"Analysis of Web Content Delivered to a Mobile Computing Environment"

Wikipedia does have its detractors, and rightly so. While the idea of an online knowledge base that anyone can add to is attractive, people like Stephen Colbert have proven that the system can be gamed. Still, aside from Google, Wikipedia is probably the starting point for finding information, and it can be a valuable starting point. Unfortunately for the mobile user, they would be better served accessing Wikipedia from a desktop or laptop environment. In portrait orientation all of the possible links are far too small to be easily read or selected. The search box, located just above the middle of the page, is too small for easy text entry. The design is clean in that the background is uncluttered, but that is the only positive thing that can be said.

In landscape orientation the site fares just a little better. While the content from the search box and below can’t be accessed without scrolling at least now I can read and click the "English" option in the upper left of the circle of links. Without using the magnification capacity of the iPod Touch, Wikipedia is essentially unusable for the mobile user.