Talk:Main Page

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NOTE: Any bolded item that appears on the Main Page must be updated and listed on its corresponding subject area page before being listed on the Main Page. For example, a news item should first be listed on current events, then the article on the subject of that news item should be updated to reflect a current event. Then that item can be placed on MediaWiki:Itn.

See Main Page/Old for the old Main Page design.


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Archived talk

Archives of older material from this talk page: Archives 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13.

The layout of the Main Page underwent a significant redesign, implemented on 23 Feb 2004. Talk archives 1-13 relate to the old design. Archives after this date: 14, 15, 16, 17.

Talk pages specifically dealing with layout and design, or alternative designs for the Main Page:

Reminder:

No personal attacks!

Switch

I propose that we swap the DYK module and the news module. We've been staring at Condi Rice for days now, DYK, by nature, stays pretty fresh. The requirements of the current events policy mean few events qualify--the layout could be reversed as events like 11-M warrant. jengod 01:37, Apr 3, 2004 (UTC)

I agree - it also looks nicer better, IMO. --mav 06:00, 3 Apr 2004 (UTC)
Poor Condi. If she's reading Wikipedia on a regular basis she'll be very sad.--Eloquence*
She will get over it. --mav

Since the featured article and In the news tend to take up more space than Did you know and Selected anniversaries, I think it creates good visual balance to have them sort of diagonally opposite each other. However, I find no explicit requirement that one of the Did you know items have an associated image. If we're going to put that section up top, I think we should make that a rule. --Michael Snow 16:06, 3 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I like having In the News at the top right -- whenever I open the front page to Wikipedia, I appreciate seeing what my fellow editors feel are the top stories. But I admit I see Jengod's point about needing new photos there to keep it fresh. -- llywrch 18:31, 3 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Argh. Don't do this. Or maybe do this, but don't switch it back. I don't want to train my reflexes for clicking on current events every other week again. -- till we *) 18:33, 3 Apr 2004 (UTC)
Keep the news at the top. It just makes sense. We just need to make sure it is current and of global importance, something like Madrid Suspect Hunt Ends in Blast; 4 Dead. The Korean train has had its time in the limelight. Brooklyn Nellie (Nricardo) 02:04, Apr 4, 2004 (UTC)
For the record, I liked it better the other way. Anniversaries and Current Events are next to each other now, and it just doesn't look good to me. I prefer them placed diagonally from one another. Kingturtle 18:04, 4 Apr 2004 (UTC)
Definitely move the news back to the top. Just be more active about changing the pictures. Ezra Wax
I prefer the news at the bottom. News is not the main item on our menu, it should just be a byline. We're an encyclopedia, not a Slashdot/CNN RDF feed. silsor 19:19, Apr 4, 2004 (UTC)
Nowadays, I sometimes go to Wikipedia to catch the latest big headlines, and having news at the bottom is really annoying. I strongly ask that news be moved back to the top. --Lowellian 01:29, Apr 6, 2004 (UTC)
I prefered the news at the bottom. New articles should be more of a feature than the news. Angela. 01:49, Apr 6, 2004 (UTC)
I think that the DYK and Anniversaries should be switched. DYK is an article related section and would look better under featured articles, while Anniversaries would go better with news. Kirk 09:10, 6 Apr 2004 (UTC)
I just looked at this option and it doesn't really work as things are now. Featured is really wide, and DYK (as it exists currently) is dwarfed by it. jengod 13:48, Apr 6, 2004 (UTC)
I really like the DYK at the top; it makes it us seem more like an encyclopedia and less like a news site. -- Seth Ilys 13:21, 6 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Quick Request

I added a basic seed for the word plotz. If someone could look over my entry and make sure it's definitive, I'd be grateful. :)

Question about logging in

When I'm logged out, Joshua A. Norton is still the featured article. Why is this? - Woodrow 02:20, 5 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Because the anon cache had not been purged when you did so. See the top of this page. --mav 04:58, 5 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Just now some fountain pen or something was the featured article. Now it's the platypus. What's going on? --203.106.8.141 14:32, 5 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Why can't I edit the main page? Do I have to be some special somebody? --Eponymous

To the above questions - the featured article is still Fountain Pen. Platypus was yesterday. Your browser is probably using an old cached copy. Hit shift-F5 to force it to load a fresh copy. To the 'Eponymous' question about not being able to edit the main page - it's one of about a dozen pages that are permanently protected from editing, simply to prevent rampant vandalism. →Raul654 17:09, Apr 5, 2004 (UTC)

Poll: in the news or did you know

I feel that Wikipedia is not a news report nor a Slashdot/CNN RDF feed. The version of the main page with the reversed layout is here. silsor 07:43, Apr 7, 2004 (UTC)

"In the news" on top

  1. →Raul654 06:49, Apr 7, 2004 (UTC)
  2. Eloquence* 07:50, Apr 7, 2004 (UTC) (changed my mind after it was live for a while - having them next to anniversaries confuses my brain's timekeeping functionality)
  3. 172 07:57, 7 Apr 2004 (UTC)
  4. Brooklyn Nellie (Nricardo) 10:45, Apr 7, 2004 (UTC) "Did you know" seems like pretty trivial stuff. C'mon, pokemon? I'm not saying we become CNN, but Wikipedia should be seen as encyclopedic and current. If it's in the global news, then it likely deserves an article. Today's news is tomorrow's history.
  5. People often want to use an encyclopedia to see the background to the news: this is a good way to drive traffic to articles of current interest. -- The Anome 10:48, 7 Apr 2004 (UTC)
  6. Elf | Talk 15:23, 7 Apr 2004 (UTC) With mixed feelings. I agree w/silsor's comment but also w/ wanting to being seen as current. However, along with that, I've thought for a while that the heading should be "Behind the news" or "Background for the news"; "In the news" feels like we'll click a link and read the news, which isn't so.
  7. Agree with the Anome. RADICALBENDER★ 15:30, 7 Apr 2004 (UTC)
  8. Having seen it both ways, I prefer the news at the top, where I can see it in my browser when I open the page. -- llywrch 17:45, 7 Apr 2004 (UTC)
  9. Agreeing with Llywrch, but first of all: decide and then don't change the main page layout for the next time -- till we *) 21:59, 7 Apr 2004 (UTC)
  10. To repeat what I said earlier, nowadays, I sometimes go to Wikipedia to catch the latest big headlines, and having news at the bottom is really annoying. --Lowellian 22:01, Apr 7, 2004 (UTC)
  11. Bensaccount 22:03, 7 Apr 2004 (UTC)
  12. Danny 22:06, 7 Apr 2004 (UTC)
  13. Artistically, it needs to be there. Historic anniversaries and ITN should be diagnolly opposed. Kingturtle 01:03, 8 Apr 2004 (UTC)
  14. Nice to be able to cross ref news instantly, which is unique to wikipediaDominick 10:32, 8 Apr 2004 (UTC)
  15. Dori | Talk 18:15, Apr 8, 2004 (UTC)
  16. Arwel 23:37, 8 Apr 2004 (UTC)
  17. +sj+ 00:48, 2004 Apr 9 (UTC) Behind the news might be a good title. Agree that this is not a news feed site. (on the other hand, once you realize you can improve the news as you read it, this starts to replaces other news feed sites as the first and last to visit...)

"Did you know" on top

  1. silsor 06:48, Apr 7, 2004 (UTC)
  2. Angela
  3. Mark 06:57, 7 Apr 2004 (UTC)
  4. mav 07:26, 7 Apr 2004 (UTC) (Wikipedia is not a news report, thus we should not emphasize that too much - a link to current events is already in the sidebar of every page.
  5. Krik - on top by default, but there should be some preferences for this kind of thing. Kirk 10:59, 7 Apr 2004 (UTC)~
  6. Seth Ilys 11:55, 7 Apr 2004 (UTC)
  7. Michael Snow 16:12, 7 Apr 2004 (UTC) I don't feel strongly, but this is my preference. Also, I think we should make it a requirement that one of the "Did you know" items have an associated image.
  8. jengod 18:25, Apr 7, 2004 (UTC) what snow said. specifically the top one if ask me
  9. Bevo 18:31, 7 Apr 2004 (UTC)
  10. Itai - Partially symbolically, because it is the errors of the past that brought about the mayhem of the present, and partly for convenience's sake, as I find it much less disconcerting to read about people already dead than about those in the process of being killed.

Corsican wikipedia and Yiddish Wikipedia

Moved to MediaWiki talk:Wikipedialang.

Main Page intro text

Two things I'd like:

  • to link "many languages" directly to the "other languages" achor at the bottom of the page.
  • to add an extra sentence at the top: "or visit one of our sister projects," and perhaps to add a fourth tiny link along the rhs., to draw more attention to those projects. [1]

[1] When I first came to wikipedia, it was many weeks before I realized wikibooks or wikiquote existed, and then only via VfD comments like "transwiki to wikiquote". when I came to take a look about a year ago, I had no time for WP, but would have had some for wikibooks (I was working on a couple books then, and in that mindset).

Thoughts? I'll wait a day before implementing the first idea, but it seems the right thing to do. The second is more drastic; I'll wait for feedback. +sj+ 13:44, 2004 Apr 9 (UTC)

The first change I support - for as long as wikipedia.org redirects to en, special attention to such matters is required. Could you provide an example text for the second change? (Nicely done, I have no objection, but it's important to provide a solid first paragraph.) -- Itai 14:10, 9 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I don't think it's a good idea. More text means more likely people will skip over it. It's important that only the most important text be there. The projects are already listed, and I don't think we can do more to advertize them. There is a ton of info on wikipedia, and it is likely that you won't be aware of it without spending some significant amount of time here. That's an inevitability IMO. Dori | Talk 14:58, Apr 9, 2004 (UTC)

Current text:

Welcome to Wikipedia! We are building an open-content encyclopedia in many languages. We started in January 2001 and are now working on 6,898,082 articles in the English version. Join us! Visit the Community Portal or try out the sandbox to find out how you can edit any article right now.

Proposed change:

Welcome to Wikipedia, an open-content encyclopedia in many languages. We started in 2001 and are currently working on 6,898,082 articles in English alone. Join us! Visit our Community Portal or the sandbox to see how you can edit any article right now, or visit one of our sister projects.

I want to keep the word "building" in the intro, and I prefer "in the English version" to "in English alone". As for the "Sister Projects" link, I can see the point, but I oppose unless we get rid of one of the other links. We have to avoid cluttering the intro space. I would fully support ditching the table-free Main Page link, that can certainly be linked elsewhere.--Eloquence* 17:33, Apr 10, 2004 (UTC)

protest against software-patents

the german wikipedia has made an red box with a protest against software-patents in europe on there main page. i think this is a very importaint thing for our digital rights and free sofware. more information about this topic: [1]. thanks for reading this --marti7D3

Full ACK! This website and most software will be illegal in Europe if software patents see the light of day in the EU! -- 195.158.147.135 09:49, 12 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Elaboration on Sister Projects

  • They're already at the bottom of the page; no loss to the scroll-averse to add some detail.
  • If adding detail, it may be worth giving them their own section (rather than sharing the yellow-backed section with the other-lang versions of WP, which is rather confusing).
  • A short 2-sentence para for each, including basic stats and a description, would be appropriate. A ~1k thumbnail logo might be appropriate for a major project like wikibooks.

More to come,+sj+ 23:53, 2004 Apr 9 (UTC)

Cutting down on size of the main page

Right now the Main Page is ~100k. Can we cut that down? It apparently gets >1M hits a month, so that's a significant chunk of bw, even if caching helps relieve server load. Thoughts:

  • avoid having title tags that just repeat the full URL of external links
  • replace the classes "internal" and "external" with one- or two-letter class names. considering how often they're used throughout WP, that should also provide a quick 1% drop in server traffic.
  • reorganize things so that you don't have to have every href start with "/wiki/" (again, general WP-wide benefit).

... +sj+

I'm not sure I'm following your argument, Sj. I just did a "Save Page" on the Main page, & the resulting file was a few bytes short of 14K; perhaps a bit bloated in comparison with Google's Main Page, but better than some graphics-intense pages I've visited. Even adding the two pictures (each a shade under 4KB), I can't make the Main Page come anywhere near 100KB. Are we talking about the same page: http://en.wikipedia.org ? -- llywrch 17:21, 10 Apr 2004 (UTC)
Interesting. for me it's 44k of html, 18k of main-page images (4 pics, not two!), 7k of javascript and [12k for the logo & 4k of css] (the latter two, at least, would probably be cached on the user's machine). Saving as "html only" instead of saving the whole page cuts it down to 36k (using Win/IE6) -- odd, eh? 36k of html is still quite a lot.+sj+ 20:46, 2004 Apr 10 (UTC)
Taking another look at what I did, I see I missed two images, & forgot about the logo -- adding them brings the total to 34K. However, I see no trace of javascript in what my browser sees. (Mozilla 1.0; an old version, yes, but I haven't seen a need to upgrade.) Could the javascript be something that IE6 adds? It wouldn't be the first time MS has bloated HTML code for reasons no one understands. (And I'm not gratuitously bashing a Microsoft product; I just know from experience MS software produces bloated HTML code.) -- llywrch 21:18, 10 Apr 2004 (UTC)


I just saved with Netscape 7.0 and got 124k, including 10k in 2 .js files and 70k in images. (jpg:4 png:1 ico:1) Looking at those javascript files, it appears they are added by user preferences. --ssd 21:08, 11 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Cutting down on size of RC

You know it's annoying. you're chasing down vicious villian VIII and suddenly, RC won't load. on the third reload, it takes 20 seconds to respond. Thoughts:

  • [disclaimer: I don't know css!] find a way to stick the width=12 height=12 border=0 associated w/ the image on every line, into a class description. (done on test)
  • use some form of spacing (transp gifs?) other than " " -- at 6B each and up to 6 per line, they make up ~5% of the content of the RC source I just looked at. (done on test)
  • As above for Main, reorg/rename so that you don't have to start every edit/rev/hist link with the string "/w/wiki.phtml?title" (soon fixed by gzipping before sending? not quite.)
  • rename the standard RC img ref so it's shorter than "/upload/Arr_.png" (soon fixed by gzipping before sending)
  • ... +sj+ 00:12, 2004 Apr 10 (UTC)

Browse by Topic update

I'd like to make BbT look like this, using a div style="float:right". Are there usability reasons not to do this? General objections? +sj+ 01:32, 2004 Apr 10 (UTC)

Browse Wikipedia by topic


I really can't see any benefit to it. It just looks asymmetrical and confusing.--Eloquence* 17:30, Apr 10, 2004 (UTC)
Did you mean the odd way it was rendering before? I don't know why the first line was munged like that. The reason, in any case, is to separate the meta-notions of other categorizations from thd default topical one... and to better use the vertical space on the screen. +sj+ 18:25, 2004 Apr 10 (UTC)

Main Page overall layout

Final thought on the main page: it deserves to break the standard article format. The "title", "Main Page", both conveys little information (it is obviously a special page) and takes up 5+ square inches of very prominent screen real estate. This page should be rendered specially, and that space should be used to direct visitors to other major entry points for the site. +sj+ 21:01, 2004 Apr 10 (UTC)

Specific ideas:

  • Direct users colorfully and concisely with a string of ultra-low-weight icons, or colored table cells containing links (perhaps with mouseover color a la Yahoo!).
  • extract information like "About Wikipedia", "Copyright and Free Use", "Ongoing Projects", "In the Media", &c. and link those pages from here.
  • Removing prominent "Main Page" links, since already on the main page, from sidebars/top/bottom. Replacing them with other useful link(s).

Behind the news?

I didn't understand what "behind the news" meant until I saw the discussion on this page. How about changing it to "topics in the news" or "topical articles" or something like that? Arvindn 17:31, 12 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Could you explain what you find difficult to understand about "Behind the news"? I personally prefer this phrase to "In the news"; regarding Mav's argument below that this is wrong, I disagree, as the headline "Featured article" does not mean that the text below it is the featured article. We provide background information about news items, so "Behind the nwes" seems like the most reasonable headline to me.--Eloquence* 17:37, Apr 12, 2004 (UTC)
I don't like it either. It is also wrong - news summaries are below the heading while the background is in the bolded articles. Besides, nothing was mentioned at the coordination page for that seciton (which is still named Wikipedia:In the news section on the Main Page). So I changed it back. --mav 22:58, 12 Apr 2004 (UTC)
OK, I brought up the possible change again at that location. Elf | Talk 04:22, 13 Apr 2004 (UTC)

American centric news

Why does the front page of Wikipedia contain daily American-centric news? Nichalp 19:44, Apr 12, 2004 (UTC)

Because its mostly the American editors who add events? (If it were truly American-centric, you might have seen events like the snowstorm in the Eastern United States, while Oregon had record high temperates over the weekend.) I see that you hail from Bombay, India; please add any significant events you know of from your corner of the world to the Current Events page. -- llywrch 21:28, 12 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Main page displaying differently under different browsers

I just noticed that under Mozilla 1.6 the top margin of the text (e.g. the gap between "Featured articles" and the box) is quite big. While under Internet Explorer 6.0 the titles are much closer to the top of the box. Yet the left and right hand margins appear to be normal for both browsers. -- Popsracer 11:18, 13 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Online Demonstration against software patents

It's the first time that I write sth. here, thus please be patient with me.

I want to make you aware of a problem that might break the neck of Wikipedia.org as well as uncountable other projects: Software Patents. The Commission and the Council of Ministers are covertly pushing for unlimited patentability of software, heavily lobbied by multinationals and patent lawyers. They are ignoring the democratically voted decision of the European Parliament from 24 september 2003, which has the support of more than 300.000 citizens, 2.000.000 SMEs, dozens of economists and scientists.

Thus, there is right now an online demonstration as well as a physical demo in Brussels, 2004-April-14 (tomorrow). Please join!

I sincerely doubt we'll close the website - however, we'd be happy to put it on our ITN section on the main page. →Raul654 12:52, Apr 13, 2004 (UTC)

You don't have to close it. Nearly noone really closed his site. You can just put either a different first page with a link to the real one or put at least a banner onto it, please.

Please see Jimbo's response to a request like this last August. Users can, however, add the message to their own user pages if they want to. See Tim Starling's user page for example. Angela. 18:20, Apr 13, 2004 (UTC)
I've written a draft of ITN for tomorrow that includes the above. It's NPOV, so I don't think Jimbo would have any objections. →Raul654 18:29, Apr 13, 2004 (UTC)

ERROR: There is an error on the main page. Passover does not begin today, it ends today. I would fix this myself but the page is protected. Thanks.

The United States bombed Libya in retaliation for Libyan sponsorship of terrorism against U.S. citizens.

That's not neutral. Make it alleged instead. -- Dissident 16:30, 14 Apr 2004 (UTC)

It's not alleged when they admit it (as they did in the Lockerbie incident). →Raul654 16:41, Apr 14, 2004 (UTC)
Lockerbie was after the bombing, which was actually a retaliation for the 1986 Berlin discotheque bombing and there is the suspicion that Gadhafi is simply admitting to acts just to start with a clean sheet. -- Dissident 18:32, 14 Apr 2004 (UTC)

The "featured article" today is Labour Economics, but there is no link to it. The words "Labour economics" at the start of the article should be fixed on the main page (but not in the article itself) to link to the appropriate article. Andrew Levine 07:14, 15 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Borders

When I swtiched from IE to firefox I noticed that the borders on the front page changed colour. I see that we don't specify a colour in the css, perhaps we should? I prefer the light grey that IE used, personally. What do you think? fabiform | talk 03:51, 16 Apr 2004 (UTC)

File:Mainpage in firefox black borders.png
Firefox
File:Mainpage in IE gray borders.png
IE

Can we try a way to see the list of topics higher up on the page? Rigth now there's way too much space dedicated to news and the featured article. Also who cares about anniversaries/ did you know/ ... they belong to the front page but underneath the topics list. If anything, make the searchbox more visible

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