Wikipedia talk:2008 main page redesign proposal/Archive 2

Archive 1

Archive 2

Archive 3

Archive 4

Should we let the pros handle searching?

Wikipedia's internal search engine is greatly outperformed by Google's, I think. Whenever I need to search Wikipedia seriously, I use Google. With all respect to the dedicated people who work on the WP internal search engine, wouldn't it be better to turf this task out? This was actually the way we handled search a few years ago (giving a choice of external engines), and I found it much more convenient and effective. Opus33 (talk) 23:53, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

Several of the submitted designs use Google to search, but there are some complaints on the talk pages of these designs. Personally I havn't had any problem using the Wikipedia search. --Andrew from NC (talk) 23:57, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

Wouldn't switching entirely to Google mean not having the namespace selection available? --Earin (talk) 01:17, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

Google search results also carry advertising, do we want that? Gnangarra 04:47, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

I agree that Google has a more powerful and effect search system, when looking for an article where I am unsure what the title is — it's up to Google. We already allow the Google the search option in the drop down context menu in the Special:search. However, I don't think exporting Wikipedia's search system to Google is a good idea. This can be potentially dangerous if we depend on Google or any proprietary search system to find our articles. This can also affect our WP:NPoV. Wikipedia's search system is effect since there is a feature which allows you to search only Wikipedia articles, only Wikipedia discussions, and so on. ChyranandChloe (talk) 06:55, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

Confused

Where was the discussion that determined the Main Page should be redesigned? It seems as if this proposal skipped the part where we decide that it's something we want, and jumped right into the implementation (and requests for designs). I don't see it in the archives, so could somebody point me to where this discussion has occurred. If it hasn't, I suggest halting the requests for suggestions until we determine there's even support for a change. Otherwise, we're just wasting everyone's time. - auburnpilot talk 01:19, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

I think it's pretty much determined. It's a proposal because it's unofficial. If it was official, it would be a policy or whatever. It's not binding. However, the consensus here is that people want a change of some kind. Saying there's no support for change is ludicrous. Al Tally ^talk 01:24, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

Hey Auburn - I think it would be a good idea for proposals to be made and then they could be put up against the current main page. If consensus is that we don't want change, then the current main page will be supported heavily. If people do want change and the current one gets poor support, we can look at that when (or if) that situation arises. Ryan Postlethwaite 01:26, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

Again, please direct me to where this proposal was accepted. Until then, it doesn't mean a thing, even if one of the redesigns gathers support. - auburnpilot talk 01:30, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

Nowhere has it been determined that we will definitely change the page, it even says on the proposal that "Any designs that are identical to the current design aren't needed, as there will be an option to vote for the current design." (Although a vote/competition might not be a good idea). There are some people (like Al Tally here) who think there is consensus for change, but there isn't. People are merely making suggestions and seeing what other people think. I personally like the idea somewhere up above about a "survey", which could then bring about some more focused discussion and help us reach consensus quicker. Deamon138 (talk) 01:34, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

AP, how do you mean by accepted? By vote? By consensus? What? Al Tally ^talk 01:43, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

The same way we determine if any process is accepted. There is supposed to be a discussion (or survey as Deamon put it) to determine whether a proposed process even has support. Within that discussion, you debate whether or not a new design is needed. Then, if consensus determines we should attempt to improve the main page, this proposal would be accepted and you open the floor for proposals. Here, we've done everything ass backwards and implemented the process before we've determined there's support for it. The watchlist notice invites editors to participate in a discussion about the proposal, not act on it. - auburnpilot talk

I was rather surprised at the said survey, and haven't seen many others. But that's not my point. My point is there are two ways (I think) to change the main page: 1) Make a proposal and see if people prefer it to the main page (i.e. what we are doing here). 2) Ask if people want a change, then make it. Both have great chances of working properly, both can be done (IMO). We've chosen one. I don't see the problem or the need on consensus yet... that'll come after. Pro bug catcher (talk • contribs). 02:17, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

You can't undo what's already been done, so I suppose there's no real point in discussing it now. In the future, hopefully people will seek consensus for their proposals before they are implemented. - auburnpilot talk 02:32, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

On that I agree with you (even if it doesn't undo what's already been done). Pro bug catcher (talk • contribs). 02:38, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

I don't see that anything's been "implemented", and there's no harm in talking about changes, which is all that's going on here. The amount of support for the current page the last time it was thoroughly tested was enormous. I am sure that no changes will be made without a very substantial demonstration of consensus. Christopher Parham (talk) 04:54, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

We can't just start a discussion about having a proposal. We need to have a proposal to have a discussion about having a proposal first. Otherwise it'll be anarchy. SilkTork *^YES! 15:39, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

Hehe, but I agree with the sentiment. AuburnPilot, you seem to be suggesting that we should have had a discussion about whether to have this discussion - that is, surely, a recipe for bureaucracy. From the huge amount of activity on this page you can see that there is substantial support for making changes of some kind to the Main Page. Why does it need to be formally agreed that people ought to be able to say something, before they are allowed to say it? Happy‑melon 20:26, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

Nothing could be further from the truth, and I'm astounded by the number of people who don't grasp the concept of how proposals work. This was initially a proposal to have a competition to redesign the main page. Instead of seeking consensus that such a proposal had the support of the community (that we as a community believe the Main Page should be redesigned) everyone jumped in and began submitting redesigns. If you can't understand that point, there's really nothing more that I can say. This was handled poorly, but further discussion will not change that. - auburnpilot talk 21:23, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

So say we have a big community vote in a few weeks and a new design beats the current design 6:1 with hundreds of editors participating, are you suggesting that, even though there is clear consensus that the design is better than the existing one, it shouldn't be used because we never got consensus to have a poll? Mr.Z-man 21:38, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

Seriously, what is so difficult to grasp about what I've said? This has nothing to do with what happens in the future. All I asked for was where this proposal was approved. It wasn't. Fine. I don't care. It's reached the point where it doesn't matter. Move on. I have. If consensus is for a change, then change will be made. I'm not big on implementing proposals before they're approved, but it seems I'm in the minority. That's ok. No need to discuss it more. If it makes you happy, tag it {{resolved}} or with one of those pretty archival templates. - auburnpilot talk 21:51, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

A fine example of the difference between those who are bureaucrats at heart ("follow the process") vs. those who are action-oriented (do something). It takes both kinds to run a Wikipedia but don't bother trying to get anyone to change categories. Jgm (talk) 22:15, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

Personally I think Auburnpilot is making a lot of sense in this section. We haven't decided we will change the main page as I said above. Personally I think the designs people have made has jumped the gun a bit, but unfortunately they're done now. It seems the majority of this page is people (even me!) randomly coming up with ideas, in new sections all over the place, and these ideas are either getting good reception or are being shot down in flames. And a lot of ideas are getting buried. As someone originally proposed(but seems to have got buried as well) , we need a survey to generate focused discussion afterwards. At the moment, we all seem to be running around like headless chickens all shouting different things. It's one thing to dislike bureaucracy, but even capitalists have focused board meetings. Deamon138 (talk) 22:36, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

Of course we haven't decided whether or not we're going to change the main page; we can't decide that until we see our options. Mr.Z-man 23:38, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

Quite. People come up with new ideas for the Main Page all the time - it's a free encyclopedia, you can make (almost) whatever you want in your userspace. None of these designs ever gains enough interest to muster the massive support needed to make a change to the live page. Here we just happen to have scores of people all coming up with ideas at the same time, which is also completely fine. We'll cut and join the best bits of the proposals together, keeping the best bits, discarding the worst, until we get down to one new design. Then comes the part where we need an organised discussion and poll, and consensus to change the live Main Page. But as you can see, people are delighted to have the opportunity to put pen to paper and say what they think the Main Page should look like. Why do you think they should not be allowed the opportunity to do that? Happy‑melon 17:18, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

I never said that people shouldn't have this opportunity. This whole discussion has attracted a lot of users, which is fair enough, but all the more reason why our discussion could use a bit of focus. What we have now is a user (even me as I said) creates a new section and then goes "here's my ideas" or "get rid of this" or "expand this" etc etc. While that is generating some very good (and some bad) ideas, I'm worried that a lot of good ideas are being buried as another user provides another new section with another opinion, and I'm worried that because we're being unfocused, we don't seem to be getting anywhere. Ideas all over the place are all well and good, but we're no closer to answering the question "should we have a new redesign done, and if so how?" That is why I think a survey (not a poll, or vote, but a survey, like companies do when they want to redesign a new product) will generate more focused, but still free, and still interesting discussion afterwards. Why wouldn't people be delighted to answer a survey giving their views on the main page? Deamon138 (talk) 02:19, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

Auburnpilot, see Talk:Main Page#Redesign? for the thread that instigated this. (I don't understand why noone else provided you with this link...)

A large part of it seems to stem from the accumulation of editors who were frustrated that their change-suggestions were consistently rejected by the 1 or 2 experienced maintainers. (See, perennial "Add featured lists please!", "add featured portals", "get rid of [this/that] section please" suggestions at Main page talk). See my and Zzyzx11's comments up at (the end of) #My Point Of View too. -- Quiddity (talk) 20:39, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

Eliminating - Wikipedia's sister projects

Just the section on the main page, not projects themselves that is. :) There is no reason all the sister projects should be treated equally on the main page or even be on the main page. With the exception of the link to Wiktionary, none is essential to the main page in my opinion. Commons and Meta-Wiki are self-referential projects that are used mainly by editors rather than casual browsers. Wikisource, Wikiquote, Wikibooks, Wikispecies, and Wikiversity are all niche projects, that while useful, don't need Main Page links. Wikinews is sort of inbetween the Wiktionary and the niche projects in general relevance. A single link to the projects or a Wikipedia specific version thereof on the main page would be sufficient. Cutting it would reduce the main page by about one-eighth of its height. Caerwine Caer’s whines 02:37, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

Most editors start out as casual browsers, don't they? I know I clicked on a lot of Main Page links when I first started trying to figure out what this wiki stuff was. Would have taken longer to discover some things without that exposure.

I still like to see them collected there, in a handy spot. That steady content is one of the things I come back to the Main Page for, as well as the daily-changing stuff that prompts some of my random browsing. __Just plain Bill (talk) 03:55, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

I think they're very important and I doubt you'd get support for removing them, but the size could be played with. Okay, I shaved a third off of each logo size and threw the code in my sandox, here.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 04:33, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

I made some changes to what you had to compress the text somewhat. Better, though I still doubt the needfulness of main page links to Commons and Meta-Wiki in particular. While the main page is a special case, the spirit behind the Self-references to avoid guideline argues against those two especially. Caerwine Caer’s whines 17:51, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

Avoiding self-references is expressly only applicable to the article space, for the reason that articles are supposed to be focused on the subject only. Self-references are fine on talk pages and citing the spirt of that guideline for Wikipedia pages is totally inapposite. Wikipedia pages are inherently self-referential; that is their very nature. Quoting from the guideline "self-references are entirely acceptable on talk pages or in the Wikipedia namespace, but they are inappropriate in articles for two reasons...."--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 18:33, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

The page in question is Main Page which is in article space not Wikipedia:Main Page, which is a redirect. That said, splitting the two, with Wikipedia:Main Page containing the self referential aspects useful only to editors does have some potential. Caerwine Caer’s whines 19:49, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

I has been proposed in another section to move the main page to wikipedia space. I support the move, you might want to read the said section (here). Pro bug catcher (talk • contribs). 21:46, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

This is elevating form over substance. The fact that the main page is in the article space is a technicality, stemming from being grandfathered in by history. What's relevant is the role of the main page, which is to serve a Wikipedia space function.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk)

Small images please

Can we please add small images under each link, something to differentiate the various suggestions "at a glance"? rootology (T) 05:44, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

Two main pages?

Would there be any value in a minimalist front page and an information-rich inside front page? The front page could have everything a new or returning user needs: a title, the list of portals, "Overview · Editing · Questions · Help", "Contents · Categories · Featured content · A–Z index", "Other areas of Wikipedia" and a bloomin' great Google-style search box. No sidebar, no extras, and a fairly prominent link to the "Welcome" page, which would have all the stuff on the current main page, plus or minus whatever is decided here. Just a thought. Scolaire (talk) 08:23, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

I've added my idea here. Scolaire (talk) 08:48, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

http://www.wikipedia.org is the "minimalist" front page. Why have 2? --Dudemanfellabra (talk) 18:02, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

There's minimalist and minimalist! A front page should have contents, index and help at the very least. Scolaire (talk) 09:07, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

"Did you know..." is irritating

I find the heading "Did you know..." very irritating. For example, at the time of writing we have "... that the Hnojník château (pictured), now in the Czech Republic, was owned by the Beess family from 1736 until 1945?". Of course I didn't know that. I had never heard of either the Hnojník château, or the Beess family, and I doubt that many people have.

The article to which it links is interesting, and I welcome the presence of such links, changing from day to day, on the front page. But I resent the implication that these are all facts which readers might know. Maproom (talk) 09:39, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

The only way is to make the hook very friendly. And that is actually the purpose. The more the subject unfamiliar yet very interesting, the more they'll likely to read. --Efe (talk) 11:46, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

When someone starts off with "Did you know..." in casual speech, it usually signals something that the speaker finds interesting, but doesn't expect the listener to already know. So actually the intro phrase is working as intended. Caerwine Caer’s whines 17:56, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

Recently I have started to dislike DYK. It now rarely intrigues me enough to pick one of the links because of its technical or obscureness. If I do find it interesting, I am usually disappointed by the article, and sometimes cannot even find the piece of information that got me to click. I would vote to axe it. Chitchin13 (talk) 19:12, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

I agree with Chitchin. The "DYK" format (odd facts in the form of questions) is kind of tortured. I would delete it or replace it with a simple list of titles of "Recently Added Articles". Jgm (talk) 19:37, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

Keep as is. A wall of links with no context whatsoever will not interest anyone. — BRIAN0918 • 2008-07-09 20:46Z

The question marks at the ends of the sentences confused me for a long time. I thought they were incorrectly displayed characters. The 'questions' are so long and rhetorical I don't think they need question marks. Kallog (talk) 23:10, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

Even long, rhetorical questions have question marks at the end of them. Oh and Maproom, while you didn't know, nor are expected to know that fact, the Did You Know section served it's purpose did it not, as it got you to read what in your own words, is an interesting article. Deamon138 (talk) 23:41, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

Sticking to the rule book, yes. But the "sentences" are broken up by other text, change of font, etc. I know Wikipedians like to be perfect, so maybe rephrase it to "Did you know?" I don't think the elipses are being correctly used here anyway, but they still make sense, why not take the same liberty with question marks? Kallog (talk) 11:10, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

You could be right about the ellipses being used incorrectly, I don't know enough about them really. But, even more reason to correct THAT (if it is wrong) and not change the position of the question marks which are in the right places. Two wrongs don't make a right, that is why we shouldn't "take the same liberty with question marks." Oh and if you have it as "Did you know?", then you get, "That the success of the World War II bombing campaign Operation Strangle was unrelated to its original objective." which is not a sentence. While it may not look right to you, grammatically (except possibly the ellipses I don't know) it is fine as is, and change of font does not effect whether grammar should still apply. Deamon138 (talk) 02:29, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

It needn't be written gramatically incorrectly, I just think it should be comfortable to read? See how irritating a suprise question mark is? I don't read the complete sentence, only the content part, and I'd be suprised if anyone did read it as a continuous sentence. Looks like perfectionism taking precedence over readability. Of course the "that" would be removed if it weren't phrased as a question. Kallog (talk) 20:55, 12 July 2008 (UTC)

The correct forum for this question is really at WT:DYK, since the Main Page itself has no control over the formatting of DYK hooks. Olaf Davis | Talk 22:04, 12 July 2008 (UTC)

It's English. Most of English can be said to be "unreadable" by those standards, just think of the amount of words that people have trouble reading because they're unusually spelled or don't follow the general pattern. Would you suggest changing every peculiarity of the English language that occurs in articles themselves? No, you wouldn't. Grammar is never sacrificed for readability, writing is made as readable as possible but never crossing the line where it doesn't make grammatical sense. If you don't want grammatical peculiarities, join the Interlingua Wikipedia. Besides, the question mark in, "It needn't be written gramatically incorrectly, I just think it should be comfortable to read?" is irritating because the sentence isn't a question, unlike "Did you know...(random fact)?" which is a question. Each bulleted random fact is even begun with a lower case letter, and the ellipses which further indicate that it is not the start of a sentence. Deamon138 (talk) 02:08, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

Evolution or revolution

What ever your thoughts on the current process the page Wikipedia:2008 main page redesign proposal needs to reflect what is happening here. What I've noticed is that as designs are put forward others are taking them and comments from the ensuing discussions the result is they are evolving. The page needs to reflect this evolution, and highlight those designs that have unique features like multiple TFA's, hidden sections etc. It'd also be nice if the source points of each designed where highlighted so that steps in the evolution can be traced. What I think will happen then is that over the coming weeks we'll come down to two or three designs from which the community can make a final decision. Gnangarra 10:58, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

Yes, I think it would be a good idea for the proposal page to be split into sections to divide the designs to make review easier: ones that are small variations on the current page, ones based on the current page with significant differences, and complete redesigns. Mr.Z-man 22:34, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

Hiding Contents

Hi guys, giving this a crack but having a bit of a problem with my test page - Wikipedia:2008_main_page_redesign_proposal/Pretzels. For some reason I'm getting a Contents box showing up - haven't seen this on anyone's else's proposals, is there some code to hide it? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Pretzels (talk • contribs) 14:25, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

I have sorted it. You add __NOTOC__ to the page, it stops a Table Of Contents showing. Regards, ← κεηηε∂γ ^(talk) 14:29, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

I like it. It's actually pretty nice. Pacific Coast Highway ^{{talk • contribs}} 17:10, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

I like it too! Only suggestion is try to align the boxes and maybe a small search bar beneath the Wikipedia banner? - Erebus555 (talk) 17:42, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

I also think this layout is quite interesting. I might flip the news and featured article boxes, but it looks good this way too. One little change I would make, based on the recommendation I just made below this section, would be to use the portal links in this diff for the "Explore by topic" box because of the reasons I cited there. RichardF (talk) 18:04, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

Better yet, use links to Overviews sections like at this diff. My thinking described just below is that overview articles better represent the contents of Wikipedia. RichardF (talk) 18:41, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

Topical links on the main page

In principle, I support the Portal list proposal to update the portals links at the top of the main page, but not the specific example above. {{Browsebar}} is an incomplete and, therefore, biased representation of all the Portal:Contents/Portals sections. The main reason {{Browsebar}} is incomplete is because of the continual edit warring over the bar wrapping at 800X600 screen displays (which it happens to do again right now).

My alternative proposal is to use a complete twelve-section set of links as shown in this diff. The labels match the current {{Browsebar}} plus the missing links to the Reference and People sections are included.

If anyone wants to object to any links to the Portals page sections being at the top of the main page, this layout works just as well for any other Contents subpages that use Portal:Contents/Types TOC. Take your pick.

Overviews · Topics · Basic topics · Glossaries · Portals · Categories

In any event, the main page really should have a topical TOC to immediately show readers how most articles can be organized. If none of these navigational aids are acceptable, then that just demonstrates a continuing weakness of the encyclopedia. RichardF (talk) 17:30, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

Actually, the more I think about it, especially after looking at Pretzels' proposal above, the more I like the idea of not using topical links to Portals sections. Instead, use topical links to an "Explore by topic" or "Browse by topic" box that go to Overviews sections. Using the current main page layout, topical overview links would look like this diff. The main advantage I see in going to overviews is that articles are extremely more difficult to "game" one way or another the way lists and portals can be from time to time. If an article truly represents an overview of a broad topic, then several editors more likely will have given it a rigorous going over, hopefully working it toward featured article status if it isn't already. RichardF (talk) 18:35, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

Thank you for that list based on "Portal:Contents/Types TOC". Good grief, I had no idea there were so many views. Every page on Wikipedia has a sidebar with contents and help. I'm trying to find out why we need link farms that reinterpret the sidebar (and then text to explain the reinterpretation ad infinitum). For now I am keeping in mind that some people favor redundancy and that it makes me dizzy. I think at the moment that relying on the "Contents" link at the top of the sidebar to say "Contents" is enough. —SusanLesch (talk) 06:05, 12 July 2008 (UTC)

No Fixed Width Pages, Please!

I'd like to request that whatever design is ultimately selected, it be executed in an adjustable-width format. This is an accessibility issue for people who still use smaller-size monitors (probably 90% of the world population) and don't want to have to scroll right for every line of text. Thanks in advance for doing this! Minerva9 (talk) 19:42, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

Agreed.

Unless you specify the sections of the page in specific units (such as px), it's relatively difficult to have a fixed page width. There are other methods using JS to detect the reader's screen width, browser type, operating system, and so on. If we can get access to JS we can have have it decide which variation to load ontop of a page in which its sections are defined relative to each other. I'm not completely sure if having the JS which variation is necessary, but it is possible. ChyranandChloe (talk) 07:10, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

Please don't waste vertical space!

Great choices! One request: Especially with monitors shifting from 4:3 to 16:9, vertical space is actually not increasing as monitors get larger. Please, whatever design is ultimately selected, minimize the wasted vertical space. I realize and appreciate what the presence of white space can do to layouts, but having 30 or 40% of the page taken up by the header is just too much. Thank you! —Mrand ^{Talk • C} 02:19, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

This is probably the best opportunity I see in which we can use JS to detect and compare screen sizes, if a page is a of a certain width to height ratio and size we can tell it to load one variation, and so on. ChyranandChloe (talk) 07:15, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

Suggestions

I'd suggest making these changes. I don't know how practical they all are though.

General

• Remove duplication.
• Remember it's not Google, use the space.
• However, keep it simple, clean and uncluttered.
• Have a prominent picture to grab the attention.

In the left hand column

• Put "Wikipedia. The free encyclopedia that anyone can edit." underneath the globe.
• Put the search box beneath that.
• Shorten the list of languages.
• Add a list of the sister projects.
• Combine all the odd links listed below with Navigation, Interaction and Toolbox.

(Overview · Editing · Questions · Help · Contents · Categories · Featured content · A–Z index · Other areas of Wikipedia)

• Then rationalise and reorganise.

As a starting point, take a look at the same part of the Italian front page

Header

• The title is now under the globe. So we don't need it.
• The article count just encourages a big number of rubbish articles. Lose it as well.
• Have a list of portals, one row deep across the top, in the whitespace above the current header.

Main Area

• If we do the things above, then we can use the rest of the space for encyclopedic content, and it will sit higher on the page.
• Lose the "In The News" section. It's an encyclopedia, which should have an emphasis on quality, not a news service. The contents of this section are regularly 2-3 days out of date and as someone else pointed out, the links go to the articles not to more in depth news, which can be annoying.
• Keep the featured article and the feature picture, but maintain a couple of alternative layouts so that some days the two are side by side and other days one sits above the other. That allows us to make best use of the picture of the day regardless of shape. It also allows the page to change a little to stay fresh from day to day.
• Keep "Did you know" and "On this day", though perhaps change the name of the former. Put them beneath the featured article and the picture.

Meddlin' Pedant (talk) 23:05, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

Meddlin' Pedant, these suggestions are wonderful. Less is more (is less than this even more? :-) —SusanLesch (talk) 06:14, 12 July 2008 (UTC)

Agreed. The point of a redo is, IMO, a logical organization which lets both new and "old" users find what they need or are interested in as quickly as possible. That means, at the least, reducing redundancies and checking link names for "intuitiveness". Whether the "look" and "feel" is to change radically isn't of interest to me.

To a couple of details: The article count is at present at the top and at the bottom of the Main Page. It could stay at the bottom, in whatever context, linkable to Statistics. And, yes, lose the news (that's going to be your hardest sell).

Otherwise: Use only two images on the page, Featured Article and Featured Picture. The others are too tiny to be of use and often aren't beside the text they belong to.

I do like your approach, Meddlin' P. --Hordaland (talk) 14:52, 12 July 2008 (UTC)

Suggestion

Here's my contribution. People really don't know what it's like to be on Wikipedia. They don't know that it is actually pretty fun. We could add an "About Wiki-Users" box that informs people what it's like being an editor. This could also let people know that Wikipedia is definetly a reliable source and that hundreds of thousands of users are making it better every day! Please let me know what you think! --Vhoscythe^chatter-sign 23:34, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

I like the idea of a Wiki-users spot on the main page. Maybe ever day (or every week) a user could be selected to write a short piece about Wikipedia or their experiences or whatever, and that could be displayed on the main page. However, I don't think we should be adding Wikipedia as a reliable source, unfortunately large portions still need a lot of work, and we shouldn't be saying it is reliable, especially when we have this page. Deamon138 (talk) 23:47, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

How about at the top instead?

There seems to have been a fair bit of talk about moving or copying the search box onto the main page. While I disagree with that idea, a better idea would be to put a longer one (possibly instead of the one on the left) at the top of every page i.e. next to where your username is. Allowing it to be longer means that when the suggestion box comes down, and you type say three words in, the suggestions are often hard to read past that third word. This makes it difficult to determine which is (for instance) the Harry Potter book article you want (try typing "Harry Potter and" into the search box now, and see how hard it is). And this is the same for the vast majority of Wikipedia articles. You might say that even if you click the wrong one, you can still navigate to the right one, but the whole point of a search box is for ease of use (instead of say going through an A to Z listing), and I reckon this suggestion would help ease of use. Thoughts? Deamon138 (talk) 00:32, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

I'd prefer moving the present one to the top of the left column (just under the globe logo), on all pages, and letting just the "suggestion list" be as wide as necessary when it drops down. I really like the drop down suggestion list we have now. The only problem with it is, as you say, that it doesn't accomodate long titles.

The search box does need to be up top, but I think the top of the left column is the best place for it. --Hordaland (talk) 10:30, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

P.S. I just noticed that Norwegian (bokmål) has done as I suggested here! (Perhaps not the width of the drop-down, but Search box at top left.) --Hordaland (talk) 10:41, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

So are you saying that it should be top left, but when the titles get long enough, extend the "suggestion list" so it is longer than the search bar itself? Deamon138 (talk) 02:33, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

Yes, yes, you got it. I don't know if it's possible technically, but that would be ideal. I quickly got used to clicking in the "Suggestion list". Now if the Search box could look just as it does now but be up top-left and the Suggestion list could expand enough horizontally to show the content, I'd be ecstatic. :)

Alternatively, if technically better, the content of the drop-down Suggestion box could scroll so that you no longer can see the repetitive stuff at the left, only the pertinent stuff at the right end. I've seen that solution somewhere, but not on a wiki. --Hordaland (talk) 19:01, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

Sounds good yeah. I'd back my original idea for it to be at the top, or your idea of top left, if it got seriously proposed, but I don't see it happening in this discussion. Deamon138 (talk) 19:25, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

While I'm dreaming, I'd suggest that the "predicative" suggestion box list include the same as now, but with all redirects greyed. --Hordaland (talk) 14:56, 12 July 2008 (UTC)

Interesting idea, it may be something worth looking into. Deamon138 (talk) 02:09, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

It should be optional

If we end up with a new page design, there should be a way for people (such as myself) who want to keep the old page to do so. There should be an option on the "my preferences" page to keep the old main page. --Andrew from NC (talk) 01:02, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

Adding an option in the "my preference" may become an alternative. However if it doesn't happen, it's still ok; all you have to do is add

if (wgPageName == "Main_Page") {
  window.location = "http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Main_Page&useskin=monobook";
}

to your user:username/monobook.js. ChyranandChloe (talk) 03:57, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

Question about clicking

Do we have any way of monitoring traffic from the front page? The reason I ask is the list of portals at the very top right. Why is it given so much prominence? Is there a lot of traffic from the main page to those areas? My gut feeling is that people come to WP to look something up (or maybe do some work!); I can't imagine many people, and certainly not casual readers, coming to the site and deciding they want to look at "Humanities" or "Math" or something. Don't most people just enter in the topic they want and press go? Before deciding what parts of the page should be kept or cut, it would be helpful to know the traffic routes. Similarly (though probably impossible to track), which other languages list gets used more? I've never understood why we list them on the left and essentially repeat the list at the bottom. Matt Deres (talk) 01:25, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

A user is doing just that, (see section here). And it has similarly been proposed to remove the language part. But even if your're not the first to have them, they are great ideas! Pro bug catcher (talk • contribs). 01:43, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

Recent deaths

I would like to see the top 10 recent deaths and have new ones rotated to the top and push off the bottoms ones. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 05:31, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

I don't consider this appropriate material to show a general audience visiting the main page. Way too grim. Gary King (talk) 05:52, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

I agree with Gary King, while this would interest some people, it will just be too grim for others, this website is trying to attract new users, not drive them away. Series premiere (remake) (talk) 07:53, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

"In the news"

I don't have a specific redesign proposal but would recommend the elimination or at least a major rewrite to the "In the news" section. Having that section on the main page creates the false impression among new editors that we want news-like content (such as sports scores while the game is still going on). Wikipedia is not Wikinews. If a redesign could help clear up some of that confusion, I think we'd have a lot less trouble with inappropriate content that ultimately gets deleted - often creating very hard feelings for the new editor who thought he/she was helping but didn't yet know all the Wikipedia standards. It's okay for new editors to make mistakes but we shouldn't be baiting them into it. Rossami (talk) 06:52, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

The whole "In the News" section seems dubious, at least in terms of what is included. I mean, currently the elections in Grenada are featured and I find it hard to see how anyone thinks elections in a poor, non-strategic nation of just 100,000 people merits much notice. I suppose there is some desire for non-Anglo-American perspective, but some discrimination for notability is needed. CAVincent (talk) 18:31, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

I would like to stress the need for a link to each corresponding article in Wikinews.

The matter of content in this section is always going to be cause for much disagreement. Wikipedia, as I understand it, has a responsibility to reflect objectively some of the world's most important current events regardless of population size. Saying that, a single short sentence would be enough for some events. Mansavian (talk) 11:05, 12 July 2008 (UTC)

We try and counter systemic bias by including elections in places outside of Europe and North America. The Grenadian elections article was updated, so it goes up.

Really, ITN shows that Wikipedia has updated content, which is different than news. Spencer^T♦C 23:44, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

It may have been intended to be different but it is not taken that way by many new editors. The confusion leads them to create inappropriate articles and causes a great deal of unnecessary grief. By now, everyone that's heard of Wikipedia knows that we have updated content. I no longer think the value of the section is worth the cost. Rossami (talk) 01:55, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

A simple appeal

Every time I see a website redesign, almost always an existing function is lost. And its darn annoying. So please, whatever the new design, please don’t loose features. I would especially like to see ‘On this day’ remain, and ‘Today’s featured article’ (and Recently featured:). Thank you Chwyatt (talk) 07:40, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia:2008 main page redesign proposal/ChyranandChloe

Wikipedia:2008 main page redesign proposal/ChyranandChloe has reached relative maturity and requires some degree of input. Click here for the documentation detailing proposals, source code features and notes, and browser compatibility. Click here for the discussion for this specific entry (please do not use the documentation's discussion page). ChyranandChloe (talk) 07:59, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

Cull

I avoid the main page like the plague. It is an example of all that is bad in web design. If it were designed to lower the reputation of Wikipedia in the eyes of the user then it suceeds- if it is designed to be a main page of the world's most reliable source of information then it is vandalism. I have read the pleas above for retaining this and that and for stuffing every pixel with some well loved gizmo, and in that spirit I would like to add a suggestion that hasn't been mentioned.

• Clever use of css can cause the text to be displayed in red, blue or green. So how about, doing the Featured article in red, On this day in blue and Did you Know in green. These could then be displayed as layers on top of each other so we can get three times as much dross in the same screen space. Enthusiasts could purchase special tinted glasses, so they could read only the red, or blue or green. As technology improves a greater range of colours could be used with the ultimate goal of displaying 256³ articles on the main page.
• Alternatively, rip out the lot and put it all in the Featured Content page suitably renamed. This high profile page has only been updated twice since the end of May. The main page can become what it should be- a page that is so important that it deserves a hyperlink from each of our two and a half million articles. The page should be minimal containing five or six links to areas of use to our editors and users. One should be a link to the manual of style, and one to good web design practice though I would omit that too, if the page demonstrated it.ClemRutter (talk) 08:30, 10 July 2008 (UTC)
  • I love your first idea! I'm not sure it would work however... Pixels can only be one colour, so putting one on top of the other would give you white... The full screen would be white, and putting on red tinted glasses would give the white screen a red tint... Would be cool if it did work though :P ← κεηηε∂γ ^(talk) 10:28, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

A bit of theory

It might be useful for me to explain some of my thoughts regarding this, and my design. The Main Page has four primary purposes:

• To explaining itself - what is this website
• To guide users looking for information on a specific topic
• To guide sers just browsing for leisure
• To showcase the best of wikipedians work (though to a lesser extent than Featured Content)

I think we can safely say that the biggest group is the second one, people coming to Wikipedia for information on something. Although many people search Google for this, and end up on a Wikipedia article, there are still a very large number of users who will go to en.wikipedia.org, and look from there.

For this reason, the main page needs to obviously and simply explain the ways to find articles on Wikipedia - searching, Contents, or by topic (portals, overviews, etc). Because of this, I think it would be wise to provide a module/box with the options available for getting to articles. Pretzels^chatters 13:24, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

Pretzels, admirable that you are trying to identify the page's audience. I replied on this topic a bit to RichardF above in the context of topical links. I would like to see fewer ways to picture a Table of Contents and more use of the MediaWiki:Sidebar which helpfully gives a link to "Contents" from every page on Wikipedia. I remember how hard swimming was during my first visits to this site. Maybe too much help. —SusanLesch (talk) 06:46, 12 July 2008 (UTC)

Look at the Swedish Wikipedia main page

Just wanted to make a little input in the discussion and suggest that everyone take a look at other language wikipedia and what is good with their main page. Swedish wikipedia (translated version) for example have the Featured Article at the top left just like english wikipedia, followed by a In the news section in a different format (most current news is displayed exactly like a featured article), then DYK section, On this day, Good Article, Article Improvement/Collaboration (article voted on to be on the main page so that it can be improved), and last but not least the featured picture. And on the right a sidebar with search, portals, other languages, and sister projects. --Krm500 (talk) 13:04, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

Swedish Wikipedia's front page is absolutely gorgeous, particularly in contrast to ours. I think I might work on a design based on it -Halo (talk) 21:01, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

The link doesn't work for me. I get an error message on Google translator. Deamon138 (talk) 18:33, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

Yes, the "translated" link doesn't translate and gives just an Error. The main page is here, and I agree they appear to have given some thought to their presentation.

The Welcome banner at the top includes "the free encyclopedia which everyone can edit", where "everyone can edit" links to "How one edits a page". Then: "Just now there are 286 304 articles in Swedish, of which 403 are marked for high quality." The "403" links to a page explaining how FA and GA are chosen and marked, with links to lists of them.

Under that banner, just 4 simple links:

Introduction (link to a proper welcome page);

Help (link to an index page for all kinds of helpful pages; Swedes are generally well-organized);

Contact (well-organized, again, index sections on how to contact users, admins, project groups, how to report errors, bugs and sabotage which one doesn't know how to fix, international addresses & projects, FAQ); and

Collaboration (the article which everyone is asked to help improve this week).

These features are very user-friendly and helpful.

One reason the page looks so neat, IMO, is that it doesn't feel the need for so darned many icons... --Hordaland (talk) 19:44, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

The english wikipedia is the largest project, in terms of articles and contributors. I hope we can create an original design, and not take another project's. 5:15 20:18, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

Fair point, but there's no harm in taking on board what others have done. Maybe another country has a solution to a problem that we haven't though of. Otherwise it's like Russia (the country not the Wikipedia) not listening to the UK because they are small, even if the UK makes a good point. I think that was the idea behind David and Goliath. Deamon138 (talk) 20:28, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

Probably no one would suggest "taking" another project's solutions in toto! But taking a look at one feature here and one there and analyzing why they do or do not appeal seems an intelligent and logical thing to do, IMO. As in "Hmmm, an approach similar to xxx might be worth considering." --Hordaland (talk) 20:56, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

Obviously we shouldn't go out and completely rip-off one of the other Wikipedias. I mean exactly what you say here, "Hmmm, an approach similar to xxx might be worth considering." Deamon138 (talk) 01:35, 12 July 2008 (UTC)

TFA -- thought

TFA is an issue that any redesign needs to address at the moment all the designs(1 exception) has retained TFA as a single article. This causes many problems for the community in discussions over what gets to the main page and there are many articles being featured now that will never get to the main page, at the current 1 per day. Given that we only have 2100 FA out of 2,500,000 articles our lack of high quality articles is a concern there should be a priority to raise the profile of these. Also I think that if the end result of the redesign only highlights one TFA then there should be no section for GA articles. Gnangarra 13:17, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:2008 main page redesign proposal/AndonicO.

Could anyone help me with Anaxial's concern? I'm not a coding master... I've no idea how. · AndonicO ^Engage. 15:42, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

FLOD\W

Maybe the featured list of the day\week should be reopened as a possible thing to be added if the revamp goes ahead. Simply south (talk) 16:05, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

Pretzels' proposal

Hullo again. I've reached a bit of a brick wall with my proposal, after takjing into account countless helpful comments. It would be really great if you could take a look and offer any advice, let me know what you like and don't like, and anything you feel is missing from the proposal. My submission » Many thanks - Pretzels^chatters 16:35, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

Mangler13's Proposal

I just wanted to know if people like my design, and what I could add/remove to make it better.---Mangler13- (talk) 18:01, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

I would align the text of the sections to the left. Right now they are centered and it looks pretty messy. − Twas Now ( talk • contribs • e-mail ) 04:19, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

Much appreciated Twas Now! All fixed now!---Mangler13- (talk) 03:08, 12 July 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia:2008 main page redesign proposal/88wolfmaster

After testing page rendering in IE7 and Firefox 3, I believe I have a working version of my proposal. I now require input and suggestions to improve upon the page. The guidelines of my proposal are below:

• create an aesthetically pleasing page
• keep page as streamlined and minimal as possible
• try to keep previous functionality of page to be acceptable to a greater number of people

--88wolfmaster (talk) 20:26, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

I am currently working on adding additional features. I welcome any help or input.--88wolfmaster (talk) 04:03, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

Better. I like the look - but I would suggest making it a little more dynamic. How about having the portal options at the top open drop down menus of subportals (i.e. like the list at Portal:Arts/Subportals). My preference would be to have sister projects as a slim horizontal list at the bottom. Then merge DYK, On this day, In the News, Word of the Day, Quote of the Day, Picture of the day into a single tabbed box that flicks gracefully through the different subpages (until a user mouseovers). That would mean that you could fit everything onto a single 1280 x 1024 screen.

IMHO - this has got to be a radical change - or it's just not worthwhile. Megapixie (talk) 06:08, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

Dynamic may not be the best for all users (like low resolution / slow internet). IMHO, a better looking page, that removes redundancy, and adds new features without becoming excessive is worthwhile. I'm trying to achieve a page that finds a balance between this, my guidelines, and consensus (that is to say one that works for as many editors as possible). --88wolfmaster (talk) 06:31, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

I rather like this. I'd prefer to see smaller icons for the related projects. My personal take would be to put DYK where "On this day..." and vice versa. I'd also tweak the proportions between the left column and the right column; try a proportion of 3:2 or 8:5. - PKM (talk) 22:00, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

I have recently underwent significant changes again. As such I would love some more feedback.--88wolfmaster (talk) 00:59, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia:2008 main page redesign proposal/Five Fifteen 2

What does everyone think (see the talk page for an explanation) 5:15 03:39, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

I have commented. Gary King (talk) 06:03, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

Hybrid andonicO and CrazyChemGuy

I like andonic's 3 column plan, but I like CCG's heading icons (the white band which expands around the circular symbols), and centered search bar. I'd like to see CrazyChemguy's looks, style, and search bar applied with AndonicO's 3 column style.ThuranX (talk) 04:34, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

the thing about 3 column style is that on a low res screen it will not look good. Shoot, I have a widescreen resolution and it doesn't look that good.--88wolfmaster (talk) 05:24, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia:2008 main page redesign proposal/RyRy

Ohai. I was hoping if some editors would comment on my design. Just some suggestions or a "looks good" would be all. ;) Or any other comment you have about it, feel free to say it. Thanks, RyRy (talk) 06:11, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

Commented :) Gary King (talk) 06:20, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

It need some colors other then blue and white, but the set up looks good.---Mangler13- (talk) 03:05, 12 July 2008 (UTC)

FeaturePictureColour

Anyone notice that the box thing that surrounds the title Featured Picture is coloured pink. It should be coloured Red Series premiere (remake) (talk) 10:03, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

Why do you think it should be red? Happy‑melon 10:35, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

It's purple to me. Gary King (talk) 18:38, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

The two-part Main Page

I'll call Wikipedia:2008 main page redesign proposal/RichardF, "The two-part Main Page" proposal. Even though I supply many examples, the real essence of this proposal is based on the arrangement of the elements that comprise it. The exact specifics of any particular element can be hammered out later if it survives the early trials by fire.

The fundamental feature of this proposal is that the Main Page is divided into two parts, the encyclopedia and the project. These parts would be located on two separate pages, visually joined by a tabbed header. The encyclopedia page would be located at the current Main Page. The project page would be located at Wikipedia:Main Page, which currently redirects to the article space Main Page.

The guiding principle for dividing elements between the two parts of the Main Page would be that encyclopedia-oriented elements and project-oriented elements would be placed on their respective pages. A few high-level links that describe the encyclopedia and project also would be placed in the section of the banner both pages have in common. A summary of the elements on each page follow.

The encyclopedia

• A common banner top half (thanks go to Pretzels for the stylistic inspiration :) that welcomes readers to the encyclopedia and links them to more information about it and the project.
• A unique banner bottom half that offers a contents-oriented navigation bar and links to topically arranged articles.
• A dynamically changing section of most types of featured content, based on Portal: Featured content. I commented out the featured list because it's display was unstable in this demo. A version of a layout using only featured content on the current Main Pages is at this diff.
• A dynamically changing Did you know section from the current Main Page.
• A dynamically changing section of events sections - On this day and In the News. This layout presents the events content below the featured content. The current layout can be seen in the above diff.
• The static section of other language encyclopedias from the current design.

The project

• A common banner top half (thanks go to Pretzels for the stylistic inspiration :) that welcomes readers to the encyclopedia and links them to more information about it and the project.
• A unique banner bottom half that offers a project-oriented navigation bar and links to topically arranged project pages (on the current Main Page).
• A a body that would be a combination of topics covered by {{WP help pages (header bar)}} (This navigation bar provides easier access to Wikipedia's help pages and help resources.) and {{WP nav pages (header bar)}} (This navigation bar was designed to provide easier access to the Wikipedia community's various directories and main resource lists.). Maybe it's a summary of each of the links on the two sister header bars. It would be analogous to the main encyclopedia contents page, Portal:Contents.
  • (previous version at this diff) A great big space for lots of other stuff related to the project. Technically, the current project Main Page is just a redirect to the encyclopedia Main Page. It's not surprising that a single project main page isn't out there, but there is a place for it. If Quiddity would just touch up his user page a bit and get rid of all that personal stuff, we might have something! ;-)
• A list of sister projects from the current layout. Where else would a "projects" element go?!

The key benefits of this proposal over the current Main Page are...

• The separation of encyclopedia and project elements helps readers and editors better understand the differences (sometimes subtle) between reading and creating an encyclopedia.
• More prime space is available for presenting key elements on high-level pages.
  • More comprehensive navigation schemes can be placed near the top of each page.
  • A wider range of content can be placed on each page.
• This proposal deliberately links the encyclopedia Main Page topical TOC to article overviews because currently, such articles tend to be of higher quality than their corresponding portal, if such a portal exists at all. When there is a portal associated with an overview article, it will be linked at the See also section. A while back, I attempted to encourage us to improve the quality of those portals currently linked from the Main Page through The portal namespace improvement drive: Contents and megaportals. For good or bad, that improvement drive never got off the ground. Until overview portals themselves rise as a group to the quality of their corresponding articles, I believe the main topical browsing tool on the encyclopedia Main Page should point readers toward articles.

Okay, have fun, go at it! >;-o) RichardF (talk) 18:37, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

I like this design. I think your section for "The project" needs a lot of restructuring, but you probably just threw them in there haphazardly to give people an idea of what you ultimately intend. − Twas Now ( talk • contribs • e-mail ) 04:45, 12 July 2008 (UTC)

Yes, the project page is just a wikicamel thrown together as a placeholder for the types of content that could go there. There's not too much point in spending a lot of time on arranging deck chairs until the ship has a slim chance of even hitting the water. RichardF (talk) 14:43, 12 July 2008 (UTC)

I like this one too! I've rarely thought about actually using one of these alternatives, but that does look good! The "project" reference might be too overt for some, but I do like the way you have rearranged the sections. Carcharoth (talk) 11:55, 12 July 2008 (UTC)

Yes, the "Pay no attention to the gnome behind the curtain," sentiment probably wouldn't like such a prominent front door to the back rooms. On the other hand, Wikipedia:Main Page still could be of much better use than a simple redirect. It still could be "The Back Door to Wikipedia." :-) RichardF (talk) 14:43, 12 July 2008 (UTC)

It's certainly an interesting concept. I think for the most part this would simply be confusing - eg if someone tells you x link is on the Main Page, and you can't find it because it's on the other main page. Also, the placement of the tabs implies that only the header is tabbed; it's confusing when the rest of the page also changes.

I think we can find a way of catering for readers and editors without having to create separate pages. Editors already have the village pump, community portal - maybe these pages should be developed more for us. I am however, in great support of the idea that the Main Page changes if the user is logged in. Pretzels^chatters 15:05, 12 July 2008 (UTC)

I went with the header tab style of Portal:Science because the current Main Page isn't framed. I can't recall anyone ever complaining this style was confusing in terms believing only the top box would change. In any event, if the tab style goes anywhere, it just as easily could include a page frame like at Portal:Religion.

In terms of two separate main pages, "no self-references in article space" certainly is a well-established mantra. Conceptually, my impression is that Wikipedia really doesn't have a single project main page right now. If anything, it might have a few competitors. If there actually is more consensus here than I understand it to be, that other main page could go there. If anything, I still think, "Where is the project's main page?" is an interesting question. RichardF (talk) 16:10, 12 July 2008 (UTC)

I like this a lot, and don't think the tab is confusing at all... nice idea... I hope you get a chance to rearrange your deck chairs without someone sinking your ship – cacahuate ^talk 17:11, 12 July 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, wikitime will tell. :-) RichardF (talk) 17:53, 12 July 2008 (UTC)

No, anonymous editors shouldn't get different content to logged in ones. Still, I agree with the rest of your points here Pretzels. Deamon138 (talk) 02:15, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

A Wikipedia project Main Page?

One proposal includes a Wikipedia project Main Page, but that concept isn't very well-developed at all. The main reason for that being I really don't know if Wikipedia actually has such a thing right now. Instead, it seems like it has some versions of such a thing for slightly different purposes. So, my basic question is, "What should the Wikipedia project Main Page look like?" Some related questions come to mind too. Does one already exist? Do some current pages partially serve that role? What would be the best parts of different pages that could be pulled together? Where should such a project Main Page be located? Is something like this worth the effort? What am I missing? RichardF (talk) 18:05, 12 July 2008 (UTC)

I always thought Wikipedia:Community Portal was the closest thing. Carcharoth (talk) 18:12, 12 July 2008 (UTC)

Yes, I agree it's close. I'm just wondering if it's the cigar. :-) RichardF (talk) 19:43, 12 July 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia seems to have three top-level, "sister" navigational templates: {{Contents pages (header bar)}}, {{WP help pages (header bar)}} and {{WP nav pages (header bar)}}. Wikipedia:Community Portal only is on {{WP nav pages (header bar)}}. What if the project Main Page were be a combination of topics covered by {{WP help pages (header bar)}} (This navigation bar provides easier access to Wikipedia's help pages and help resources.) and {{WP nav pages (header bar)}} (This navigation bar was designed to provide easier access to the Wikipedia community's various directories and main resource lists.)? Maybe it's a summary of each of the links on the two sister header bars. It would be analogous to the main encyclopedia contents page, Portal:Contents. RichardF (talk) 21:31, 12 July 2008 (UTC)

I started adding some organizational tools to the project page of this proposal. RichardF (talk) 02:38, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

The encyclopedia - community two-part Main Page

Note. This discussion is transcluded so that it can be displayed at both Wikipedia talk:2008 main page redesign proposal and Wikipedia talk:Community Portal.

Wikipedia:2008 main page redesign proposal/RichardF2 is a variation of The two-part Main Page proposal, (RichardF). Both proposals use the same version of "The encyclopedia" page.

The difference between the two proposals is in "The other page." RichardF would use a newly designed page, The project, that contains descriptions of project pages in a way that would be analogous to what Portal:Contents does for articles. This proposal, RichardF2, would use an enhanced version of Wikipedia:Community Portal, called The community here.

Changes to the community page could range from very extreme by Wikipedia standards that would have to be part of this Main Page redesign to those that are quite routine and don't need any special process like this. A list of some possibilities follow.

• Use a banner that is complementary to the Main Page banner.
• Visually join the pages with a set of tabs.
• Eventually, use the same box and palette styles for the Main Page and the community page (not shown).
• Add a second navigation bar, {{WP help pages (header bar)}}, to the top of the page for a more comprehensive list of high-level project pages.
• Possibly add a few links currently on the Main Page ( Help desk, Site news, Local embassy) in the area across from the current page TOC.
• Add missing links found on other high-level navigation tools (see User:RichardF/Main Page/Project/Pages) to the body of applicable Community portal sections (Welcome, Cheatsheet, FAQ, Help desk, Media copyright questions, Citing Wikipedia). These links would be the most routine enhancements to the current page.

RichardF (talk) 20:31, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

I don't agree with this. You see, if it is going to be included in the main page, it won't be a "portal" anymore. Plus, the main page is designed for visitors who use wikipedia as a source of information. It is not designed for the community (well, the community too, but you know what I mean), so therefore I think all that should be left in the corner.--ZooFari (talk) 03:39, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

One thing I like about this idea is that, in making the Community Portal more obviously accessible from the Main Page, it may become easier for "visitors" to become "community" - which is surely a point of a wiki? -- MatthewDBA (talk) 18:45, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

Some more implemented ideas

My latest proposals (proposal 4, proposal 3 and proposal 2) include a number of applied features and ideas:

• Make the main page prioritize welcoming and introducing new users rather than providing vast amounts of dynamic information (we could have a secondary main page that focus on the latter for more regular users).
• A much more prominent search bar. The search function is the main page's most important feature, and one of its greatest flaws today. A clearly visible search bar is worth whatever duplication that might occur.
• Use graphics and well-placed icons for better usability and visual appeal, to catch the interest and liking of new users.
• Reduce size of main page, with only the most interesting dynamic content presented. In my version, I removed "Did you know", but this is up for discussion.
• Reduce the number of cluttered wiki-links in FA, In the news and On this day-sections. These only detract and mislead users from more important links and content.
• In the news: Added dates on news items.
• Featured article: Make title of article more prominent. Multiple featured articles.
• Picture of the day: Previous pictures visible as thumbnails.

I'd like to invite everyone to discuss these features and ideas further. - Wintran ^(talk) 01:07, 12 July 2008 (UTC)

Oppose

Yeah I'm not going to dig through the huge discussion above this, I just wanted to note somewhere that I think this is a bad idea. Especially given that so many of the proposals are ugly and/or poorly designed. Naerii 18:55, 12 July 2008 (UTC)

Well, in the end, if we find all new proposals worse than the current main page, we simply don't change it. However, I personally believe that many of the proposals are of higher quality than the current main page, which I believe is both ugly and poorly designed in many regards. - Wintran ^(talk) 00:29, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

What is you definition of "higher quality"? I see too many proposals (and one is even too many, IMO) that have a lot of "bells and whistles" while at the same time compromising web accessibility and/or web usability. Zzyzx11 (Talk) 06:13, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

On the current main page, the title is hardly visible. Any interesting content presented is throttled by overlinking and redundant information; No wonder the main page has 10-20 million views per day but the featured article in average only around 50k. Worst of all, the most important feature for new visitors, the search function, is very hard to find, and the current main page is not very good at welcoming and introducing new users, which should be its main purpose. Of course, web accessibility is important, but no proposal has claimed to contain clean code yet, and this could be fixed after finding a more user friendly presentation. That's not to say that the current proposals are all better, but just that this is definitely a good idea. - Wintran ^(talk) 09:13, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

I do so agree that overlinking and redundancies are a (the) major problem on the current front page. Admittedly, reducing that flora doesn't require a whole new and different page...

I don't feel that the search function is so difficult to find now, tho I'd rather it should be moved to the very top of the left panel (as the Norwegians have done).

My major complaint is, as you say, "the current main page is not very good at welcoming and introducing new users, which should be its main purpose." Rather than duplicating (nearly) all the links from the left panel, perhaps there should be a welcoming section which points out and explains some of them? It could start by pointing out that the left panel is found on all Wikipedia pages, and that the Search Box is always at top left. Then how to look for info, how to start editing, where to discuss Wikipedia. --Hordaland (talk) 10:56, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

Yes, the Norwegian search box placement is much, much better, and should definitely be adopted by the English Wikipedia. I still believe we could use another search bar even more prominently displayed at the Main Page, because, I mean, who would accept if Google made their search box smaller and placed it in the upper-left corner? The search function is obviously Wikipedia's most used feature, just like it is Google's. Please see (and discuss) my latest proposal for an example of less overlinking and redundancy, that gives more focus to welcoming new users. - Wintran ^(talk) 09:51, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

Refactoring

I've refactored the main proposal page to allow for easier, centralized discussion of each design. To add a new design to one of the lists, I've created {{subst:MPRP|subpage name}} to add a new section. I'm aware that some of the designs have significant talk page discussion, but having discussion on dozens of different pages will never lead to development of any sort of conclusion and will make comparison of designs near impossible. Mr.Z-man 20:27, 12 July 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. Refactoring is a good idea because the list is getting long. I explained on your talk page that I disagree with your revert, which served to bury the previous discussion. I think a compromise retaining links to the prior talk would have been nicer. —SusanLesch (talk) 20:31, 12 July 2008 (UTC)

I actually don't like this because I'm working on enhancing my proposal based on user comments which could get messy when done on a centralized discussion page.--88wolfmaster (talk) 00:49, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

Taking my life in my hands, I reduced the number of blank lines (four for each proposal added up to more than 200 blanks to fill in), and the multiple listings (4x the number of proposals). As 88wolfmaster said, maybe later. —SusanLesch (talk) 06:45, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

Undid. —SusanLesch (talk) 09:48, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

I think the general "refactoring" idea is a good one, but feel strongly that this is not the way to do it.

If people take this seriously, the project page will be extremely long very soon. You're asking us to pool all the talk pages into one page! I'd take out the "discuss here" blanks, and change "previous discussion" to "discussion."

How about a note about how to use the template? I'm just going to move mine to the appropriate place by hand, because I don't want to take the time to read a lot of documentation.

Making sublists based on how different the proposal is from the current version isn't useful, for two reasons. First, it's very hard to quantify that. Secondly, it doesn't tell you anything about the proposal. One user might think their new color scheme was a "significant" change, while another might remove the DYK and, having made only one change, call it a "small" change.

It would be very useful, I think, to split the list according to what aspect of the main page is being changed - so, a list of all proposals that change the content; the layout; the colors; etc. — eitch 18:38, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

p.s. I can't for the life of me figure out how to bring my proposal out of "suggestions" up to "based on current page." — eitch 18:48, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

How is having discussion on 60 separate talk pages supposed to work? The talk page works great for suggesting changes to that design, it fails epically when trying to compare it to other designs. Are people supposed to watchlist all of them? At some point we need to start centralized discussion to pull out the best parts of the best ideas, or else this will be nothing but a big CSS/HTML/wikicode showcase. Its already split up into several subpages, if it gets too long, the subpages can just be linked instead of transcluded. As far as the divisions go, that was the easiest way I could think of, short of leaving them in one big list. If its nearly identical to the main page, its in the first section. If it has all the same parts and general layout (2 columns of boxes) as the current page, but rearranged, its in the second. If it adds or removes pieces or makes major changes like the addition of another column, its in the third. If its barely comparable to the current page, its in the fourth. If you split it based on colors and layout, you're going to end up with a couple dozen sections, each only having 1 or 2 pages. I don't think I could have made the template much easier, just {{subst:MPRP|subpagename}}, if your page is at Wikipedia:2008 main page redesign proposal/Foo, you would use the template as {{subst:MPRP|Foo}}. Mr.Z-man 00:02, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

Well that was my point "at some time" I think we need to figure out a time to do that (its just not right now. soon perhaps but not now).--88wolfmaster (talk) 02:51, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

Lazy

It's a lot of work to click on each entry and return to the 2008 main page redesign proposal to then click on another entry. Would someone create a mirror page having all the redesign proposals on that page so that they can be viewed merely by moving the vertical slide bar? That way, we can compare them all together and be better able to pick the ones we like. Bebestbe (talk) 23:05, 12 July 2008 (UTC)

You could transclude all of them to one page, but do you have any idea how huge that would be? It would likely crash your browser. --MZMcBride (talk) 23:09, 12 July 2008 (UTC)

Proposal news

How about creating a page for news about the proposals? The designers themselves could update it, such as when adding a new proposal or making a major update to an old (small changes could be omitted)? They could also wait with announcing their proposal before they're finished editing. Currently, if someone makes a complete remake or update of their design, no-one will see it. It's even easy to miss out newly created proposals. - Wintran ^(talk) 23:16, 12 July 2008 (UTC)

57 different proposals, that's too many

Do we actually expect whoever votes to carefuly judge each one? At best people will browse through them. ⇨ EconomistBR ⇦ Talk 04:20, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

There are indeed many proposals listed. I think that the ones listed near the top of the page will get more attention than the ones at the bottom, because people don't usually like to scroll too much. Gary King (talk) 04:24, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

A vote on all 57 vs the current page would be a terrible idea. The odds of getting more than 20% support for any one design in a poll like that would be next to nothing and we'd need a heck of a lot more than 20% of the community behind something to change the main page. I think the best way to go about this would be to eliminate the designs that can't be used (ones that are broken in some browsers or don't work in certain screen sizes), then combine the best parts of the remaining design into 1, or at most 2, final design(s) to use in a poll. Mr.Z-man 15:48, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

I agree with Z-man. The proposals are there to get the best ideas from a variety from a variety of interested users. At an unspecified point, we can start to get the best ideas together, and work on say, up to 3 pages which can be collaborated on together. Al Tally ^talk 15:54, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

Yes, few designs will work much better. Do you think only the people here working on the proposals are enough to decide whether something or other should stay or not in the last proposals? I think we should also bear in mind that both content and form can change. Pro bug catcher (talk • contribs). 15:58, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

I also agree with Mr.Z-Man, his solution to combine the remaining working designs into "1 or at most 2 final design(s)" is IMO a better way to proceed about this.

⇨ EconomistBR ⇦ Talk 17:05, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

Cutting down the number of proposals assumes a non-wiki "one person's the winner" model of redesigning the main page. The important thing isn't a user's mock up of their design, but the ideas it reflects. If a proposal has good points, we should try to factor those points into the final version. We should do this whether or not the person who makes the proposal has actually succeeded in realizing their idea (that is, an idea isn't bad just because the amateur programmer who thought of it couldn't figure out how to make it work with all browsers). If we throw out proposals just because they don't (yet) work, we also have to throw out all the "I don't know how to do this, but I think it would be good if…" proposals. Editors whose designs don't look professional shouldn't have to worry that their ideas won't be considered.

It seems to me that different proposals focus on different things. Some want to change what content is actually on the main page. Some want to change the theme, as it were - more icons, or more pictures, or rounded corners on the boxes, or shadows, etc. Some want to change the layout - push more things to the top, or add columns, etc. If we could group proposals according to the aspect of design they're concerned with, I think 1) it'd be easier to take it all in, and 2) it'd be easier to have discussions comparing different proposals.

This would also make voting more feasible: multiple votes would be taken for multiple decisions. ("1. Should there be icons? 2. Should DYK be in a right-hand column?" or whatever) And even then, even if there are many different options (e.g. "Which of the following 20 color schemes do you like best?) there's no sense in predicting that there'd be no clear winner. (And I'm not up on my voting math, but I would imagine preference or possibly range voting would deal with large number of candidates than the single-vote system you might be imagining.) — eitch 18:16, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

I think it might be best to use some sort of nomination system to decide which suggestions will be included in the final vote - if a certain proposal does not get support from X number of people, it won't be considered "nominated". This still leaves the problem of, for example, suggestions near the top of the page getting more easily "nominated" because more people view them. To solve this, perhaps some sort of nomination page could be created which displays the suggestions in a different order each time it is viewed, or displays a random suggestion and asks if the user would support it? Given a certain number of people that participate in this process, this would theoretically ensure that each proposal is given roughly the same number of opportunities to be nominated, without requiring people to view all of the suggestions - they could view as many as they wish, then stop (supporting as many or as few as they would like). CCG _(T-C) 22:11, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

Finally some common sense from Eitch here. As has been said 57 is far too many ideas to judge, even by Mr.Z-man's method, and the ideas on this page are too many to gather consensus any time soon. This is why I have mentioned above, that some form of survey would be a good way of gathering these ideas together, with this survey containing similar questions to what Eitch mentioned. This could then generate further more focused discussion afterwards, where I think individual ideas which follow the results of the survey, would be more useful. Also, if in these further discussions, an idea is chosen, the community should be given the opportunity to edit the idea, until we reach a final version which can then be compared with the main page perhaps. Deamon138 (talk) 23:07, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

Idea: I don't know if this is a good idea, or if it will just delay the process, but I might as well give it a whirl. It would seem to me that with 57 noms, many are bound to be similar. So what if we grouped these similar noms together (maybe five or ten at a time) and had like a tournament style vote? The winner of each of these votes would advance and face the others. There is no sense in having two ideas so similar that having 57 canidates only causes the votes to be spread out among five noms that look the same. Thoughts? Blackngold29 23:13, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

Agreed. Since so many users are working on this project, we'd only need to have every round at a maximum length of two days. -- iMatthew _T.C. 23:16, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

Deamon, I repeated what you'd already said? See, that is exactly the problem we need to deal with. I only this afternoon decided to take on the project of reading this page, and only got about half way through. In a couple days, no one will read where I say it.

My proposal for dealing with that problem: I just left a note far up this page suggesting that the discussion of whether to use css or not be put in the discussion page of a "2008 MPRP: Programming Language" subproject. By the time you read this, the CSS lovers will be fighting back, saying I'm trying to sweep that discussion away. But I'm just looking for discussability. Could we have separate discussion pages for color, layout, and content?

Back to Blackngold's voting Idea: I think the problem here will be that individual proposal don't limit themselves to changing just one aspect of the main page. So, grouping by similarity will be confounded. We can get around this, I think. First, we need to wait a bit, to make sure we aren't missing any radical redesigns. Then split up each proposal into its component pieces, making a separate mock-up for each - so, Jane Anonymous's proposal, which moves the TFP to where ITN is now, makes Sisters hide/show, and changes the opening banner, would be split into JaneAnon_order, with only the TFP/ITN change, JaneAnon_hide, with the Sisters change… You get the idea. For all but the most radical proposals (which is likely to be synonymous with "all those proposals which stand a chance of consensus) this would allow for fair comparison.

I don't know if it's worth the work, but that to me is what needs to happen to minimize "regret".

And then back to Daemon's question of how to deal with top-of-the-list effects. Here's an idea that feels to me like it has pieces of Blackngold's mini-contests and Daemon's random order: what about (somehow - I have no idea how this would be done) randomly selecting 5 proposals at a time. You'd vote on those (by whatever method we decide on), and then be shown another 5, and vote on those, etc. The vote wouldn't be stored until you'd seen all of the proposals. — eitch 00:19, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

"Deamon, I repeated what you'd already said? See, that is exactly the problem we need to deal with." Well, I think your idea had more detail or substance than mine, but I agree, this is/will be a huge problem. Someone is bound to come along and post "X should be changed" only to be told there's a section above where X was discussed, but it got buried. Oh and FYI, the "random" idea was not mine, it was CrazyChemGuy's, sorry for the confusion. Anyway, the idea of "making a separate mock-up for each" might work, though I'm a bit worried that that would create duplicates of some ideas (i.e. two or more people both have the same idea as part of their whole design), so ideas would have to be checked against each other by someone(s). Also, I think before any "survey" or "vote" or "poll" should be carried out, I think each idea should be gone over and made sure they work, as (as you said), "an idea isn't bad just because the amateur programmer who thought of it couldn't figure out how to make it work with all browsers", so when an idea is "fixed", it can then be put forward to some sort of poll/survey/vote. Finally, I like your idea of "separate discussion pages for color, layout, and content" or other ideas for separate issues, that could also make discussion easier. At the moment, all the discussion above (and possibly below!) seems disorganized, and like we're in some sort of anarchy). There's not a lot of working together going on it seems. Deamon138 (talk) 00:54, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

This thread has got a bit out of hand, but just wanted to say, yes - we need to shortlist the designs down to 5 - 10 choices at some point. Pretzels^chatters 16:40, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

A good way to start is to throw out the ones that continue to break after a certain time. I've already found about 10 broken designs. MER-C 03:52, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

Is there some sort of deadline for submissions? If we're gonna do the vote we could start before it's up (we obviously have enough to start with), but we can't just let submissions come in until eternity. Sorry if I missed it, this discussion is "large". Blackngold29 04:11, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

Once again, I disagree with the idea that only working submissions be considered. I, for one, am specifically not interested in making a working proposal. What about the people who just Painted on a screenshot of the current page, or wrote a list of ideas, or (as I did) made a mock up to illustrate their ideas while specifically leaving room for others' opinions? — eitch 00:58, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

I agree. I haven't got the time or patience to look through 57 (or god knows however many now) designs, let alone compare all 57. We should be judging this on each ideas inherent qualities, not on whether design 43 is better than design 34. Despite not looking at very many designs, I can be pretty confident that no design will be perfect or have no flaws, therefore selecting one "winner" in this "competition" (read: anarchy) would no doubt get rid of 56 designs, one of which might have the quality that the "winner" lacked. And this quality might well be in a broken design, or in a design like Eitch mentioned i.e. more of a drawing board. Broken designs can be fixed, drawing boards can be implemented, but treating all these designs like discrete entities (quanta lol) isn't going to work. Deamon138 (talk) 01:24, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

Feedback Requests?

To all those who have submitted a new page design proposal and are looking for feedback, follow the above link, and I will provide feedback in a rather different way. For more information, follow the above link. Cheers, -- iMatthew _T.C. 18:39, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

Can you do my two proposals. this one and this one ElectricalGone Public01:24, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

Sure, leave the requests at the page, though. I'll get to them tomorrow night, because I'm getting off soon, and I will not be back on until then. Cheers, -- iMatthew _T.C. 01:29, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

Thankyou ElectricalGone Public 01:31, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

No problem. -- iMatthew _T.C. 01:34, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

Guidelines and Suggestions are needed before people start designing pages.

Already far far too many designs are listed for people to easily sort through them. As it is not as easy to look over many multiple pages of designs as it is say to scan over many multiple viewpoints in an AfD. It is easier to get an initial grip on words than on images. I recommend that this project to redesign the mainpage has to main parts to it:

1. Create a simple base line of consensus over what is being sought after.
2. Listing design proposals.

So far the focus has only be on the latter. Yet it would be a great help to all the designers if they went in already having a rough idea of what the community is after. For instance is the consensus for a very long page that lists absolutely everything that could be listed? Or for a more minimalistic page such as google.com or wikipedia.org. Personally I much more prefer leaning towards the minimalistic approach. This is just one of many issues it would greatly help designers if they already knew what the community consensus is leaning towards (of course they could still go ahead and disregard this to design whatever they feel best. But at least they are aware of this, and overall the standard will be lifted). Mathmo ^Talk 02:55, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

It was worth trying to inject some commonsense into this thread - but the chances of being listened to were infinitesimal. I read your comments. They were very good. Being proved right, when the whole room is against you produces a satisfying inner glow. ClemRutter (talk) 18:20, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

Using static content

Hi. Static content appears to be loosely, something over 30% of every page on Wikipedia, with variable content something over 60%. By static I mean three sections of the page that never change (the top, left and bottom). I'd like to propose that we acknowledge rather than ignore these static parts of every Wikipedia page. Then remove redundancies and link farms in the mainpage spot. I read here some users here think the sidebar isn't used. Doesn't that make you wonder why? It made me wonder about the footer, and the top of the page too. I wonder if in the case of the main page proposals it's because they are drowned out. If the links everybody has on every page can be found (rather than lost in a sea of more links) they could be a good thing rather than considered wasted space. Tonight I am going to try to take a second look at the current proposals with this in mind. It may be some of the static links need strengthening or little focus but they look great! —SusanLesch (talk) 04:25, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

Background Images

I have a problem with setting background images on my proposal, because wikicode removes all traces of url(). Any ideas how to work around this? Pretzels^chatters 14:13, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

What background do you want, or where from?--ZooFari (talk) 15:40, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

Use your monobook.css. ~ Boro (talk) 16:12, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

But this would only show the change for me. It is part of my proposal so needs to be visible to everyone. Help? Pretzels^chatters 14:34, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

Daily kitten

What the main page needs is more of this

The current proposals are all fatally flawed. None of them include a daily kitten feature. I suggested it on talk:Main page and it has unanimous support as I write this. Clearly there is a tremendous grass-roots support for having a daily kitten picture. The current proposals need to be amended to take this into account. Ceiling Cat (talk) 16:01, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

So that explains it! From this moment forward, consider this to be the undisputed front runner for the next great Main Page final fixit! >;-o) RichardF (talk) 16:37, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia:2008 main page redesign proposal/Alvaro qc

I've finished my proposal, comments are welcome :) . Alvaro qc (talk) 06:47, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

"Wikipedia:Centralized discussion" should go onto the main page (or: Mr. IP's proposal)

As it is, less editors get involved in "the community" than should get involved in the community, because they don't know where to find the behind-the-scenes discussions that actually initiate major changes. Let me give you an example: right now we are discussing an overhaul of the main page. Does the main page contain a link to this discussion, or any way for an inexperienced editor to find it? Not directly. And so here we are, making guesses as to what changes may or may not put off inexperienced editors...

Most serious Wikipedia discussion is tucked away, and any "consensus" we establish until we open it up more publicly is a bit of a sham. The best tool we have for guiding users to the various crannies where discussion actually happens is Wikipedia:Centralized discussion. It's small, useful, and should go right on the main page. The whole thing! Mr. IP (talk) 18:06, 19 July 2008 (UTC)

There's the rub on such discussions. The Mian Page already links the VP & CP.

• Village pump — For discussions about Wikipedia itself, including areas for technical issues and policies.
• Community portal — Bulletin board, projects, resources and activities covering a wide range of Wikipedia areas.

I can't find links to CD on either of those pages. Also, what happens to get listed on CD seems to be a bit arbitrary. For example, only one of the current VP discussion items is listed there. To me, that looks like just another example of no real consensus on the meaning and location of fundamental project-oriented processes. RichardF (talk) 19:19, 19 July 2008 (UTC)

I'm talking about putting up the whole thing, not just a link. I agree that CD is not perfect, but mainpaging it would be one of the best ways to improve it. CD would improve the main page, and the main page would improve CD. Mr. IP (talk) 06:39, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

Okay, thanks. I thought that was what you meant. I'm not so sure that works with the current style of layout, but I would support adding it to The project page for the RichardF proposal. RichardF (talk) 11:57, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

On Mr IP's comment that said, "Does the main page contain a link to this discussion, or any way for an inexperienced editor to find it? Not directly.", I would say that this discussion was notified to me because it was placed above everyone's watchlist. Anyway, your main point seems to be about putting Wikipedia:Centralized discussion entirely on the main page. Seems like a bit much to me. I wouldn't mind a link to it and maybe a small blurb, but not the whole thing, on the main page. Deamon138 (talk) 22:06, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

Shortlist

So how is this organized, are we having a shortlist? Shall we start merging ideas? Randomblue (talk) 18:07, 19 July 2008 (UTC)

Plan of Action

Suggestion instead of creating proposals and talking about change, we actively work on creating a collaborative proposal (one that we can show to the rest of wiki). Below is a list of steps to accomplish this:

1. stop any further submissions.
2. comment on all submission check out the setup on my sandbox.
3. stop all comments end of day on July 31st (UST).
4. compile all comments into a single list of qualities we want in our "master proposal".
5. take a week to vote on any conflicting qualities.
6. create a single "master proposal".

--88wolfmaster (talk) 03:50, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

It's a good and important idea to try to structure the further process! I agree with your first step, but am uncertain if the rest are the ideal approach. Your setup (on sandbox) with its groupings of proposals may not be ideal or necessary. The key, and the difficult part, is: compile all comments into a single list of qualities we want in our "master proposal". Perhaps such a list is the best place to start, mentioning some proposals as examples. For example (no particular order):

• Use Show/hide (proposalA, proposalB, proposalC)
• Emphasis on encouragement/assistance to potential contributors (.......)
• More than one FA (.......)
• GA or no GA
• Featured image full width, or not (.......)

And then, just a week for "voting" is too short. :-) --Hordaland (talk) 12:32, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

Wherever it's located, a chart like the one at Wikipedia talk:2008 main page redesign proposal/Critiques could be used to summarize possible Main Page features, its benefits and disadvantages, whether or not it is on the Main Page now, the state of consensus on whether or not to include it, and general comments.

RichardF (talk) 14:29, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

Nice. I can picture that growing and growing at first, then consensus developing on individual points which then could be agreed upon, summarized and removed from the table. --Hordaland (talk) 15:46, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

I don't think removing the agreed points from the table is a good idea as someone else would think the point hasn't been raised yet and reintroduce it. Perhaps agreed/rejected actions should be moved to a second table of completed discussions? Road Wizard (talk) 23:43, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

Yes, something like that is what I meant. The summary of conclusions must be prominent, whether in table form or not. --Hordaland (talk) 03:13, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

RichardF that is nice. So how do we want to proceed.--88wolfmaster (talk) 21:38, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

Well, someone could place the chart on a subpage and folks could edit it as they ID a feature with related comments. RichardF (talk) 23:31, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia:2008 main page redesign proposal/Comments would be a good place to put it. Road Wizard (talk) 23:43, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

I moved the sample table to Wikipedia talk:2008 main page redesign proposal/Critiques and transcluded it to the top of this page so that it still can be viewed as part of this discussion. Anyone else can feel free to move it, delete it, add to it or use it to help summarize any features and the current consensus (or lack of) about them. RichardF (talk) 15:04, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

I've updated my sandbox to reflect the new plan.--88wolfmaster (talk) 22:12, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia:2008 main page redesign proposal/Main Page Draft

I suggest we start with a copy of the current Main Page, called Wikipedia:2008 main page redesign proposal/Main Page Draft, and through edits and discussion transform it via consensus into the new Main Page that will be proposed to the community for final approval. Competitions won't work (we tried that last time), because submissions that are only slightly different from each other will divide the vote between them which will drive their basic common design out of the competition, obscuring its support as well as support for particular design elements. Each new design element or change needs to be discussed on the talk page of the community-developed draft, to arrive at a consensus for each as to whether it should be included or not, and what each design element should look like. We need to literally get on the same page and integrate the best features of all those wonderful designs that have been submitted. Let the edit wars editing and discussion begin! :) The Transhumanist 01:23, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

I think I understand the idea: that is, we edit the main page just like we edit articles in the main name space in a wiki way. The problem I have is that my proposed main page is radically different from the current one. For me and (some others with radical ideas), this doesn't work. So what works? I don't know :)-- Taku (talk) 04:01, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

Interesting thought. But I wouldn't begin with the current page, but with a blank main page, including only what must be included. So start with discussion of left panel. What can we change on this page independently of all the other pages in Wikipedia? What do we want to change on all pages (search box further up, more informative and consistent mouseover tool-tips, etc). Then skip the banner and top links until later and decide on the top two boxes. With or without Show/hide? Etc.,etc.

BTW, Taku, whenever you refer to "my proposal", you should link to it :-) --Hordaland (talk) 11:02, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

My proposal is in Wikipedia:2008 main page redesign proposal just like any others (under the name TakuyaMurata). -- Taku (talk) 23:34, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

Important Village pump discussions: Moving the main page

Just in case things aren't confusing enough, don't forget to take in the discussions at:

• Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#Proposal: Move main page to Wikipedia namespace
  • Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)‎#Arbitrary break to the first mention of Portal:Wikipedia
  • Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#Also move Wikipedia:Community portal to Portal:Wikipedia community?
  • Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#Why not Portal:Main Page?

RichardF (talk) 12:00, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

Suggestion for way forward

I's like to suggest we put the designs forward to a community vote, and we pick the top 5 to work from. As a community, we can then improve these 5 designs, along with the current main page and take it from there. It would be a good idea to get an understanding of which designs the community prefer. I suggest starting the poll on August 15 and letting it run for two weeks to give everyone enough time, we can then take things from there. Ryan Postlethwaite 02:19, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

Reasons behind the current design

[expanded to reflect below discussion]

I've noticed that many of the proposed designs incorporate ideas that have been suggested and rejected in the past. Consensus can change, but it's helpful to consider the reasons why the community decided to omit these elements:

• Third column (and other uses of "empty space") — poor display for users of lower screen resolutions
• Additional search field — redundant; regarded by many as confusing and distracting
• Featured picture section with greatly reduced width — prevents optimal display of wide images (such as panoramas); depending on layout, displays poorly either at low resolutions or at high resolutions
• Featured picture higher on the page — disadvantageous for users of slow Internet connections (still a very large segment) and those with images disabled; if placed above the text-based sections, interpreted by some as prioritization of images above prose (contrary to Wikipedia's standards)
• Date and time — tied to UTC (and therefore confusing to many readers); inaccurate because of caching issues
• Icons — regarded by many as too informal and more indicative of a social community than of an encyclopedia
• Rounded corners — based on nonstandard, experimental, Gecko-only HTML code that works only for a minority of users (resulting in a needlessly inconsistent appearance) and varies in quality for said users (with very poor anti-aliasing for many)
• Background image — poor display on some screens; potential to decrease text legibility
• Integration of static and dynamic sections — For the readers' convenience, we've provided deliberate demarcation (via spatial separation and visual cues). The dynamic sections (Today's featured article, Did you know..., In the news, On this day..., and Today's featured picture) appear within colored boxes with distinctive headings, while the static/semi-static sections (Other areas of Wikipedia, Wikipedia's sister projects, and Wikipedia languages) appear at the bottom of the page (non-boxed, with standard headings). This makes the distinction much clearer and the page much easier to read.

While nothing is set in stone, it would be wise to consider the above when proposing new designs. —David Levy 14:03/23:06, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

• In addition Today's Featured Picture is 100% width so panoramas and wider media can fit nicely. Pro bug catcher (talk • contribs). 14:50, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

Indeed, that's one that I forgot to include (and it also benefits users with low display resolutions). —David Levy 14:55, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

If I recall correctly, the reason that the Feature Picture is not at the top is also a restriction due to the problems this would cause for users on slow internet connections or with images turned off (feel free to correct me if I'm wrong - but "In the United States/Western Europe/Japan people have broadband now!" is not an indication that this problem has since been averted, particularly given Wikipedia's "mission" to the developing world) TwoMightyGods^Persuasion_Necessity 22:48, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

You're entirely correct. I've added these to the list. —David Levy 23:06, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

It should also be emphasised (if not already done) that people can feel free to use any of these designs themselves if they want. The primary aim should be to have a Main Page that is welcoming to new users and regular casual readers and easy for them to use and helps them find what they need. Editorial concerns and "I like this look" should be secondary to that. Both those latter concerns can be addressed by having different main pages and/or skins designed for people who want different things to regular casual readers and new users. The final point is that while the functionality should be preserved or not excessively altered, it is important to refresh things like colour and style to a certain extent to avoid feeling stale. Carcharoth (talk) 11:51, 12 July 2008 (UTC)

The key words for a main page designed for new users and regular casual readers are web usability and web accessibility. Colour and styles can change as long as they do not decrease the usability and accessibility of the page (which I am afraid some of the proposals made so far still do). Zzyzx11 (Talk) 01:03, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

...like not thinking about panorama images like this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, and that. Zzyzx11 (Talk) 13:58, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

Bump, to prevent archiving. Useful initial thread. -- Quiddity (talk) 19:23, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

Achieve bot for discussion page

This is one big talk page. Does anyone mind if i set up MiszaBot for 7-day archival? Simply south (talk) 22:22, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

Seeing as this is an ongoing discussion, archiving at this stage would be problematic. But yeah, this page is stupidly huge, and we don't seem to have gotten anywhere lol. Deamon138 (talk) 22:27, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

Be bold, if you are mistaken we can simply hit the revert button; seeing how we could make an article about the table of contents of this article (discussion) — it's long overdue. If you're in doubt, you can check with the some of the administrators that take care of this proposal; I remember that Ryan Postlethwaite may be one, but I'm not sure. ChyranandChloe (talk) 00:46, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

Before it gets archived, were there any useful conclusions drawn from Happy-melon's #Some market research above? Scolaire (talk) 13:26, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

No, if it were useful it would easily resurface in another form either one of the entries or in the discussion again. The information won't be lost, simply moved. ChyranandChloe (talk) 01:25, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

Yes please, and soon. At "352 kilobytes long" it is getting very close to browser-crashing size for me.

Actually, I will now... (Done. hopefully correctly) -- Quiddity (talk) 19:31, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

Someone else manually archived the whole thing. I've split the archive in 2, updated the Miszrabot counter, and unarchived 1 thread that I think makes a useful intro.

Feel free to unarchive any other active threads, or even better, summarize anything in the archives, to help bring newcomers up to speed. -- Quiddity (talk) 23:37, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

page layout vs. everything else

i might be wrong, but it seems that we could possibly separate the discussions of page layout with other stylistic concerns, such as colours, icons, etcs. The distinction being that these stylistic things are much easier to change than a page layout. so i would suggest first deciding the layout and then agreeing about the style. For example, after looking through many of the proposals, I would prefer portal links near the top of the page, no redundant search bar, a Featured List box, and no Featured topic box (of course others may disagree..). It is good to have so many different designs to consider; but can we not now decide on some key elements of the page layout and build from that? 131.111.24.187 (talk) 13:13, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

Before designs

Everyone seems to have a proposal for procedure (besides a proposal for designs.) But anyway, here is mine. I think that we must first work on what should appear on the new main page, before we vote on design proposals. (Since this was discussed already, I won't elaborate on why). So, I propose that we create a page called Wikipedia:2008 new main page poll (or one with a similar name). That page isn't about design proposals but ideas as to what should appear on the new main page. I'm not certain about the exact structure of the page, but the page should ask the community to propose and vote (either Keep or Delete) on stuff that could appear in the main page. I'm betting that a poll could work more effectively than discussion we are having, which isn't going well in my opinion. -- Taku (talk) 03:47, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

Already been done, see Some market research. It lapsed after a few days and nobody ever crunched the numbers. Maybe you could. Scolaire (talk) 06:02, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

Obviously I missed that poll. (I'm rather late to this whole project.) But what I have in mind is slightly different from it. As I understand, what you did was a market research for your design, which is not binding. We need something more definitive if we were to move forward. (I'm making a proposal here since I'm not seeing any progress.) Realistically speaking, we have to build the consensus on what the (new?) main page should look before coming up with designs. (I think the reason for this was already given some threads above.) I'm thinking of something like AfD or something, that gives us the definitive answer. Do you think this would simply be a duplicate effort? -- Taku (talk) 06:49, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

Actually it was market research for my design, but that's a little beside the point. I was actually trying to stimulate discussion more along the lines you suggest, to get people to think in abstract terms rather than on specific details (you notice that I haven't actually submitted a design as yet). I think that we need to start from a blank slate and get consensus right from the word go: throw everything we know about the main page aside and start from scratch, although using these proposals, and the lessons from the previous design process, to inform our new decisions. Happy‑melon 14:37, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

This is exactly what we do need to do and what I've been saying all along. Your idea HM was a nice start, now I think we need a huge ginormous survey to get further. Kinder like yours, but with the consensus to back it, and of course many more questions! Deamon138 (talk) 19:29, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

Proposed shortlist

Discussion has drawn to a standstill, and everyone is afraid to be bold and remove designs unlikely to be selected. So rather than continuing to wait for someone else to take the flak for picking someone's design over another's, I guess I'll do it myself. My proposed short list is as follows, please remind me of the many spectacular designs I missed, and the many poor designs I included:

The list

• Wikipedia:2008 main page redesign proposal/AMK152 - Same layout, added icons to the portals link
• Wikipedia:2008 main page redesign proposal/ChyranandChloe - Two column view, light blue welcome banner with expanded help/community introduction section, multicoloured section headers, section icons, large-iconed portals section with show/hide feature
• Wikipedia:2008 main page redesign proposal/CrazyChemGuy - Same layout, white book welcome banner background, light blue section banners, section icons
• Wikipedia:2008 main page redesign proposal/Dudemanfellabra - Same layout, expanded welcome section with iconed portals, multicoloured section banners, section icons (left and right)
• Wikipedia:2008 main page redesign proposal/Electrical Experiment (2) - Same layout, blue welcome banner background, grey section banners, section icons, motto of the day section, wikipedia radio section
• Wikipedia:2008 main page redesign proposal/Hazelorb - Same layout, white book welcome banner, pale blue section backgrounds and banners
• Wikipedia:2008 main page redesign proposal/MZMcBride - Same layout, grey-blue section banners
• Wikipedia:2008 main page redesign proposal/Polishname - Same layout, welcome banner with no redundant search bar, multicolored section banners, section icons, large iconed portals section with featured portal section, in other languages section with flags (nationalist/linguistic issues?)
• Wikipedia:2008 main page redesign proposal/Pretzels - Two column design, plain white welcome banner, portals section with icons, thin section borders
• Wikipedia:2008 main page redesign proposal/RichardF2 - Tabbed main page (encyclopedia/community), featured portals section, featured sound section, featured list section, featured topic section,
• Wikipedia:2008 main page redesign proposal/RyRy - Same layout, centered white welcome banner, grey-blue section banners, section icons (left and right), improved portals section
• Wikipedia:2008 main page redesign proposal/Scottydude - Same layout, expanded welcome banner, white section banners
• Wikipedia:2008 main page redesign proposal/Wintran - Same layout, white book welcome banner, portals section with icons, light blue section banners, section icons

I tried to pick designs that gave a variety of colour schemes, as well as some redesigns that brought something new to the table. I think we have enough good ideas that we have gone past picking a single design, and we will likely wind up incorperating elements from several into a final product. Some features I really liked: the featured topic section in RichardF2's design, the the Portals/Featured portal section in Polishname's, and the Portals show/hide feature on ChryanandChole's. So, comments, please? --NickPenguin_(contribs) 23:41, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

wheres mine two there not low quality of incomplete. HereFord 23:44, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

A poor choice of words. I have changed that, sorry. --NickPenguin_(contribs) 23:51, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

I've already made a suggestion for a way forward, with a community vote to get a short list. Ryan Postlethwaite^{See the mess I've created or let's have banter} 23:47, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

I would love if something like that could be organized easily, but I think it might be better if we generated a very small list before we started getting very wide spread community voting. I only hope to stir up a more focused discussion. --NickPenguin_(contribs) 23:53, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

Well, I was hoping we could vote as a community to narrow it down, then discuss changes to each one that's shortlisted and try and form a consensus. Ryan Postlethwaite^{See the mess I've created or let's have banter} 23:56, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

Then perhaps we should relabel this the 2012 main page redesign. It's not that I don't have faith in the community to work this out, it's just that will take forever, and we will wind up with similar numbers of happy/unhappy people at the end of it either way. --NickPenguin_(contribs) 23:59, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

I have to agree with Nick. I am really close to forgetting about redesigning the main page and trying to get some piecemeal advances instead.--

88wolfmaster (talk) 08:29, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

I have to regretfully agree with Nick. For myself, I like the tabs (the encyclopaedia/the community) on someone's (my extremely bad memory), and overall I favor dudeman...'s. IceUnshattered (talk) 15:06, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

That's Wikipedia:2008 main page redesign proposal/RichardF2. :-) RichardF (talk) 19:38, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

Well My are mine thrown out? HereFord 15:29, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

Of course not, the list is not set in stone, it's just my first attempt. I'll add anyone to the list if they feel their design is a good candidate to be chosen, or if it makes a strong aesthetic/functional contribution. --NickPenguin_(contribs) 23:17, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

"Then perhaps we should relabel this the 2012 main page redesign. It's not that I don't have faith in the community to work this out, it's just that will take forever" Has Jimbo died and made you boss? Your logic seems to be, "either this is going to take years to complete, or I, NickPenguin, shall have to narrow it down and force everyone to select from the options I like." I agree this process will take forever, but I personally favour "forever" to a dictatorial change.

And why remove incomplete or poor designs anyway? There has been no consensus for a "competition" to decide this, so as I and others (e.g. User:Eitch have said before, we shouldn't be focusing on "Design A versus Design B versus Design C etc", we should be taking each design and taking it's individual qualities and discussing that. I mean, what about those users who have good ideas but either aren't skilled at programming enough to make their design "work" or don't have the time to design it? Furthermore, the designs that people have done aren't necessarily a fair representation of the community. Most people that have come to this talk page haven't made a design, so it can't be guaranteed that our views are represented in the new design. Finally, the designs themselves as they stand might have very good reasons to not be used, e.g. they are perennial proposals to change the main page in some way but usually it has some problem, yet these suggestions keep coming up. Sorry Nick, but this is not the way to go about deciding whether the main page should be changed. Deamon138 (talk) 01:55, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

I disagree with your characterization. My main drive is that this proposal progressed to the point where we got some very good ideas and examples, and then everything stopped, because there is no organization, no one is sure how to move forward. If this is the wrong way (and I don't think that's true, I'm giving suggestions, not assigning decisions down the barrel of a gun), feel free to suggest the right way, or even better, implement it and let the community decide. --NickPenguin_(contribs) 11:33, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

Well you've been bold and made an attempt at getting some progress which is very noble and I can't argue with that. But I still disagree that the way you've suggested is the right way. Either all of us submit our own shortlists and use those to narrow it down (which would be the most horrendous vote ever as if everyone suggested their fave ten, we'd still get 500 suggestions with lots of repetitions) or we use your design which would very unconsensuslike. Either using yours, or using 50 similar shortlists won't work, not to mention the reasons I gave in my last comment above. And I have made my own suggestion it that comment and in other places (most likely archived now). We (the community) should be making some kind of survey with each individual aspect desired by an editor being part of a question on that survey. Therefore all qualities that a new design might have get fairly judged and not be judged against because they are part of some complete design that someone has done and people don't like most of it though they do like that particular part of it. Deamon138 (talk) 19:24, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

Ok, that sounds good. --NickPenguin_(contribs) 02:32, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

• As I said above, The 3 options seem to be: 1) Complete overhaul (better handled by professionals) 2) a few minor tweaks to the current design (everyone will need to come to agreement/consensus on a few/dozen points, handled element by element), or 3) leaving it as it is. Option 2, if it goes as smoothly as last time (the way it's currently heading), will take about 2 months and leave everyone involved stressed out.
• The only 2 tweaks I've personally liked so far, are the dates added to "In the news" (e.g.) and the brief introductory paragraph that a few of them incorporate (e.g.). I'd be happy to see those added, and an overhaul of the top banner and links (everything above the TFA and ITN); conversely, I'd be unhappy if anything below that was changed to any of the current drafts. -- Quiddity (talk) 18:16, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

Whether tweaks, minor or major redesign, I agree that an overhaul of the links is way overdue. Many are redundant with different names (link text) and different tool tips. It seems as though some Intelligent designer has been here, making an effective labyrinth of linking with the intention of making the user forget what it was s/he was looking for in the first place. And it works. I keep getting lost. But as with the Intelligent Design discussions, it's not been designed, it's just evolved. --Hordaland (talk) 18:50, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

I do like those dates next to "In the news", that's a nice touch! Deamon138 (talk) 21:47, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

Including more than one featured article

I have noticed a few proposals including more than one featured article. However, I know that User:Raul654, our featured article director, has objected to this idea in the past (I believe his comments are still in the archives of Wikipedia talk:Today's featured article/requests), so what makes you guys think he will go along this time? If he is not in agreement (and you know how he is with the TFA process), I highly doubt this proposal will fly. Thanks. Zzyzx11 (Talk) 15:24, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

The myth: Consensus. The reality: Oligarchy. RichardF (talk) 02:19, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

Raul isnt a god he's just another editor, yes he's taken on a horrid job that never satisfis everyone. He's also a member of the community and I think while he discourages more than one TFA if there is community consensus for it to change then Raul would abide but that consensus. Gnangarra 23:58, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

DYK, new articles vs GA's

Looking through the various designs, and reading the discussion two things I noticed;

• there is a group of editor who would prefer for not having a DYK.
• a group that say GA should have some presence on the main page.

Personally I like the DYK format and we do get many interesting links, I'm not supportive the GA process and found it rather inconsistent to point where I no longer bother with putting articles to GA. Thinking about the two areas maybe we consider DYK taking hooks from recently promoted GA's rather than the newly created articles. The benefits of this is that it encourages editors to expand articles with appropriate sourcing etc, it gives the GA process an added value within community and DYK becomes quality over quantity process. Gnangarra 12:11, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

GA has improved alot over the last year. The problem with using exclusively new articles or expanded stubs for DYK is they are often really quite obscure. Virtually none of mine get much substantial addition of content while there. So, erm, agree with this. Cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 13:02, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

I like this idea a lot, Gnagarra. One of the good points is that it further articulates that Wikipedia does have a peer-review process, that articles are reviewed, criticised, etc from within the community. I've contributed to a number of DYKs over my tenure here and I have to admit that they probably only appeal to me and the small group of editors with whom I frequently colloborate. However, the DYK section does indicate the vastness of en-Wikis knowledge. Hmm...can we have both? Lazulilasher (talk) 22:56, 27 July 2008 (UTC)

I would like to see DYK divided into 2 sections, one focusing on new articles and another focusing on recently promoted GAs, as I think they both present a desirable image of the project. Lazulilasher (talk) 23:01, 27 July 2008 (UTC)

They needn't be separate - the heading of the section could be Wikipedia's newest and newly improved articles. or somesuch. Cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 04:40, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

Hm...I was thinking of one box with two headings, i.e. Newest and Newly improved. However, I like your suggestion better. I like it a lot, in fact. I especially like that it further reinforces that we have processes, something which many first-time visitors are unaware. It also as an added incentive to produce articles of GA quality. Again, great proposal IMO. Lazulilasher (talk) 15:48, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

I also think it would be beneficial to have a link to WP:GAN or some such. From my own experience, knowing that my edits could be peer-reviewed and that I could easily find collaborators on a project was a huge motivator to increase my involvement. Lazulilasher (talk) 15:52, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

I wouldn't mind seeing GAs featured on the main page, but the DYK box generates a lot of interest (often as many or more clicks than the featured article box over the course of a day) and spurs the creation of a lot of new content. I'd be very opposed to anything that removed DYK, and critical of any redesign that puts ITN, DYK, or OTD in a less prominent position, as I think each of those sections generates more traffic on average than the FA box. (See User:Ragesoss/Main page stats for some limited statistics.)--ragesoss (talk) 01:21, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

Very interesting. I hadn't seen those statistics before. Lazulilasher (talk) 02:47, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

Official statement of progression

I believe we have progressed far enough to begin developing a timeline on how we are going to get from proposal to release. I'm not saying we should cap new entries, I'm saying that we need to determine a date and method of how this should happen. We currently have 65 entries, if we continue to climb at this dismal rate it would simply be (more) unfeasible to use any form of popular consensus in a preliminary elimination: people can't effectively look over 65 candidates, so we may end up forming or electing an committee or Main Page arbitration committee to achieve this. I believe the decision on how this is to progress can only be made official by administrators and the arbitration committee since they are the only ones who have privileged access to the Main Page and otherwise. ChyranandChloe (talk) 02:50, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

I don't mean to sound too critical, but admins and arbitration committee have nothing to do with the main page design. Their jobs are to handle problematic users or content dispute. I don't think we are experiencing any incivility here, but merely a slow progress. -- Taku (talk) 04:51, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

I never stated that we were experiencing incivility — and it would be naive to state that administrators or arbitrators do not hold an force in an main page redesign. When the initial proposal was made there was no timeline, no specific plan, and in a where no where to go after the brainstorming is complete. I'm not proposing to forfeit all control to arbitration. I'm proposing that we need to know how to to progress — and in a way I am also asking for the administrators and possibly (if necessary) arbitrators lead the way. ChyranandChloe (talk) 19:43, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

Arbitration has and will have nothing to do with this redesign. Please reread Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee if that is at all unclear. -- Quiddity (talk) 21:17, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

You are right Quiddity, however, I would prefer to see the administrators or whoever began the proposal to at least show how we are going to progress. In about two months, perhaps, when it's died down, they'll reopen it and look at the possibilities. Though with the ambiguity, it wouldn't be unusual to see other results. ChyranandChloe (talk) 02:35, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

We need data to base redesign decisions on

I'm a web developer for Viacom and I'd like to share a little about how our site design process works (since we do site redesigns all the time). Before we even start to talk about styling and layout issues, we look at lots of data — clickmaps, traffic patterns, survey info, usability testing info, etc. We also take a good look at our competition and the trends and innovations elsewhere on the net. It doesn't look like Wikipedia is undertaking either of those critical steps. I guess that's why it's not surprising that no one is seriously proposing any major changes to the site layout. Most of the designs I've seen seem to just be rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. So this brings me to my first question. Would anyone object to me temporarily setting up the home page in Google Analytics so that we can at least get a clickmap? Even if we just had 1 weeks worth of data, I think it would go a long way to helping us know (and not just guess) which parts of the current design are actually useful to visitors. Kaldari (talk) 15:08, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

You have my full authorization to proceed! That and a quarter... ;-) RichardF (talk)

There's some info about how much the links are used here. Mr.Z-man 20:31, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

And some complementary info about the dynamic content here.--ragesoss (talk) 01:24, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

Those are useful, but they are neither comprehensive nor easily parsable (I can't make heads or tails of half of it). A clickmap would let everyone see in a few seconds which parts of the home page are popular and which aren't. Kaldari (talk) 20:27, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

That's a very good idea. We also need to have more of a think about what our start page is for... perhaps coming up with a set of aims and objectives for what we want the redesign to achieve. Personally, I'm a fan of the suggestions which place a big fat wikipedia banner at the top with a brief explanation of the wikipedia project and a nice big search bar. At the moment the start page is too cluttered. Google and Apple have really shown that simple designs are the most effective. Saluton (talk) 23:24, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

I think our main page has quite a different purpose from the Google and Apple websites. Google and Apple homepages are about enabling users to find what they want, and it assumes they know what they want. Wikipedia's homepage adds to that a menu of suggested content to pique readers' interest. A successful example of a similarly cluttered design is Yahoo! (the #1 site according to Alexa). It's clear that many Internet users do like clutter. Maybe we could offer something like Google's customizable homepage. The default, though, should probably remain something closer to Yahoo! than Google.--ragesoss (talk) 01:36, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

To Kaldari: Good thoughts, good proposal. But I'm not sure that one should give so much weight to current clicking patterns. I've been here a year, and I still can't find what I want from the main page. Redundant links to the same places abound, but sometimes with different names and often with different tool tips. Many of the clicks you'll register will be "wrong number"; that's why so many people create their own indexes in their own space. What I want from a new main page is a clean-up of that jungle. Thanks. --Hordaland (talk) 21:45, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

In an effort to diversify, a lot of us have conducted our own independent market research — whether we consciously knew it or not. Wikipedia is not a professional institution, nor does it strive to be one; instead we depend on the eventualism that many users developing many ideas and effectively leeching off each other can produce something worth while. If you quickly skim over the entries, there are many duplicates with minor variations and arrangements. Kaldari, we would appreciate any contribution; however one purpose of creating a new main page is that we could develop new habits, preferably healthy ones. If you want to track the traffic here's an in house tool Wikipedia article traffic statistics. ChyranandChloe (talk) 03:05, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

What links are there on the Main Page are redundant Hordaland? Sorry but I don't use it a whole lot so I haven't had any problems like that. Any examples? Deamon138 (talk) 21:50, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

Mostly, but not only, duplicates in left panel and main page:

• "About Wikipedia" (Tool tip: Find out about Wikipedia) and "Overview" take you to Wikipedia:About
• "Current events" and "More current events", with different tool tips, take you same place
• "Wikinews", twice
• "Community portal", twice, different tool tips
• "Help", ditto
• "Featured content", ditto
• "Contents", ditto

That sort of thing. Admittedly my irritation comes, also, of non-intuitive and apparently overlapping titles; click on "Editing" and you get a tab called "Front page" which is not about what anyone would call the front page, but you do get to click on "Editing" again from there. Perhaps the section "Other areas of Wikipedia" should first explain the items found in the left panel, in order, then other areas. (I am aware that my complaints may involve the content of the linked-to pages, as well as their titles.)

In this whole endless debate, one of the basic unanswered questions is: "For whom is the Main Page?" Is it for users of the encyclopedia, experienced editors or people who might like to start editing. Sorting the million (or so) ambiguous and duplicated links according to whom they are for, might be a starting point. --Hordaland (talk) 23:47, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

Ah yes, I see now. Never noticed all those before! Thanks for the list. I don't mind the odd one or two being duplicated or the main page (e.g. "help"), but most are silly. As for the "Front Page" thing, I think that is just the front page of the Editing tutorial, hence that name. That one doesn't bother me tbh. I think the Main Page is primarily for new users, then current editors of articles, then current editors looking for proposals and discussions etc. I'm not saying it should solely be for new users, but any new design should be primarily for them to gain access to parts of the project that would interest them. Deamon138 (talk) 01:08, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

Google Analytics is prohibited per the Foundation Privacy Policy (because it gives traffic and IP data to Google). Other attempts to use Analytics have been discussed and rejected on the Foundation mailing list foundation-l. Dragons flight (talk) 20:44, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

Obviously, though, Google Analyics is not the only way to generate a clickmap. The point is that seeing one would be pretty useful, regardless of how it's generated.

Idea: Redlink(s) on the main page

An interesting possible addition to the main page would be a section devoted to nonexistent articles (in particular, either selections from the "Wikipedia:Most wanted articles", or newly linked redlinks referenced in existing articles). A recent study of the growth patterns of Wikipedia (see this summary) suggests that redlinks spur the creation of new articles, and that the vast majority of the time, the user who starts a new article that is already redlinked in an existing article is not the same one who added the redlink. (This might work best if the page was first created as a blank page and manually colored red on the main page, so that new users and anons could participate.) Making the collaborative participatory nature of Wikipedia more prominent on the main page would be a nice change of pace.--ragesoss (talk) 23:35, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

Clearly, the idea makes sense, given the study you mentioned and, in fact, the nature of Wikipedia in general. The question, however, is whether or not the main page is a place for finished products -- a place to show off our accomplishment-- or for enticing visitors to become Wikipedia contributors. This has to be answered, or I can't tell if your idea is such a good idea. -- Taku (talk) 05:19, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

Whether or not we include redlinks, I think it could be good to explain clearly on the front page how to help, with some sort of prominent link. Right now we have a link to a page that shows how to edit, but this isn't exactly what I'm thinking of. When I first started contributing to Wikipedia, it was because I was bored and wanted to kill a bit of time. I figured I could somehow be useful, but didn't know where to start. The community portal is kind of overwhelming and overkill, but if we had something along the lines of a spiffed-up Wikipedia:Contributing to Wikipedia linked from the main page, maybe we would get more visitors realizing what sort of things they could contribute to the site. Calliopejen1 (talk) 21:07, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

I do so agree that it needs to be made easier to get started. This is along the same lines as my comments (above or below or wherever it is) about the link-jungle on the front page. It would be good if there were one primary link to whichever page one really needs for the first basics. That page will be full of links, of course, but it should be easier to find one's way back to where one came from. I can't be the only one who gets lost in the linkage.

Accomplishing what's needed doesn't mean, I believe, aiming the main page primarily at the newbie! The details needn't be on the main page. Just give us one good, clear starting place, not so many that it's confusing. --Hordaland (talk) 00:05, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

portal icons

hi, I recall that last main page redesign there was consensus to not include portal icons (like in the current Czech wikipedia). currently the portal links on the English wikipedia main page are dull and uninteresting.. whereas with the little icons, it makes me want to click there. This is, afterall, what I thought the main page was for: opening the door to the rest of the encyclopedia. I'd prefer the door to be less bland.. and portal icons seem a step in the right direction. 82.6.96.66 (talk) 12:15, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

I've noticed that, too. I occasionally edit fr-wiki and am always impressed with their icons. It makes it look more smooth. On the other hand, I often browse en-wiki on my Blackberry and the images can slow down load time. Lazulilasher (talk) 15:45, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

Oui, oui. I don't use my cell phone to browse the Wiki, so I think that portal icons might be nice. IceUnshattered (talk) 15:01, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

Agreed. Realistically, the cell phone editors are a minority...but I like to use it on long trips. Lazulilasher (talk) 02:13, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

You could use CSS media types to hide icons for mobiles, perhaps... @media handheld { foo: bar; } or <style type="text/css" media="handheld"> --Dave the Rave (DTR)talk 15:55, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

Objections to icons

I (and others) think that the various available (legal-licence-wise) icons, especially the ones suggested/in-use, are problematic for a few reasons:

• aesthetically very unprofessional, 'cartooney', childish, and cutesy
• poor representations for their respective topics
• need to be large - The Czech Main page example has them so small as to be indiscernible ( is meant to represent all of technology?). Even the large ones used in the Portal:Contents' headers are hard to decipher, unless you already know what they are, from having seen larger examples.

For these (and probably more) reasons, they are a divisive idea to include in any draft. (There have been a few unanswered requests for a new set of more professional, perhaps greyscale, freely licenced icons. If that were to happen, it might address any or all of the objections.) -- Quiddity (talk) 04:58, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

Agreed! I'd like to see the 'featured' star on any featured content (incl. images, lists if any...), because you see it again when at a featured article and in the language list for featured articles in other languages. A valuable, well-known icon by anyone's 2nd or 3rd visit. Most of the ones in the sister projects box (except Wikisource - what's that, icebergs?) are good. Otherwise they are just clutter, maybe clickable, maybe not, who's to know. --Hordaland (talk) 18:38, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

Some of the Oxygen icons might be appropriate: see preview page here for download. IIRC they're available as CC-BY-SA 3.0. --Dave the Rave (DTR)talk 15:55, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

Signal to noise ratio

The reason this discussion has stalled is that the signal-to-noise ratio is unbearable. 90% of the designs are worthless and 90% of the discussion is by people who don't know anything about website design. I'm not sure design by committee is such a good idea. Wouldn't it be better to come up with a list of goals for the design first and then take those goals to some professional web designers and see what they can mock-up for us to discuss? Kaldari (talk) 22:51, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

i certainly don't know much about website design.. but i agree that we need some goals. why are we trying to redesign the main page in the first place? 131.111.24.187 (talk) 13:16, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

See Talk:Main Page/Archive 124#Redesign? for the thread that instigated this.

(imho) A large part of it seems to stem from the accumulation of editors who were frustrated that their change-suggestions were consistently rejected by the experienced maintainers at Talk:Main Page. (See, perennial/constant "Add featured lists please!", "add featured portals/users/blanks!", "get rid of [this/that] section please!" suggestions there).

Because of this starting point, and because some editors liked the idea of calling [whatever it is we're doing here] a "competition", there has been a lot of confusion as to the intent/purpose/objective of this page.

I think Kaldari's idea is exactly what is needed, but I'm not sure that the people who started this page will want to give that control away...

The 3 options seem to be: 1) Complete overhaul (better handled by professionals) 2) a few minor tweaks to the current design (everyone will need to come to agreement/consensus on a few dozen points, handled element by element), or 3) leaving it as it is. Option 2, if it goes as smoothly as last time (the way it's heading), will take about 2 months and leave everyone involved stressed out. -- Quiddity (talk) 05:43, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

I'm for leaving it as it is, except maybe add a link to the Wikipedia:Main Page alternatives, where new designs can be presented. If a new design ever becomes popular enough (the traffic of each design can be checked using http://stats.grok.se/ ), it could be proposed as the replacement for the Main Page at that time. The Transhumanist 02:31, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Target to unfamiliar users

We should also avoid choosing designs based on what we would like to see on the Main Page, and instead choose based on what we think will bring the greatest amount of positive results into Wikipedia (such as new registered users, productive community involvement, etc.) — Twas Now ( talk • contribs • e-mail ) 23:14, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

This is a fair point. Deamon138 (talk) 23:35, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

The people discussing this are generally people who already know how to navigate Wikipedia comfortably. The Main Page shouldn't be designed for our comfort, because we can get around. — Twas Now ( talk • contribs • e-mail ) 01:31, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

Elements

Ok, I think there is some support for the element-by-element approach to the redesign. But before we go any further, we need to decide what elements we're actually thinking about. So let's make a list. If you can think of an element that's in one or more of the designs or that you think should be discussed, list it below. Try and avoid duplicates - reword an existing element if that would avoid listing a very similar one. Elements can be very specific, very general, or anything in between. Once we've actually got a list of the elements we're thinking about, we can start working out which ones are mutually exclusive and selecting one; which ones are boolean and determining consensus for or against; and then work on whatever else we need to decide to get some workable designs. Happy‑melon 21:34, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

Technical

• Supporting 640x480 resolution
• Two sections: Encyclopedia & project/community
• Tabs
• Move Main Page to different namespace
• Overhauling link jungle (unclear ones & duplicates)
• Using Show/Hide as per French main page

Page sections

• Including Today's Features Article
• Expanding Today's Features Article
• Including In The News
• Expanding In The News
• Including On This Day
• Expanding On This Day
• Including Did You Know?
• Expanding Did You Know?
• Including Today's Featured Portal
• Including Featured List
• Including Featured Sound
• Including Featured Topic
• Including Featured Editor
• Including Today's Quote
• Including The Signport
• Including an intro/explanation of Wikipedia
• Including a searchbox in the page content
• Having a section for language links in addition to the sidebar

Aesthetics

• Two or three column view
• Using portal icons
• Update portal section to attract traffic
• Changing the color scheme
• Change font or font size

Boldness, I like it! Anyway, perhaps we could discuss the elements we do/don't want to include on the main page (featured this, featured that, did you know etc), and then after afterwards have a look at the elements for style/graphics/size? Deamon138 (talk) 21:55, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

By the way, the Main Page features critiques table is set up just for this occasion. RichardF (talk) 22:01, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

thats more a map of opinion, its not got any numbers to show whats really worth consideration and what should be ignored. Gnangarra 00:05, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

Should also add TGA article in the current TFA format' or TGA in the current DYK format to this list. I think there been a fair amount of suggestion put up that various individual ideas should be considered at which time the current suggestion can be archived and new ones developed along the lines of community opinion. Gnangarra 00:05, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

• I tried to go through all the submissions again and improve the features list. Does it pretty much summarize all of the submissions/ideas now? If so, then I think we can work on turning this into an adequate (read: quick) survey and think about getting it advertised on the main page. --NickPenguin_(contribs) 15:36, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

• I don't know about "quick" but yeah I think this is a good summary so far. I would say now that the elements have been split into three sections, that we go through it in the order of Technical, Page sections, Aesthetics (I didn't think about "technical" elements in my last comment) since that is the order of importance and limitations (certain technical decisions will probably limit the page sections and aesthetics that we can have). Deamon138 (talk) 16:20, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

Technical: 640x480 resolution is obsolete, so few people use it that it is not even listed on W3C's Global Web Stats and would be unlikely to turn up on such a content rich environment such as Wikipedia. I suggest that we optimize it for 1024x (44%) and 1280x (29%) while remaining compatible with 800x (6.5%). For browser compatibility, many of our users utilize Firefox (our tools such as TW and WikiEd are optimized for it), while many of our readers would likely utilize IE; Safari should not be too great of a concern since its webkit rendering engine is highly flexible. Browser Market Share; I got some notes in the documentation of my entry that might be of use. ChyranandChloe (talk) 01:30, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

Firstly, I think at the moment we are just suggesting what elements we should consider, and then we will try and find consensus for and against each element.

With regards to your opinion on 640x480 resolution, that link you provided basically shows that the tenth highest used resolution (according to that site) has 1.04% of the share, but that still suggests that 640x480 and lower resolutions could be as much as 1.03% of the population. I would be uneasy about alienating maybe 1% of our users by getting rid of 640x480 support. 1% of web users is an awful lot of people.

Also, you shouldn't be too hasty generalizing the browsers. Even just with Firefox, there are things that work on FF3 but not on FF2 (and vice versa). For instance, User:Haha169's bouncing ball image on his userpage doesn't work on FF2 but does on 3. Now it's unlikely that we are going to put said image on our Main Page, but I assure you, that image is just the tip of the iceberg over all the browsers. Deamon138 (talk) 20:02, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

• I have created a rough idea of what a survey might look like. Please improve that page as much as needed. It would be really helpful if we used the existing proposals as examples for the survey. --NickPenguin_(contribs) 01:39, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Yes, you are correct, browser compatibility is the tip of the ice berg — I simply place a (brief) sentence so that it was at least considered. 640x480 displays for computers are rarely supported, we may be interested in the portable device market share, however this should not impede on our design: 640x is half the size of 1280x making columns and many of our features extremely undesirable; for those who wish to support it, it should be within a design of its own. I hope this clarifies. ChyranandChloe (talk) 02:38, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Personally I'm a little uneasy about this, but I'll see what other users think in this survey, and hold my judgement till then (I might be doing that on a fair few of these questions methinks!). Deamon138 (talk) 13:54, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Nick, I've made a few little alterations myself to it. It looks pretty damn good what you've done. I was just wondering: with sections where it is "Including X" and "Expanding same X" would it not make sense if we add these together into one section, and then have a more multiple choice feel to it e.g. answers could be Oppose, Less, Same or More (probably best if someone else makes up the bolded names for those, my four options sound rubbish, there must be better names for them!). Anyway, I'm talk about sections like:

• Including Welcome banner and Expanding Welcome banner
• Including Today's Features Article and Expanding Today's Features Article
• Including In The News and Expanding In The News
• Including On This Day and Expanding On This Day
• Including Did You Know? and Expanding Did You Know?

So for instance we could "merge" the subsections Including On This Day and Expanding On This Day into just "On This Day", and then have more than just support and oppose options for people to choose. Sorry if what I'm suggesting isn't clear. Imo, if that gets done, this survey could be good to go! Perhaps we could put it at Wikipedia_talk:2008_main_page_redesign_proposal/Survey or similar when it's ready, and provide a link here and in several other places (e.g. Village Pump)? Deamon138 (talk) 13:54, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Sounds good, I made those changes. Wikipedia talk:2008 main page redesign proposal/Survey is a good spot for the survey, maybe later on today I'll do a quick copy paste and the make a temporary redirect from my temp page. --NickPenguin_(contribs) 14:17, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Made a few more small alterations as you may have noticed. Can't see any other flaws, so unless another user pipes up soon, I reckon we can let the "wider wiki world" (lol) know about this survey. Maybe sometime tomorrow? By tomorrow I mean in Wikitime, since for all I know, tomorrow for you might mean in 1 hour (it may be like 11pm where you are). Or is tomorrow too soon to start getting some input? Deamon138 (talk) 15:50, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Ok, I've made the move to Wikipedia talk:2008 main page redesign proposal/Survey. How do we go about getting a Watchlist or site wide notification going? --NickPenguin_(contribs) 23:34, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

I might be wrong, but I believe here might be the place? As soon as we find out whether we get a message on our Watchlists or not, I would also like to add a notification on this page (maybe at the top?), the Village Pump, Talk:Main Page, and at that discussion at the Village Pump about moving the Main Page to a Portal (since it's one of the options in the survey). The reason for multiple notifications would be that people don't always read the notifications in their Watchlists I believe. Can anyone think of anywhere else applicable this might need to be notified? Deamon138 (talk) 23:45, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

This is a comment to keep this section from being archived. Deamon138 (talk) 15:17, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

Crazy thought

Would it be possible to remove the standard left column from the main page? In many ways it's redundant to the content that is on the page itself. It would give us a lot more width to design, and it would let us organize the links in a more coherent and design-y way. (As well as making the search box more prominent and grouping it with other ways to find articles.) Calliopejen1 (talk) 20:59, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

In my opinion, I like the consistent left-column throughout the project. Lazulilasher (talk) 14:36, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

But then again, I do like what you're saying about the search box. It would make it easier for mobile users, as well. Lazulilasher (talk) 14:37, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Keeping a consistent site design (so as not to confuse ANY users) has been mentioned many times.

Mobile users can use any of the methods given at Wikipedia:Mobile access already. -- Quiddity 02:57, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

I don't think this would confuse anyone. wikipedia.org has a totally different design (that's actually what people are more likely to see than en.wikipedia.org), and that hasn't confused anyone as far as I know. Calliopejen1 (talk) 20:57, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

That's a good point. It does have a totally different design. I didn't think about that, I usually go straight to my user page. Lazulilasher (talk) 23:45, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

That's true. Making the search box more prominent is a reasonable proposal. Lazulilasher (talk) 14:42, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

Oh, I tried to do that during the last redesign, see User:Quiddity/highlight search box (copied from WP:VPR archive). No consensus. -- Quiddity 17:35, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

Summaries should be written under each section to better explain each proposal. I am still stumped about what "Two sections: Encyclopedia & project/community" means. — Twas Now ( talk • contribs • e-mail ) 22:52, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

Sandbox ! ! !

Why can't I find a link to the common Sandbox prominently (or at all) on the Main Page? We want people to try out editing, right? We don't want them experimenting in established articles, right? Let's give 'em a link to the Sandbox! Thanks. --Hordaland (talk) 10:26, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

Good idea! Hold onto this idea, I reckon once we've done the survey above (whenever we can get that on the watchlist, nobody seems to want to reply), we'll probably be going over precisely what links to include I reckon. Whatever happens, this is a good idea! Deamon138 (talk) 22:21, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

Yeah good idea. I've put a link in the "other areas of Wikipedia" section of my proposals. (1 and 2) Scottydude _review 00:12, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

Proposed versions

Could someone please create a list to the user sandbox pages for all the proposed versions? That way we can take a look at the proposals and judge them first-hand. Thanks! SharkD (talk) 03:34, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

Well they're all listed on the page related to this talk page. Wikipedia:2008 main page redesign proposal Scottydude _review 00:03, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

Start?

Well, we've started to have people make comments on the survey, but a decision about the Watchlist still hasn't come back yet. To be honest, I thought they would be quicker than that. Never mind. What say we post the latest developments (i.e. the creation of this survey) onto places like the Village Pump now, rather than wait for the a decision about the Watchlist to come back first? Deamon138 (talk) 23:39, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

Actually, I already put notices on the Village pump (technical and proposal pages), along with Talk:Main_Page. Still waiting on the watchlist notice, there seems to be some hesitation on the idea of using it, and a distinct lack of boldness. --NickPenguin_(contribs) 00:45, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

Ah, I see! Didn't realise. Okay thanks for going ahead and doing that. Deamon138 (talk) 01:22, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

I'm coming over from the watchlist notification page to comment. I think it should receive a WNotefication, but not in its current form. I find it hard to navigate the page and find the ones I like without looking at all of them. Sometimes I can't easily see the difference compared to the current one, or another proposal. I think a one sentence description describing the changes made by each proposal should be included with each. Maybe it would list which sections are included,or removed or added. Not sure. My preference would be for a minimalist page, so I would find it useful if instead of that type being lumped under significantly different, it could be included in a section titled "Minimalist" or something. Maybe minimalist isn't a valid section, but there should be something better than "Tweaks", "Based on", etc. When the notification goes up, people should find it easy to zero in on the one they want and vote for it. Maybe I could see a "Minimalist" section and quickly spot one that includes FA, FP, DYK but not On this day and Wikipedia languages (or whatever). glance at the mockup, and then support it. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 02:26, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

version of design

Can keep all version of design on main page to have all people to see every nice design. RushdimIDlike (talk) 16:14, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

I second that, a unilateral removal of all previous entries does not reflect consensus (WP:CON, we keep the version before the edit), and leads to a tremendous loss of potential design improvements. If you want, split the project page into two, the shortlist and the full list. ChyranandChloe (talk) 02:41, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

Well, I did make a history link to the last version with all the submissions. I even did it in the second sentence of the proposal page. --NickPenguin_(contribs) 00:22, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

Hi, just received you message[1], and, since I am not an expert of Information Technology, I forthwith referred this good project to our Filipino Wikipedia editors' community Wikipedia talk:Tambayan Philippines[2] There are lots of IT experts there from Ateneo de Manila and other colleges. Cheers.--Florentino floro (talk) 08:59, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

New icon

Looks better at this res

If anyone needs it, I made a featured picture icon. If you want to improve it, please do... Right now it doesn't look good at really low size. ≈ MindstormsKid 15:55, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

Not all FPs are photographs... :D Happy‑melon 16:01, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

^_^ ≈ MindstormsKid 17:24, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

Handheld and small screen issues

Just a quick note -- I would recommend considering display on small screens and handheld devices when updating the main page design.

Browsers on various mobile devices are getting better and more popular, and there's also some more popularity these days for sub-notebook computers which have narrower screens than you often see on full-size computers.

The current main page design has a lot of table-based layout components, some of which look very bad on small screens -- try loading the handheld style and making your window smallish and you'll probably see the "Welcome to Wikipedia" box start scrolling off the side of the page... on some mobile browsers this text actually just breaks into many lines, filling up a page or two before you see any content.

Definitely give a shot at keeping the view scalable and friendly to all! :) --brion (talk) 20:33, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

The Lord has spoken! But I would fully agree: I watched a friend searching wiktionary on an iPhone this morning, and it was not a pretty sight :D. I'm sure our front page is not a lot better. Happy‑melon 21:11, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

What is the most common minimum resolution right now in the handheld and subnotebook market right now? --NickPenguin_(contribs) 22:12, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

There is a wonderful mobile Wikipedia, which does away with all of the "trimmings". Have a look! The articles may seem short, but they are divided into subpages (click [Continue...] to pass to the next page). Wikipedia:Mobile access has other mobile solutions. I think rather than compromise design to accommodate mobile users, we should promote awareness of these mobile options. — Twas Now ( talk • contribs • e-mail ) 02:05, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

It seems to me that you're either starting from the wrong principle or missing the point. Just to be clear, I'm a regular at Talk:Main Page and encourage people who complain about mobile accessibility to use one of the main options available. And I'm definitely opposed to redesigning solely for the sake of accomodating these users. But if we are going to do a redesign, we should do it properly and not be half-hearted about it. Rather then starting off with the unproven premise that making the main page mobile friendly is going to compromise design, we should instead investigate if we can make the main page mobile friendly without significantly compromising design which I think is what Brion and others are saying (it definitely is what I am). And what is a compromise designed? IMHO it's when the page either becomes significantly larger (i.e. takes a lot longer to download) or uses excessive scripts or other complicated features which results in it failing in some browsers or taking significantly longer to compose. I.E. Loading times and compatibility! Definitely adding to the server load is irrelevant and making things more difficult for the redesign team shouldn't be of great consideration. Even if it comes down to having 2 designs, one which to some is worse but supports mobiles and one which is better to these people but doesn't support mobiles, there's nothing wrong with letting people decide whether the perceived tradeoff is worth it. This doesn't mean we should aim to supercede the existing options or that we shouldn't promote them. Nil Einne (talk) 10:24, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

Good point. If a slimmed-down version was presented alongside a larger version, then the community would be able to evaluate whether the price/performance trade off was worthwhile. Lazulilasher (talk) 17:54, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

I couldn't disagree more. Creating a page that works on all resolutions is an almost impossible request, will hamper any attempts to improve the design plus many modern mobile devices should render the page at a higher resolution, scale down and allow zooming making that screenshot completely and utterly misleading. Most modern popular websites are moving in the opposite direction and requiring a larger minimum resolution - see Yahoo or Amazon, for example. Even most commercial minibooks, with the exception of the Eee 700 range, are shipping with a decent resolution (e.g. the MSI Wind, Aspire One and the Eee 9xx series are all 1024x600). I will encourage anyone to use CSS instead of tables to improve accessibility though, and if that improves things as an indirect consequence even better. -Halo (talk) 00:22, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

Point : Wikipedia is primarily reference material. It is not at all uncommon to browse for reference material with a window that is not fullscreen.

In addition, many people feel that browsing the web wide-screen is uncomfortable because of long line lengths. It's not unusual to see people with wide screen monitors browsing with roughly 4:3 windows even if the browser is the only window open. Both those notebooks you linked as having "decent resolution" have only 600 vertical pixels.

finally, you say that "Creating a page that works on all resolutions is an almost impossible request", since html was originally designed to be completely independent of screen size, I'm curious as to when it lost this capability so completely that you would discourage people from even considering the issue. APL (talk) 05:24, 22 August 2008 (UTC)

Forgot to mention : People with bad eyesight will often crank up their font size, effectively causing most of the same problems as a low-rez screen. (Some browsers (Opera, for example) even allow you to crank of the scaling of the entire page, causing exactly the same problems as a low resolution display.) —Preceding unsigned comment added by APL (talk • contribs) 05:27, 22 August 2008 (UTC)

I've set up a MediaWiki:Handheld.css (also incidentally MediaWiki:Print.css) so additional handheld and print-specific style customizations for the site can be cleanly added. For a start I thew in some quick flattening of the table layout bits on the main page, as these rendered pretty poorly on small screens. This flattening is applied to all tables by Opera Mini's classic view, but apparently doesn't get applied in Opera desktop's handheld display mode, and I'm unsure about Opera Mobile. This should benefit other devices which support the handheld stylesheet but don't do their own flattening, as well.

It would still be ideal to avoid table layouts and consider generally flexible style layouts which "degrade gracefully" or naturally bump down from two columns to one column on small screens. Just to consider. :) --brion (talk) 03:36, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

See my blog post on the matter for sample images in Opera's small screen mode. --brion (talk) 03:55, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

Background color

The main page has a white background, but the redesign proposals are in the wikipedia namespace, which has a light blue background. This might not seem like a big deal, but it significantly changes the way the designs look (adding a border around the edges, or subtracting one, etc.) and makes it much harder to do a design. I'm dropping out of the competition for now, but best of luck to the other entrants. (Also, it might be nice if, for the iteration after this one, usability testing was conducted.) Tlogmer ( talk / contributions ) 22:01, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

I personally like a normal white background, such as the current background of the Main Page than any other colored background. -- RyRy (talk) 22:03, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

I also like the white background, but I'm not sure that we've discussed this issue. Maybe we ought to? Deamon138 (talk) 01:16, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

A tinted background imrpoves usability; I assume that's why content pages have an ever-so-slightly dimmed background. On the main page almost all the content is in coloured boxes so the background can be brighter. Pretzels^chatters 13:01, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

The background color has actually changed since the proposal began. Part of what I would call subconscious social engineering, we used to use a blue-green off-white (#F8FCFF) since (from my understating) pure white can be: irritating, was potentially unaesthetic, and could provoke some people to vandalize pages. We switch the main space back to pure white about around mid-August, but the Talk pages remain the same. ¶As an example, if you are using a bright LCD, look at the screen at an angle since: THE BACKGROUND OF THIS TEXT IS PURE WHITE. When I translated the pages from the Spanish WP and French WP in my proposal (there are several forks now, the survey used Mangler13's, which I think didn't do as good as a job), I had to reoptimize the code so that the background would match whatever we'd decide to use here in the English WP (...background:transparent;...). ¶I do not agree that a dimmed and tinted background can improves usability, in fact it can be quite the opposite: since some of our background colors are not websafe, which will cause older monitors to dither (creates a distracting cross-hatch pattern). I think this issue can be more relevant than 640x480 since web pages (although unaesthetic) are resizable. ChyranandChloe (talk) 01:41, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

Some common design issues

Now that we are working with a much smaller number of high quality designs, it is becoming easier to see the relative strengths and weaknesses. When I scroll down the list, I see a few minor problems that could be fixed in a few designs.

• Displaying widescreen PODs without horizontal scrolling at 800 x 600.
• Reducing or eliminating dead space between sections
• Keeping the font type and the font size consistent with other wikipedia pages
• Making section boxes line up at the top and bottom
• Making the color scheme and icon pictures easy to see and look good
• Making any "What is Wikipedia?" type sections useful but not visually distracting or overly long
• Page formatting should not leave one side of the page longer than the other
• Retaining visibility of all sections (all show/hide sections should be show by default)

If you've submitted a design, please check if yours has any of these issues, and if so, try to fix them. --NickPenguin_(contribs) 03:03, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

Survey results

After leaving it open for a week, new comments have slowed, and I think a general concensus has been reached for most items. Here is a summary of that I thought of it, available for discussion:

Support for a two column view, with some consideration to users with 640x480 resolution and mobile resolutions. Some support for keeping and modifying the welcome banner, along with some mixed support for including an "About Wikipedia" section. Some support for portal icons and color scheme changes, strong opposition to changing default font and font size.

The links should also be overhauled. Support for not including a second searchbox in the page content, and not having a section for language links in addition to the sidebar. General support for keeping Today's Features Article, In The News, On This Day, Did You Know? and Today's Featured Picture the same, or slightly less.

Moving the Main Page to different namespace such as Portal:Wikipedia has discussion ongoing.

General opposition to the following proposals: Two sections: Encyclopedia & project/community, Tabs, Using Show/Hide for sections, Including Today's Featured Portal, Including Featured List, Including Featured Sound, Including Featured Topic, Including Featured Editor, Including Today's Quote or Today's Motto, Including The Signpost, Having a section of undeveloped articles ("You can help!"), Remove left-most standard sidebar from main page, Centering text.

Now that the survey has given us some concrete advice about what to design for, we should discuss this further, and then start looking for designs that fit the bill. --NickPenguin_(contribs) 11:31, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

Wow, a step in the right direction, it makes me kind of sad that i have given up on a new improved main page. Well, at least I have my proposal while i wait.--88wolfmaster (talk) 03:47, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

My proposal has been updated to reflect the opinions stated in the survey. Best of all its fully functional and updates automatically because its based off of the current design, well sort of.--88wolfmaster (talk) 04:47, 22 August 2008 (UTC)

I've adjusted my proposal to meet all the criteria decided by the survey participants. There are some quite drastic changes from my last version so feedback would be much appreciated. =] Pretzels^chatters 12:55, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

I like Pretzels' design because it's more welcoming and gives more consideration to the needs of the user. Recent news is given more importance than the featured article, which is how it should be. Yes, lets have the incentives and rewards for those editors who like them, but lets get our priorities right! SilkTork *^YES! 10:12, 22 August 2008 (UTC)

Silk, I would disagree with you on that point. We are an encyclopedia, not a news portal, and our selections of our articles should be featured first. Doesn't need to be tied in to incentives/rewards, but I think that is probably the easiest way to avoid the main page featuring articles with embarrassing copy errors. Perhaps I missed that discussion. Lazulilasher (talk) 13:29, 22 August 2008 (UTC)

I think perhaps that that one single item should be widely surveyed: "We are an encyclopedia, not a news portal, and our selections of our articles should be featured first." Everyone seems to think that her/his opinion on that matter is, 'of course', the prevalent one. I'd really like to see a clear "vote" on that, made clear and easy for all contributors for perhaps 14 days. --Hordaland (talk) 14:07, 22 August 2008 (UTC)

Well, I don't think the first part ("We are an encyclopedia, not a news portal") needs to be surveyed, that seems self obvious, especially if you look in the top left corner (it doesn't say "the free news portal"), but the second part ("our selections of our articles should be featured first") might need to be. Deamon138 (talk) 18:58, 22 August 2008 (UTC)

It's interesting how much conversation has died. Don't forget that towards the end we'll need to take a larger survey, since the one conducted earlier only encompasses those still actively participating in the 2008 main page redesign proposal. I think we should conduct a second survey over Thanksgiving break and the final one over Christmas break since the holidays could free up a lot of potential participants. If I could, I'd like to quickly cast my position (I missed the survey): if show/hides are done right, it could be an extremely effective feature allowing users to hide content (after they're done delving through it) which would otherwise get in their way. It's especially useful in larger proposals. ChyranandChloe (talk) 23:14, 24 August 2008 (UTC)

I don't think we should have more and more surveys. Choosing each feature democratically is not an effective way to handle this, and could easily result in a disastrous amount of crap, particularly from a design point of view. This survey was just a quorum to get an idea of the general preferences. Many of those features have been argued fairly effectively one way or another (remove/expand/reduce/do nothing), and the results for these features should be accepted. Maybe the features that remain debatable can be put up to a new vote, but I think we should move ahead. Our next step should be to whittle down our potential candidates to 25 or so, and then hold a Wikipedia-wide preferential vote using a Condorcet method of voting (such as the Schulze method, which was used to elect Ting Chen to the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees in June 2008). — Twas Now ( talk • contribs • e-mail ) 02:17, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

I was thinking we should clear the proposal page, send a message to all the users that created proposals, and ask them to resubmit their proposals. The idea is that since we have some general guiding advice on features, editors should reflect/modify their designs, and if they think it would be broadly accepted by the community, they should submit them into a much smaller round two. --NickPenguin_(contribs) 03:05, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

Sounds like a decent enough idea to me.--88wolfmaster (talk) 03:58, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

Sounds fine to me too. I would say to Twas Now, that Wikipedia is not a vote, so we shouldn't decide this by voting really. Deamon138 (talk) 15:32, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

Agreed. Wikipedia is not a vote on what content is true/false or notable/non-notable, but as for what the main page will look like, I think every Wikipedian should have a say. There was a brief discussion earlier; once we have some final candidates, a watchlist notice would be put out to the whole of Wikipedia. Is there a reason why we should keep the voting private, to the handful of us who still keep tabs on this discussion? — Twas Now ( talk • contribs • e-mail ) 19:14, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

Of course, every Wikipedian should have a say, but everyone can have a say through commenting rather than voting, which would be best imo. Anyway, yeah we asked the Watchlist notice people about that, and they didn't seem to want one at this time, but maybe later on they will be okay about that. So no, no reason to keep it private, the next stage (whatever we agree that should be) should be broadcast to at least as many places as it was when the survey was started. Deamon138 (talk) 21:33, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

• Ok, I removed all the old entries from the proposal page and modified it a little bit. I find the submission process difficult to understand, but if other people can figure it out that's cool. Maybe someone can drop a line on the talk pages of the designers in the first round and get them to think about their proposals, this page looks pretty bare right now. --NickPenguin_(contribs) 03:14, 26 August 2008 (UTC)

Good job Nick. I've added my new proposal. Many thanks Pretzels^chatters 16:29, 26 August 2008 (UTC)

I am not appealing to a democratic process. The main page is the center piece of the English Wikipedia, and an edit there is felt throughout. For a page to be edited, it needs to fulfill consensus, and because of the impossibility to achieve near unanimity (when its not unanimous its reverted); it trickles down to arbitration. Similarly, arbitrators often conduct a survey to measure where consensus is centered: it's not a democracy, arbitrators get to decide, the survey is simply for their benefit. We already had a short list or were in progress of creating one; don't clear the project page, this leads to a unilateral loss of information. ChyranandChloe (talk) 02:41, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

A message definitely needs to be left with the designers. I'm on a wikibreak and was shocked to find my proposal had disappeared! Luckily I checked. Someone should create a simple template message and leave it on the talkpages of the designers. Scottydude _review 15:43, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

While I'm not so good at making templates, I'm good at learning (in other words I'll make one)... ≈ MindstormsKid 17:28, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

Hello, 2008 main page redesign proposal! Wikipedia:2008 main page redesign proposal was recently cleared of all design entries. You may want to re-enter your design(s). (You can see the old list of designs here). NOTE: A survey was conducted on what users wanted to see in the new main page, you can see the results here. ≈ MindstormsKid 17:59, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

Like it..? Add it with {{subst:Template:Main page redesign proposal notice|~~~~}}. Edit the template here. ≈ MindstormsKid 17:59, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

Yeah that'll do. Scottydude _review 18:09, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

I edited it a bit to link to this section so they can see the details at the top of this section on what the best ideas are to include. Deamon138 (talk) 18:53, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

How are we going to get it to everyone? A bot? ≈ MindstormsKid 19:13, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

No time for bots. I highlighted each username on the old proposal page, right clicked and searched google, nine times out of ten the user page was the first result. Only took about twenty minutes while I watched the democratic convention. --NickPenguin_(contribs) 02:19, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

I guess that works. Don't forget that a survey cannot substitute discussion in achieving consensus. In technical it missed websafe colors, and browser compatibility. In layout and aesthetics, it was well-covered, but remember that a lot of the elements depend on the design in whole. To move beyond the survey, I think we should organize similar entries into a single proposal and state that there are several versions of it. It's unlikely that we can achieve a consensus on any one design, so this can help bridge the gap between proposals. ChyranandChloe (talk) 01:57, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

The survey was by no means an attempt to be the end-all-be-all when it comes to a redesign. It is just a fairly well grounded starting point, to give designers some concrete general advice that they may or may not follow. Granted, if they ignore the advice, then I suspect the community at large will be less likely to vote for their proposal. --NickPenguin_(contribs) 18:07, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

Screenshots

After Pretzels added a screenshot of his redesign I think it might be a good idea for everyone (or at least anyone who'd like) to add a screenshot of their proposal by their name. I can see where some might disagree with this but I don't think it will clutter or create to many problems for us. This way it will be easy to quickly look at the pages and compare them. I'll go ahead and add mine, feel free to remove it if you'd like. Scottydude _review 00:21, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

That's a fantastic idea. It's sometimes difficult to remember which design is which, and we will likely be needing them for a community wide vote. --NickPenguin_(contribs) 02:42, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

Well this might prove to be a problem because both User:Pretzels and my own screenshot were removed in an automated removal of non-free images. They were removed because this page is not in the article space. I don't know if there is another way to categorize the images but they are technically an image of the Wikipedia layout which is copyrighted. I'm not sure how exactly right I am on that... Any ideas? If not we can just scratch the idea in general. Scottydude _review 04:20, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

(But I do think it's a good idea.) Scottydude _review 04:21, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

I've corrected the licensing (we have one specifically for WP pages, GFDL with logo copyright), restored the removed screenshots and uploaded those for all the other designs. Jennavecia ^(Talk) 15:00, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, scottydude, and thanks to Jennavecia for dealing with the licence. I posted my screenshot to demonstrate the background image, which is only available to me, but you're right - the proposals page looks a lot better now. Pretzels^chatters 15:30, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

Aha. Would it be helpful to anyone if I made a thumbnail grid at the top of the proposals page of all the designs? I think it would it more interesting and accessible for other Wikipedians to browse and comment. Pretzels^chatters 15:36, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

Please do, that'd be great. Jennavecia ^(Talk) 15:44, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

• I have updated the proposal homepage with Jennavecia's help, and there are changes to the layout and text to make it more accessible to "outsiders" wishing to comment. Do you think it is an improvement? Are there any new problems created by the change? Pretzels^chatters 12:42, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

Question

When will a new design be selected and implemented? Just curious... FeanorStar7 (talk) 08:28, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

2009? ;) iMatthew (talk) 09:54, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

The contest needs more attention from the community. I'll go post some notices on various noticeboards. Tell your friends, your brother, your neighbors and your mother (only if they are Wikipedian's) to come take a look and voice their opinions. Jennavecia ^(Talk) 15:03, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

It's not a contest, but it's reasonable to treat it as one. The redesign will take a while before it can be implemented, it started at the beginning of July, and there doesn't seem to be an end in sight. I would speculate around December. ChyranandChloe (talk) 03:23, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

Combination proposal

Well, I've created another proposal combining the ideas of 88wolfmaster's proposal, Pretzels' proposal and my own proposal. I did not seek any input from wolfmaster or pretzel but to be honest most of the design elements are their own. Becuase of this I'm not sure who to credit the design to. For now I will move the page from my userspace and call it "combined proposal" here. I'll put more comments on the design itself in the comments space on the project page. (Wikipedia:2008 main page redesign proposal/Combined proposal (Scottydude)) Scottydude _review 15:58, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

My widescreen monitor uses 1440 by 900, and there's a lot of whitespace under the In The News section, almost looks like there should be another section there. --NickPenguin_(contribs) 02:54, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

Request for Comment

Would it be a good idea to start a Request for Comment to get more community feedback? Pretzels^chatters 13:09, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

That's one good idea to get some attention to this page. Let's do that, and maybe we can think of one or two more. --NickPenguin_(contribs) 17:59, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

I posted notices to AN and VP a couple days ago, as well as a notice on the Community Portal. Jennavecia ^(Talk) 19:11, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

Help

I need some help with my proposal... The main concern with my proposal is a great one: The rigid margins combined with the variable content in the sections causes moving dead space and the occasional overlap. I'm wondering if someone could optimize the markup (to be more like the current mainpage). This would include making the TFA and DYK connected at the bottom/top respectively and the same for ITN and OTD. Thanks, I really appreciate it. I'm glad to see that things are beginning to take shape and that we're all looking forward to moving this proposal forward! Scottydude _review 20:47, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

I really like your design, rather than appealing to tables, you appealed to CSS, which offers more features and potential. What is causing the TFA and ITN to be disaligned is because it is attempted to wrap a break line (<br />) ontop of the ITN: remove it. The ITN and OTD are connected because the top margin of the OTD is specified to moved two and a half font widths of the letter "m" above it s current location, remove: margin-top: -2.5em; in the OTD inline-CSS. To reduce to dead space, or margin, simple increase the float percentages from 54%-33% to 54%-44%, which gives a 2% margin relative to the width of the content.

Code fix for the disaligned ITN, before:

<!---------Featured Article---------->
<div style="border: 1px solid #AAAAAA; float:left; padding: 0.6em; background-color: #fff; width: 54%; vertical-align: top; margin-top: 2em;">
== On this day... ==

{{Wikipedia:Selected anniversaries/{{CURRENTMONTHNAME}} {{CURRENTDAY}}}}
</div>

I hope this helps. In short, I actually promote using CSS over tables in positioning content since: CSS is more flexible; it is more accessible since, in Aurel and Braile browsers for the disabled, the text is read more naturally since it does not attempt to understand the tables. I used horizontal scrolling for the coding examples, if you have joint problems, I can remove the overflow:auto. ChyranandChloe (talk) 21:33, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

Yeah that helps thanks so much! Another question though... The right column has a nice even space between the sections. On the left this space changes as the content changes. What am I missing that makes the left column keep the same vertical space as the right column does? Scottydude _review 21:45, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

Anyway, I was going through your code way too fast, and forgot to mention that you have to {{clear}} the content you floated below the sections Find an article and about. To allow the content to be of the same length: this is where tables make life so much easier. Nevertheless, the solution is to specify the height of each section (you have to play around). This can lead to what is called a design fork, in which there are several possibilities: all of which work. One method is to specify the height slightly higher than the content you would expect (if the content is larger than the specified height, the content take precedence and it makes is slightly larger), the other would be to specify the height and add a "overflow:auto;", which allows scrolling within the sections. It's entirely up to you. ¶If you need help just ask. ChyranandChloe (talk) 23:18, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, I will. Scottydude _review 02:59, 7 September 2008 (UTC)

Survey

I missed the survey, I'm sorry to say. I'd just like to add that I support all the proposals except:

• Including Featured Editor
• Including The Signpost
• Having a section of undeveloped articles ("You can help!")
• Remove left-most standard sidebar from main page

SharkD (talk) 21:20, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

A lot of people missed the survey, which within my opinion does not accurately represent the population. Nevertheless, as NickPenguin said it's not a "end-all-be-all". One thing that remains for us to do is to get the current proposals closer to maturity. ChyranandChloe (talk) 21:38, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

The survey was to get a general sense of what was wanted and what was not. However, there is an obvious bias in the results toward editors who care about redesigning the main page (since they were almost the only ones aware of the survey). The new submissions do not even have to comply with the results! I've made a change to the proposals page to reflect this. It may be that some redesigns look better and function better when they include things that were not wanted, or exclude things that were wanted. — Twas Now ( talk • contribs • e-mail ) 22:32, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

Honestly, it felt like the longer the survey was open, the less accurate it was to become. Group-think breeds more group-think, and that idea was to just to test the waters. I'd encourage everyone to be original or go against the flow and chase down a really good idea. New and novel submissions should break all the barriers they can! But as I've said before, if it sounds like most people think FeatureX is a bad idea, chances are your submission will not get a whole lot of support when it goes to vote. --NickPenguin_(contribs) 00:50, 7 September 2008 (UTC)

What's supposed to be in a Welcome bar anyways?

Looking at most of the proposals, almost all of them have some sort of welcome bar. Since this is going to be the very first thing a user sees when they hit the page, where is it supposed to take them? --NickPenguin_(contribs) 02:59, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

I think that is at the discretion whoever is proposing rather than a set of guidelines. However we appears to be dominant is a "Welcome to Wikipedia" and some quick statements to garner interest (e.g. number of articles, slogan, so on). ChyranandChloe (talk) 03:42, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

I think his question was intended to start discussion and garner examples. Implicitly asking: Where is everyone getting the text they are using from? Is there a one-paragraph introduction in use anywhere else currently and officially? What are the most common links given (amongst them, or in general)?

Here are a handful of ideas:

• Wikipedia:About - 1st and 2nd paragraph particularly
• Wikipedia:Five pillars
• Wikipedia:Main Page alternative (Classic 2004)
• Wikipedia:Introduction
• MediaWiki:Welcomecreation
• Wikipedia:Welcoming committee/Welcome to Wikipedia ((older diff of same page))
• Help:Contents/Getting started

Someone else could get further examples from the various other language mainpages. -- Quiddity (talk) 03:37, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

Personally, I was thinking of something like this User:Quiddity/sandbox2. Still contemplating though. -- Quiddity (talk) 03:38, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

Suggestion

I have a suggestion. The main page should also contain a section about the reference desks. This can be on a one desk a day basis and can contain only the latest questions (not the answers) posted on the reference desk. It would look good and give the impression that this site is more then just a compendium of facts and figures.--Shahab (talk) 08:55, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

• I support this wholeheartedly. I feel the current Main Page shows an idealist and incomplete view of Wikipedia - we should be using it to turn readers into editors and share the great work going on all over the project. Pretzels^chatters 16:04, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

I believe its possible, but before we can make such a move, I think we need to increase the scope of our "proposal". On idea (it has come up before in the archives, but were never effectively pursued), was to create a WikiProject or task force. Nevertheless, if we are to pursue a WikiProject or TF, we should establish who would be interested, and some guidelines to our scope: since we appear to be pursuing proposals that would extend into the Portals and Featured Content WikiProjects. ChyranandChloe (talk) 03:42, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

I'm not opposed to this, but I would like to caution that increasing awareness of the RefDesks will most likely lead to increased trolling or vandalism there. — Twas Now ( talk • contribs • e-mail ) 06:52, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

In the news

All I seem to hear about implementations of In The News is that "Wikipedia is not a news service". If so, why do we publish headlines? Why not just a bulleted list of articles related to current events? Pretzels^Talk! 16:53, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

You are right that "Wikipedia is not a news service", however the ITN is not news. Wikinews is news. The differences is often blured, but the primary difference is that in a news service: references and content can be created through inteview; however in Wikipedia, under WP:V, this is considered original research. Instead all the ITN really shows is how quickly and how well updated Wikipedia is; it is associated with news, but is not actually news. ChyranandChloe (talk) 02:29, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

We don't want to create the assumption that Wikipedia is primarily about news. Pretzels' proposal had ITN in a more prominent position than we currently have the FA. That level of attention is ridiculous. I think ITN is just fine where it is, and that any change to make it more prominent would be going in the direction of "Wikipedia is a news service". --Pwnage8 (talk) 00:53, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

What's going on with this?

The weeks are dragging by and nothing here is happening. No designs being weeded out. No mass input being gathered. Nothing. It's just the same designs up and... that's it. Are we picking a new design or is this idea fading out? Jennavecia ^(Talk) 06:05, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

• I'm still improving my design and I'm sure others are. Pretzels^Talk! 09:03, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

I think the best way for this to get some new traction is a watchlist notification. We need fresh input, and from a large user base, because attempts to narrow down the list by individuals can be seen as arbitrary favoritism. And no body wants to get told that not enough people like their design, or want it to be the main page. --NickPenguin_(contribs) 02:45, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

Why not initiate a Wikipedia-wide vote, using the watchlist to notify editors? There are only 20 proposals right now, so we don't need to weed any out. First, we will need each editor who has contributed a design to finalize their proposal. Then, we post the watchlist notice and start a preferential vote using a Condorcet method of voting (perhaps the Schulze method, which was used to elect Ting Chen to the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees in June 2008). — Twas Now ( talk • contribs • e-mail ) 03:20, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

Unless some editors still have some un-posted works in progress. — Twas Now ( talk • contribs • e-mail ) 03:22, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

I think part of the reason that this isn't moving very quickly is because people are already used to the current main page, and don't think there is any reason to change it. Gary King (talk) 03:22, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

If we're going to be finalising designs, a last round of feedback would be hugely appreciated to get things perfect. I think after a clearup of the discussions, a watchlist note would be in order — but worded to imply that this is going to happen so we don't just drown in useless "I LIKE THE MAIN PAGE". Staying with the old design should be a last resort in my opinion; in comparison to other high traffic websites it's frankly embarrassing. Pretzels^Talk! 08:15, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

Many of us do in fact like the current mainpage design. There is no reason to believe that a change "is going to happen". Please read all the discussion archives for this page, if that is unclear.

I'll specifically point to Wikipedia talk:2008 main page redesign proposal/Archive 2#Signal to noise ratio, which should explain why everyone disappeared. (For the record, we're in the midst of 'option 2'...).

As for moving forward: If the best elements of the designs could be merged into 2 to 4 drafts, there might be a chance of progress. But if you attempt to start a vote on 19 designs (plus the current design), it will be a disaster (for a slew of reasons. some obvious, some not). -- Quiddity (talk) 19:03, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

To put it in context, this is the second time things have slowed down. What we did last time was to create a survey, which I found to be biased and it removed several designs I felt held good potential. One of the main reasons why this isn't moving very quickly is that we simply don't know who to talk to. Jennavecia, you're and administrator—and despite that the purpose that administrators are simply to serve as techs—you still hold a lot of weight in your opinion.

One of things we will need to do is to begin to merge proposals and I agree with Quiddity, however it's difficult to really vet each other designs without invoking self-promotion and so forth. I think we can organize several proposals and state that there are several variations of it: and that after the primaries we can effectively vote on which design to continue with. I've asked FT2 for his take. ChyranandChloe (talk) 03:12, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

What if we created a design criteria list? Your design needs to score a 4 out of 5 against it to make it into the next round of discussion. --NickPenguin_(contribs) 00:11, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

I think we should concentrate on merging designs before omitting them. To ensure that our self-selected survey is not further confounded with group think and see each other results, we should all compile our response on our own, say we come back Next Saturday (18 October 2008) by simply posting the list of what we think.

Here's the criteria:

• 1-5 with 5 as strongly support
  • Strongly oppose, oppose, neutral, support, strongly support
• For the people who have posted a design, your results can easily be biased (possibly by both consciously and subconsciously), so therefore you simply won't have a vote on your own design.
• We'll average the scores, and the top ten (50% of the current number of proposals) will be further developed
  • If there is a tie, the proposal with the most votes total will continue
    • If that still doesn't work, both are accepted
• To ensure that a proposal doesn't come out of nowhere in the first primary, we'll put a cap on new proposals on this coming Sunday (12 October 2008)
  • We'll allow new proposals in the second primary, so don't worry Pretzels just keep working and post it after 18 October 2008
• On Saturday 18 October 2008, you must post your response on that day: that way people who just come by interested, missing our warnings and so forth won't confound themselves by reading through the support and oppose.
  • If you'll be absent, post a message in this discussion to the link in a user sub-page of what you think.
• No comments should be allowed, only the number of what you think. The discussion should stay here or on the project page. This ensures that people who happen to be able to come, fails the read the instructions, on that day won't be confounded by the comments.
• We'll continue this process, until Thanksgiving or some holiday (Christmas) where a lot of users will have free time

At the generals there I've thought of Three options:

1. Like a recall people can choose to:
   1. Either "Keep the main page", "Change it to the new main page"
   2. Then they'll select which proposal they will want regardless (possibly out of five)
   3. If keep the main page is selected gathers the most votes (plurality), then we'll simply keep the main page.
   4. This allows us to divide the people into people who want change, and people who don't. If change wins, then we know simultaneously which proposal holds the most support.
2. The second option simply lists "keep the main page" as an option in addition to the four or five proposals, plurality wins. I'm somewhat against this option, since it with five proposals, they could easily divide the vote.
3. The third option is like a primary, where we select one proposal which we believe is the best, and then bump it up to the general election: however this requires extensive consensus.

This is a little long, however I think its important that we work everything out before we start. One thing I'm concerned about is that for people who have a proposal or are polarized on the issue can simply vote lower on the closest running candidate and therefore lower their scores. Under WP:AGF, I think that's a risk we'll simply have to accept unless we can find a way to conduct a random sample survey. Otherwise, if we'll agree, I'll edit the project page that on Saturday. We can put a watch page notification then as well. As a side note: I'm strongly against surveying over "elements that should be included" since each element is not independent of each other, and depends largely on the proposal and each other. Over issues like coding problems or that certain sections have not reached a consensus within their respective Wikiproject (GA, new FA design, so on) — I think we should omit that in the first round, since we're seeking general trends before any specifics (I think that should be primary number two). Thoughts? ChyranandChloe (talk) 03:44, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

Take a step back

There seems to be an assumption that changing the Main Page design is a foregone conclusion. The current design can and will be an option if this "proposal" doesn't fall off the radar. This should be noted on the project page, as the belief that the Main Page design will unquestionably change is incorrect. - auburnpilot talk 20:34, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

I disagree, this page discusses the proposals: sort of like a primary election, and I would imagine that keeping the main page would of course be implied. Wikipedia is not a democracy, but I can't seem to find another way for our actions to be legitimized and show that our change—whatever it may be—isn't unilateral. ChyranandChloe (talk) 03:12, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

Design rules of thumb

Ok, I'm not a professional web designer, but web design is my hobby, and based on personal experience, personal taste, and what I've seen on web design-related pages, these are my thoughts (generalizations, really).

• I read recently that less tech-savvy websurfers are more comfortable with left-column navigation than right-column (possibly because left columns don't require scrolling to see). As I am someone who prefers to browse in a non-maximized window and hates side-scrolling, this makes a lot of sense to me. Many of our readers are not terribly familiar with computers; they use Wikipedia in part to avoid Googling and navigating a wide variety of other websites, each with a different look and interface.
• Very long home pages are, in general, bad. At 800x600, a reader should be able to see all significant content in roughly the first 3-4 screens (1800-2400 pixels at exactly 600 pixels window height) or less, if possible. The current Main Page stays within this rather well, requiring more scrolling only for the sister projects, different languages, and other links at the bottom.
• Relatively shallow headers increase the amount of content visible (without scrolling) upon first loading a home page.
• Two navigation columns or sidebars tend to clutter a page, especially in the eyes of the less web-savvy visitor.
• Semi-transparent boxes may be fine for text (check the contrast) but don't work so well for images, which then overlay the page background image and look messy. Featured images especially need the higher contrast provided by 100% opacity.

So... I see that most, if not all, many of the proposed redesigns violate at least one of these "rules," especially the one about having navigation columns on the right. I find that the current Main Page, while not perfect, tends to satisfy each of these ideas. I hope that any changes made to the layout will continue to value efficiency (in terms of using the page, not in terms of bandwidth) and user-friendliness over considerations like flashy graphics, leet styling, or tons of information (possibly leading to information overload). Thanks for taking the time to read this. Aylad ['ɑɪlæd] 14:48, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

Thank you for the excellent feedback. I strongly agree on all points. (And I have a similar well-read-amateur background (Zeldman is god, etc...)) -- Quiddity (talk) 18:12, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

A bit vague and general, but you have a point. I agree with most except on the issue that the home page should be designed for very small screens, such as a window that is not maximized, I would imagine that people would more likely read articles than the main page at those sizes since they would be using it simultaneous to starting an essay or otherwise. I'm not really against, I'd just prefer you give some more rationale. ChyranandChloe (talk) 03:38, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, as I said, these mostly are generalizations. As far as rationale for small-screen or small-window support, I don't have much hard data on it. I imagine it's more common among people who aren't very experienced web users, and I also suspect that as more and more handheld/wearable devices are used to browse the web, small-screen support will become quite relevant again. I have no sources for either of these claims, however; they're just ideas/expectations I have. Aylad ['ɑɪlæd] 12:27, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

Kudos, Aylad. I definitely agree with what you said about the left-column navigation - even though I am an experienced web citizen. All the proposed designs that I've seen lose some of the clarity and accessibility of the current main page. The Fiddly Leprechaun (talk) 23:55, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

Featured sounds

We now have 6 times as many files as in June, and 4 times the number of distinct compositions, as some featured sounds are a symphony in multiple movements, and the like.

There are 98 distinct files, and 65 featured sounds at the time of writing, and the rate of increase continues to mount. in both August and September, more featured sounds got promoted in a month than in all of 2007. So far in October - and it is only the 12th - we have again had more FSes promoted than all of 2007. A group of Wikipedians are actively working on it, and I believe that the main page space will be quite sufficient to pull us from the current ~15-20 distinct compositions a month to a healthy 30 or so. Worst comes to worse, it could be updated thrice-weekly for a bit.

However, I do not believe there is any good argument for not giving it a try on the main page, and would ask the proposals be modified to include it. A recent poll, Talk:Main_Page/Archive_127#Featured_Sounds, was strongly in favour.

I apologise this comes a bit late, but the featured sounds project was never actually asked for their thoughts on this, ad well... you know. Had we had some warning that we should have made our proposal earlier, we surely would have.

Anyway, consider it a good stress test for the proposals: How well can they be adapted to accommodate new features =) Shoemaker's Holiday (talk) 14:52, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

There was also mention (somewhere, probably multiple places) about transforming the "Featured Image" section into a "Featured Media" section, so that images, movies, and sounds, could all be displayed in that space. That idea could work in any of the new designs, or in the old design, even if no other changes were made. -- Quiddity (talk) 17:50, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

Yes, except that I believe Featured picttues is about 200 days behind, and, plus, frankly, I don't think that we'd get as much notice if we weren't explicitly linked. =/ Shoemaker's Holiday (talk) 19:04, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

I support either solution and would gladly delay my share of featured pictures from the queue (several dozen) in order to incorporate featured sounds into a featured media presentation. Durova^Charge! 17:19, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

It seems like everyone wants this feature implemented, and the only resistance seems to come from those in charge of selecting featured items. --NickPenguin_(contribs) 17:44, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

Well, I hope it doesn't come off the wrong way to say this, but Wikipedia's featured sound collection isn't much bigger than my share of contributions in the FP backlog. I'm volunteering an indefinite postponement of all my FP work from the main page in order to bring featured sounds on board. Hope that resolves the remaining issue. Best, Durova^Charge! 18:16, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

I meant to say more that for changes to be made about the featured content, the whole idea can be vetoed from those doing the selecting. If you are familiar with the featured picture process, maybe you can bring some of the involved parties here. --NickPenguin_(contribs) 22:28, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

Good idea; I'll post to the talk page. Durova^Charge! 22:58, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

Well, we do have Howcheng on board, at least =) Shoemaker's Holiday (talk) 23:57, 15 October 2008 (UTC)