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Wikipedia has released their new layout, which unsurprisingly includes whitespace bars on either side, justified by the claim "most people prefer a column 60-80 characters wide" (although it's not that extreme).
The changes being introduced are not very dramatic — in fact, they may not even be immediately noticed by some users. The organization, however, says the update was necessary in order to meet the needs of the next generation of internet users, including those who are more newly coming online and may have less familiarity with the internet.
To develop the new interface, the foundation engaged with more than 30 different volunteer groups from around the world, with users in places like India, Indonesia, Ghana and Argentina, among others, all helping to test the update and provide insights into the product development. The goal for the update was to make Wikipedia more of a modern web platform, it said, and to remove clutter, while also making it easier for users to contribute. It additionally aimed to make the desktop web version more consistent with Wikipedia's mobile counterpart.
It is possible to go back to the old layout, if you log in to the site and set it in your preferences.
(Score: 2) by driverless on Wednesday January 25 2023, @01:27AM
Yeah, I'd thought about typesetting issues too but wasn't sure what the factor would be, since this goes back to manual typesetting the formatting of text to fit around the very narrow columns must have been a huge PITA, but as you say it may have been a convenience factor, changing a few words in a narrow column is much easier than re-setting a full-page line. Anyone know if there was any advantage to using very narrow vs. wide composing sticks in manual typesetting?