Wow. I know it's a purely personal taste thing, but I think your redesign is leagues ahead of OP's proposal. Your design keeps the informative, interconnected aspect of Wikipedia's design and then cleans it up slightly and makes it more readable, but does so in a way that won't alienate the average user.

I might actually see if I can find the time to code up a preview of your design and see how it handles 'in the wild', as such.

Thanks very much! I wanted to keep all the existing features of an article page rather than eliminate anything. I think it's possible to do this while making the page feel a little less busy and cluttered.

This is by far better approach yes (and as you say on your page, really its all just a bit of tweaking, not a technical redesign); Wikipedia's content is, IMHO, way too rich to thrive with the minimalist/huge-blog-font combo in OP's link.

Thanks. I think the structure and organisation of articles on Wikipedia is pretty sound, but some visual tweaks can help make the page more easily scannable and a litte bit more aesthetically pleasing (which I realise is a very subjective thing!)

This is much better. It actually fits the purpose of the site.