If I want AI, I'll either build my own local solution with whatever LLM I want for free or go to a website or use a separate app. Wikiwands' entire existence for being is to make the Wikipedia layout easier to read. Nothing else. Don't remake it ever. AI Wand, NOT Wikiwand. Utter JUNK made by JUNK developers, supported by JUNK people.

This 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.

I've been here 3 min and I've already learned something!

When 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.

Love 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.

Shoves 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

Great design, but ruined by first having AI shoved in my face and now ads everywhere. Back to classic Wikipedia.

Was 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

used 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.

Was 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.

Awesome extension until they decided to add Ads.

now its filled with ads, 1 star.
alternative addon:
Modern for Wikipedia
by Modern Redesigns

the enshittification has started

Wikiwand 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.