Reviews for Wikiwand - Wikipedia Modernized
Wikiwand - Wikipedia Modernized by Wikiwand
Review by Celena
Rated 1 out of 5
by Celena, a year 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.
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.
687 reviews
- Rated 1 out of 5by LL, 5 days agoDisgusting that this once amazing app is now profiting on the free wikipedia. The developers should be ashamed of themselves. Uninstalling.
- Rated 1 out of 5by Johannes Häusler, 21 days agoIt really went down. what once was a nice skin for Wikipedia is now a really ducked up platform where Wikipedia does not profit. It DOES sell data and DOES have paid features so I dont think the extension is correctly disclosing such stuff, which is bad, especially in the EU
- Rated 1 out of 5by Frkid, 25 days agoIt was such a good add-on. Shame it turned into this.. whatever this is.
- Rated 1 out of 5by sausje, a month agoSadly this has gone down the drain. Forcing you to make an account just to sell the data for it.
- Rated 1 out of 5by Firefox user 19929310, a month agoThat you would take something as pure as free, open-access education, slap a skin on it and try to harvest people's data shows what a bottom feeder this dev is.
- Rated 1 out of 5by Silvio, a month agoForces you to create an account for no apparent reason. Disregard old 5 star reviews, this is trash now. Ensh*ttification at its finest.
- Rated 1 out of 5by Recharger, a month agoFinally reached my breaking point with this extension which used to be amazing. Making me register is the last straw. I'll miss the good old days!
- Rated 1 out of 5by DadManBlues, a month agoThe latest version forces mandatory registration and sign-in. I don't see the point in that at all. I have around 2 dozen Ff plugins in use - none of them forces registration.
I'm sorry, I'll miss you. - Rated 1 out of 5by Firefox user 14209344, 2 months ago
- Rated 1 out of 5by simurq, 2 months agoNewer versions of the addon are getting worse with every release. AI addition is what ruins it, in my opinion. Standard Wikipedia looks prettier and loads easier without the addon's distractors.
- Rated 1 out of 5by Sushiimi, 3 months agoWikiwand has been great for years but unfortunately, as outlined by many other reviews, has gone downhill after shoehorning in excessive AI integrations and simply becoming non-functioning for basic usage.
- Rated 2 out of 5by NoxlynU, 3 months agoThe old design was really modern and better than Wikipedia's, and there were many customization options.
However, the new design is way less confortable and customizable.
The only addition is intrusive AI.
Wikipedia is better without Wikiwand now. - Rated 1 out of 5by huianxin, 5 months agoLike others said, used to be good. Now there's some useless new features. Stop spamming AI in my face. And worst of all, it stopped working! Keeps displaying "Article not found", making it utterly unusable. Way to ruin what was once a great app.
- Rated 5 out of 5by Firefox user 19567302, 7 months ago
- Rated 1 out of 5by Elfirya, 7 months ago
- Rated 1 out of 5by Howar31, 8 months agotoo much useless features. settings are not saved keep resetting. and also ads
- Rated 1 out of 5by Haltarys, 9 months agoThe extension used to be good but now they're pushing users to subscribe, don't follow dark mode by default anymore (it resets every couple of days or so), and push the AI tab too much.
(And apparently, it has way too much ads, which I don't see because I use an ad blocker anyway) - Rated 1 out of 5by Firefox user 19053100, 9 months agoUsed to be really good, now it's infested with ads (ON A WIKIPEDIA SKIN, a notably ad free site) and AI bullshit everywhere, asking for a subscription. It also automatically blocks access to actual wikipedia, by automatically rerouting every article to their skin of it. No even entering the wikipedia website manually can you there with this extension installed. Where can i just get this extension, but how it was 2 or 3 years ago?
- Rated 5 out of 5by Firefox user 19114790, a year ago
- Rated 1 out of 5by Sciky, a year agoThis used to be a great extension, but now it's a bloatware full of ads for its AI, what a shame