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I've been playing. Rough results of playing at
http://tom.me.uk/2005/9/MainPage.html
http://213.105.117.236/phase3-REL1_4/index.php/Main_Page - really interested to hear comments. Thanks,
Tom-
11:09, 29 September 2005 (UTC)
I'm fairly unconvinced that there's really anything wrong with the status quo. We have a page. It's popular. It clearly does its job okay, and I've only very rarely heard complaints about it. Which makes this a solution in search of a problem - and the "solution" is much more cluttered than the original. It's just unnecessary. I also hope it'll be taken to a vote before being implemented, as I suspect it'll be unlikely to pass. Ambi 13:05, 4 October 2005 (UTC)
I don't like that it has two search boxes, one is enough, also, "Search $1 articles" is misleading since the search doesn't just search the main namespace by default as the text would imply. — Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason 15:48, 4 October 2005 (UTC)
On another note [1] this one is the best one yet. I like how the browse bar goes to the top - the page now seems to flow better and feel more related. I liked that 1,2,3 though, and would like to see it in the "final" version.
I've mentioned this before but if you compare to Main_Page/Temp11 you can see how the background pics add warmth and depth to the page. I think this is a required piece for Main page/community portal type pages. - Trevor MacInnis ( Talk | Contribs) 16:08, 4 October 2005 (UTC)
I like it a lot, I think it's quite clear. Even works well in links. There is room for some little tweaks, for example browse should probably be linked, and we appear to have lost the A-Z list. -- Gmaxwell 19:19, 4 October 2005 (UTC)
I agree with most of the comments above; It's a huge improvement but still could use a few tweaks. - Haon 00:35, 11 October 2005 (UTC)
One minor thing bugs me about this design and that's that the middle-bottom column On this day: September 29th does not line up with the other two boxes at the bottom (I don't care if they're irregular within the group, but the bottom should line up)... I'm tempted to change it but I don't wanna impose. Other than that I love the design (600x480 and cel-phone surfing issues should probably be handled separately). --
Stux
00:26, 30 October 2005 (UTC)
Giving the main page some design attention certainly seems like a good idea. Here are some comments on the draft proposed at:
http://tom.me.uk/2005/9/MainPage.html
I'm actually a little surprised someone didn't just copy the wikitext from the main page and throw it on a temporary page for fiddling with, instead of putting up a non-editable page on a completely different server.
-- Beland 02:16, 3 October 2005 (UTC)
My comments:
Overall, very very nice work! Could you later also take a look at Community Portal? :) Renata3 21:08, 10 October 2005 (UTC)
Nice layout, with some comments:
-- Iantresman 13:24, 23 October 2005 (UTC)
Don't really like yellow as colour for the top rectangle. Maybe a blue or a grey. Otherwise nice. Epiwiki 17:52, 24 November 2005 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Usability/Main_Page mentions that images linking to the image page as a problem. I don't agree. Our current practice is important for providing access to attribution information which is required by the license of many of our images. If there is a move to not make images link to the image page, I'm going to counter that then we need to provide attribution under the image. I think that would be worse for useability than leaving the link to the image page, even though it might be somewhat supprising to new users. -- Gmaxwell 19:22, 4 October 2005 (UTC)
How about having a small link directly beneath each image saying "image source" or something to that effect, and use Javascript to hide the link and instead make it pop up over the bottom of the image when the mouse moves over the image? Here's an example of how it could look. - Mark 07:04, 7 October 2005 (UTC)
Sorry to bore you yet another time, but could the ever so enlightened members of the W.U.G. take note of the famous Matter of the Captionless Images? Even in the new design, they're simply still there. -- Leo44 | Talk 15:27, 7 October 2005 (UTC)
I agree with Tom-. The images on the Main Page has to link to the article. It's what the reader expect. It's what every (well almost) other site do. Go to, say, cnn.com. Click an image, and you get the story you'd get if you clicked on "Full story". The same for msn.com, times.com or almost any other news-site. Trying to behave differently is just confusing the reader. Then, in each different article, having a link from the image to the image-description (and a bigger image) is fine. But on the Main Page, the images simply have to link to the story. Who would ever want to see the image description? Very few. If a story is about some painting or a nation or a person, clicking on the image about that person, or whatever, should bring them to the story. Nothing else. Shanes 01:28, 15 October 2005 (UTC)
Okay, I've updated the article with what needs to be done if this design is to come reality.
The biggest issue now is very simply making sure enough people think this is a good idea so we don't get into silly revert wars (which is easily the worst thing to happen to the Main Page).
Are we at that stage yet? Or do we need more discussion/announcements? Thanks, Tom- 11:36, 7 October 2005 (UTC)
I have tried tweaking some of the browse categories on Main_Page/Temp11, coming up with the following largely based on Tom-'s version. --- Aude 18:52, 7 October 2005 (UTC)
Replaced Life with By occupation.--- Aude 18:52, 7 October 2005 (UTC)
In thinking about what topics are covered in major scientific journals such as Science and Nature, as well as the science section of major newpapers such as New York Times... key topics include biology (e.g. ecology, medicine, microbiology, genetics, etc.), earth science (climate change, meteorology - e.g. hurricanes, geology, etc.), and space ( astronomy). --- Aude 18:52, 7 October 2005 (UTC)
Moved Politics to the society category, and eliminated Family. --- Aude 18:52, 7 October 2005 (UTC)
Added Computers, Engineering. Eliminated Sound and Tools. --- Aude 18:52, 7 October 2005 (UTC)
These are just proposed changes, but think people might be more interested and idenfity more easily with some of these terms. --- Aude 18:52, 7 October 2005 (UTC)
P.S. This also demonstrates the importance of Wikipedia:Categorization projects (current)- Trevor MacInnis ( Talk | Contribs) 22:10, 6 November 2005 (UTC)
This seems very crowded on a much smaller screen. See the screenshot to the right. It's great to have all the info, but could we consider maintaining the two column format? We really should think about our aims, I feel. We keep talking of giving our content to 3rd world countries, and from what I understand they have old hardware. That means smaller screens. - Ta bu shi da yu 09:34, 8 October 2005 (UTC)
Well, to start it off I use 800x600 and a 13 inch monitor. I can describe one problem. For me, the yellow bar doesn't go all of the way across the screen. The 'Browse WIkipedia' box stops it short because it isn't aligned with the other two boxes as it is in the picture. Message my talk page if you want more explanation. Jaberwocky6669 | ☎Holla! 12:58, 10 October 2005 (UTC)
What do you think of this experiment? Try resizing your browser to be shorter horizontally. It's very experimental, but does seem to work OK (tested in IE, Opera and Firefox). Oh, and it requires JavaScript to be enabled (I'm trying to come up with a version that doesn't). Tom- 16:03, 10 October 2005 (UTC)
Aw-man, I was hoping that I could see a radical redesign. Harumph, lol, at least its functionality will improve! I have been looking at Wikipedias overall design and it is starting to really give me a headache. Maybe that's a result of my small screen though. Jaberwocky6669 | ☎ 03:02, 12 October 2005 (UTC)
Every single day I sign up for something and the next day I find osmething else i want to sign up for even more! I think that this is great what you're doing here! I have had complaints about the images linking to the picture and not a news article myself! I especially like TOm's redesign! Keep it up guys (and gals) Jaberwocky6669 | ☎Holla! 12:54, 10 October 2005 (UTC)
Seeing as Wikipedia is a freely-editable encyclopedia, I would like to see a link to the collaboration of the week inviting people to help out with editing. At the moment the main page, nor the redesign, really invite people to start editing, which is one of Wikipedia's raisons d'être (if that is the correct pluralisation). It looks much better than the current version IMHO. Talrias ( t | e | c) 13:33, 10 October 2005 (UTC)
Wouldn't it be a good idea to get rid of a few things in the browse bar (right)? It's rather longer height is leaving a white space below the featured and did you know on 1280*1024. Or maybe a fixed percentage to avoid this. -- WB 23:56, 12 October 2005 (UTC)
I'm surprised that nobody's brought this up yet - the current Main Page has no link for a newcomer who's curious about Wikipedia but not exactly sure what it means and if he can help, e.g. "Can ANYONE add information? Even me?" Currently, there's just one sidebar link that says "Community portal" - kind of cryptic and definately not inviting.
I think that somewhere on the Main page we should have a prominent link to a page for new users, which should incorporate the information found at Help:Contents but in a more user-friendly way.
Thoughts?
-- Αλεξ Σ 23:19, 15 October 2005 (UTC)
I'm now away until at least Friday 21st, but I'm planning on looking into actually getting this design online when I get back (which will, undoubtably, prove to be great fun). Thanks,
Tom-
16:02, 16 October 2005 (UTC)
Main Page looks pretty bad on it. Maybe a separate CSS for the mobile devices? Anyway, I just wanted to let people without PPCs know. -- WB 22:12, 18 October 2005 (UTC)
Sorry, but that just looks horrible on 800x600 screens and completely unreadable on mobile devices. I also really don't like the idea of shortening each section - they are all already at a good size and you will meet considerable resistance from the different groups of people who maintain each of those sections. But I do like the idea of having the search box in a more prominent place on the Main Page and having images somehow automatically link to the article they are about. But how are the images displayed on the Main Page going to know what article to link to or for that matter, if they are linked from the Main Page in the first place? I guess some combination of templates and css is needed. -- mav 03:56, 23 October 2005 (UTC)
The problem with the Main Page is just that it is unnecessarily evil, and the complexity lies in all these boxes and their pictures jostling left and right. For real optimal usability, we only have to break through the dimensional barrier; that is, the two dimensional barrier. Only with a simple up-and-down arrangement of horizontal boxes can we fit on everything from the PDA to the largest monitor, and in style. See the idea at work at Wikipedia:WikiProject Usability/Main Page/Horizontal. What's the thought on this?-- Pharos 16:12, 25 October 2005 (UTC)
Scrapping In The News section and expanding Selected anniversaries. I think ITN is too small (only 4 stories) and often is not very representive of the news headlines and it is rather inferior compared to wikinews. I also think this could allow a more permanent position for Pictue of the Day-- Clawed 07:40, 28 October 2005 (UTC)
Right now the way I see it, Wikipedia is one of the most popular websites on the internet for a few different reasons. 1.) it is easy to use and find what you are looking for 2.) it is appealing to the eye - most pages offer enough text to get the point, while allowing links to supply additional information on the topic. Pictures are everywhere and people like pictures. 3.) it is easy to change misinformation - although that does not seem to be why people come to this site. In talking to people, I have found the majority use this site primarily for research purposes and not the addition of their own personal knowledge - leave that up to the people who know what they are doing. 4.) the current design is obviously working - if not people wouldn't come.
The only changes I would like to see would be to transform the header into a search bar - instead of the current title. Right now that is too jumbled and "texty" to be of much use. I didn't realize myself that there were browsable categories up there until reading this discussion on changing it. I would also suggest moving the list of browsable categories to where the current search bar is located - along the left hand side of the page. This would put the search bar right below the name of the page, and move the less used browsable categories to the left and out of the way. Anyway those are just my thoughts Bigal888 06:03, 29 October 2005 (UTC)
Should the serach bar be over top of Welcome to Wikipedia or is that my screen size? 13 inch 800x600 Jaberwocky6669 | ☎ 00:44, 30 October 2005 (UTC)
There's now a full version of the design live on Wikipedia (make sure you clear your cache before viewing). I'd appreciate as much testing as possible with various browsers. More to come soon! Tom- 01:10, 30 October 2005 (UTC)
Any room for holidays and observances ? (This doesn't apply to Sept.29th. Try Nov.1st.) -- PFHLai 14:58, 2 November 2005 (UTC)
Are we going to use a smaller font on MainPage than the rest of Wikipedia ? -- PFHLai 14:58, 2 November 2005 (UTC)
I've arrived a bit late, and so I hope I'm not too much of an echo. While I applaud Tom-'s hard work, I see some problems with the new design. I think that any redesign should be approached quite carefully, and any great change should be done with major community support -- and on the main page of a website which is 38th in the world, meerly changing a shade of yellow is a "great change".
We are trying to:
...all at the same time. This means that we are not as able to decide upon small incremental changes ("do we want to have images link to articles?") as easily. Instead of voting on a major change, I think that we should split the new design up into small seperate proposals.
As for the new design:
In summary, very good effort, but the new design is not better than the old. Certain important aspects were overlooked, and too much leave was taken beyond solving the current problems, thus creating new ones. –M T 07:42, 5 November 2005 (UTC)
I think a good idea for the new main page is to put the Wikinews link on the end of the news snippets. Obviously this is only applicable if there is an article on Wikinews.
Thanks Hohohob 21:26, 2 December 2005 (UTC)
I think one of the main things that makes the main page look cluttered is the huge amount of wikilinks. The current main page today has links to 93 articles! (only counting regular articles, no special pages) My suggestion would be to only keep the links that are currently displayed bold. If people are interested, they will go to the article and find the links there. Compare draft with the same draft with less wikilinks. The latter looks much cleaner. -- WS 03:25, 11 December 2005 (UTC)
I'm a bit late with this, but I like the draft main pages, particularly Draft3. I have a few suggestions. I havent exhaustively read through the discussions on it though, so i apologise if these have already been discussed.
I think thats it for the moment. -- jeffthejiff ( talk) 15:14, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
First of all, my apologies if anything I mention here is covered somewhere else - I think I've read through the whole discussion page and clicked the right links, but you never know...
What I haven't seen anywhere in this discussion (and I think it's great the discussion is taking place) is a requirements definition. That is
This is not an easy thing to decide. Are there statistics on how people use this page? What % only search from this page, how many click a news item etc.. This information would be useful, although not sufficient, as obviously if some features are currently difficult to access they will be used less than they otherwise would be.
From reading the discussion, it's obvious that there are some hard and fast Wikipedia rules - I don't know what the complete list is, but it looks like we need to spec:
I can't create this minimum requirements list, but I generally I think a focus on
would be beneficial. I think by doing this, it would be easier to have a discussion around practicalities (which is not in any way to criticise the very good work that's gone on already). Didsbury ryder 20:14, 19 December 2005 (UTC)
The purpose of the main page should be to encourage creation of Quality content in wikipedia. The Main Page Today's featured article is an inducement - a reward for good editing. In the news is not. Keep the one, ditch the other. Harsh but practical. The great glob of in other languages and sister projects encourages contributions - keep the great glob. Distasteful but practical. As for attracting users, Google is tops with a text box. If they know there's content, users seem to be willing to type. Google has no need to foster volunteer contributions, but wikipedia does, so its Main Page can't be as simple as Google's. To improve, give it a squinty-eyed look and do some head scratching, then be bold. Metarhyme 21:26, 27 December 2005 (UTC)
Take a look:
Wikipedia:WikiProject Usability/Main Page/Draft
Go for it!
17:37, 7 January 2006 (UTC)
I think it would be a good idea if the one-paragraph lede for the feature article of the day, every day, were concluded with a link that said "Read the full article". I realize the paragraph already includes a bold-faced link to the full article, but it might not be clear to people who are new to Wikipedia, seeing the home page for the first time, that each of the hyperlinks goes to an entire encyclopedia article. They might think that the single paragraph constitutes the whole "featured article"! Andrew Levine 11:43, 8 January 2006 (UTC)
Could somebody please archive this page, it can still be used if somebody creates a reliable structure. freshgavin TALK 00:53, 23 January 2006 (UTC)
![]() | This page is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
I've been playing. Rough results of playing at
http://tom.me.uk/2005/9/MainPage.html
http://213.105.117.236/phase3-REL1_4/index.php/Main_Page - really interested to hear comments. Thanks,
Tom-
11:09, 29 September 2005 (UTC)
I'm fairly unconvinced that there's really anything wrong with the status quo. We have a page. It's popular. It clearly does its job okay, and I've only very rarely heard complaints about it. Which makes this a solution in search of a problem - and the "solution" is much more cluttered than the original. It's just unnecessary. I also hope it'll be taken to a vote before being implemented, as I suspect it'll be unlikely to pass. Ambi 13:05, 4 October 2005 (UTC)
I don't like that it has two search boxes, one is enough, also, "Search $1 articles" is misleading since the search doesn't just search the main namespace by default as the text would imply. — Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason 15:48, 4 October 2005 (UTC)
On another note [1] this one is the best one yet. I like how the browse bar goes to the top - the page now seems to flow better and feel more related. I liked that 1,2,3 though, and would like to see it in the "final" version.
I've mentioned this before but if you compare to Main_Page/Temp11 you can see how the background pics add warmth and depth to the page. I think this is a required piece for Main page/community portal type pages. - Trevor MacInnis ( Talk | Contribs) 16:08, 4 October 2005 (UTC)
I like it a lot, I think it's quite clear. Even works well in links. There is room for some little tweaks, for example browse should probably be linked, and we appear to have lost the A-Z list. -- Gmaxwell 19:19, 4 October 2005 (UTC)
I agree with most of the comments above; It's a huge improvement but still could use a few tweaks. - Haon 00:35, 11 October 2005 (UTC)
One minor thing bugs me about this design and that's that the middle-bottom column On this day: September 29th does not line up with the other two boxes at the bottom (I don't care if they're irregular within the group, but the bottom should line up)... I'm tempted to change it but I don't wanna impose. Other than that I love the design (600x480 and cel-phone surfing issues should probably be handled separately). --
Stux
00:26, 30 October 2005 (UTC)
Giving the main page some design attention certainly seems like a good idea. Here are some comments on the draft proposed at:
http://tom.me.uk/2005/9/MainPage.html
I'm actually a little surprised someone didn't just copy the wikitext from the main page and throw it on a temporary page for fiddling with, instead of putting up a non-editable page on a completely different server.
-- Beland 02:16, 3 October 2005 (UTC)
My comments:
Overall, very very nice work! Could you later also take a look at Community Portal? :) Renata3 21:08, 10 October 2005 (UTC)
Nice layout, with some comments:
-- Iantresman 13:24, 23 October 2005 (UTC)
Don't really like yellow as colour for the top rectangle. Maybe a blue or a grey. Otherwise nice. Epiwiki 17:52, 24 November 2005 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Usability/Main_Page mentions that images linking to the image page as a problem. I don't agree. Our current practice is important for providing access to attribution information which is required by the license of many of our images. If there is a move to not make images link to the image page, I'm going to counter that then we need to provide attribution under the image. I think that would be worse for useability than leaving the link to the image page, even though it might be somewhat supprising to new users. -- Gmaxwell 19:22, 4 October 2005 (UTC)
How about having a small link directly beneath each image saying "image source" or something to that effect, and use Javascript to hide the link and instead make it pop up over the bottom of the image when the mouse moves over the image? Here's an example of how it could look. - Mark 07:04, 7 October 2005 (UTC)
Sorry to bore you yet another time, but could the ever so enlightened members of the W.U.G. take note of the famous Matter of the Captionless Images? Even in the new design, they're simply still there. -- Leo44 | Talk 15:27, 7 October 2005 (UTC)
I agree with Tom-. The images on the Main Page has to link to the article. It's what the reader expect. It's what every (well almost) other site do. Go to, say, cnn.com. Click an image, and you get the story you'd get if you clicked on "Full story". The same for msn.com, times.com or almost any other news-site. Trying to behave differently is just confusing the reader. Then, in each different article, having a link from the image to the image-description (and a bigger image) is fine. But on the Main Page, the images simply have to link to the story. Who would ever want to see the image description? Very few. If a story is about some painting or a nation or a person, clicking on the image about that person, or whatever, should bring them to the story. Nothing else. Shanes 01:28, 15 October 2005 (UTC)
Okay, I've updated the article with what needs to be done if this design is to come reality.
The biggest issue now is very simply making sure enough people think this is a good idea so we don't get into silly revert wars (which is easily the worst thing to happen to the Main Page).
Are we at that stage yet? Or do we need more discussion/announcements? Thanks, Tom- 11:36, 7 October 2005 (UTC)
I have tried tweaking some of the browse categories on Main_Page/Temp11, coming up with the following largely based on Tom-'s version. --- Aude 18:52, 7 October 2005 (UTC)
Replaced Life with By occupation.--- Aude 18:52, 7 October 2005 (UTC)
In thinking about what topics are covered in major scientific journals such as Science and Nature, as well as the science section of major newpapers such as New York Times... key topics include biology (e.g. ecology, medicine, microbiology, genetics, etc.), earth science (climate change, meteorology - e.g. hurricanes, geology, etc.), and space ( astronomy). --- Aude 18:52, 7 October 2005 (UTC)
Moved Politics to the society category, and eliminated Family. --- Aude 18:52, 7 October 2005 (UTC)
Added Computers, Engineering. Eliminated Sound and Tools. --- Aude 18:52, 7 October 2005 (UTC)
These are just proposed changes, but think people might be more interested and idenfity more easily with some of these terms. --- Aude 18:52, 7 October 2005 (UTC)
P.S. This also demonstrates the importance of Wikipedia:Categorization projects (current)- Trevor MacInnis ( Talk | Contribs) 22:10, 6 November 2005 (UTC)
This seems very crowded on a much smaller screen. See the screenshot to the right. It's great to have all the info, but could we consider maintaining the two column format? We really should think about our aims, I feel. We keep talking of giving our content to 3rd world countries, and from what I understand they have old hardware. That means smaller screens. - Ta bu shi da yu 09:34, 8 October 2005 (UTC)
Well, to start it off I use 800x600 and a 13 inch monitor. I can describe one problem. For me, the yellow bar doesn't go all of the way across the screen. The 'Browse WIkipedia' box stops it short because it isn't aligned with the other two boxes as it is in the picture. Message my talk page if you want more explanation. Jaberwocky6669 | ☎Holla! 12:58, 10 October 2005 (UTC)
What do you think of this experiment? Try resizing your browser to be shorter horizontally. It's very experimental, but does seem to work OK (tested in IE, Opera and Firefox). Oh, and it requires JavaScript to be enabled (I'm trying to come up with a version that doesn't). Tom- 16:03, 10 October 2005 (UTC)
Aw-man, I was hoping that I could see a radical redesign. Harumph, lol, at least its functionality will improve! I have been looking at Wikipedias overall design and it is starting to really give me a headache. Maybe that's a result of my small screen though. Jaberwocky6669 | ☎ 03:02, 12 October 2005 (UTC)
Every single day I sign up for something and the next day I find osmething else i want to sign up for even more! I think that this is great what you're doing here! I have had complaints about the images linking to the picture and not a news article myself! I especially like TOm's redesign! Keep it up guys (and gals) Jaberwocky6669 | ☎Holla! 12:54, 10 October 2005 (UTC)
Seeing as Wikipedia is a freely-editable encyclopedia, I would like to see a link to the collaboration of the week inviting people to help out with editing. At the moment the main page, nor the redesign, really invite people to start editing, which is one of Wikipedia's raisons d'être (if that is the correct pluralisation). It looks much better than the current version IMHO. Talrias ( t | e | c) 13:33, 10 October 2005 (UTC)
Wouldn't it be a good idea to get rid of a few things in the browse bar (right)? It's rather longer height is leaving a white space below the featured and did you know on 1280*1024. Or maybe a fixed percentage to avoid this. -- WB 23:56, 12 October 2005 (UTC)
I'm surprised that nobody's brought this up yet - the current Main Page has no link for a newcomer who's curious about Wikipedia but not exactly sure what it means and if he can help, e.g. "Can ANYONE add information? Even me?" Currently, there's just one sidebar link that says "Community portal" - kind of cryptic and definately not inviting.
I think that somewhere on the Main page we should have a prominent link to a page for new users, which should incorporate the information found at Help:Contents but in a more user-friendly way.
Thoughts?
-- Αλεξ Σ 23:19, 15 October 2005 (UTC)
I'm now away until at least Friday 21st, but I'm planning on looking into actually getting this design online when I get back (which will, undoubtably, prove to be great fun). Thanks,
Tom-
16:02, 16 October 2005 (UTC)
Main Page looks pretty bad on it. Maybe a separate CSS for the mobile devices? Anyway, I just wanted to let people without PPCs know. -- WB 22:12, 18 October 2005 (UTC)
Sorry, but that just looks horrible on 800x600 screens and completely unreadable on mobile devices. I also really don't like the idea of shortening each section - they are all already at a good size and you will meet considerable resistance from the different groups of people who maintain each of those sections. But I do like the idea of having the search box in a more prominent place on the Main Page and having images somehow automatically link to the article they are about. But how are the images displayed on the Main Page going to know what article to link to or for that matter, if they are linked from the Main Page in the first place? I guess some combination of templates and css is needed. -- mav 03:56, 23 October 2005 (UTC)
The problem with the Main Page is just that it is unnecessarily evil, and the complexity lies in all these boxes and their pictures jostling left and right. For real optimal usability, we only have to break through the dimensional barrier; that is, the two dimensional barrier. Only with a simple up-and-down arrangement of horizontal boxes can we fit on everything from the PDA to the largest monitor, and in style. See the idea at work at Wikipedia:WikiProject Usability/Main Page/Horizontal. What's the thought on this?-- Pharos 16:12, 25 October 2005 (UTC)
Scrapping In The News section and expanding Selected anniversaries. I think ITN is too small (only 4 stories) and often is not very representive of the news headlines and it is rather inferior compared to wikinews. I also think this could allow a more permanent position for Pictue of the Day-- Clawed 07:40, 28 October 2005 (UTC)
Right now the way I see it, Wikipedia is one of the most popular websites on the internet for a few different reasons. 1.) it is easy to use and find what you are looking for 2.) it is appealing to the eye - most pages offer enough text to get the point, while allowing links to supply additional information on the topic. Pictures are everywhere and people like pictures. 3.) it is easy to change misinformation - although that does not seem to be why people come to this site. In talking to people, I have found the majority use this site primarily for research purposes and not the addition of their own personal knowledge - leave that up to the people who know what they are doing. 4.) the current design is obviously working - if not people wouldn't come.
The only changes I would like to see would be to transform the header into a search bar - instead of the current title. Right now that is too jumbled and "texty" to be of much use. I didn't realize myself that there were browsable categories up there until reading this discussion on changing it. I would also suggest moving the list of browsable categories to where the current search bar is located - along the left hand side of the page. This would put the search bar right below the name of the page, and move the less used browsable categories to the left and out of the way. Anyway those are just my thoughts Bigal888 06:03, 29 October 2005 (UTC)
Should the serach bar be over top of Welcome to Wikipedia or is that my screen size? 13 inch 800x600 Jaberwocky6669 | ☎ 00:44, 30 October 2005 (UTC)
There's now a full version of the design live on Wikipedia (make sure you clear your cache before viewing). I'd appreciate as much testing as possible with various browsers. More to come soon! Tom- 01:10, 30 October 2005 (UTC)
Any room for holidays and observances ? (This doesn't apply to Sept.29th. Try Nov.1st.) -- PFHLai 14:58, 2 November 2005 (UTC)
Are we going to use a smaller font on MainPage than the rest of Wikipedia ? -- PFHLai 14:58, 2 November 2005 (UTC)
I've arrived a bit late, and so I hope I'm not too much of an echo. While I applaud Tom-'s hard work, I see some problems with the new design. I think that any redesign should be approached quite carefully, and any great change should be done with major community support -- and on the main page of a website which is 38th in the world, meerly changing a shade of yellow is a "great change".
We are trying to:
...all at the same time. This means that we are not as able to decide upon small incremental changes ("do we want to have images link to articles?") as easily. Instead of voting on a major change, I think that we should split the new design up into small seperate proposals.
As for the new design:
In summary, very good effort, but the new design is not better than the old. Certain important aspects were overlooked, and too much leave was taken beyond solving the current problems, thus creating new ones. –M T 07:42, 5 November 2005 (UTC)
I think a good idea for the new main page is to put the Wikinews link on the end of the news snippets. Obviously this is only applicable if there is an article on Wikinews.
Thanks Hohohob 21:26, 2 December 2005 (UTC)
I think one of the main things that makes the main page look cluttered is the huge amount of wikilinks. The current main page today has links to 93 articles! (only counting regular articles, no special pages) My suggestion would be to only keep the links that are currently displayed bold. If people are interested, they will go to the article and find the links there. Compare draft with the same draft with less wikilinks. The latter looks much cleaner. -- WS 03:25, 11 December 2005 (UTC)
I'm a bit late with this, but I like the draft main pages, particularly Draft3. I have a few suggestions. I havent exhaustively read through the discussions on it though, so i apologise if these have already been discussed.
I think thats it for the moment. -- jeffthejiff ( talk) 15:14, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
First of all, my apologies if anything I mention here is covered somewhere else - I think I've read through the whole discussion page and clicked the right links, but you never know...
What I haven't seen anywhere in this discussion (and I think it's great the discussion is taking place) is a requirements definition. That is
This is not an easy thing to decide. Are there statistics on how people use this page? What % only search from this page, how many click a news item etc.. This information would be useful, although not sufficient, as obviously if some features are currently difficult to access they will be used less than they otherwise would be.
From reading the discussion, it's obvious that there are some hard and fast Wikipedia rules - I don't know what the complete list is, but it looks like we need to spec:
I can't create this minimum requirements list, but I generally I think a focus on
would be beneficial. I think by doing this, it would be easier to have a discussion around practicalities (which is not in any way to criticise the very good work that's gone on already). Didsbury ryder 20:14, 19 December 2005 (UTC)
The purpose of the main page should be to encourage creation of Quality content in wikipedia. The Main Page Today's featured article is an inducement - a reward for good editing. In the news is not. Keep the one, ditch the other. Harsh but practical. The great glob of in other languages and sister projects encourages contributions - keep the great glob. Distasteful but practical. As for attracting users, Google is tops with a text box. If they know there's content, users seem to be willing to type. Google has no need to foster volunteer contributions, but wikipedia does, so its Main Page can't be as simple as Google's. To improve, give it a squinty-eyed look and do some head scratching, then be bold. Metarhyme 21:26, 27 December 2005 (UTC)
Take a look:
Wikipedia:WikiProject Usability/Main Page/Draft
Go for it!
17:37, 7 January 2006 (UTC)
I think it would be a good idea if the one-paragraph lede for the feature article of the day, every day, were concluded with a link that said "Read the full article". I realize the paragraph already includes a bold-faced link to the full article, but it might not be clear to people who are new to Wikipedia, seeing the home page for the first time, that each of the hyperlinks goes to an entire encyclopedia article. They might think that the single paragraph constitutes the whole "featured article"! Andrew Levine 11:43, 8 January 2006 (UTC)
Could somebody please archive this page, it can still be used if somebody creates a reliable structure. freshgavin TALK 00:53, 23 January 2006 (UTC)