Wikipedia planning major facelift

Some of the most significant changes set to take place on Wikipedia will make the site easier to use, according to its owners The Wikimedia Foundation.

The latest version of Wikipedia has already been used and tested by some 500,000 beta testers. Eighty percent of these users say that they prefer the alterations. This emphasis of these new changes is on increased ease, as described by the Wikimedia blog: "Our overarching objective is to make it easier to find and contribute knowledge in Wikipedia and its sister projects. "Volunteer participation is the essence of everything we do; our job is to facilitate and support that volunteer work. Continually improving the experience our projects is now a core mandate of the Wikimedia Foundation." The changes: The Wikipedia blog states the main changes as follows: "We are changing our default look to a new theme we call 'Vector' which makes essential functions easier to find. "Editing pages will be easier, thanks to a new editing toolbar that makes it easier to insert links and tables, and a built-in 'cheatsheet' to access help for the most commonly used functions. "All users will also see that the site layout has changed noticeably. We’ve simplified the site navigation, relocated the search box to satisfy user expectations and to follow other web standards, reduced some of the clutter, and made sure that the new features work with different resolutions, browser formats, and window sizings." The sites redesign will go live "late April," if no major problems occur. This new look is completely optional, so if you dislike it you can simply subscribe to Wikipedia and log in, where there is an option to default back to the old look.