search? These things are absolutely possible to put into Vector 2010 (and I have the first two via plugins already). A restricted reading width could be a toggled option in such a hybrid. I'm not interested in throwing out the baby with the bathwater, but I see zero reason to keep Vector 2022 as default to maintain these marginal improvements for our end reader at the expense of many extremely plausible downsides. I would also echo Red-tailed Hawk's A/B testing proposal as actual evidence rather than the supposition that has been provided to us. — Shibbolethink ^{(♔ ♕)} 17:57, 20 January 2023 (UTC)
64. Support I don't hate Vector 2022, though I do like it less than 2010. I do, though, think it's borderline unacceptable that you have to log in to change between styles. I think that, for as big a change as this is, broader and firmer support should've been built up before WMF pushed the change. I think that trying to enact the change on the basis of very shaky results solicited from ~300 active editors is bordering on the negligent- readers have as much of a stake in Wikipedia's usability as do editors- maybe more, as they're likely to be less experienced at using and navigating the site- and that's a tiny fraction of editors, anyway. For myself, I saw or heard nothing of the coming change that I can recall, and I use Wikipedia every day, and I see multiple comments above to the same effect. I guess that getting a good indication of reader preferences might be hard, but Vector 2022 should not be mandatory or default without a clear mandate from Wikipedia users as a whole. Yspaddadenpenkawr (talk) 18:44, 20 January 2023 (UTC)
65. Support While not against a redesign in general, the crazy amount of white space is distracting every-time it loads I think I'm on the mobile version. chiffre01 (talk) 15:30, 20 January 2023 (UTC)
66. Support The previous RFC did not establish community consensus to change the default style. Yet another example of the WMF pretending to care about volunteer concerns, but ultimately doing what they had intended from the start regardless. MrsSnoozyTurtle 21:23, 20 January 2023 (UTC)
67. Support I have had an account for going on 15 years, rarely edit anymore but I was so abhorred by the design change I had to make my voice heard, please change it back. --Flappychappy (talk) 21:50, 20 January 2023 (UTC)
68. Support I appreciate the people who did their best and put in effort into doing what they felt would improve reading and editing for everyone on Wikipedia, but it is clear that the design was not truly approved of beforehand by the majority of users. This coupled with the issues that have arrisen makes me feel that going back to the 2010 version as standard is for the best.★Trekker (talk) 21:57, 20 January 2023 (UTC)
69. Support My main concern is for text width, but more broadly it seems based on what I have read so far is that a consensus does not appear to have been reached prior to implementation, which ought to be done first. Nl4real (talk) 22:08, 20 January 2023 (UTC)
70. Support per nom. I never even heard of the new skin before it suddenly showed up with the horrible whitespace and janky layout. A change this huge, and this controversial, should have had an actual consensus before being forced on all readers. --HappyWith (talk) 22:32, 20 January 2023 (UTC)
71. Strong support: At least as long as logged-out users have to use this as the default layout, I am against it. Requiring the creation of an account just to use the arguably better skin is no different than what Fandom/Wikia does. I have no problem with it being an option, just not the default. gangplank galleon (talk) 23:10, 20 January 2023 (UTC)
72. Support I've thought over this for awhile now, and I land in the Support column for a variety of reasons. First, in my view the original RFC didn't have a consensus to implement Vector 2022 and the closing statement of the RFC has always kinda baffled me, but that's neither here nor there at this point. Second, I love the width toggle, but the fact that it doesn't persist should've been fixed before the rollout took place. Third, I really feel like the Page Tools and customizable user menu should've been in the skin before the rollout took place too. I think that would've at least calmed down the whitespace complaints somewhat. Also won't belabor the point since it's apparently going to be easier to develop one with Vector 2022, but having a dark mode would've helped this complaint too. Fourth, I will take the WMF's word that Vector 2022 wasn't designed for mobile, but it does have some of the hallmarks of moble web design (text in the middle, hamburger button, etc). I know it's only two people, but here's two of my friends reactions to seeing Vector 2022 for the first time (warning: language): https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/499649691714060299/1066137406576787506/image.png. I don't know how the developers of Vector 2022 could make it look less mobile-y, but there you go. Fifth, the mystery meat navigation issue that was brought up in the original RFC and again here hasn't been fixed. Finally, I feel like Vector 2022 is still not ready for primetime. It feels like a version 0.7 or 0.8 in that it's getting there, but is not fully ready. These are my thoughts anyway. ♠JCW555 (talk)♠ 23:39, 20 January 2023 (UTC)
73. Strong support on returning to Vector 2010. I think that my main gripe is the TOC. I understand that there's configuration option however the default view is pretty bad and I think increases the number of clicks to get to the information I want. For example on a page with a lot of sub categories, I often find it useful to scan the ENTIRE list to jump directly to the section I'm interested in. Now, again unless customizes, things are collapsed by default AND formatted in a way that makes it difficult to read long titles. So if I'm not logged in, or for any of the HUGE amount of ip only users and editors, it's now multiple clicks to get to relevant information. In the past this was literally the one click to open the page, and the one click on the section desired. Now we're up to potentially 4/5 clicks after getting to the page for what just last week was a single click action.
    I'm also going to put in here similar text from my post on the Talk page on Reading/Web/Desktop Improvements:
    Now that this change has launched why not put this up to ALL users? Put a banner on the top of articles similar to the donation banner and see how desktop users actually respond. If the attitude of "we know change is scary, you'll get used to it, we've done research!" shown in this condescending article must be forced I'm sure a developer would love to make sure that banner shows up only on devices that have had the new layout for "long enough". You could even randomize that, see what a user thinks on day 3 vs day 15.
    If the Wikimedia foundation actually cares about user feedback I don't see why this can't be done. I think it's fairly obvious that a tiny fraction of Wikipedia users actually create an account and basing this change on what has amounted to ~170 users feedback is disingenuous. Show us you care, show us you want to see your research actually validated, it might be, but it's also ok to get it wrong too. I understand the value in continually looking forward and not settling where we are, but if you're going to use "research" as your backing, see if the hypothesis is correct. Zdwagz (talk) 23:27, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

    This is the opinion of a brand new user. Its their first edit. Its great not to have to scroll all the way up of a long article or talk page but just be able to scroll quickly through the sections in the sidebar. Paradise Chronicle (talk) 00:29, 21 January 2023 (UTC)

    So a new user (who, for all you know, has been an IP user for years) shouldn't have any say in the matter? Curious. 73.8.230.57 (talk) 02:37, 21 January 2023 (UTC)

    Often, users who show up specifically to champion some particular cause have their opinions given less weight. In this case, though, they definitely shouldn't, since this is an issue of design preferences that everyone who reads this website has a reasonable stake in. —Compassionate727 ^(T·C) 05:47, 21 January 2023 (UTC)

    And here I thought that an opinion was considered according to its own validity. Not according to official or unofficial club membership, or conspiracy theories and biases regarding the presumed intentions of the signature. That signature is as good as the latest comment preceding it. 172.254.255.250 (talk) 16:29, 21 January 2023 (UTC)

    Yeah sorry for the late reply, you didn't ping me. As for me, if you want to collaborate on wikipedia seriously, you should create an account. Now to revert to Vector 10 for IPs or newly created accounts who's votes include terms that can be understood in a negative way..., no way. Those votes will just not weigh against the votes of accounts with several years counting. Paradise Chronicle (talk) 17:18, 21 January 2023 (UTC)

    Yes first edit but if you see actually looked, the account was created in 2013. I'm a reader, which is a perfectly valid use of Wikipedia. Everyone isn't here to edit and editors shouldn't get special sway on how readers see things. Zdwagz (talk) 13:45, 21 January 2023 (UTC)

    @73.8.230.57; @Compassionate727: Paradise Chronicle's message referred to the fact that Zdwagz's comment was originally posted on top of the RfC when it was located at the Village pump; the comment was later moved into the appropriate subsection and afterwards the entire RfC was relocated to its (this) separate page. Æo (talk) 14:17, 21 January 2023 (UTC)

    I can only agree with Zdwagz about the problems of the new lateral ToC: it has completely lost its functionality of giving a complete overview of the article, of allowing the reader/editor to move forthwith to the section/subsection of interest, of creating a distinction between the article's lead and the article's body. These problems have been raised by many users, both registered and unregistered. Let me abridge: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, amongst other discussions, including my commentary and proposal of alternatives in the previous RfC. Æo (talk) 15:00, 21 January 2023 (UTC)

    For me it becomes an issue when the ToC is extensive in length and depth. For brief ToC's, the side table is more than acceptable. Perhaps there could be a "__ FORCE_INLINE_TOC __" option for such articles? Praemonitus (talk) 15:10, 21 January 2023 (UTC)

    Yes, the old ToC was useful especially in long articles and talk pages, while short articles and stubs without a certain number of subsections didn't have it. As pointed out by StarTrekker here, the new ToC "makes every article look like a stub". Æo (talk) 15:16, 21 January 2023 (UTC)

    Æo, would you strike my name from the list above, or mark it in some way to show I don't agree with your conclusion? I don't want to be cited in support of your position; I think the new skin is an improvement over all and the ToC issue is a minor point that doesn't change my view. I see at least one other editor cited in your list who has opposed this RfC, below, so you might make your caveat more general than just naming me. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 16:21, 21 January 2023 (UTC)

    @Mike Christie: Yes, I removed your name. Apologies. It was intended as a list of commentators to the various discussions about the problems of the ToC.--Æo (talk) 16:29, 21 January 2023 (UTC)

    No problem; it clearly wasn't intentionally misleading. I do think you should still hedge your comment a bit more since a negative comment about the ToC doesn't imply support for reverting to Vector 2010, but our exchange here is probably enough to point that out. Thanks for the edit. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 16:36, 21 January 2023 (UTC)

    There are many comments about the ToC at mw:Talk:Reading/Web/Desktop Improvements too; a particularly thoughtful one, in my opinion, is Bring back the TOC (21:35, 20 January). Æo (talk) 19:55, 21 January 2023 (UTC)

74. YES Definitely return to the vector skin! 2601:644:401:39D0:79D9:58C3:3B6D:651E (talk) 00:33, 21 January 2023 (UTC)
75. Support: While there are some things I like about the new update, the negatives of it outweigh the positives. So much so that I've come out of my three-month hiatus just to talk to y'all. My main issue with this update has to be the empty white area that takes up a good portion of the screen. It's ugly and wastes too much space. It looked way better when the area was actually used for the words and images. Now you have to scroll more due to the text being so narrow rather than being able to see the big picture. Another thing I hate has to be that everything is now in a drop-down menu instead of being laid out like before. And no, this isn't a case of I hate change, or I will get used to it.
    However, I do love that the table of contents now follows you instead of having to scroll up to change your spot in an article. Also, I asked some of my friends to see if they noticed any change (because I was curious), and one of the three said they did. So I guess it is a subtle change. Wowzers122 (talk) 01:24, 21 January 2023 (UTC)
76. Support I will stop using Wikipedia and exclusivly use other sources if I am unable to see the old format. The new format is THAT bad. 2603:3023:180:4800:38B1:9CEB:5048:5F2C (talk) 01:31, 21 January 2023 (UTC)
77. Strong Support I have been a regular, casual user of Wikipedia nearly since the site launched and have neither had nor wanted an account until this UI rollout forced me to create one to revert back to a more usable layout. The Wikipedia Privacy Policy starts off by saying "Because we believe that you shouldn’t have to provide personal information to participate in the free knowledge movement", yet I feel as if I was forced to provide a username and password in order to continue participating in using the site. This increases my Internet footprint and its associated risks and I am not happy about that. In addition, the discussions I've read from WMF have seemed quite dismissive of criticism regarding the new UI and its rollout, and IP users do not seem to be considered a part of the "community" in any of these discussions. Furthermore, the stated metrics that WMF is looking at to gauge success of the new skin do not actually measure KPIs related to satisfaction with the new skin among non-logged-in users. As long as a user has to be logged in to change the UI to a usable layout, this new skin should be rolled back. Trynn (talk) 01:45, 21 January 2023 (UTC)
78. Support. Given the large number of bugs and other issues being raised at the Village Pump, this was far premature, especially since the WMF's record for supporting the tools and interfaces they push out suggests that most of these issues will probably never be fixed. Eventually, we need to do a large survey of the reader base to determine which is actually better, but for now, the lack of one is not a good reason to oppose reversion (or support it, for that matter), since without knowing what readers we think, we kind of have to let editors control this decision. That said, the large number of IPs and SPAs commenting here suggest the change is deeply controversial at best, especially given the immense hurdle readers would have needed to jump to find this. —Compassionate727 ^(T·C) 01:48, 21 January 2023 (UTC)
79. Support It seems that a majority of users here would rather have the old layout be the default, and I agree. Personally, I am specifically not happy with the amount of whitespace in the new layout. ―NK1406 01:50, 21 January 2023 (UTC)
80. Strongest possible support, far too much white space on the left and many formerly easy to find links are several clicks away. 1.136.110.165 (talk) 02:13, 21 January 2023 (UTC).
81. Heavy Support Too much white space. Irritates the eyes. The fact that IP users still can't change visual preferences is also an insult to those with visual impairments. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 73.8.230.57 (talk • contribs) 02:33, 21 January 2023 (UTC)

    Indeed. It violates MOS:ACCESSIBILITY. ~ HAL333 02:41, 21 January 2023 (UTC)

82. Support on behalf of unregistered users and readers. The older version of Vector itself in my opinion is inferior in most respects and I have never used it (the appearance of mysterious symbols and lots of white space serves as a useful signal that I've been logged out), so I wasn't able to respond very usefully to the "what do you think of these projected skin changes?" questions the WMF asked me over the past year or two. But I'm hearing from people who do use Vector that the new version requires significant juggling of column width and other settings to be made usable, that things jump around and icons change form in different screens and needed adjustments don't hold in preview mode, and that the list of other-language links appears sorted by some high-handed assumptions about which one should want to see, which is just insulting. Those who use Vector have made clear that the new version is a dog's dinner. Unregistered users have no choice, although someone has already rushed out an app to modify the URLs, which should indicate the reception by actual unregistered readers and editors. Give them back what worked relatively well for them. Yngvadottir (talk) 02:59, 21 January 2023 (UTC)

    @Yngvadottir: For those of who are curious and out of the loop, what app are you referring to? —Compassionate727 ^(T·C) 03:42, 21 January 2023 (UTC)

    Excuse my technical ignorance, extension. For Chrome. (Link via the unnameable site.) Yngvadottir (talk) 07:21, 21 January 2023 (UTC)

83. STRONG SUPPORT (Redacted). 78.28.44.127 (talk) 03:03, 21 January 2023 (UTC)

    That's not a "perfectly reasonable" vote that got "censored", it's an open-and-shut UAA ban. Also, just looking at the video title, your "immortal clip" is in poor taste. —pythoncoder (talk | contribs) 03:30, 21 January 2023 (UTC)

    You know what's in poor taste? Ninja-deploying an awful layout change that ruins the experience of millions of users without consensus. And the comment was reasonable; they could've--and should've--just redacted the username. 78.28.44.127 (talk) 03:47, 21 January 2023 (UTC)

    @Pythoncoder: To be honest, I don't know what the normal protocol for such usernames is. But in this case, I think it would have been better to just redact the username. (To be clear, I don't think Donald Albury's revert was unreasonable. I just would have handled the comment differently. The IP's assumption of bad faith is worse, but there probably isn't a point trying to lecture him about it.) —Compassionate727 ^(T·C) 05:37, 21 January 2023 (UTC)

    On reflection, I agree, redacting the username without reverting the post would have been better, but I got called away from WP immediately after that for a couple of hours, and didn't see any great need to to try to fix that later. Donald Albury 15:45, 21 January 2023 (UTC)

84. Support The whitespace problem needs to fixed before Vector 2022 is deployed. One of the pros listed of the spec page is 'Less scrolling'. This couldn't be further from the truth. My 1920 x 1080 is now almost 50% whitespace, meaning there is less text forcing me scroll almost twice as much to read the same amount of text. Gehyra Australis (talk) 03:12, 21 January 2023 (UTC)

    Agree with the white/wasted-space issue and increased scrolling required to read text. It is even worse for those using 4:3 aspect-ratio monitors or large font-sizes for accessibility. Hopefully people don't get carpal tunnel syndrome from the excessive mouse scrolling. 98.149.164.167 (talk) 09:30, 22 January 2023 (UTC)

85. Support But what does it matter? Machinations like this are WMF's bread and butter and it doesn't seem like they care what any volunteer editors think. Azx2 04:17, 21 January 2023 (UTC)
86. Strong Support. Despite the claim in the faq that "we do not have plans to merge the desktop and mobile experiences", somebody from the WMF said "While building the skin, we also considered bringing it closer in visual design to the mobile site, so that people reading on mobile can still recognize Wikipedia in its desktop form as well. We also aimed to reduce code for skins overall so that it's easier in the future to build features and adapt them across both desktop and mobile skins." (diff) So while it would probably be histrionic of me to call the claim in the faq a lie, it happens to be the opposite of the truth. This skin is part of extinguishing the desktop idiom. Unwittingly, perhaps, it's part of a cultural trend, beneficial to commercial interests centered around phones and advertising, promotion, tracking, de-powering users and making them passive, and discouraging reading. It's a reaction to the demands of those already steeped in this culture. Many responses around the web have been along the lines of "it looks like the mobile site".  Card Zero  (talk) 04:39, 21 January 2023 (UTC)
87. Strong support for now Tried using the new Vector for a few days and it's just an irritating experience. For example, there's an issue with text becoming randomly bold while scrolling. It may be a Chromium bug (that's what I heard) but I've never experienced it with the old Vector. The actual root cause is somewhat irrelevant, as it impacts the experience either way. Text also seems lighter and harder to read. Overall it feels like additional polish and time is needed before it goes mainstream. GoPats (talk) 04:49, 21 January 2023 (UTC)
88. Was never broken, should never have been fixed. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 05:07, 21 January 2023 (UTC)
89. Support The new skin is an eyesore and many regular Wikipedia users had no idea this was happening. A poor consultation process. ~Darth Stabro^{Talk/Contribs} 05:12, 21 January 2023 (UTC)
90. Support if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, especially if most users disagree. Toa Nidhiki05 05:29, 21 January 2023 (UTC)
91. Support While I understand the motivations behind the update, none of the new features are things I asked for nor what I want. The new layout really irritates my eyes from the excess whitespace and the excessive scrolling I'm now forced to do because of the new width. Additionally, the fact that the settings are no longer immediately available on the left is an annoyance. Overall, the new layout is a detriment to my ability to navigate this website.WikEdits5 (talk) 05:39, 21 January 2023 (UTC)
92. Strong support. Enormous amounts of white space serve no useful purpose. This is widely known as "Fisher-Price UI design", which is trendy, but usefulness is more important than trendiness. Also, please stop calling the new UI an "improvement". It's not. -- HLachman (talk) 05:41, 21 January 2023 (UTC)

    I like the table of contents on the side, being able to change from an to full-width by clicking on the icon on the bottom right, being able to collapse the side bar, and an uncluttered top bar. 0xDeadbeef→∞ (talk to me) 05:45, 21 January 2023 (UTC)

    OK, but I still think enormous amounts of white space serve no useful purpose. -- HLachman (talk) 06:28, 21 January 2023 (UTC)

    Agreeeee! The last available username (talk) 04:27, 4 February 2023 (UTC)

93. Strong support The contents section is an entire screen downward now, off to the side, and sub-sections are hidden, whereas before you could see them immediately. This new format is regressive. At the very least, the contents need to be back in the body of the page, either after the article summary, like before, or ahead of it.LkeYHOBSTorItEwA (talk) 05:51, 21 January 2023 (UTC)
94. Strong support, as strongly as possible. Wikipedia has become practically unnavigable, and at least my eyes get strained from the new layout. Having to dart back and forth every second or two because of how short the lines are when there's tons of eye-burning blank space all around them is just incomprehensible. Reading Wikipedia pages is now genuinely unpleasant and feels harmful to my already bad sight, compared to being comfortable in the past.

    To make it even clearer how bad this is, when I saw the new design (on some pages but not others), at first I was 100% convinced that Wikipedia was having some issues and hoping they'd be fixed. I mean, this new design really seems broken in every way, at least from a reader's perspective (which I count as since I barely edit at all). Literally how I found out that it's not just broken is because of a discussion with other readers about Wikipedia being broken, decided to google to see if anything had been written about it, and... well, you know. VHGW (talk) 06:13, 21 January 2023 (UTC)

    Well, looks like I replied to the wrong section because even editing pages doesn't work like it used to. I can't even figure out how to move my comment to the right place... VHGW (talk) 06:17, 21 January 2023 (UTC)

    Comment moved by moi. ~ HAL333 06:47, 21 January 2023 (UTC)

95. Support as an IP user this is making my life a misery. Setting aside how unfinished the sidebar looks, and the fact useful links like recent changes, contents, recent events and things like user contributions (or "what has my address changed to today") are now hidden behind an extra click, the absolute killer is the stupid waste of screen real estate. Widescreen monitors have been fairly standard for many, many, years now and with the new layout almost half of my screen is whitespace. It is absolutely ridiculous that the only way to override it is either to click the button on every single page I visit or create an account. This is not acceptable to me and I would sooner stop contributing to the project and browse via a fork/mirror than do the latter. 2A02:C7F:2CE3:4700:1081:876B:679F:8E58 (talk) 07:35, 21 January 2023 (UTC)
96. People are creating accounts just to avoid this skin... ansh.666 09:23, 21 January 2023 (UTC)

    And this is a bad thing? Daniel Case (talk) 02:48, 24 January 2023 (UTC)

    Yes. Yes, it is. These users are not going to contribute to Wikipedia in any way, they just want to look up information and we are forcing them to spend time on setting up an account. Just so they can avoid the Vector 2022 layout, which is confusing for many (remember that a lot of people who are inexperienced with computers read Wikipedia daily). To pretend that it is not bad thing or that it is even a good thing is rather absurd... Walter Klosse (talk) 20:20, 25 January 2023 (UTC)

    We've always had users like that, though, who created an account for one reason not really related to editing, and then stayed. But I'd like you to hold this thought and come back in eight years or so, when you'll probably see at least a few userpages with something like "I created an account in 2023 so I could change from the Vector skin to the old look, but then I started editing, and ..." What makes people stay cannot be predicted from what makes them come.

    I also like this "spend time" creating an account. It takes about as much time to set up an account as it did when I did it back in 2005, which is to say less than a minute at the outside. How many other websites that were popular then and now can you also say that about?

    Aside from which, I think this is a very dismissive attitude to have towards new editors that is rather lacking in good faith. Daniel Case (talk) 05:56, 4 February 2023 (UTC)

    @Daniel Case: sorry it's been a couple months, but I think this still deserves a small response: just because something bad unintentionally caused something else that some people may see as a good thing does not mean the original thing is good. I also don't think simply having an account makes people more likely to edit - it's not like they couldn't have done that before. ansh.666 17:16, 13 March 2023 (UTC)

97. The strongest support possible. This change is outrageous! Very short lines and tons of blank space on both right and left. It's sad that after 18+ YEARS OF CONTRIBUTING, I feel inclined to quit the project rather than putting up with this nonsense. Ghirla^-трёп- 09:41, 21 January 2023 (UTC)
98. Support vector 2022 is a huge blow to the community. It is blatantly evident that most users(especially the IPs whose contributions are indispensible) are going to stop editing from here onwards if rollback is not carried out asap; in any case, vector 2022 already created so much damages that are irreparable.149.36.19.74 (talk) 09:48, 21 January 2023 (UTC)
99. Support on grounds that this is a badly-handled change with insufficient notification. (FWIW - I thought my browser was having problems loading the page at first). The individual wikipedias make their own decisions on content and that includes display. GraemeLeggett (talk)
100. Support. While I think Vector2022 has the opportunity to be superior to Vector legacy without too much additional work, I think there are three disservices to our readers that need to be worked out before. (1) overall brightness. So much white causes eye strain. Either a default fixed-width (I'm against), or a design like this would reduce that. (2) link colours. Talked about this to exhaustion. The visited and unvisited links look the same for those with colour blindness and a significant minority struggles with how light the colours are (phab:T213778). A further iteration, with help of experts, is needed to resolve this. (3) Symmetry: even a small asymmetry can lead to pain for those with neck problems.
     As a power user, there are reasons I've switched back to Legacy too, even though I think our readers should be prioritized in the discussion to deploy. For instance, I don't want contributions to be hidden behind two clicks. Some background pages are difficult to navigate without the ability to enable a numbered TOC (like WP:GAR). There are quite a few things broken still (like {{TOC limit}} phab:T317818. While these shouldn't be blocks for deployment, I would like to get more guarentees that they will be worked on. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 10:18, 21 January 2023 (UTC)
101. Strong support – The new style is horrible with too much white space, there was no consensus for it. Peter Damian (talk) 11:46, 21 January 2023 (UTC)
102. Support. My first reaction was that my browser was acting up (I use Wikipedia daily and I wasn't aware of the change). To those who say "So you think that Wikipedia should never change?", this is my reply: if I have to go north and I notice that I've been driving south for one hour, the only logical reaction is to hit the brakes and do a U-turn. If I keep the course I'll reach my destination only eventually, after circling the globe. The main design choices of the new interface are all pointing south (mystery meat, mobile-friendly line width, less immediate switch to other languages and so on). Rizzardi (talk) 12:03, 21 January 2023 (UTC)
103. Support - per all of the above. Ealdgyth (talk) 13:19, 21 January 2023 (UTC)
104. Strong support - per all of the above. --Blockhaj (talk) 13:51, 21 January 2023 (UTC)
105. Strong support I've heard claims that this these changes were being openly discussed, but as a long time reader they may as well have been discussed in a basement behind a locked door behind a sign reading "beware of leopard". Literally the first I was aware of changes to the UI was when I opened up a page and suddenly less than half my screen is being used. Why? I've heard claims that it's "more readable" but it really isn't. Seriously, just why? I'm absolutely horrified and appalled by the trend of websites forcing major visual overhauls on their users simply for the sake of looking "sleek, modern and trendy", ESPECIALLY when it looks worse in every way. A desktop site should not look like a mobile app for crying out loud. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.10.96.162 (talk) 14:56, 21 January 2023 (UTC)

     Strongest support - See the textbook case of Last.fm which to this day has not recovered from the embarrassing forced rollout of it's new UI design in 2008. They knew it was unpopular, they did it anyway, the userbase left. This rollout has looked eerily similar so far. - "Ghost of Dan Gurney" ^{(work / talk)} 16:21, 21 January 2023 (UTC) Eh. Last.fm didn't have a rollback option, so this comment is out of line based on that alone. - "Ghost of Dan Gurney" ^{(work / talk)} 14:33, 2 February 2023 (UTC)

     Last.fm actually saw an increase in usage after the redesign according to Comscore [2]. the wub "?!" 17:42, 28 January 2023 (UTC)

     On a site where passive engagement (listening to audio) doesn't require a UX, total minutes is in no way an indication of UX success. TheMissingMuse (talk) 17:51, 28 January 2023 (UTC)

106. Strongest Support - As someone who is an extensive user of wikipedia (multiple hours per day), but is only a reader and not an editor, I've found Vector 2022 extremely jaring to use. It feels significantly thinner, it wastes a massive amount of horizontal screen real estate, the excessive whitespace is visually offputting to the reading experience, and having to manually toggle the table of contents side bar and the limited content width button for every single article I open when not logged in is extremly frustrating. Additonally, only finding out about the redesign after it had been implimented with seemingly no effort to consult or poll readers/noneditors seems extremly problematic. Wikipedia should probably be optimized for the vast majority of those who use it, and as a reader Vector 22 is simply a downgrade from Vector Legacy. IanKBania (talk) 16:47, 21 January 2023 (UTC)
107. Strong Support per all of the above. Delphin64 (talk) 17:13, 21 January 2023 (UTC)
108. Support per the default width issue as well as other bizarre UI changes. Cards84664 17:20, 21 January 2023 (UTC)
109. Support. At this point, I got only one thing to say, RIP Wikipedia. You had a good run. 148.252.35.10 (talk) 19:36, 21 January 2023 (UTC)

     It's just a design change, how does that deathify Wikipedia? Aaron Liu (talk) 22:00, 25 January 2023 (UTC)

110. Support. Ever since the Vector 2022 rollout helpers on IRC have been receiving a tonne of complaints about it, of varying levels of vitriol, to the point we had to include a new bang command pointing to WT:VECTOR2022 (and, more recently, this Request for Comment). The complaints have mainly been about the large amount of whitespace (with at least one legitimately wondering if advertizements were going to start showing up), how squished everything is, and how everything is hidden under a new dropdown menu. This, plus the requirement to register an account to change it (which isn't an option in jurisdictions prone to human rights abuses or which has lese majeste or equivalent laws) is why I have to support the skin being reverted at this time. (Disclosure: I use, and have always used, MonoBook and I was not switched over to Vector '22; I thus have no personal experience using the skin.) —Jéské Couriano (No further replies will be forthcoming.) 21:11, 21 January 2023 (UTC)
111. Support. I supported V2022 in the original RFC and my view on that has not changed, but I do not think this change is representative of consensus. ^Clyde!_Franklin! 21:17, 21 January 2023 (UTC)
112. Strongest support Waste of space. More button clicks to perform the same actions.Lots of mobile influence in desktop(it is bad and should be separated). So revert it back. Wikipedia had the most efficient and slick design. Don't fix it if it ain't broken
113. Support The enormous margins and massive amounts of wasted space just look awful, especially once you start getting to 2k or 4k resolutions, and the moving table of contents, while a nice idea, is super poorly implemented in its current state. This design seems like it was made by a group of people exclusively running on 720p monitors who never thought to check how it looked at any other screen size. KirbychuHRD2 (talk) 21:45, 21 January 2023 (UTC)
114. Support I remember when Monobook was the default skin, and Vector 2010 was an improvement. This is not. – filelakeshoe (t / c) 🐱 21:57, 21 January 2023 (UTC)
115. Support Hadn't seen the change until I saw people on another website I frequent complaining about the new look. How the RfC on its introduction was closed as consensus in favour when there were more opposers than supporters is beyond me... Number 57 22:00, 21 January 2023 (UTC)

     @Number 57, because the closers didn't simply count !votes? — Qwerfjkltalk 22:10, 21 January 2023 (UTC)

     Or rather because they just ignored the opposers? Tvx1 22:31, 21 January 2023 (UTC)

     WP:VINE very explicitly states that majority vote should at least be requirement for UI changes; such as this and the text width issue (in which the latter no vote was taken). The closers should have simply counted the votes, and then check if the support arguments had any merit. Transcleanupgal (talk) 18:31, 22 January 2023 (UTC)

     An essay. — Qwerfjkltalk 21:03, 22 January 2023 (UTC)

     so? Transcleanupgal (talk) 21:04, 22 January 2023 (UTC)

     Essays are neither policies nor guidelines, and are written as advice or opinions of one or more Wikipedia contributors, as stated in {{essay}}. It's something to consider, but by no means is it mandated. —Tenryuu 🐲 ( 💬 • 📝 ) 23:55, 22 January 2023 (UTC)

     yes, i know, it's just that @Qwerfjkl replied to me not only stating a list as policy, but getting the criteria for something to be on that list wrong and is being a massive hypocrite. Transcleanupgal (talk) 00:46, 23 January 2023 (UTC)

     @Transcleanupgal, I wasn't suggesting that WP:200 was a policy, rather that large numbers of editors rarely participate in discussions. — Qwerfjkltalk 07:08, 23 January 2023 (UTC)

     don't game the system. that's not what you did, period. Transcleanupgal (talk) 20:54, 23 January 2023 (UTC)

     @Transcleanupgal, please AGF. — Qwerfjkltalk 07:12, 24 January 2023 (UTC)

116. Support Old is seriously better! Editorkamran (talk) 22:09, 21 January 2023 (UTC)
117. Support. I'm here for information density. The users who didn't like the line length could always shrink the window. This is universal and easily achieved; the corresponding method does not exist in reverse for the new design. I've had to install GreaseMonkey and find a script to modify the URL--I'm embarrassed to say this took me a couple hours. Additionally, I will never be in favor of icons rather than text links on websites. They're less accessible to the vast majority of users.
     Furthermore, given how awkward the handling of this has been, I'd support a vote of no-confidence for the decision-makers involved in the rollout. I found it to be a deeply unpleasant surprise, and difficult to find information on. They've forfeited any future donations from me until the people involved are fired. 2601:645:0:41C0:D1A0:EB6A:A0C7:18BD (talk) 22:14, 21 January 2023 (UTC)

     Comment moved. ~ HAL333 00:41, 22 January 2023 (UTC)

118. Support the decision to change was done compleatly behind the average wikiipedia reader, the only way you could have found that discussion was if you actively searched for it or were part of the implementation, in other words; the original discussion should be Moot per WP:POLSILENCE Transcleanupgal (talk) 23:34, 21 January 2023 (UTC)

     @Transcleanupgal, WP:200. There were enough editors. — Qwerfjkltalk 07:41, 22 January 2023 (UTC)

     wp:200 states that there needs to be 200 support votes, note 200 total votes, not only did neither the support nor oppose get nearly enough votes, the oppose actually got more votes. so yes, it would be Moot. Transcleanupgal (talk) 18:02, 22 January 2023 (UTC)

119. Support. I think there is case to be made for a fresh UI and design. However, currently we have a hodge-podge of screens. Have detailed out some of my notes here [[3]]. Need these to be fixed at the minimum before the roll-out. Ktin (talk) 23:41, 21 January 2023 (UTC)
120. Support I made an account for the sole reason of changing my skin back. I have not spoken to anyone who supports this change. I have overheard complaints in real life about the new skin. The idea that a small subset of the most active users, who did not reach a clear consensus in favor of this change, can be used to justify this change is absurd. Reading back through the previous RFCs, the design team did not meaningfully take community feedback into account, particularly as it regards fixed-width content. This change should be reverted and changes should be made to the RFC process to ensure this can't happen again. Fwint (talk) 23:49, 21 January 2023 (UTC)
121. Strongest support New UI is annoying, & seems to assume everyone's on a smartphone. There are a lot of assumptions, in fact; the process seems to have been largely internal, with a lot of confusion as to why more average Wikipedia users didn't join the RFC. Most users don't even make accounts, & their thoughts seem to have been totally ignored. A bad redesign can kill a site, & a stubborn desire to fiddle with stylesheets is not a good reason to risk the whole enterprise. Why not simply deploy this new UI as a "fixed-width mode" or something? See if people adopt it that way. Anything other than a sudden forced change, which users of every site universally hate. It is always a negative user experience, & it has been negative for all the no-account users I've spoken to. In summary, the change needs to account for casual users before it's finalized, & needs to be rolled out in a more thoughtful, consensus-minded way. WizWorldLIVE (talk) 00:19, 22 January 2023 (UTC)
122. Support I created an account and am fumbling through page edits just to express my strong dislike of the new layout. It is way, way too narrow. Most desktop users view the site on widescreen monitors. There is way too much unused space. Keep the mobile version of the site on mobile devices. Let me use utilize my wide screen on Desktop. I'm seeing lots of arguments from people saying it's easy to just change back to Vector 2010 from the appearance menu, but the vast majority of users aren't logged in and can't do that without registering an account. I'm certainly not going to be bothered to log into my account every time i need to use Wikipedia on another computer. SteveBlanka (talk) 18:47, 22 January 2023 (UTC)
123. Strongest support The new UI is terrible. I've been using it for a week and I hate it. Low information density, stupid "mobile-like" design, and huge swaths of useless empty space, forcing users to scroll even for short articles. Fix it. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.48.244.10 (talk) 01:21, 22 January 2023 (UTC)
124. Support, mainly because IPs don't have the luxury of going back to legacy Vector. I gave Vector 2022 my best shot for about a week, and was happy to return to the old skin; I can't help wondering if the WMF is thinking of trading the mobile site (which has issues, notably WP:TCHY) for Vector 2022. This is reminiscent of WP:VE#Limitations. Miniapolis 02:27, 22 January 2023 (UTC)
125. Support. Per all of the above, and with concerns about the WMF deploying skins with insufficient consensus. I do not see a consensus to deploy in the last RFC, and the way this one is trending, I do not see a consensus to deploy in this one. A proper consensus should be obtained for something this controversial. –Novem Linguae (talk) 02:42, 22 January 2023 (UTC)

     Today's changes to vector-2022 have messed up the style of my user scripts that I fixed the other day. They have also added padding to each menu item, which doesn't look great in my opinion. They have also deleted padding between menus, which also doesn't look great in my opinion. It's a bit frustrating that the English Wikipedia has turned into a vector-2022 sandbox. –Novem Linguae (talk) 03:51, 24 January 2023 (UTC)

     Suggestions for the closer: 1) Try to avoid hypothesizing what consensus will be in the future, and focus on what consensus is now. I feel that this mistake was made in the close of the first Vector 2022 RFC. 2) Even if there is policy prohibiting the wikis from making coding and technical decisions, it is still acceptable to find consensus to ask the WMF to roll back Vector 2022. Thanks in advance for closing this. Good luck. –Novem Linguae (talk) 19:36, 15 February 2023 (UTC)

126. Support - the biggest issue in my mind was the lack of consensus (or even a plurality) before implementing. And also a lack of communication about it. Personally I saw no banner advising of the implementation time. When it was implemented, I was editing in realtime, and there was no banner indicating that it had changed (yes, there was one later on). The RFC noted that certain improvements needed to be made before implementation. I'm confused why the "Background" section above says that these WERE implemented, as that's not the impression I got. Either in terms of width, or the language improvements. What was promised needs to be done. I also feel that those who actually did the change, without consensus, should have their permissions on the English Wikipedia restricted. Nfitz (talk) 03:48, 22 January 2023 (UTC)
127. Support - The answer to this question is obvious. And that answer is yes. The new skin is clearly not designed for what would be considered the primary use case: a desktop computer using a landscape monitor. Having to login to switch skins through preferences is annoying. Deadgye (talk) 04:01, 22 January 2023 (UTC)
128. Support. Just for starters the whitespace is an abomination and makes reading and navigating the website objectively worse on a desktop. I read through the RFC and some of various supporting talk pages and it was interesting to me to see that, although the WMF people generally made a big show of this being a change to the desktop site only and having nothing to do with the mobile site, Card Zero's !vote above pointed out the WMF comment "While building the skin, we also considered bringing it closer in visual design to the mobile site, so that people reading on mobile can still recognize Wikipedia in its desktop form as well. We also aimed to reduce code for skins overall so that it's easier in the future to build features and adapt them across both desktop and mobile skins". What is good for the mobile reader is often not what is good for the dektop reader and trying to make them similar is a recipe for disaster. Surely the WMF gets enough money each year through their relentless advertising that they can develop skins that suit mobile and desktop separately rather than needing to homogonise them. For whatever it's worth I did support the change from monobook to vector at the time so I don't think I am some luddite who just hates change. 2403:5802:19ED:0:21C1:6CBF:2E59:864 (talk) 05:14, 22 January 2023 (UTC)
129. Support The new design is truly abysmal and dysfunctional for a modern website's UI. I'm not opposed to new default displays, but it must reflect buy-in from the community. Both on a substantive and procedural basis, the new design should be rolled-back. Lord Roem ~ (talk) 05:54, 22 January 2023 (UTC)
130. Support. I hope I did this right as I've only been a logged out user until now. When talking about the "Wikipedia community", there seems to be a sole focus on editors. Part of the Wikipedia community also includes logged out users, aka the largest share of Wikipedia. There was no notice to logged out users who were happy with the old design or any real attempt to reach out to logged out users about input for this upcoming change (banners, etc.); Wikipedia gets billions of pageviews a month and the if there were real problems with the layout from a reader's point of view they would have organically come about already. Instead, I woke up to a new design that looks plain bad; I honestly thought I was on mobile for ~10 minutes until I googled the problem and learned it was in fact a redesign. --Newresdesignisdumb420! (talk) 06:21, 22 January 2023 (UTC)
131. Strong support - new skin is totally unworkable in viewing mode. Don't know what it would be like in editing mode as I got out as quickly as possible, but based of viewing mode it would be a nightmare. Mjroots (talk) 07:03, 22 January 2023 (UTC)
132. Support I do not understand the modern trend of adding white space to webpages, and this design is particularly egregious in that regard. Adopting a new design is fine, I am not married to the 2010 layout, but this one appears disliked by editors and readers alike. Undo. wxtrackercody (talk · contributions) 07:20, 22 January 2023 (UTC)
133. Support. I'm just a user, not an editor, but I'll tell you guys what I told the wikimedia volunteer email: this new site redesign is terrible. Particularly egregious is the bit where it assumes my desktop computer with a full-width monitor is a mobile phone, as though we're moving back in time to a previous and worse era of web design. table of contents on the left I could get used to, but having to click a button to tell your website I would like it to use more than a third of the screen in 2023 is just frankly embarrassing. 2601:645:8200:FF50:0:0:0:EC5F (talk) 08:05, 22 January 2023 (UTC)
134. Support This new design is a downgrade. It's baffling this has been set to default and unchangeably forced to logged-out users. Ew. — DVRTed (Talk)
135. Support This is horrible. At a minimum allow logged out users to opt out. 111.220.98.160 (talk) 09:32, 22 January 2023 (UTC).
136. Support I don't much care for all the wasted space left and right when rendered on my computer monitor. There is a way to override when logged out (i.e append ?useskin=vector to the url) but this doesn't propagate when clicking links. Should be easily be fixable IMO, so please do that. 90.231.239.98 (talk) 10:20, 22 January 2023 (UTC)
137. Support I've read this site almost daily for at least 15 years. I've learned so much from it since, especially from the 'random article' link, and still was - until Wednesday. I remember the old default skin, Monobook, which I always thought had a quirky but tasteful photo of a crumpled white bedsheet as a background, and it changing to the Vector 2010 with a light gray margin that I thought was somewhat generic but still unique and appealing. I didn't care about that change because it was the only real change I noticed and it didn't affect my experience. Despite what many have said in the many parallel ongoing conversations on this site about it looking outdated or being obsolete, I thought it was far and away the best-designed major site on the internet - an example in function over frills and timelessness over trend-following, compared to websites that seem to get overhauled every couple of years that replace self-evident links with weird hieroglyphic buttons, require more and more scrolling, and make more and more space for ads. I'd argue the design kept up with the times, especially compared to Craigslist, which looks very firmly rooted in 2002. As an IP user, I had absolutely no clue this new default skin was planned, and thought my browser was buggy when I first saw it, particularly because pages were being updated to the new skin one-by-one, and I was coming across 'normal' and 'buggy' ones at random. Then I discovered it was a feature, not a bug. I've already said why I liked the previous default skin(s), and this redesign hit like a gut punch. I have to describe the new skin (Vector 2022) as sterile, like an operating room - it's not comfortable to look at, the 'random article' button is hidden behind a hieroglyphic, it takes much more scrolling to read an article, and some articles just look like the layout was wrecked by the skin. It also seems like the black text is somehow brighter and harder to read. I found myself going from being on Wikipedia for hours at a time to a minute at a time until I found a browser extention that would add "?useskin=vector" to every URL every time I clicked a WP link. I have to say that all of this discussion - especially from all the people whose arguments against this request boil down to 'suck it up and get over it' - really puts me off coming back. Why should I patronize a website whose maintainers are themselves patronizing to their readers? It's not exactly welcoming, which is what I would think an online encyclopedia that encourages its readers to become its writers would want to be. --67.6.158.84 (talk) 10:36, 22 January 2023 (UTC)

     This is completely irrelevant to the substance of what you wrote, but the background image is a book, not a bedsheet — hence the name "MonoBook". —pythoncoder (talk | contribs) 03:32, 26 January 2023 (UTC)

138. Support Reading articles on a laptop logged-out (i.e. in the normal way) is more difficult – my eyes are distracted by the fact that the text doesn’t start until almost one-third of the way across the page. And it’s weird that there is no visible tab to use to log in. The new skin should be an option – readers and IP editors should be asked if they want to opt-in. Sweet6970 (talk) 12:17, 22 January 2023 (UTC)
139. Support. Unfortunately any perceived improvements do not matter a jot when the basic reading/editing experience is fundamentally compromised by what feels like 30-year old design methodology focussing exclusively on small, low-res displays (and simply accepting the resultant mass of dead space on larger, higher resolution displays), that should have long since been consigned to history. This lunacy should not have been inflicted on everyone by default with arrogant and almost total disregard for any and all negative feedback. _wjemather^{please leave a message...} 12:36, 22 January 2023 (UTC)
140. Support: the new version looks awful. If the previous version is not broken, why change it, and especially for this? The 2022 version is not an improvement at all, it is a downgrade. I know bad, pseudo-clean website designs are a trend, but that does not mean I have to accept it. Veverve (talk) 12:48, 22 January 2023 (UTC)
141. Strong support, and I don't use "strong" lightly. The number of IPs and new accounts indicating their displeasure above (and that's just those who managed to find this RfC) indicate how poorly Vector 2022 works for casual readers. Compacted text, large swaths of whitespace, more difficult navigation - this is not an improvement. Many of the opposes below seem to fall into the "it's time for a change" category, but change for the sake of change alone is rarely a good thing. This is not an e-commerce or social media site; it's an encyclopedia. Readers come here for the article content, not for what some might call cutting-edge web design. For editors it can sometimes be easy to lose sight of the fact that these articles are written for Wikipedia readers, not other editors. Maximizing usability for readers is paramount, so the default skin for someone not logged in should not be Vector 2022. --Sable232 (talk) 15:19, 22 January 2023 (UTC)

     What about those who actually like Vector 2022? To my knowledge if you dislike something enough you will eventually find somewhere to express your displeasure. But for readers who either don't care or like the new design, how are we supposed to know exactly how many of them there are? 0xDeadbeef→∞ (talk to me) 15:25, 22 January 2023 (UTC)

     @0xDeadbeef: I think that they are well represented in the "oppose" category and by the small minority of appreciative comments left on pages like this one. Let me highlight an excerpt from Stable232's comment: "Many of the opposes below seem to fall into the "it's time for a change" category, but change for the sake of change alone is rarely a good thing. This is not an e-commerce or social media site; it's an encyclopedia. Readers come here for the article content, not for what some might call cutting-edge web design." Applause! The same as I think: there seems to be more attention on the "user's experience" than on the contents of the encyclopedia, while a great number of articles are in a wretched state. Æo (talk) 15:49, 22 January 2023 (UTC)

     I was merely pointing out the fact that people who hate the new design and desperately want the old design back will have enough motivation to find this page and others. Wikipedia editors are <0.01% of our readership, so even if a majority of readers actually like the new design, we would not know because people who like the new design would not care about this enough to find this page to express support. 0xDeadbeef→∞ (talk to me) 15:56, 22 January 2023 (UTC)

     That's why there have been some thoughts about publicising this page to casual IP readers (#Publicizing this RfC). Many of them have actually found this RfC or other talk pages and have expressed their views, and most of them have been negative. Regarding the segment of readers who "do not care" whether the interface is V2010 or V2022, I think that their view (which, given that they "do not care", is not an "opinion", i.e. a choice, between "options") is ostensibly irrelevant, and they probably do not even care whether Wikipedia exists or not. Æo (talk) 16:34, 22 January 2023 (UTC)

142. Strong support. This mobilification of desktop sites is a plague on the Web. I'm not very active here any more (much more of a reader than a contributor these days) and as a reader this change is awful. Ignatzmice•talk 15:38, 22 January 2023 (UTC)
143. Extremely strong support this is the Wikipedia equivalent of New Coke and is an unnecessary inconvenience to logged-out users and readers. Dronebogus (talk) 17:12, 22 January 2023 (UTC)
144. Support. The old skin was fine, the new one is just... weird. —scs (talk) 17:14, 22 January 2023 (UTC)
145. Strong support The whole point of responsive layout is that the user determines the width of the screen, not the developers. The other alterations seem unneccesary and unhelpful.John Talbut (talk) 17:28, 22 January 2023 (UTC)
146. Support Partly because the search field is not immediately usable. --Bensin (talk) 17:38, 22 January 2023 (UTC)
147. Strong Support The new skin is harder to use than the old one. It makes the text harder to read, for example, and generates wasted space on the sides of the page. Maybe we can make a better skin someday, but the 2022 one is actually worse than what it's replacing and shouldn't be used. Yellow Diamond Δ Direct Line to the Diamonds 17:52, 22 January 2023 (UTC)
148. Support There is too much whitespace and it is harder to navigate with Vector 2022. Kay2370 (talk) 19:14, 22 January 2023 (UTC)
149. Support There's too much whitespace, and it's actually harder to read now. I do not like how the Foundation imposed it upon the community. kulupu ko, many and one (talk) 20:16, 22 January 2023 (UTC)
150. Support For all the reasons already stated, especially white space, missing menu, and inconvenience of having to hit several buttons just to login. Unless we're anticipating a return to 13" square monitors there is absolutely no need for this. Wiki-Ed (talk) 20:47, 22 January 2023 (UTC)
151. Strong support The new skin is a nightmare both aesthetically and from a usability point of view - it is driving serious contributors as well as readers away from the project. Forcing it on all users by default is rude and shows ignorance and incompetence. Whoever is responsible for this decision at the WMF should be removed from power - donation money should be spent on running the servers, fixing bugs and implementing actually needed core functionality the community has asked for for decades, not on things not needed like the Visual Editor or this new skin. The old Vector skin should be made the default again not only in the English Wikipedia but also in all other Wikipedias unless the users have explicitly opted in to the new skin (having a preferences setting to opt out is not enough). --Matthiaspaul (talk) 21:14, 22 January 2023 (UTC)

     No need to make an ad hominem response directed at the person who introduced the skin itself. (And not to get too off-topic, but Visual Editor makes editing less daunting for new users, and more editors is something the project desperately needs). DecafPotato (talk) 23:08, 22 January 2023 (UTC)

152. Support: This change was completely unnecessary, and the new layout is distracting and harder to read, especially because of the large amount of white space. --1990'sguy (talk) 21:15, 22 January 2023 (UTC)
153. Support: It looks like the majority of respondants to the original RFC were not in favor of the new skin as-is, but it seems that the closing statement assumed that their concerns would be addressed. They were not. But ignoring the old RFC and looking at it fresh, there are still a lot of complaints that, unless they can be addressed instantly, should be grounds for a roll-back. The biggest concerns I'd like to point out are that the graphical buttons are not as obvious as they could be. (And they're not really saving space, because the whitespace where the old links would be is still unused.) And the dificulties with full-width mode. I realize that research has shown that narrow lines can be better for long-form reading, but It's my understanding that research has also shown that people don't read Wikipedia like that. They glance around quickly for the fact they're looking for. (I know I usually do.) The toggle for full-width is kind of hidden in my judgement, not really obvious iconography wise, and has a frustrating, seemingly broken behavior for non-logged in users. (I realize that fixing that last would require extra effort that can only be done by the Foundation's programmers, but ... ok, so what?) ApLundell (talk) 21:39, 22 January 2023 (UTC)
154. Support: The change is not an improvement, and despite what was stated the research did not show the limited width is better. I have read the papers linked at https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Reading/Web/Desktop_Improvements/Features/Limiting_content_width but they are twenty years old and do not consider modern wide-screen high-definiton monitors. 80.43.159.95 (talk) 22:01, 22 January 2023 (UTC) 22:00 January 2023 UTC
155. Extremely strong support The old style Wikipedia was much easier to use and to edit. I am not sure what was wrong with it, and wish to say "If it's not broken, don't fix it." YTKJ (talk) 22:47, 22 January 2023 (UTC)

     FYI, "extremely strong support" tends to be functionally equal to just "support". DecafPotato (talk) 23:05, 22 January 2023 (UTC)

     Maybe read that article of TechCrunch and you'll notice the changes a bit better. Its really much more efficient for editors. Then here the developers have also their say on their aims. Paradise Chronicle (talk) 01:15, 23 January 2023 (UTC)

     That article would be relevant if the site actually looked like the screenshots the article includes. It does not. On my screen, it looks like this: https://postimg.cc/3ddyCXDj, which is significantly different than the old layout. I'm starting to wonder if those who claim the new layout is not that different are only using lower-res displays and haven't actually seen the problem. I measured the whitespace on my monitor earlier today. There's a solid 9 inches of whitespace to the left of the content, another 8.5 inches of whitespace on the right, and measly 6 inches of actual content in the middle. The content quite literally takes up less than a third of my browser window. That's on a 27" 3840x2160 monitor using 100% OS-level scaling and 100% browser scaling. It's not much better at 125% OS-level scaling. People have also brought up comparisons to other sites using similar design elements, but I checked a lot of the ones mentioned by others, and even those other sites have their UI elements stretch out to fill the entire window even if article content does not. In that regard, Vector 2022 doesn't even follow the design examples of the sites other people are referencing. Trynn (talk) 01:38, 23 January 2023 (UTC)

     Welcome to Wikipedia Trynn! I believe you have an individual preference. Your username, bell and notifications are above the white space, while my username, bell and notifications are all above the text and the whitespace begins at the Watchlist. Just ask for help at the talk page. Paradise Chronicle (talk) 02:33, 23 January 2023 (UTC)

156. Support On a wide desktop monitor the amount of whitespace is baffling and the exact opposite of what I'd expect a website to do with available "real estate". Cpl Syx ^[talk] 23:05, 22 January 2023 (UTC)
157. Strong Support: I specifically made an account again for this, having lost my old login somewhere along switching emails, because this is the worst design 'improvement' I've seen in quite a few years. It is unpleasant to be unable to see where the sidebar ends and the page starts, and the overwhelming whiteness of the design made pages more difficult to read. It's very much a mobile-centric design on a website I only ever use on desktop, and I'm pretty sure there's already a mobile version. Heavily indented sections, like this page for example, are a nightmare to parse without a clear border like the old design. The non-persistence of having to click on a button to open the menu on the side with every single page change if not logged in is frustrating too. No longer having an easy overview of languages on the left (without having to click on it, again) is a negative too. I personally also hate the move table of contents, specifically how it remains in sight while you scroll, though I can see why some would like it. SiderealMask (talk) 01:35, 23 January 2023 (UTC)
158. Strong Support: The only way I've found to disable this new UI is a Chrome extension (to add "useskin=vector" to all pages) and that is frankly ridiculous. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.128.26.93 (talk) 23:04, January 22, 2023 (UTC)
159. Strong Support. The community rejected this before, and the idea that it's being foisted upon us anyway is outrageous. Andrew Lenahan - Starblind 04:05, 23 January 2023 (UTC)
160. Support for a multitude of reasons. I rarely edit these days and as such rarely log in, but this new skin is so terrible that I have to log into to even do so much as to browse the site effectively.
     1) Whitespace-heavy skin designs work for mobile users because it can be difficult to click on the correct links when there are too many in close proximity. But for desktop users the added whitespace just creates unnecessary scrolling.
     2) The new design clashes visually with established templates, the standard editing interface, and the like: any change to the default skin should consider not just what the new skin looks like in a vacuum, but also how it meshes with the current content of the website. And that was clearly not considered at all in the design of this skin.
     3) When hiding the table of contents there appears to be no way to get it back short of refreshing the page, at least that I can find. This is a horrible design choice for what should be obvious reasons, and the fact that the skin was rolled out this way speaks volumes about how it wasn't ready for deployment.
     4) When I use the search box, then move my mouse cursor, and then type something in, I get unexpected behavior: instead of searching for exactly what I typed in, I instead search for the page in the search results that my mouse cursor happened to be hovering over. This is clearly not what the majority of people typing a term in the search box would expect or intend to do, and again the fact that the skin was rolled out with this "feature" speaks to its unsuitability for use.
     I could talk about other issues as well, but most of what I would say has already been addressed above. Suffice to say, this skin clearly needs more work before becoming the default. That's not to say that there aren't positive aspects to the new skin: the more prominent search bar is a welcome change, as are the page previews that occur during a search. But the issues presented above are too great to make up for these small improvements. ST11 (t • c) 04:14, 23 January 2023 (UTC)

     Holy crap, you're right about hiding the contents. How did I not realize this until now... and why did the WMF think this was acceptable to deploy onto a top-20 website? —pythoncoder (talk | contribs) 04:17, 23 January 2023 (UTC)

     Hang on, I figured it out... it's the !!! button that shows up next to the article title. But once again, the skin relies on hieroglyphics to communicate important features, when text would've made much more sense. —pythoncoder (talk | contribs) 04:19, 23 January 2023 (UTC)

     Eh, I think it's a fairly common icon with a fairly common use. I would prefer if it gave a tooltip when you hover over it, though. -BRAINULATOR9 (TALK) 04:26, 23 January 2023 (UTC)

161. Support due to the following problems with Vector 2022 that the WMF has showed no signs of interest in fixing:
     • Excessive whitespace at the top — The "Log In" button is hidden behind a … button, which makes things more inconvenient than they were before for no clear reason. I mean, look at the official screenshot — there's plenty of space to make the login button be one click away.
     • Excessive whitespace in the contents sidebar. Like, they could easily cut the CSS margins on the contents by half and it would result in less unnecessary scrolling.
     • The hamburger menu. You can't say with a straight face that this is a desktop-first redesign then proceed to hide content behind a ≡ button by default. —pythoncoder (talk | contribs) 04:52, 23 January 2023 (UTC)

     Also, one more thing: I've tried to read pages in the new skin a couple times and it bugged me that there's no way to expand all the options in the contents at once. So now I think we should just put the table of contents where it was before.

     If that and the first two things in my original comment got fixed, I might move to neutral. The hamburger menu is probably just a Me Problem and I'm willing to compromise on that.

     Also if this RfC gets an incorrect close or the WMF otherwise defies the consensus here, we should at least come to a community consensus on a new name for this skin, because as others have said, it's a more substantial change from Vector than MonoBook->Vector was. —pythoncoder (talk | contribs) 05:44, 2 February 2023 (UTC)

162. Support per pythoncoder. starship.paint (exalt) 06:41, 23 January 2023 (UTC)
163. Support: As an avid reader and occasional editor and author with many interests, I don't like that many important links are hidden by the new skin, in particular the login field. What once was a single-click process, needs two clicks and a pull now. It's a small thing, but it is inconvenient nevertheless. I also don't like the extent of the white space, and most importantly (as missing information is often found in other versions), I miss the one-click language links. Hence I find that the previous default skin was much better, but Monobook is still superior to that since all operational controls are on the same side of the screen. But I also see that the new skin may have some advantages for users of mobile devices, restricted as they are in screen size. Then again, as a desktop user I find these characteristics detrimental, and I'd rather have all operation controls visible from the start. Hence I propose a compromise: Let the browser detect the operating system. If it is a mobile one, tell it to display the new skin (or another that is geared towards mini-screens). If it is a desktop one, use something like Monobook, or another of the classic skins, with all bells and whistles on. Don't just cater for one side. --Schlosser67 (talk) 07:29, 23 January 2023 (UTC)

     There's already a mobile skin and its already automatically shown on mobile operating systems. Vector 2022 was designed for desktops. – Joe (talk) 08:04, 23 January 2023 (UTC)

     Was it really meant for desktops? It does not look the part. And here I thought the developers wanted to help users with small screens, which I could have understood. That would mean that the new skin is not good for anything. Pity about the work people have wasted on it, their time would have been better spent on content than on appearance. Hence, upgrade to strong support. --Schlosser67 (talk) 11:25, 23 January 2023 (UTC)

164. Support: the new Vector skin has some good points but the iconographic "mystery meat navigation" at the top suffers from some serious usability deficiencies that make it harder to use and discriminate against users with certain disabilities. These issues are easily rectified but the interface development don't seem to be interested in taking user feedback into account. Cnbrb (talk) 10:53, 23 January 2023 (UTC)
165. Strong support: I do not think this move adheres to the RfC close. Whitespace width is still an issue with menus and any page with tables/images; others have raised that IPs can't keep their preference [in fact, I just tested it and I can't find the toggle at all as an IP]; sticky header and menu behavior is confusing and buggy [on a non-16:9 desktop window the sidebar jolts the entire article down instead of sideways, on my tablet talk pages are unreadable thanks to buggy table of contents menus]). These and similar issues were raised in the RfC which was closed with a huge "if" regarding the resolution of these issues, and while I see some improvements in the article body width, it's a huge stretch to say that the community's concerns were all satisfactorily handled, as this entire page should explain. While I do not think Vector legacy is perfect and I would welcome a solid update, this particular update, by consensus of the last RfC, is not it. Blue Edits (talk) 11:02, 23 January 2023 (UTC)
166. Strong support: This skin is garbage, it's got more blank white space than a ream of fresh copy paper. It sucks ass. Get rid of it, the people who introduced it and the people who designed this monstrosity. It's extremely clear to me that the the full impact of this change was hidden from the wider community in order to force it through regardless of many of the concerns listed above that were advised before. The change wasn't even close to a clear consensus, but it was forced through on the community, the backlash is massive. It's quite clear that it should be immediately reverted. Macktheknifeau (talk) 12:15, 23 January 2023 (UTC)
167. Support as per all the above. For those who say it is a resistance to change, it is not, but is a resistance to idiocracy.Clntkee (talk) 12:18, 23 January 2023 (UTC)
168. Strong support: A few days ago, I went to look up something on Wikipedia, only to find that its design had, shall we say, uglified. I don't know who complained about the old design, which had nothing wrong with it, but they are definitely in a very small minority. I'm glad to see that many agree with me, and I ask that Wikipedia go back to the old design. 98.20.129.84 (talk) 12:25, 23 January 2023 (UTC)
169. As pointed out by some people above, this design has an aesthetically bad look — too much white space, which can be perceived as trying to unify mobile and desktop designs. Secondly, as per all the above, WMF completely ignored community consensus and immediately implemented the change (which kind of feels like a throwback to WP:FRAM). Therefore I support a rollback to the old design. Summer ^talk 12:30, 23 January 2023 (UTC)
170. Support. I rarely see an instance where a big websites changes a classic design and it goes down well with the community. It usually feels like trying to fix what's not broken, and something no one asked for. Changing everyone's UI (rather than just giving them an extra option) is rather presumptuous. Please let this be a lesson for future redesigns to consult the community first, or to just add it to the existing list of skins without changing the default. — Czello 15:21, 23 January 2023 (UTC)
171. Support. The legacy Vector looks simpler and more elegant, the Vector 2022 looks clunkier. I do like the table of contents to "follow" the reading, but the simpler and wider legacy Vector is better for me. The fact that IP editors can't change that is another problem. A quick fix to this matter is to allow changes to all users - with account or without account. Another important point is that this change is forced on us, and I would never support such changes, no matter how "benevolent" it might be. ✠ SunDawn ✠ (contact) 15:26, 23 January 2023 (UTC)
172. Support and in strong terms at that. The redesign attempts to fix what isn't broken. The whitespace and the squeezing of text are just two reasons out of many. For example, I formatted my userpage for the 2010 skin, and because the text has been pushed into the middle the layout has suffered as a result. That to me is enough of a reason. I also think removing section numbering is a huge error, and pushing it into the side and making it so you cannot see all of it at once makes it measurably worse. The only positive thing I could say about it is widening the searchbar along the top. Tim O'Doherty (talk) 17:15, 23 January 2023 (UTC)
173. Strong support The single worst site-wide change I've seen during my 17 years here. The amount of white space this creates is beyond ridiculous. And most of the other changes are clearly retrograde also. mgiganteus1 (talk) 18:02, 23 January 2023 (UTC)
174. Support. Not sure if I'm doing this correctly, as I made an account to restore my ability to use the old wikipedia style so I'm new to this whole thing. SanJacintoPeak (talk) 18:12, 23 January 2023 (UTC)
175. Support, per above. BeanieFan11 (talk) 18:47, 23 January 2023 (UTC)
176. Support rolling back to 2010, for as long as IPs are unable to change skins without signing up and because of the badgering as Fram has pointed out. Decreasing the page width so that skimming eyes on widescreen monitors don't have to travel too far is about the only noticable improvement over the old skin, but that can be easily retrofitted for v2010. Everything else, including the hamburger hell UI, is tedious for desktop browsing and not well supported by older web browsers (one of the major benefits of Wikipedia over other JS/complex-CSS-heavy sites: you could still comfortably read articles on "obsolete" hardware without much lag or broken rendering). DigitalIceAge (talk) 19:15, 23 January 2023 (UTC)
177. Strong Support I immediately reverted to Vector 2010 because I hated the new skin so much. I don't like guessing at what a symbol means and I like being able to click on plaintext that says Contributions and Watchlist. Abzeronow (talk) 19:37, 23 January 2023 (UTC)
178. Support As mostly a reader and not an editor I was pretty surprised (not in a good way) by the new look. I was looking into wether there was a CSS error on my end but noticed it as deliberate. Even after a period of trying to have the new look grow on me I just don't understand the reasoning for the change. A simple shrink expand button for Vector 2010 would have been much better. Without an easy way for logged out users to opt out I would like to see this change rolled back on all wikis. Or leave the decision to the admins of every language. Real Joe Cool (talk) 21:20, 23 January 2023 (UTC)
179. Strongest possible Support The new design is clunky, awkward, hides tools and options, makes the dealing with the ToC a chore, switching languages more cumbersome... (the original full list of languages, on the left, was best) It takes more time and effort, to do anything or get any information. Ones ability to get an overview of things, or to navigate, is clearly diminished. Functionality, practicality and efficiency is severely hampered. Not because it is an unfamiliar set-up, but because it is an inherently, objectively, and significantly, less functional/practical/efficient design. (and this is true of most "upgraded"/"updated"/"modern" website designs, from about the 2010's onward ...which are far from unfamiliar, by now) The new design makes the desktop and mobile designs closer ...but I have yet to see, any reasonable argument (or any argument whatsoever), for why that would be a good thing. Why one should make the desktop version, be closer to a design that has to be severely limited, by the severely limited abilities of mobiles. (most notably, their minimal and extremely clumsy and imprecise touchscreens)--155.4.221.27 (talk) 21:34, 23 January 2023 (UTC)

     I agree. I browse Wikipedia on both desktop and mobile, but I only use desktop to contribute, because it is impossible to do serious editing on the mobile version; I use the mobile version only for superficial and quick reading and information-search. Æo (talk) 21:50, 23 January 2023 (UTC)

     ...and mobile is clearly worse, for superficial and quick reading and information-search, as well, other than specifically on a smartphone. (due to the many and severe limitations, of smartphones) 155.4.221.27 (talk) 14:35, 24 January 2023 (UTC)

180. Support (edit conflict) As someone who prefers Vector 2022, the backlash is very clear and features that many editors & readers are concerned with should be addressed and fixed as necessary (e.g. random white spaces) before rolling out V22 again. Making the skin optional is also another option. --Harobouri • 🎢 • 🏗️ (he/him) 21:38, 23 January 2023 (UTC)
181. Support for all the reasons stated above. The amount of blank space it's just ridiculous to me. Tintero21 (talk) 22:54, 23 January 2023 (UTC)
182. Support per many above. While updating the look of many websites is now popular and WMF acted in good faith, setting Vector 2022 as default skin is likely a mistake. The default skin should be the one most familiar and habitual, with Vector 2022 being optional. Brandmeister^talk 23:36, 23 January 2023 (UTC)
183. Support: this existential change has not been communicated globally, and the en-WP affects each and all language versions and projects (commons etc). Was there even a banner to notify people this was coming up? I can only imagine the issue was pinned in the basement admin bathroom's talk page, just Guide-to-the-Galaxy-style. Well, I have been actively avoiding the fr-WP and the pt-WP for years already, because they had this skin activated for everyone and I had no clue on how to switch it back. Clicking on a fr-interwiki link meant I had to spend extra time to find my way back to the other languages. I don't care at all about all the other horrible design choices of the new design (like rendering half my screen totally empty, and using giant fonts, making featured articles or lists unreadable) ... no, I can tweak that. But what I desperately Need: Interwiki Links, and to have them readily accessible at first glance. These *#ß%É designers HID THEM! Behind a button! You have to endlessly navigate because they are not even sorted by language code anymore but by popularity or whatever!
     Seriously, the sidebar interwiki-links are the most important feature of a multi-language global encyclopedia, and like it or not, the en-WP is the hub connecting all languages. Or... it was. Now, users are actively discouraged of finding information in other languages, thanks to badly designed menus. I know what I'm talking: the French and Portuguese wikis have moved the interwiki-button around several times, and I essentially stopped checking there for info. This has become a SHELL GAME. If accessible interwiki links don't get re-introduced, then goodbye multi-language encyclopaedia. --Enyavar (talk) 23:40, 23 January 2023 (UTC)
184. Support: Following on the December 2022 banners, yet another disconnect between editors and WMF, with readers caught in the crossfire. While I personally like the skin, the WMF pushed ahead even with significant improvements yet to arrive. Sungodtemple (talk • contribs) 03:05, 24 January 2023 (UTC)
185. Support This is a Windows 8-level miscalculation. While this skin does make the desktop and mobile versions more similar, 155.4 raises good points about whether that's something we should want in the first place. What works on a smartphone screen or tablet is not necessarily what will work best on a PC. The new layout is not just an eyesore, it hampers desktop functionality.LM2000 (talk) 04:29, 24 January 2023 (UTC)
186. Very Passionate Support. Not to suggest that someone was supposed to inform me of this, but I feel like I really missed the boat in opposing this format ever being rolled out. It's a nightmare to navigate and looks like something out of the 90s. I think the biggest issue here though is the fact that non-member readers (who I'd have to imagine make the vast majority of this site's readers) were woefully underconsidered, especially given they more or less have no choice to use this new format (and even if they make accounts may not be aware of the appearance setting or what it means). I appreciate those who are working to improve this site, but we need to have the whole format sent back to the drawing board. DarkSide830 (talk) 07:38, 24 January 2023 (UTC)
187. Weak support I had been using Vector 2022 since last year. The immediate first look for me was that it compressed a large quantity of text, especially for users with smaller monitors and resolutions. This unnecessary compression leaves issues for editing, especially in tables and lists due to how these tables present differently. With this implementation, many tables are now shown in an awkward manner, where text is compressed and elongated. The intention of this design is not at fault, but the lack of consideration of how it impacts different users (on the technical side) is what that makes this change controversial. gavre (al. PenangLion) (talk) 07:55, 24 January 2023 (UTC)
188. Support Yet another desktop redesign trying to make it look like a mobile version even though a mobile version already exists. Vector 2022 is confusing, buggy, and has way too much wasted space. Greyhound 84 (talk) 08:06, 24 January 2023 (UTC)
189. Support rollback. This vector looks unready. I think it was a mistake to make it default while in experimental phase. More thoughts on improving first, before deployment. Sarri.greek (talk) 08:09, 24 January 2023 (UTC)
190. Support rollback because the redesign fails at making Wikipedia easier to use than the previous skin. In addition, this RfC needs to be shared more widely because I'd wager most editors still haven't seen that they can comment on this. Perhaps WMF should do an editor poll or vote instead of a RfC most people won't see.--SouthernNights (talk) 13:05, 24 January 2023 (UTC)
191. Support as the new version is completely unfriendly and makes usability difficult. Vector 2010 was a natural, simple successor to Monobook. This one wasn't to Vector 2010. Bedivere (talk) 14:30, 24 January 2023 (UTC)
192. Support I think the foundation have their approach entirely backward. They've made the change and are waiting to see how many people hate it enough to revert back to the previous skin; this is an incredibly low bar for classing the change as a 'good idea.' I propose that they revert the default to the previous design, advertise the new skin, and measure what proportion of people like it enough to change to the 'new' skin voluntarily JeffUK 13:46, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

     @JeffUK: Notice that this Question #2 is specifically about the width problem. Was your vote/comment intended for the general RfC (above) about the restoration of Vector 2010 as the default interface? Æo (talk) 14:38, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

     Ack, it was. I blame the new layout! Thanks. JeffUK 15:08, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

     Comment moved to the correct subsection.--Æo (talk) 15:04, 24 January 2023 (UTC)

     Hey @JeffUK, thanks for taking the time to join this discussion. I hope it isn't inappropriate of me, as a staff member, to try and clarify one point here. We've been developing the skin with the help of many volunteers over the past 3 years, and have had several large Wikipedias (French, Hebrew, Persian, and others) as pilot partners. The opt-out rates we've seen on those pilot wikis have been extremely low. So, in many ways, we did exactly what you're recommending. Only once we were confident in the skin (due to acceptance among pilot wikis, and data) did we bring it to English. However, of course, the gradual developments on the pilot wikis was a big difference to the switchover we did on English. I wonder if we had introduced parts of the skin gradually, if that would have been easier on editors (as it seems to have been on the other wikis). Cheers, AHollender (WMF) (talk) 02:00, 26 January 2023 (UTC)

193. Support The new skin is a bug. It's a mobile layout moved mindlessly to the desktop. Vector 2022 does not use the space offered by large screens, hides interface elements and extends the time to access them by requiring additional clicks and mouse movements. The functional blocks of the page are not distinguished in any way, merging with each other. The new table of contents is collapsed by default, making it difficult to keep track of the content, and its width does not allow for comfortable placement of long titles. If someone wants to use the mobile view, they can always do so. If someone does not want to, he should not be forced to do so by authoritative decisions.The new skin is an example of all the evils of current design fashion. It puts a "modern", "clean" mobile-like look above usability. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Freja Draco (talk • contribs) 15:25, 24 January 2023 (UTC)
194. Support weak support with an asterisk: I appreciate some of the changes, but overall I feel it is worse. Especially please bring back the original Table of Contents (TOC) design (placed below the lead section). Having an additional copy of the TOC that is constantly visible on the left side of the page is fine as an extra feature, but not replacement of the long-standing design. Thank you. Al83tito (talk) 15:46, 24 January 2023 (UTC)

     @Al83tito: I agree that the ToC is one of the foremost problems (see #Bring back the TOC), together with the limited width and the hidden toolbar, and I also agree that some other changes are good, especially the the new colour palette and the new horizontal Wikipedia/other WMF project logo. Æo (talk) 16:09, 24 January 2023 (UTC)

195. Support definitely. But also improve the old and the new skin. Steue (talk) 15:59, 24 January 2023 (UTC)
196. Support If any skin should be picked as a new default, it should be Timeless. V22 doesn't feel very thought out or even production-ready. MaterialWorks _(talk) 16:56, 24 January 2023 (UTC)

     Agreed. If any other skin is picked, it should be Timeless. Unfortunately, we'll probably never get any consensus for that. ‍ ‍ Helloheart ‍ ‍ 03:14, 25 January 2023 (UTC)

197. Support. I've been happily using Vector 2022 for several months and assumed that a finished version had been developed and rolled out. Apparently I was wrong: as of today a number of new, ugly and/or broken features have been introduced. Clearly an approach of "roll out first, finish the design later" has been chosen, rather than one that would indicate a modicum of professionalism or respect for readers or editors. This isn't sustainable and it harms the work we're trying to do. – Arms & Hearts (talk) 17:19, 24 January 2023 (UTC)

     Hey @Arms & Hearts, thanks for giving Vector 2022 a chance, and I'm sorry to hear that we've let you down recently. We're working hard to fix bugs, and make improvements to the skin. If you could elaborate on which features broke for you, and how they affected your workflows, that would be much appreciated. Thanks, AHollender (WMF) (talk) 01:55, 26 January 2023 (UTC)

     Apologies, AHollender, for the belated reply. The issues I recall experiencing on 24 January included extraneous whitespace at the tops of articles and icons appearing behind text in the right sidebar (the RSS icon, now apparently gone, and possibly also the "add interlanguage links" pencil). These seem to have been rectified but the two-sidebar version still looks to me like a work in progress and, for editing purposes, is much clunkier than both Vector 2010 and the earlier Vector 2022. – Arms & Hearts (talk) 17:15, 11 February 2023 (UTC)

198. Shouldn't have been changed, to begin with it. PS - Why are editors putting 'Support/Oppose' etc, in their posts? The survey already has 'support/oppose' sub-sections. GoodDay (talk) 17:44, 24 January 2023 (UTC)

     Perhaps to make their thoughts clearer, or because it's common practice, or because the posts here were not initially split between supports and opposes. -BRAINULATOR9 (TALK) 17:51, 24 January 2023 (UTC)

199. Support Excessive amounts of blank space, bad readability, and other features pointed out above. Avilich (talk) 17:49, 24 January 2023 (UTC)
200. Support — The new design is just plain bad. I have seen many bad designs of websites but this is the first one that made me think there was something wrong with my browser. I don't oppose all change as a kneejerk thing and would be happy to see other options explored, but Vector 2020 is bad. Stratpod (talk) 18:44, 24 January 2023 (UTC)

     that’s vector 2022 Dronebogus (talk) 20:18, 24 January 2023 (UTC)

201. Weak support. I get formatting errors on most pages (text lower down is bolded) and the new font colors are more difficult to see. I'm surprised actually that they meet the minimum contrast ratio specified by Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. DrKay (talk) 19:28, 24 January 2023 (UTC)

     I have actually been getting similar glitches even after I switched back to Vector 2010. Something global must have changed that is incompatible with the old skin, and it makes me concerned that 2010 may become difficult to technically support in the future. Jeremy Jeremus (talk) 20:20, 24 January 2023 (UTC)

202. Rolling back to Vector 2010 is actually a bad idea, because obviously the only reasonable thing to do is roll back to Monobook, but since that isn't going to happen, back to Vector 2010 is the lesser evil. JBW (talk) 19:35, 24 January 2023 (UTC)

     Another thought. I see that many comments object to imposing a mobile-like interface on desktop users, but seem to take it for granted that the mobile interface is fine for mobile users. Not so. For reading on a mobile device, the best thing to do by a long way is to select "Desktop", and avoid the well-intentioned but misconceived "mobile" interface. If you do that, Vector2010 is perfectly usable, and Mononbook absolutely fine. For editing on a mobile device, the same applies, except for "the best thing to do" substitute "the only reasonable thing to do". The mobile interface is appallingly badly designed for mobile devices, quite apart from the fact that it's even worse on a computer screen. JBW (talk) 20:04, 24 January 2023 (UTC)

     @JBW, perhaps V10 works well on your mobile device, but it was even worse than the mobile interface (MobileFrontend) for me. The sidebar covered half the screen. That's the main reason I've been using V22 for around a year. — Qwerfjkltalk 22:24, 24 January 2023 (UTC)

     @Qwerfjkl: Well, actually I do almost all my editing on Monobook, and use Vector only occasionally, when I am editing from an alternative account for which I haven't bothered to change the settings, so perhaps the best I can say is that it's usable for occasional use like that. Maybe I would have a different opinion if I had more experience of it. JBW (talk) 22:52, 24 January 2023 (UTC)

203. Support So, I'm not an editor. I'm a reader. And I don't read Wikipedia for the articles. I read it for the discussions and I have been reading it for the discussions since the 2007.
     • The method by which Vector 22 was shoved down the throat of the community makes it evident that WMF does not understand how to work with a grassroots, volunteer-driven project such as Wikipedia. The way to have gone about it was to run a contest for a new design created by members of the community, submitting Vector 2022 as one viable option out of say, five. This would have made the community at least feel enfranchised and shown that WMF is willing to trust the volunteers who create and maintain enwp to understand how the project should be presented visually to the public. Instead, WMF bestowed it upon the community as an edict from on high, granting to the community only small adjustments rather than the ability to say "no, thanks, we're fine without this inaccurate depiction of our work."
     • The new design makes what should be a reliable and trustworthy archive of knowledge look like an inflated bimbo with too much makeup. It's unnecessary and undermines the respectability of the entire enterprise. Wikipedia's look should be a little stodgy. It should be dense. Vector 22 would belong just fine on Fandom but it does not belong on enwp.
     • A site does not add a ton of whitespace to their UI if they are not intending to fill that whitespace with ads. I am 100% expecting that WMF will cram their cash cow full of banner ads within the next 12 months. That is how low the level of trust has sunk, and I fully expect WMF is unaware of the extreme level of resentment and mistrust since they're all a bunch of corporate MBAs with no understanding of why an editor or reader buys into the Wikipedia mission and concept.
     • On my phone in desktop mode (the only viable mode) my options are either a) let a page take 30 seconds to load before the JS loads so I can hide the sidebar and get more than 4 columns of text on the screen, or b) disable JS entirely, which means I cannot hide the sidebar at all. There has to be a CSS-only method of hiding the sidebar, and until that is implemented at the very least the design should be rolled back. I use Firefox for Android. I can't install addons that let me force-redirect. I'm never going to register since I'm just a reader. Let me set my skin of choice so I can actually read. 108.250.219.137 (talk) 19:48, 24 January 2023 (UTC)

     Hey 108.250.219.137, thanks for taking the time to join the discussion and share your thoughts. I think you bring up some interesting questions, which I'd like to respond to.

     • Vector 2022 is largely inspired by community-developed features (such as the collapsible sidebar on Korean Wikipedia, the sticky header on Hebrew Wikipedia, Wikipedia.rehash, etc.), as well as Timeless, and Winter (the skin-that-almost-was). We aimed to take the best ideas that have been developed on local Wikis, work in some additional feature development (such as the new table of contents), and bring it all together into a cohesive interface. We've been actively working with over volunteers for the past 3 years. We've been grateful to have collaborated with over 2,000 volunteers so far on the development of Vector 2022. Seeing how caught off guard so many people are, I obviously feel like we let a huge number of people down on the communications front. I know it's probably hard to believe, but we tried pretty hard — multiple posts in the Village Pump, running banners, outreach on Discord, etc. — to include everyone in the process. I am sorry we didn't do better in this regard.
     • I understand where you're coming from regarding wanting the interface to be "stodgy" and "dense". I grew up with Vector and am very accustomed to it. To a certain degree it probably even defined my sense of what a reliable source of information should look like. However with Vector 2022 we're thinking about people all over the world, of all ages, who have a wide variety of different aesthetic associations. Things that look credible to us, look dated and untrustworthy to others.
     • As the lead designer on the project I can definitively say the only reason there is so much whitespace is because we limited the line-length of the text to comply with WCAG standards, and existing research. There is no plan to put ads of any kind on Wikipedia. Also to note, we don't see white/empty space as a problem in and of itself.
     • Since our team also works on the mobile website, I'm curious to better understand why as a reader you find desktop mode on mobile preferable? If you're willing to elaborate that would be awesome.

     I hope that information is helpful, and look forward to continuing the conversation. Cheers, AHollender (WMF) (talk) 01:51, 26 January 2023 (UTC)

     @AHollender (WMF): IP 108's comment about using the phone in desktop mode resonated with me, because that is what I do too. On the phone, one of the first things I do is to scroll to the bottom-most line (which is hard when pages are long) and seek out the "Desktop" link. I browse by Categories and I find them only when the UI is switched to desktop mode. I then scroll again to the bottom of the page and zoom in the Categories box, to continue. I don't know if there is a simpler way of getting to the categories in mobile mode, and maybe I have been using it the wrong way all the time. I'm never logged-in on the mobile though. Jay 💬 12:57, 27 January 2023 (UTC)

     I'll just chime in as well that I regularly use mobile in desktop mode. I wonder if there are usage statistics on how often that happens vs. people using desktop in mobile mode. TheMissingMuse (talk) 20:49, 27 January 2023 (UTC)

     @Jay, you can see categories in mobile, but it requires an account. It's under advanced mibile options (I think). — Qwerfjkltalk 00:12, 28 January 2023 (UTC)

     That is odd. What has categories got to do with being logged in? I certainly don't want to log in for browsing some content on the mobile. On the desktop, I'm logged in 100% of the time though. Jay 💬 09:10, 28 January 2023 (UTC)

     Another good example of a breaking change that should have not gotten out of review. The notion that site features are only for logged in users is community hostile. TheMissingMuse (talk) 17:53, 28 January 2023 (UTC)

     @Jay, sorry, I got confused. Disregard that last comment.
     @TheMissingMuse, again, what is the breaking change you're referring to? — Qwerfjkltalk 19:07, 28 January 2023 (UTC)

204. Support: My support is primarily based on the accessibility issues being unresolved. This should have been a point of focus when implementing a new redesign. Hey man im josh (talk)
205. Support: There was insufficient discussion; a coupon of hundred divisively split editors is not a sufficient community discussion for something that affects thousands of editors, especially when it invalidates their editorial choices made over the past decade. Because the placement of the TOC and having all its levels visible has effects on image placement, infobox placement, and decisions about the outline of the article's headers and subheaders. Not having all subheaders available by default makes the TOC far less useful, no matter what anyone claims, because one cannot see at a glance what topics are covered. oknazevad (talk) 20:17, 24 January 2023 (UTC)
206. Support +1 for accessibility!! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:645:8202:fbc0:312e:f28:84b5:626 (talk) 21:34, 24 January 2023 (UTC)
207. Support --Johannes (Talk) (Contribs) (Articles) 21:43, 24 January 2023 (UTC)
208. Support - Doesn't seem to be ready. Nigej (talk) 22:26, 24 January 2023 (UTC)
209. Strong Support - I find myself clicking twice to go to many pages where I only had to click once previously. That alone makes navigating on the skin less productive, and more annoying. Not to mention the weird look and spacing. Gizza (talk • voy) 00:52, 25 January 2023 (UTC)
210. Strongly Support The pet projects of some insider clique shouldn't override general consensus. If Vector2020 is so great, make it an option people can enable, and let us retain the older version that actually used the screen space of a desktop monitor. Forcing readers to make an extra click to access the menu? Just why? LeperColony (talk) 01:47, 25 January 2023 (UTC)
211. Support: Been around for years, mostly edit Gnomishly, but occasionally create an article when I see the opportunity/have the time. Tend to stay out of RFCs and voting etc because I don't consider myself experienced enough to get involved. Had no idea this change was forthcoming, tried it, thought it looked hideous. Now I see there was no consensus?! Nah, change it back. Muchclag (talk) 01:48, 25 January 2023 (UTC)
212. Support the new skin is not an improvement. LEPRICAVARK (talk) 02:25, 25 January 2023 (UTC)
213. Support I heard of the previous RFC. The first thing I did when it changed was to discovered where the skins were in preferences and roll back the change. I am glad I am not an IP user. BeckyAnne(talk) 02:52, 25 January 2023 (UTC)
214. Strong Support The new theme is mobile styling for desktop, and as such is a bad UX by definition. I've been editing on wikipedia for 15 years, much of it logged out. Now I need to be logged in to even *use* the site. I do think improvements could be made to the previous style, but it is a practical style that serves the public well. There was no need to create such a radical redesign. I thought that the ToC had been *eliminated* until I finally changed the theme for my logged in usage. I saw that the redesign broke the sw.wikipedia as well. Has anyone done a broader survey of which other locales have been broken? TheMissingMuse (talk) 03:50, 25 January 2023 (UTC)
215. STRONG SUPPORT this is a hard fail. Accept defeat and revert. Thanks. LeperColony (talk) 04:07, 25 January 2023 (UTC)
216. Support new skin is not ready, and as many have pointed out, there are a lot of issues that make it less usable than the previous one. Also, the rollout was clearly done without support from the community --Ita140188 (talk) 08:56, 25 January 2023 (UTC)
217. STRONG SUPPORT Rollback to Vector 2010 skin, immediately. It is clean, text-based, no web gimmicks, and fully functional. This is key to the excellent cross-platform compatibilty of Wikipedia. The new skin's pop-ups, its vague, ambiguous, subjective icons (in place of explicit words), and other gimmickry, strip Wikipedia of its essential clarity, simplicity, reliability and convenience. For those infatuated with "new" for the sake of "new", offer an additional menu item (or, if need be, an icon), which allows selection of the newer (or an older) skin. But the new skin should NOT be forced on all users by default. The arrogance of such a contemptuous attitude is indefensible, and a blatant repudiation of WP:Consensus. ~ Penlite (talk) 12:11, 25 January 2023 (UTC)
218. Support. While the ability to select Vector 2010 as my default display preference rendered the implementation of the new Vector 2022 to merely a one-time annoyance to me, I was not prepared for the number of (non-editor) Wikipedia users who have approached me at school to ask me how they too could restore their display layout as well. This led to many questions as to why the change was made on English Wikipedia (despite an RfC with no consensus to support), the difference between the WMF and en:wp, and why IP users needed to make an account just to "fix the display problem". It is not just editors, but general readers that are not happy with this change. Loopy30 (talk) 13:04, 25 January 2023 (UTC)