Talk:MediaWiki/Homepage redesign/Preview/Archive 1

Please create new topics under the most appropriate section.

= Design =

Brena, Heather, and Quim want to complete a first homepage redesign proposal based on this mockup. We welcome feedback improving and challenging the current design, but we will not deviate at this point from the basic structure proposed. We are prototyping now on a wiki page, so forking and proposing alternatives should be a lot easier.

Top box
I'm very impressed, great work, I'm going to base my feedback on the mockup rather than the code as implemented since it seems a little further along. from top to bottom:

(...) Again, great work, really looking forward to seeing this out in the wild. Jaredzimmerman (WMF) (talk) 23:46, 24 February 2014 (UTC)
 * the box on the text feels a little weird, we might want to just add a subtle drop shadow to the text or modify the actual image, to darken the top. The photo banner could actually be 50% taller i think, it feels very thin now. The "Community Collaboration" text should probably be in Title Case and the leading between it and the sub-title feels off.
 * (Jared, I took the liberty to integrate the rest of your feedback in own sections for better discussion)--Qgil (talk) 00:37, 25 February 2014 (UTC)

About the height of the box, it ultimately depends on the final image, but all in all I think it is good not to take too much space, pushing the rest of content further below. I think the mediawiki.org homepage will benefit from a wide graphic bringing color and character, but our product, our audience, and our community are probably not going to be impressed with a really big "inspirational" image taking over. That is my opinion, at least.--Qgil (talk) 02:44, 25 February 2014 (UTC)

Not removing the top box
Replying to the comments questioning the big top box. See Talk:MediaWiki/Homepage_redesign/Design_Document for the kind of homepages we have been looking at when considering a large opening image. I think it is worth trying. If we reach a point where the big top box is the only remarkable problem of the homepage then let's talk about removing it.--Qgil (talk) 02:22, 25 February 2014 (UTC)

What can you see without scrolling
,, , I took screenshots of the Preview wiki page and the current mediawiki.org homepage to see what can be seen without scrolling in different configurations: my laptop, my monitor in portrait (which is my default), and my monitor in landscape (really wide). In my laptop I only see the first row of features. In wide monitor I get to see the gallery, with luck. The monitor in portrait looks great, but it is sadly the less common configuration out there. Thoughts?--Qgil (talk) 22:51, 25 February 2014 (UTC)

While showing the top box and features to new comers is a good idea, regular visitors won't need to see this all the time. Potential solutions: Thoughts?--Qgil (talk) 23:04, 25 February 2014 (UTC)
 * users can clip the top box and features to see the news and shortcuts right away (and the site or the browser will remember)
 * this is the homepage for anonymous users, logged in users get the top box and features clipped by default (is this feasible?)
 * this is a homepage mainly for newcomers --regular visitors go to some kind of Community Portal to get 100% technical info, 0% marketing

Margins
All the content feels uncomfortably close to the left and right container edges, I think having a bit more whitespace on either side would help.--Jaredzimmerman (WMF) (talk) 23:46, 24 February 2014 (UTC)

"Get MediaWiki" button
I like that there's a great big "Get MediaWiki" button. It kinda reminds me of the big green "copy" button on copiers; there's no way to miss it. However, I think the main page should continue to say what the current version of MediaWiki is, and provide some of the same quick links we have now to certain useful content. If I were doing the redesign, I would keep the top half or two-thirds of the main page (including the Using MediaWiki, System Administration, and Developing & Extending parts) mostly the way it is now. I would condense the Welcome to MediaWiki.org section by getting rid of the newlines, and replace the icons with either better icons or more quick links, since the current icons aren't all that descriptive of the concepts they represent and thus are mostly wasted space as it is now. I would keep the Current Version section the way it is, except move it up to the top right and put a big "Get MediaWiki" or "Download MediaWiki" button there.Leucosticte (talk) 00:35, 25 February 2014 (UTC)

Icons
The icons using on preview is the initial proposal, feel free to suggest and do improvements. --monteirobrena (talk) 20:42, 24 February 2014 (UTC)


 * I like both icon styles but i think we need to stick with one or the other, the top row speaks to me a bit more, so perahps we could use that style for all 6 icons. (black rounded outlines, brand colors used as accents)
 * gears don't really make me thing "Extend" this might be a place where we could use the puzzle piece iconography.
 * I think we need an icon for "reliable" from a quick search this is usually represented as a simplified bar graph or tachometer those seem boring, but I can't think of something better off the top of my head.
 * Jaredzimmerman (WMF) (talk) 23:46, 24 February 2014 (UTC)


 * In fact I wanted to propose to use the "W" in the first place, as a clear visual cue to the fact that MediaWiki is used by Wikipedia and there is a strong link between both. I would be even open to change the text to adapt better to the context of the "W", for instance stressing the fact that MediaWiki is open, free, and developed for very prominent projects. If nobody else thinks that keeping the "W" is worth then I won't fight for it, but if you also see the point...--Qgil (talk) 01:31, 25 February 2014 (UTC)

Beyond the icons, after hearing the first comments I think we need slightly longer texts for these 6 features. Currently the icons and the very short texts leave too much space for people's interpretations. Brena, take into account that longer texts might show up next to these icons.--Qgil (talk) 01:56, 25 February 2014 (UTC)

Button Style
Buttons, as mentioned, lets use the mediawiki.ui style buttons, looks like S Page (WMF) has you covered there.--Jaredzimmerman (WMF) (talk) 23:46, 24 February 2014 (UTC)
 * What bulleted list are you referring to?--Qgil (talk) 00:40, 25 February 2014 (UTC)

Gallery
I'd love to see these pictures bigger, maybe staggered left and right? they aren't really clear call to actions, are they access points to this type of information or asks that i create extend this type of information, its unclear at this point when i think of myself as a user new to this page,--Jaredzimmerman (WMF) (talk) 23:46, 24 February 2014 (UTC)

News and media
The video in the bottom left doesn't have a clear call to action, what is this thing, why do I want to watch it? News seems to need a header of some sort.--Jaredzimmerman (WMF) (talk) 23:46, 24 February 2014 (UTC)


 * I would replace the News and New Opportunities sections with something more useful; I'm not sure what, though. Maybe randomly featured content; e.g. there could be a randomly featured extension section, if people wanted to put in the effort to write up some blurbs for various stable or beta extensions. Or randomly featured documentation pages. Or new extensions. Or new documentation pages. (That would be the equivalent of a "Did you know").


 * Maybe there's just not a whole lot that needs to be said on the main page, which is why the current main page has so much whitespace and so much content that will be of use to only a small number of people (e.g. notices of gatherings in Zurich), and why the preview calls for having a big photo of a crowd of people, great big icons, and lots of whitespace. It's basically filler and/or decoration. We're not exactly going for the Craigslist look of cramming as much text on the main page as possible. It's also not as though we have a large enough readership or editorship that there would be much interest in creating the kind of "Today's featured article" or "Did you know?" or "News" content that makes Wikipedia's main page a go-to place for introducing oneself to intriguing new topics and goings-on. It would be badass if we could maintain something like that, but we probably can't. Leucosticte (talk) 00:35, 25 February 2014 (UTC)


 * The News and media row needs more thought, yes. First, as it is now the big logo doesn't fit there at all. Then, both News and Media would need proper headers and a more compact design. I still think that it is worth using two boxes for News and Media, but I'm less sure about the third.--Qgil (talk) 01:12, 25 February 2014 (UTC)


 * Qgil no boxes! mw has too many boxed, use a grid and whitespace and clear titles, but no more boxes please.Jaredzimmerman (WMF) (talk) 00:19, 26 February 2014 (UTC)

Logos of MediaWiki users
We seem to have lost the "other companies/projects that rely on mediawiki, I think its important to have.--Jaredzimmerman (WMF) (talk) 23:46, 24 February 2014 (UTC)
 * We decided to leave them out for now. It will require some extra community consensus, and it can be easily added if/when we agree on it.--Qgil (talk) 00:50, 25 February 2014 (UTC)

So many people!
I hope it's not an indication of anti-social tendencies on my part that I'm somewhat bothered by all the people and photos on the front page. :) First, it's unexpected - I don't think I've seen other software homepages that featured photos of the developers quite so prominently. (Please correct me if there are other such pages.) But I think there might be a deeper issue, which is that it changes the focus: instead of "how can this software help you", it's "look at us, making this software in our tight-knit community". It might be intended to show humanity or inclusivity, but it seems oddly... alienating. Yaron Koren (talk) 00:23, 25 February 2014 (UTC)


 * You have a point. When it comes to the top box, the image is the most appropriate we have got so far, and we are happy to update it with a better one. Then yes, the pictures in the gallery also feature people, and at the end this gives the impression of an overcrowded homepage, in the literal sense of the word. Then again, the images of the gallery can also be improved with new ones. his is one of the reasons of moving the prototyping to a wiki page.--Qgil (talk) 01:18, 25 February 2014 (UTC)


 * Yes, "overcrowded" is a good word. Why even have an image? I've just looked through a bunch of other software homepages, both open source and proprietary, and I don't see any that have that kind of large, informationless image, especially not one that dominates the starting screen (users have to scroll down to see pretty much anything else). Yaron Koren (talk) 01:30, 25 February 2014 (UTC)


 * Agreed. --MZMcBride (talk) 01:51, 25 February 2014 (UTC)


 * Ah, now I see - this was where the decision to have a big image at the top was made. But the difference between those images and the current MediaWiki redesign one is that those images, to quote the page, "tell a story" - they convey something about the software, whether it's through screenshots, or metaphors (a writing pad), or just some graphic that indicates that the software is fun, uncluttered, etc. The current MediaWiki image says nothing about the software - or at least, nothing good. Perhaps a screenshot would work well there, or perhaps there is some outside image that can serve as a metaphor for MediaWiki. I've actually thought quite a bit about this, back in 2012 when I was trying to come up with a cover for my MediaWiki book. I very strongly considered this as a visual metaphor, for instance. (We ended up going with stylized wikitext instead.) But unless there's a meaningful image there, I would say no image is the way to go. Yaron Koren (talk) 15:50, 25 February 2014 (UTC)

= Content =

You can edit the homepage preview texts directly, as long as you keep their current purpose. If you want to change the purpose of text elements, please discuss them here first.

Title
"Community collaboration" puts the emphasis on the fact that MediaWiki is developed for communities, implicitly telling that is developed BY communities as well. If you have a better concept or wording please propose it here.--Qgil (talk) 15:31, 25 February 2014 (UTC)

Tagline
About "All sizes covered", the idea is that MediaWiki can handle communities of any size. It is useful as a personal archive or a tool to write a book, it is useful for a small team creating a knowledge base, for mid-sized companies, and for huge projects like Wikipedia, Wikia or WikiHow. If you have a better concept or wording please propose it here.--Qgil (talk) 15:31, 25 February 2014 (UTC)

Main description
The main explanation of MediaWiki currently reads:

MediaWiki is a collaborative publishing platform that can scale and be extended to empower big and diverse communities like Wikipedia. No matter how specialized, large, and multilingual you want your creative community to be, MediaWiki has you covered.

There's clearly an attempt to do some touchy-feely branding here with words like "empower", which is admirable, but I think overall it's the wrong approach. That's for two reasons: first because it's too vague about what MediaWiki actually is, and second because the focus on community is not appropriate for many - or even most - usages. I think about half the installations of MediaWiki are for internal use only. Someone considering using MediaWiki to, say, store their company's internal operations manual might look at the text and think, "Our group of employees doesn't need to be empowered, it isn't big or diverse, it's not really a community, it's not specialized, large or multilingual, and it's not creative for that matter either. Is this really the right tool for us?"

I would argue for something more pedestrian and informative, ideally including some or all of these words and phrases: "wiki software", "content management", "open source", "very popular", "stable", "reliable", "large developer base", "many different usages", "enterprise", "extensions". Some of that echoes other text already on the page, but I think it's fine to reinforce important concepts. Yaron Koren (talk) 17:56, 25 February 2014 (UTC)

The right 6 features?
Considering that we have six placeholders? Would you change any of the current features for another one?--Qgil (talk) 01:43, 25 February 2014 (UTC)

Misleading features
Brian Wolf says: "When i read that page it makes it seem like these features are available out of the box, which is kind of misleading." Right, then we need to be more clear with the text. This is better than only trying to promote what comes in the tarball, ignoring what you can also get through extensions, right?--Qgil (talk) 01:50, 25 February 2014 (UTC)

Publish
Brian Wolf says: "In particular claiming we have wysiwyg editing without mentioning visual editor is extremely difficult to install doesnt seem like a good idea." Yes, agreed. We will need more space for text in these items. This homepage won't go live before MediaWiki 1.23. I asked James Forrester whether VisualEditor was aiming to be installable in 3rd party wikis for that release and he said that this is something they are working on. We can fine tune the text as a real release date for this homepage comes. I think it is good to be ambitious, but we don't need to oversell, agreed.--Qgil (talk) 01:53, 25 February 2014 (UTC)

Translate
I would think that it makes sense to rename this to something like "Global". This currently seems to imply that MediaWiki is great because you can use it to translate - which is of course true, but I'm guessing that what was meant was that it's already been translated into many languages, and thus can be used internationally. Yaron Koren (talk) 01:54, 25 February 2014 (UTC)
 * Is the problem the title or the description (or both)? I have expanded the description. "Multilingual" might be more descritive than "Global", if the title needs to be changed.--Qgil (talk) 02:05, 25 February 2014 (UTC)
 * I thought the description was fine before; the problem to me was only the title. Obviously, the ability to translate stuff is important, but that's a rather minor usage of MediaWiki, all in all; existing language support, on the other hand, is crucial. Yaron Koren (talk) 02:18, 25 February 2014 (UTC)
 * The problem of handling multilingual sites is pretty common, and MediaWiki offers powerful tools to address it, probably better than many other alternatives. Maybe the fact that the Translation bindle is not more used or even a driver of MediaWiki adoption is that many sysadmins / publishers don't even know that it exists?--Qgil (talk) 02:32, 25 February 2014 (UTC)
 * Maybe - I don't know what the overall thinking behind this feature list is, or how concise each description is supposed to be. I do think the title should change, though. Yaron Koren (talk) 03:24, 25 February 2014 (UTC)

Reliable

 * "Tested and maintained as long as Wikipedia exists." And hopefully even longer; I'm sure a challenger to the throne will emerge at some point. Wikipedia might also migrate to some other engine eventually; the tech world is a fast-paced place full of creative destruction. Leucosticte (talk) 23:51, 24 February 2014 (UTC)
 * Sure, but while that day comes, featuring the Wikipedia name and "W" is a good proof of reliability and a marketing asset that MediaWiki can benefit from. If a challenger beats Wikipedia, editing that block will be the easiest thing.--Qgil (talk) 00:24, 25 February 2014 (UTC)

Current four "main boxes" could be restructured
The four "main boxes" in the middle of the page (that's what I'm calling them, for lack of a better word) are currently "Documentation", "Support", "Development" and "Get involved". I think the current set is not quite ideal. It's not clear, for instance, what the difference is between "Development" and "Get involved"; and in fact, "Development" links to the "Developer hub" page, which is already linked prominently in the "Get involved" page. I would just get rid of "Development". Conversely, there should probably be a new box there, maybe called "About", that links to some page with explanatory text and links. There are various questions that new visitors to the page might have, that it's hard to figure out how they would get at the moment. These include:
 * what is a wiki?
 * what is MediaWiki?
 * is it open source?
 * who uses it? (Covered in the section below.)
 * what is the version history?
 * what are some possible upcoming features?

Some of these questions are explained, or linked to, in the current homepage, but can't be found in the redesigned one.

Also, the "Support" box links to Project:Support desk, but it perhaps it should link to Communication, or some new page like "Communication", instead. Unless the implication is meant to be that the "Support desk" forum is a better place to ask questions than the mailing lists, IRC channels, etc. Perhaps it is - if so, I wasn't aware. Yaron Koren (talk)
 * My comments on the main description above now cover at least some of the "About" stuff. Yaron Koren (talk) 17:57, 25 February 2014 (UTC)

Something about existing usage?
Given that this has a marketing feel (which is good), I think there should be something about the current usage of MediaWiki here. MediaWiki is the world's most popular wiki software - I don't think many people would disagree with that. Besides Wikimedia sites, it's used on the world's most popular wiki farm (Wikia), and it's used by governments, corporations and organizations around the world. Could there be some text to reflect that? Testimonials would be nice too, of course, although that requires some separate effort. Yaron Koren (talk) 00:34, 25 February 2014 (UTC)


 * In previous versions we had a list of MediaWiki users that even included a SemanticMediaWiki logo. :) However, we decided to leave them out for now. It is a separate community discussion that has a risk of becoming dense. We can bring them back if there is a clear plan, though.--Qgil (talk) 01:23, 25 February 2014 (UTC)


 * Right - a logo wall, like a set of testimonials, would require additional work and discussion. Much as I'd like to see the Semantic MediaWiki logo there, I'm really just talking about having text that indicates that yes, this is very popular software - even "the world's most popular wiki software", if the lawyers will agree to it. :) Yaron Koren (talk) 01:34, 25 February 2014 (UTC)


 * Should this concept become one of the six features? In exchange of which one? Changing "Reliable" for "Most popular", keeping the "W"? Otherwise "Discuss" might be the weakest link, resulting in: Publish - Translate - Extend || On the go - Reliable - Most popular.--Qgil (talk) 02:11, 25 February 2014 (UTC)


 * I figured it could just be added to the text on the front page, but I don't know. Does everything need to be fit within that "features" framework? It would be great for the front page to state that MediaWiki is open source, too, for instance, but I don't know if that requires an icon. Yaron Koren (talk) 03:11, 25 February 2014 (UTC)

= Code =

Clickable images in gallery
I thought we could just use the beautiful design offered by the MediaWiki gallery in our row with four pictures. However, the problem of this is that the pictures themselves are cickable, which makes sense total sense for a gallery but not for a homepage. "link=" won't work here. Can this behavior be implemented in the current gallery in any way? Should we just replicate the HTML manually?--Qgil (talk) 19:32, 21 February 2014 (UTC)
 * Unless you find a way to give attribution, you pretty much have to have them clickable. I think this is an acceptable difference between us and other homepage types... what do you think? heather walls (talk) 21:02, 24 February 2014 (UTC)
 * Not a bad argument. Let's keep it as it is.--Qgil (talk) 21:03, 24 February 2014 (UTC)

mediawiki.ui
I'm trying apply mediawiki.ui in span tag but the style isn't applied. Is there any configuration I have to do first? I'm trying like this. --monteirobrena (talk) 14:53, 24 February 2014 (UTC)
 * might be able to help.--Qgil (talk) 16:48, 24 February 2014 (UTC)
 * The module that has the CSS,, isn't loaded by default (to confirm, in a browser console enter mw.loader.getState("mediawiki.ui.button") , it's "registered" but not actually "ready").   proposes to load it on all pages for exactly this reason. Vote early and often! :)  In the meantime, you could put code to load it in MediaWiki:common.js , see how en:MediaWiki:Common.js does it. -- S Page (WMF) (talk) 21:52, 24 February 2014 (UTC)


 * , thank you so much. I created the file common.js and mediawiki.ui was apply. --monteirobrena (talk) 22:31, 24 February 2014 (UTC)


 * I have edited MediaWiki:Common.js. Thank you S!--Qgil (talk) 23:37, 24 February 2014 (UTC)


 * ✅. Thank you S Page (WMF) and Qgil. --monteirobrena (talk) 11:48, 25 February 2014 (UTC)

News
The news added on preview was collected from tech blog more specifically from posts using MediaWiki category. We need find a way to feed this automatically. Any idea? --monteirobrena (talk) 21:17, 24 February 2014 (UTC)
 * We don't know yet what source we will use, and how we will update the news manually. In the meantime updates will be done manually.--Qgil (talk) 00:27, 25 February 2014 (UTC)
 * https://blog.wikimedia.org/c/technology/mediawiki/feed/ should work, but it'll require a configuration tweak first (cf. 61888). --MZMcBride (talk) 02:24, 25 February 2014 (UTC)
 * http://blog.wikimedia.org/feed/ provides decent results already now, could be used as a working solution. I haven't used Extension:RSS before, it looks like the styling of the items is done through separate wikitext templates. Neat.--Qgil (talk) 19:22, 25 February 2014 (UTC)

Video
The video used was found in a search with words: video + feature. The idea is feed automatically such as links. Any help? --monteirobrena (talk) 21:36, 24 February 2014 (UTC)


 * That video will need to be updated manually until we find a better way to solve this. Also, we might want to leave it as "Media" more than commiting to video. We might have a PDF, an image...--Qgil (talk) 00:26, 25 February 2014 (UTC)

General thoughts
I largely agree with others who have already commented, but my thoughts specifically:


 * Header image is overly large and unnecessary
 * Wikimedia Foundation logo is overly large and unnecessary
 * Most of the proposed text is really bad and needs to be rewritten

File:MediaWiki Homepage Mockup Graphic With Help Links.png is a good first draft, but it still needs substantial improvement.

Is the sidebar part of this discussion? --MZMcBride (talk) 02:04, 25 February 2014 (UTC)


 * We have left the sidebar aside :) for now, although we have discussed about it. I think it could also get some love in terms of content and styling. See Talk:MediaWiki/Homepage_redesign/Design_Document (thoughts) and MediaWiki/Homepage_redesign/Design_Document/Texts (a very initial draft welcoming improvement).--Qgil (talk) 02:38, 25 February 2014 (UTC)