Wikipedia’s main, and sole, purpose is to deliver content. It’s a database of information, 95% of which is text, the not coincidentally ‹T› in HTML.

You usually don’t read Wikipedia: you scan it. Well, it is a website, and with it comes the usual browsing behavior. Any redesign that crushes the information density is missing the primary use case: looking for a specific bit of information in a well-structured page full of text.

… whenever I do read a page in full, the design never bothered me. I actually didn’t see the design. I wasn’t aware of it. And that’s actually the point.

Jeremy Thomas.