Talk:Requests for comment/MediaWiki.org Main Page tweaks

Requests for comment/MediaWiki.org Main Page tweaks/Sandbox/v5
What's the point/purpose of the "Popular pages" box? --MZMcBride (talk) 22:46, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

Purpose of redesign
I think it'd make more sense to first focus on the actual issues you're attempting to address with a redesign before making a bunch of redesign drafts. It still isn't very obvious to me what problems are intended to be solved here. (Or how this requests for comment is intended to solve them.) --MZMcBride (talk) 22:54, 26 February 2012 (UTC)


 * ... right. --MZMcBride (talk) 22:33, 6 March 2012 (UTC)

Initial reactions
I've quickly looked at all the variations submitted so far (up to #10), and all of them are much, much more cluttered and confusing than the current main page. Our current main page looks pretty good, but I agree is a bit dated and is not necessarily meeting our functional needs. However, all the given designs look - to me (as a professional web designer) more dated, more confusing and less professional.

If these designs are currently just wire-frame style mockups to discuss arrangement of content, then obviously this criticism is invalid and premature, and I will look at them again in more detail, but if they are broadly what the finished designs will look like, then I say no, no, no!

On a more constructive note, here are my thoughts on where the current home-page succeeds and falls down. I am not going to discuss visual design at this stage, just content. I've numbered the list to make it easier to refer back to specific comments. The comments are not in any particular order.
 * 1) The 'about' box is actually pretty good.  A succinct description of what MediaWiki is and a couple of key notes about the site, plus links to the general overview stuff.  Download and Help & Support links are duplicated elsewhere, but I don't think that does any harm as these are likely the most common links that new visitors to the site will be after, but could be removed if the duplicate links end up sufficiently prominent.
 * 2) I think that the explicit delineation of content into users/admins/developers is something that we have got very right on the home-page (though less-so elsewhere in the site) and should definitely remain.  It think there is a tendency for developers to feel that they are under-represented as they are here all the time and because they are the people who will, ultimately, be driving the redesign.  However, you should remember that the home-page is most important to new or infrequent visitors as a jumping point to find what they want.  Therefore anything which side-lines the users, or which bloats the page with developer-specific stuff, is a bad idea in my view.  In particular, any design mock-up which simply reserves an area of the page indicating 'link 1', 'link 2', etc. (which applies to most of them) is going about things the wrong way.  First identify what these links are that are important enough to go on the home page, and then work out how much space is required and how it should be laid out.
 * 3) We have three hubs on the site, geared towards these user types: one for users, one for sysadmins and one for developers.  Currently these are underdeveloped and somewhat bit-rotten - largely just link dumps.  I think that it would be better to focus this redesign effort on making those hubs useful and powerful, rather than trying to get more stuff onto the home page.
 * 4) I think the icons for the different user roles are very clear and are quite important.  They should be used more widely on the site (as was the original intention) to flag the level of relevance/skill-level for different pages/sections/box-outs/etc.  I feel very strongly that each target-group should have a distinct icon.  I am happy for new icons to be considered, but no-one has yet put forward any suggestions in this regard.
 * 5) The current version box is almost redundant.  This was introduced at a time when we had several different current versions (due to PHP4 compatibility being removed in 1.7) and therefore a lot more content to go in it.  The news box was also shorter, so the whole bottom row occupied less space.  I think the current version box can be replaced by a single prominent [Download 1.XX] button, with smaller links underneath it to older versions and release notes, a bit like here (just one of many possible examples I could have used).  This should be near the top of the page, not tucked away at the bottom.
 * 6) The news box is completely and utterly redundant.  Remove it.  Aside from the two recent notices about Git migration, the only news that has been published in since 2007 has been to announce new releases.  This is not front-page fodder!  We know the latest release from the download box.  If the date is important, we can add that too.  There is no need to have such a prominent history of prior releases.
 * 7) New opportunities - this new addition, I like.  A great idea, so long as it is kept current.
 * 8) The idea of adding a 'popular pages' section just seems wrong to me.  If this is not already covered by our (already long) side navigation, then there is something very wrong indeed.  Of course, that comment assumes that it will be a static list that someone updates once-in-a-while based on the pages that are likely to be most useful.  If the suggestion is actually for a dynamically updated list (of what - most reads? Most edits? Over what time-scale?) I can very much see the point... though I must admit I'm a little sceptical.  Would be a great idea, so long as we get the algorithm right, and it actually churns out some relevant stuff that changes once in a while (hint: none of built-in special pages give us anything very meaningful).
 * Re: splitting extension writers away from developers - I can see the conceptual sense, but is there actually much of a delineation. Are there many extension writers who don't dabble in the code, at least a bit?  I'm not yet convinced, but would like to hear the arguments for this delineation (particularly in the light of points 2 and 3, above).
 * Re: 'A block to showcase sites made with mediawiki'. I think this is potentially a great idea, but only if (1) we have images for all sites that get listed - no benefit in just having text links (2) they are not too dominant (which is a danger if this is the only non-iconic image on the page - we don't have a screen-shot of the vanilla software after all, as the whole site is an interactive screen-shot, and it could be confusing if there are other screen-shots present).  I would suggest implementing this as a carousel, cycling through one site at a time, showing a screen-shot of the main page plus the site name, both of which link to either the site, or a page/section on MW.org giving more details about it.
 * Re: statistics about mediawiki. Nice idea, if useful/interesting to visitors and automatically updated.  Waste of space and high likelihood of bit-rot if not.

Hope these comments are taken in the constructive vein they are intended, and help focus the discussion onto what we actually want to do, before we go any further in discussing specific layouts.

--HappyDog (talk) 23:56, 14 March 2012 (UTC)