Re: Free Virtual Dj Skin 1366x768 Hit
Rhonda Brazler
The main page hasn't been redesigned since 2006. The 2013 main page redesign proposal requires your feedback on the main page, in order to design an alternative main page based on what the community asks for. As well as leaving feedback, this RFC can also be used as a community wide brainstorming session.This RFC will stay open until at least 6 June 2013.
The discussion in this section should focus on your feelings regarding the current main page (including content, style, and layout). Consider: What do you like about it? What do you dislike about it? How could it be improved?
I have a 10 year old laptop, with low RAM and 1024x768. Even Google is slow for me. I like that WP is not a "Web 2.0" AJAX driven javscript nightmare. As it is, I've had to add some ABP filters User:IP98/ABP to eliminate the few things that have crept in. During the redesign please consider older equipment and lower resolutions. There are still a lot of us out there. --IP98 (talk) 11:33, 7 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Comment broken for ease of reading. The unchanged comment can be found here.Also the content In The News section really needs improving. It seems to select strange things for inclusion while big events get missed. Why not link it to wikinews and feature content from there? Morgan Leigh Talk 02:03, 8 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
"In The News" would be a section better used to highlight articles of interest to recent and upcoming events. Before a US election, highlighting articles about the electoral college, history of elections, etc. could be of interest. After a major storm linking to Hurricane, Wind, Storm Damage, national disaster relief services, etc., would be a better way to show off WP's use than linking to a nascent page about the particular storm. -- Michael Scott Cuthbert (talk) 06:05, 26 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I thought about the US centricity of what I proposed, but kept it in because I couldn't come up with articles with the same specificity as "Electoral College" for other countries' elections based on my own knowledge set. Apologies if the single US-based example came across as biased to any readers. Let me instead take some items from today's In The News and say how this proposal might work:
this seems pretty close (at least in linking) to what I'd think is an ideal in the future; five links of which only one is to the actual event, four to related resources that give more depth. Another entry though is much different from what I propose.
But other events such as "Britain loses EU budget battle" which we less often cover (because we might not have an article specifically about it) could more easily fit into a rethought ITN (linking to Budget of EU, UK in the EU, Euro, etc.). If WP is not primarily a source for breaking news (which I don't think we should be), we should be a place where people can learn more about the background of news that is breaking. Just thinking more about different audiences. -- Michael Scott Cuthbert (talk) 23:28, 26 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
IMO, the arguments for the ITN section being removed altogether are working on the premise that it's called Breaking News. No, it's called In the News. I have never considered it to be in competition with getting newsworthy stories out ASAP before a competing news service does. To my mind, it serves (well) as a complementary service for those wanting to establish a little more about the historical background of a region, a biography or whatever the nature of that particular news item; or simply something they might have missed. While I understand Nick-D's concern about copyvios, so long as there are people wanting to work on this section I suspect that many people who actually come to the entry page would be sorry to see it go. --Iryna Harpy (talk) 22:48, 29 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
It's refreshingly clean and simple when compared to many other web pages cluttered with tons of ads, social network links, and other garish promotional bling. And the simple interface is egalitarian in that those with less than optimal connections and/or hardware may still find it accessible. Some of us still run Pentium 4 machines that bog down when presented with too many java scripts, flash content, etc.
On the flip side, I do recognize that many people are using various mobile platforms and that their needs deserve consideration as well. Perhaps a nice "Wikipedia Mobile" button that initiates additional features affecting image display, font size/text format and such would be the way to go. It's important that a simple light-on-resources option be the default as 'fancy first' would bog down those with slow machines/connections while with the inverse no harm is done to those with spry hardware/connections as long as an obvious well placed button to switch to the next generation display is provided. Of course it would also be good to allow account holders to toggle 'feature level' in preferences.
Radically overhauling the main page actually strikes me as a bit of a vanity project. Other areas/concerns of the wiki may well better warrant some of the attention. Last I last I heard the English language Wikipedia was one of the most visited websites in the world. The dcor doesn't seem to be scaring anyone off. Certain editors on the other hand... >wink< ...and the editing interface and a plethora of at times scattered guidelines... It seems to me that work 'under-the-hood' should take priority over 'a-new-paint-job'. Creating an editing environment that's friendly/safe and readily intelligible seems more important than doing a complete style overhaul on the front page. IMHO, Tweaking the interface to better accommodate modern devices would likely suffice. : } --Kevjonesin (talk) 17:20, 11 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The featured picture takes up way too much space. There is no need for the blurb to take up a whole page width. Other Areas of Wikipedia should go next to it, not below it. The four sections above would not be so cramped. ITN, for example, is far too selective in what it posts. Items other than disasters, sports and elections get cramped out because of this. μηδείς (talk) 18:27, 5 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
On another note, we have plenty of Good Articles that never get noticed, perhaps we can improve DYK and advertise GAs more by limiting DYK content to Good Articles.--ColonelHenry (talk) 14:19, 9 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
What we are doing now ignores the concept of Hypertext. You don't have to cram everything on the front page. Instead of a huge wall of text with "On this day..." at the top, simply put up a link to a dedicated page with that information. Putting all of that clutter on the front page is basically saying "we don't trust you to decide whether or not you want to learn what happened on this day in history" The Wikipedia home page shouldn't be much more complex than the Google home page.
I tested these on several browsers, and had no problems on Firefox, Chrome, and Opera. Internet Explorer tried to open a couple of popups, so IE users might want to avoid these. Also, the internetarchaeology.org site has no scroll bar and can only be scrolled with the up and down arrow (the very bottom is interesting). --Guy Macon (talk) 12:51, 12 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Let's face it, the main page looks boring. Pastel colors are so unexciting. They remind me of faded wallpaper. We could do a lot to spruce up its look with just some simple CSS - the great thing about that is, users with old browsers will still be able to read the content, even if the appearance doesn't quite look right for them.
Personally, I look at TFA and ITN. I think both are very valuable. Although I would love it if ITN provided more timely updates, I doubt it will happen. I regard OTD and DYK with only passing interest, and TFP and TFL are too low down the page for me to ever reach. (I think TFL's blurbs are too tersely written, and I have always found TFL's inclusion on the main page a bit jarring. It doesn't seem to justify its existence to the unfamiliar reader.)
The images are too small, especially TFP. In many ways, TFP looks like it belongs on a web page from 10 years ago. Anyone using an 800x600 monitor has to scroll websites horizontally nowadays (they would have had to do so on most sites for the past 8 years or so), so to bother to support 800x600 on the MP is just stupid. From a technical perspective, it would be very simple to use CSS media queries to provide larger images on the MP for those with larger monitors, and smaller images for those with smaller screens/browser windows.
I have no particular complaints about the "desktop" version of the main page. It presents a great deal of information and navigation options for someone who is accessing the site from a standard computer display. However, the mobile version is awful. When I access the main page in a mobile browser, I see only "Today's featured article" -- I don't even see the Wikipedia identification. When I scroll down, I also see "In the news", then a link to "Read in another language", an indication that the page was last modified 17 days ago (not true of the content displayed on the page!), and finally the Wikipedia identification and the usual boilerplate. I can get to a sidebar menu to access a random article, log in, or view my watchlist, but most of the main page content is completely invisible -- and apparently not accessible. --Orlady (talk) 17:17, 15 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
To me, the main obstacle to an attractive redesign of the main page is not that there are too many sections but that there are too many words per section. I concede that the wordiness of the main page reflects a general attribute of the project, but we should force ourselves to edit more on that particular page. Almost everything on there right now, for example, could easily be cut in half. The current FA blurb as I write would be more readable and present a better introduction if it ended after the fourth sentence; everything else is trivial detail. I suspect the writing at DYK would actually improve if hooks were a maximum of 150 characters instead of 200, because it would force people to work at them more (I have also long thought that DYK hooks should contain no non-bolded links; same with On This Day). Chick Bowen 01:32, 16 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
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