Reviews for Wikiwand - knowledge, with context
Wikiwand - knowledge, with context by Wikiwand
Review by sdf64
Rated 2 out of 5
by sdf64, a year agoThe updated view is difficult to navigate, uses blurry images as backgrounds, and doesn't support navigating through talk pages for editors. The way it's designed is for readability without integrating other functionalities as it doesn't use CSS themes but rather a URL with back-end to process Wikipedia articles - which may contribute to lag.
640 reviews
- Rated 1 out of 5by Celena, 2 days agoThis used to be a good extension, which I used for many years across different browsers and devices. Today I've had enough and I'm going to uninstall it.
Before they started remaking it, it was very good. It was essentially a better layout for Wikipedia with not much else to it, but that's why I liked it. It made it clearer to read, easier to use, and just overall felt like a more updated version of Wikipedia's UI. Combined with an ad blocker, it was perfect. However, since the remake, it is worthless. It is so bloated. The majority of the page is taken up with AI stuff, and it wants you to use it constantly. It has made the layout even more confusing - while before I felt like it was very intuitive and more Wikipedia like, now it's just added so much more junk and confusing elements. Wikipedia is way easier to use.
With this latest update, I'm done. I was already getting frustrated with the way pictures were handled. If you clicked on it, there would be various bits of information that covered over part of the picture. Then there was so much blackspace that it wasn't always that much more visible than in the article. You zoom in and it's barely better. Now, I tried to look at the picture it used for the cover image, which no longer shows up in the sidebar as well. I clicked on it, and it was much the same as it used to be, although the information/other pictures below now fades away. Good! However I tried zooming in, because it was still not a big picture. It not only barely zoomed in, but moved the maybe two pixels bigger image around with my cursor. So now I had a very vaguely enlarged picture of some people that bounced around as I tried to exit out of it. Cool!!!!!! Good thing I never use Wikipedia to look at things like art as someone who enjoys art history!!!
The AI is too much, the paywall is too much, the needing to have a separate account for it is too much. And now they have continued to just make the UI worse and worse. I'm done here. I'm so sad that this has gone this way. I'm so disappointed. They had something good and it's useless now. I'd rather use normal Wikipedia, and that's the first time I've said that in many years. - Rated 2 out of 5by Niklas H, 2 days agoUsed to be slim, nice and handy, but feels a bit bloated since the remake. The possible settings for UI adjustments are great, however the popup is very annoying to always come back since I constantly use private windows, and Wikiwand won't save any settings, instead asks again every time.
AI features are really unneccessary for me. Just please make it save my settings and not ask again for a login everytime. - Rated 3 out of 5by Nhân Trí, 5 days agoUI is outstanding and is packed with a lot of nice features
but jeez what's with this AI being everywhere
and especially so paywalled and ads too - Rated 5 out of 5by rivrain, 6 days ago
- Rated 5 out of 5by Meta Williams, 15 days agoI've been here 3 min and I've already learned something!
- Rated 1 out of 5by Firefox user 17490856, 20 days ago
- Rated 2 out of 5by Eonir, 20 days agoWhen I open a wikipedia article, 70% of the screen is covered by either AI bullshit, or a huge window with new settings, 90% of which are behind a paywall.
- Rated 1 out of 5by Firefox user 17143382, a month ago
- Rated 1 out of 5by DS, a month agoLove how Wikiwand used to be an incredibly useful product that made Wikipedia more readable and now it's... "AI-driven" slop garbage that no one wants or asked for. Yet another product "improving" itself right out of usefulness. What a waste.
- Rated 1 out of 5by Firefox user 17984040, a month agoShoves GenAI garbage down your throat and the pop ups blocks half the screen. Also sells your data. Just go use something like Modern for Wikipedia
- Rated 1 out of 5by Firefox user 14774990, a month agoGreat design, but ruined by first having AI shoved in my face and now ads everywhere. Back to classic Wikipedia.
- Rated 1 out of 5by Steedlan, a month agoWas great, but the recent changes made the UI awful and turn this add-on into a whole cash cow that is against the principles of Wikipedia
- Too much ads, trying to hide bring to a paywall, adding CSS doesn't worth 5$. Even with an adblock the banner background stays.
- They added an AI that is completely useless and only here to surf on the trend of AIs.
- Talking about ads it requires a Wikimand account despite that Wikipedia already have one
We can't accept an add-on that makes money off Wikipedia - Rated 1 out of 5by Mlse, a month agoused to be good, then over the years it became incrementally more annoying to use. first all this AI/ account stuff (which was tolerable but annoyinh), paywalls and now ads everywhere. its just not worth it for that marginal improvement over stock wiki.
- Rated 4 out of 5by Dirk R G Janssens, a month ago
- Rated 1 out of 5by Firefox user 18160256, a month agoWas once good, now it is terrible and full of ads.
The ads can be blocked with an ad-blocker but it will leave placeholder boxes. If you're using ublock Origin, you can remove them with the "block Element function" though you will need to tune it to remove them entirely.
Target the 'remove ads' part, and tune the left slider once to the left. Preview shows the results in real-time. - Rated 1 out of 5by Kioraga, a month ago
- Rated 1 out of 5by Aphotic, a month agonow its filled with ads, 1 star.
alternative addon:
Modern for Wikipedia
by Modern Redesigns - Rated 2 out of 5by Schorle, a month ago
- Rated 5 out of 5by Firefox user 16073868, a month ago
- Rated 1 out of 5by Firefox user 18749240, a month agoWikiwand used to be great. It was a bit annoying when the AI features were shoved in my face, but it was at least tolerable. However, ads have been added recently, and even if I use an ad blocker there are still placeholders breaking the page layout.
RIP Wikiwand. - Rated 1 out of 5by Mikaïl, a month agoThe AI features are useless, used it once and didn't even answer my question, might as well use ChatGPT for AI
- Rated 5 out of 5by OzMerry, a month agoSo, I wrote a negative review yesterday (which I've now deleted), but it appears that the Wikiwand add-on was updated yesterday and it's now working again. Yay! The AI Tools block on the right can be minimised and an ad blocker takes care of ads, but I may just upgrade to a paid version anyway since I use Wikipedia a lot and WIkiwand (pro) is very reasonably priced and supports the existing and ongoing development efforts of a great add-on. FWIW, I think it's worth it to get a much better reading experience than ordinary Wikipedia for frequent users.