Wikibot — A Wikipedia Articles Reader App Reviews

I was expecting the makers of this app to have learned their lesson. They havent. "Wikibot cannot be opened because of a problem." Fix NOW, or I will be done with this app forever.

Despite the claim above that "Using the new iCloud (iOS 5.0+ and OSX Lion 0.7.2+) syncing features, you can access your read later queue, folders, bookmarks, and history across all of your devices", iCloud sync simply doesnt work. If thats the reason you want to buy this app, dont make the same mistake I did. I use iCloud for a lot of stuff, and I know what Im doing - this is not a user error and its not a problem with iCloud, which is running fine right now. Its simply false advertising - you can create all of the "read later queue, folders, bookmarks and history" items you want on your Mac or your iPad or your iPhone, and they *will not* be synced anywhere. Other functionality is broken as well. Clicking on an item in the table of contents navigator on the left has no effect at all. It should scroll the application to the section that you clicked on, but nothing happens. Finally, emails to the support address are simply ignored. Ill be reporting both the iOS and OSX versions of this app as inappropriate, hopefully Apple will pull them until the advertised functionality is there.

Wikibot is a fantastic app, however, the wikipedia site changes constatnly, resulting in frequent breakages of the app. However, when something goes wrong the developers have reliably patched the incompatibility within a few weeks time. The app itself is great, presenting wikipedia in a beautiful, straightfowrad manner, that makes wikipedia feel more like a living, breathing encyclopedia than a website. There’s added functionality too- the sidebar adds a read later feature, as well as pulling the contents table out of the article and into it’s own space, drastically reducing clutter. Wikibot is a great app- but through no fault of the developers, there will be a few bumps down the road as wikipedia makes drastic changes to it’s site with no warning from time to time. However, for someone looking for an app that puts the content from the world’s largest information source front and center, there’s no competition- just be prepared to ride that trolley straight down the line.

Just what the Mac needs for all of the Wikipedia lovers out there!

Wikipedia only gets better and better. I use Britannica Online, and an online library--both of which cost over $100 for access each year. As a semi-retired theologian and writer, I have a 50+ year perspective on not only theological literature, but also philosophy and psychology--all of which I taught as at a B.A. and M.A. levels, and in field schools around the third world nations. The genius of Wikipedia is that its open source strategy which allows for a modified form of peer-review via addition to articles (under supervision of Wikipedia editors). Congratulations Wikipedia staff. The aplication has never broken down on my computers. Wikipeda is becoming well-respected in various disciplines of study, and not only at the general knowledge level. I notice Wikapedia being cited more frequently in papers that require veracity both in quotes and attributions.

Wikibot, which I use on all of my OSX and iOS devices, is a great Wikipedia reader. The shared history across devices is a big plus. However, WB offers no mechanism to edit WP articles or look at the edit history or “Talk” metadata, which would occasionally be useful. WB’s big problem, though, is its terrible handling of article images. Clicking an image opens a new window not with the full-size image you would see if you clicked on an image on Wikipedia.org, but with the small thumbnail, floating in the middle of a large gray background. Why WB doesn’t fetch the full size image is beyond me. I’ve emailed the author multiple times with this request/inquiry, but never gotten a response.

Last time I rated Wikibot, I gave it 1 star for crashing regularly and unpredictably. Now, the app functions smoothly and beautifully. A must-have for any student or avid reader of Wikipedia. Although this is possibly the best Mac OS Wikipedia reader, there is a better app for iOS - Wikipanion. Overall, 4.5 stars for Wikibot. I’m glad I stuck with it, despite its buggy begging.

This is a lovely app! As a teacher, I use Wikipedia heavily for reference. Wikibot makes Wikipedia like a normal encyclopedia. Keep it up! P.S. I would love if I could see the photos larger when I load the images of an article. Wikibot seems to only take screen shot of each photo. Thank-you!

This is competent dedicated Wikipedia app that’s great for storing a collection of your favorite articles. The sidebar navigation makes it easy to jump to whatever you want. But the best thing about this program is that it syncs with the iPhone app (I believe there’s no other Mac Wikipedia app that does this), and the iPhone app has been left looking very outdated for quite some time. Other developers - like Robert Chin, who works on Wikipanion - continue to update their apps regularly, while this one and its iPhone companion have generally sat on the sidelines since their initial release. I hope the developers jump back in to giving this app the attention it deserves.

I’m pre-med right now and was in need of some quick simple reference searches for everything from quick refreshment to curiosity. This app certainly does the trick. Simple additives make this app something I continually come back to. Only downside, which I hope is fixed, is the photo/JPG etc viewer. Photos are generally disproportionate and not always easy to see. Resizing and scaling is worthless. This is not a huge issue for me though. At least not yet.

The way that this app handles pictures on Wikipedia is terrible. It doesn’t request a high resolution copy of the picture, it just uses the thumbnail image and blows it up. That’s insane. This app also is not retina-ready. The way searching is handled is also very sloppy. Why does an ugly box full of blank lines show up as soon as you click the search bar, before you even type anything? Shouldn’t the search results box only appear when there are actual results to show? That is just indicative of the poor design and carelessness put into this app. I wish that Wikipanion, which I use on my iPhone all of the time, had a Mac version. This is not up to the quality I was expecting. The entire experience is just very disappointing.

I just wish it had more flexibility when it comes to “bookmarking” pages. I would like to be able to categorise my bookmarks by topic.

there are benefits to using a dedicated app for what otherwise could just be another window or tab in your browser - an app *can* more trouble to use than it is worth. generally, i think wikibot comes out on the plus side, however there are some bugs and weaknesses. the most noticable weaknesses in everyday use for me: 1. in a regular browser surfing wikipedia pages, i am used to clicking on an image to see (when available) a bigger version of it or at least a scaled up rendering of the same image. in wikibot, clicking an image gives an unsatisfactory result - often a *smaller* (1:1) rendering of the same image in a separate window. also, the “open in browser” doesn’t do what i expected - it just opens another wikibot tab (instead of opening in safari to allow me to work-around problem #1).

I appreciate that the developers have created a good app for Wikipedia, but there needs to be a more rapid response when things break. Graphics no longer appear with Yosemite.

I got this program because I had too many Wikipedia tabs continually cluttering up my web browsers. Offloading these into a separate Wikipedia-reading program has been quite helpful. As the name suggests, Wikibot is a Wikipedia reader. Don’t expect functionality beyond viewing Wikipedia articles, although, as the feature list indicates, Wikibot does this in some fancy ways. I haven’t found a similar application that comes close to Wikibot on OS X. (I’ve also tried Wikipanion Plus and Articles for the iPad, and there I think Wikipanion Plus has the edge over Wikibot.) However, images are broken under Yosemite, and there is no way to export your bookmarks. This became a problem when I switched computers; I wanted to set up the new one manually to avoid the accumulated cruft that dominated my old drive, and I couldn’t even locate the Wikibot bookmarks file. I wound up re-bookmarking everything manually. Worringly, this application seems to have been abandoned by its developers. The company website link and the “reader support” link from the app store are both broken, the Avocado Hills Twitter feed hasn’t posted anything since May 2013, the program itself hasn’t seen an update in over a year, and Wikibot 2 is only available for the iPhone and iPad.

I really love this app. I am a jazz musician and refer to Wikipedia often for musician bios and album information/discographies. It is fantstic to be able to make folders and subfolders (e.g.- Trumpet/Kenny Dorham), and be able to have factual jazz history at my fingertips without haveing to search. There are also random recomendations for stuff that I probably would not think to look up, but enjoy learning about.

works fine. wish there was sidebar/widget or integration onto spotlight

I use this App frequently to access Wikipedia. Trying to access Wikipedia using Safari is often slow and halting. I get much faster results using this App. It displays the information clearly and allows me to control font size. I think it it great.

Doesn’t display any of the pictures.

No pictures on either the Mac or IOS versions. It appears this application is no longer supported. Too bad, since this was one of the better Wikipedia readers out there.