Talk:Main Page/Archive 1

General
It may be useful to add a related Wikicities section on this wiki. See Wikicities:Category:Politics for some which may have a similar to this one. Also, see Wikicities:Category:English for other English language Wikicities. Angela 23:34, 27 Jan 2005 (PST)

Design suggestions
It would be useful for the left column to start with a short, accessible summary of what the site's about so that a reader parachuting in can tell straight away whether they've arrived where they wanted. This is one of the two key functions of a home page.

I wonder whether the page is too full and busy - maybe some of the detail can be cut or moved elsewhere?

--Tim Gray 21:59, 3 Jun 2005 (UTC)


 * Hi Tim, the convention seems to be, on talk pages put most recent stuff at end. To answer your question, Thanks for discussing this first. The page is constantly evolving, and in particular readers asked for the three main sections on the left and 'more about wikis', and I think the 'You can help' bit is vital and preferably should be toward the top. But I suppose the main reason why it looks kind of busy is 'cause it's designed to be like that! - because one if its main functions is perhaps to provide as many ways in to other pages (now some 120+ excl talk pages) to boost traffic and stats - and very much modelled on Community Portal and Main Page - which make a virtue out of busyness(?) - see also Main Page  Long term strategy here is to develop more pages as ways ins (sort of Main Pages for different sections - started on this with LS Ideas Bank - but much more to do, when I can get round to it!) - then perhaps share the business around a bit (?) see also WikiNode  If you want to draft a "short, accessible summary", please do so (here?) then we can see if it can replace or add to anything. This sort of thing always useful for publicity purposes (other kinds of publicity) anyway. Philralph 08:31, 4 Jun 2005 (UTC)

OK... the top bit should address what it covers, who it's for, and scope/coverage. Yucky first stab: "This site is about sustainability in the UK, especially grassroots action. Sustainability is basically the pursuit of a good quality of life for all in harmony with the environment. The site holds information about issues, projects and events and, importantly, is created by its users."

For lower links, my personal preference would be to only list top-level stuff, perhaps with a few words to clarify what it is. E.g. "Local Sustainability Ideas Bank - ideas for action across a range of topics", possibly followed by the "featured" link. Use spacing and/or bullets to distinguish them. Think about a new user, possibly with no prior experience of sustainability work, just wanting a clear idea of what's there and where to go. A sea of links does not help them.

Overall I think your sections are good ones to have, though I'd combine the "Build a bigger alliance" with one of the other sections. Maybe "you can help" belongs with the text about what a wiki is, while the stuff about why s, c and a in that section should be separated.

If you want I'll have a go at moving things around and you can revert it if you like. But I know I'd be a bit uncomfortable about changes to my own main page because that's where I set out the basis for the whole thing.

--Tim Gray 09:08, 4 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Further thoughts on main page design
Hi Tim, More thoughts about main page design. I think I feel more strongly about this than I've previously suggested, particularly about what you call the 'sea of links'. I started out with ideas which seem similar to what you're expressing now and early versions reflected this. Then, as I say it evolved in response to what others suggested should be there. But I think the main reason I came round to the sea of links rather than my initial view of just a few main ones, was the way things are done on Wikipedia. As I understand it they have around 5 years experience and what they've ended up with is the result of consensus amongst many, many people. I'm not sure we have any great reason to depart too far from their successful 'blueprint'.

But there are other reasons too for the sea of links. Personally I find them a help to site navigation. Because I've a rough idea of the whole site structure in my head I can easily get to places with just a couple of clicks. Have you heard of the 3 clicks rule? - people give up if they don't get to where they want with three clicks - so statistically more chance of success if you start with a sea of links.

I appreciate that your looking to 'explain', summarise, etc, particularly to newcomers, and I agree that's useful, but look again at Wikipedia. There doesn't seem to be that much by way of explanation. I guess they use the sea of links to help with explanantion and rely on people being sufficiently interested to get their own feel for how they want to see the thing. (There's a particular problem with trying to condense too much "what is sustainability" - it resists, or rather people object quite strongly when their perceptions seem to be being left out, it quickly gets big and defeats summary - localsustuk discussions are but one example of this)

But the biggest reason for my chance of heart I think, and I may not be able to explain this as well as I'd like, is to do with overall structure, For me (I may be unusual but probably not, and even if I were I still think this is the way to go) one of the things I disliked about ordinary websites (and conversly like about possilbilities within wikis) was the way they tend to cater for the reductionist view of tracking down information, and often avoid giving an idea of the whole site structure. This leads to a kind of self-limiting block on the site getting too big 'cause even site designers lose track of what they've got and where it can go. Conversely I'm excited by the possibilities SCA wiki seems to offer. As it seems to me sustainability is partly about the joined-up, integrating, holistic, whole picture view, it seems to me to fit beautifully (so that we're 'walking the talk') if we're seeking ways of conveying this up front. (I also think there are ways of going even beyond how Wikipedia do it - but that's another story!)

Having said all this I want to remain open to your suggestions. E g perhaps WIkipedia have migrated their sea of links to their community portal allowing the main page to be a little less cluttered and we have similar possibilities?

One specific thing I may not be explaining well enough is that SCA is open to other countries, (though English speaking only at least at to start with) For obvious reasons the content will have a UK bias at the start. (e.g. I get the impression that a high proportion of other wikicitizens could be from US)

Hope the length of my reply doesn't put you off! Philralph 08:02, 6 Jun 2005 (UTC)


 * Thanks Phil, it's good to have ideas set out clearly.


 * I'm coming from the perspective of conventional website design, where the home page has two purposes: to tell the reader very quickly what the site's about so they know whether they've come to the right place, and to link to the top-level categories of the site. Those categories are general, with content arranged within them, perhaps in subsections. Yes, one of the principles is the 3-click rule. The aim is to get a structure that's clear even to someone who comes to the site and the subject matter to the first time. If it's well designed there isn't a limit on the size of a site because you know where to look for anything.


 * Now the wiki format is not quite the same as that, but should draw on similar principles. Yes, a wiki is much more a sea of information that connects up in an organic way rather than a rigid tree, emphasising sheer volume of information, and it's good to reflect that size and liveliness from the start. But one of the advantages of the web is that people can take in information at a rate to suit them. You might find it useful to have lots of shortcuts to places you know within the site, but do you tink another visitor might wonder which link they were supposed to click on?


 * It's good to draw on the experience of Wikipedia, but it's not the same project. Entries stand alone more there, I should think. Some will go there just to look something up, and most people have experience of using an encyclopedia or dictionary so they'll "get" the way it works. Active contributors are more committed and will puzzle out how things work.


 * I guess what my comments come down is that when I arrived at the front page I found it a mass of info and it was a bit hard to see where I could go, and that's with being someone who can digest the jargon pretty well.


 * I'd suggest these modest changes as important improvements. 1) A couple of sentences at the top to explain what the site is. 2) More use of bullets in "what's here" to clarify which lines are main sections, perhaps with a few words of explanatory text about what they mean. (And add something about searching in the WikiCities box, which is the primary method of finding stuff.) And perhaps 3) Tighten up the other sections a bit.


 * Tim Gray 09:40, 6 Jun 2005 (UTC)


 * I've set up Draft main page ideas to show the sort of things I'm talking about. It's the existing main page material rearranged a bit. Changes can be adopted into the main page or ignored; eventually that draft page can be deleted. Tim Gray 10:56, 6 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Image size and layout on smaller displays
Possibly a smaller image would be better here. I saw the page today on an 800 width display and the left column really gets squashed. Tim Gray 16:29, 10 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Hi Tim, had great problems when setting this up with not only text flowing round picture if smaller width of pic but also differences of how this came out on different browsers. Solution I'm just about to try is a roughly proportionate decrease in image width and col width Philralph 11:46, 11 Jun 2005 (UTC)


 * (reply written as phil was posting)The text flow is sorted by br clear=all. I can't see why it aligns the image frame right even when that instruction is taken out of the template; maybe that's a property of thumbs. The image needs to be quite small for the layout to work in 800 width. As the original image is large, and an odd number of pixels wide, this degrades the quality the user actually sees. Ideally once you hit on the right size you'd produce a version of the image that is that size. (Forcing resize in the browser generally looks bad, and of course means a bigger download for the larger image.) (PS the timestamp on these discussion items is completely out of whack! It's now 13:17.) Tim Gray 12:03, 11 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Tim ,just tried as above. Don't want to reduce size of image too much. But solution seems not too bad in both col widths? If you play around with more, best to check how looks in both main browsers. Draft page also needs tidying up. Have to go now! Philralph 11:55, 11 Jun 2005 (UTC)


 * From tinkering around and using preview I see there's a row at the top of the table that appears redundant (with the wrong colspan), though removing it doesn't seem to make any difference. If I were you I'd set the 2 cols to 50% each rather than odd numbers - I don't *think* there's a good reason to do that. At 250 width the image overrides that anyway on an 800 width screen, and tends to jump out of the column to obscure the Google ads. Tim Gray 12:24, 11 Jun 2005 (UTC)


 * OK, this seems to work OK in both 800 and 1024 screen width. It looks a bit small at 1024, but I think it's better to do that and have better usability. I don't think you can assume a viewer has a larger screen; I always design my websites to work at 800. The problem with this one is that you have both left and right columns with fixed content so we're only working with a narrow screen.


 * By the way, I found that right align *is* the default for thumbnails and frames, so you have to specify otherwise - center in this case, which automatically puts following text below the image so I took the br clear=all out again. Tim Gray 12:56, 11 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Good stuff, Tim. I'll adjust C Portal and LS Ideas Bank accordingly, and also at some point do a check on other images (that size used is as uploaded). It'd also be good to have these design tips written up somewhere, perhaps a Manual of style page? I'll add this to the global to do list on the Village pump page. Philralph 07:14, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Test redesign October 2005
Just setting up a page to try out a redesign Philralph 13:00, 3 Oct 2005 (UTC)

I see you've put it up on the actual front page now. --Tim Gray 08:15, 5 Oct 2005 (UTC)

New Zealand makes the front page
Nice. I've never been as far north as Kerikeri. It's a noted citrus fruit area. Robin Patterson 19:19, 1 Dec 2005 (UTC)

SCA's first birthday

 *  Happy birthday, SCA!  (6 December) - among the oldest of the serious wikicities; perhaps the very first. Robin Patterson


 * Wow! Hadn't realised it was such a pioneer! Thanks to Phil for all his hard work. --Tim Gray 08:51, 7 Dec 2005 (UTC)

Proposal for redesigns, February 2006
Part of redesign for main page, community portal and help section - forthcoming redesign for front page: main change - hiving off the what's new bit {right hand column) to a new separate page - hopefully resulting in less cluttered front page as Tim has argued for in the past.

other aspects
 * (although this may become contentious) feel may need more explanation of sustainbility on front page
 * more / better use of images (changed regularly)
 * wikicities tour
 * (separate page - possibly linked to from here or comm portal, something like 'Why use SCA wiki', top 20 reasons, etc

(Learning from the best design for Main page, community portal, help sections of other wikicities, Wikipedia and other projects) Philralph 10:53, 18 February 2006 (UTC)


 * Interesting. I think the existing page has some use for experienced visitors but would be very daunting for new ones. Perhaps a prominent "if you're new start here" link. Include just enough new/news stuff to make it look fresh. Not more expl of SD on front page, but maybe somewhere else. Basically, anticipate the needs of site users and make sure they have a clear *route* to what they want rather than dumping it right there. --Tim Gray 19:17, 18 February 2006 (UTC)


 * Reasons for redesign not just, or even mainly about, reducing text on main page, although this may be useful, but also about creating more space for the What's New element. Whilst this is on the front page it's always going to feel constrained by this thing of not having too much (overwhelming content) on the front page. The new What's New page is to start with very basic in design, but as it develops hopefully it'll be clearer as to why it's maybe better separate. Philralph 10:57, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

Protection
Greetings! Nice place you've got here.

I notice the Main Page of this wiki is protected. In very rare cases, the Main Page can be protected, but it should usually remain editable. If you suffer large scale vandalism on your wiki, you might want to consider watching that page more often, or making use of templates to make it harder, though not impossible, to edit. If you're not quite at that stage, though, protection will probably do your wiki more harm than good.

The Main Page will often be the first page a new user sees, and having it uneditable is off-putting, since it implies some sort of hierarchy among editors. New users may not even realize the site is editable if they only see a locked page, and leave without contributing. (Remember that no one owns a Wikicity, not even the founder!) Being the Main Page is not, in itself, a reason for protection, so try not to lock this page unnecessarily. Thanks, and let me know if you need any help! Mindspillage (spill yours?) 20:34, 2 March 2006 (UTC)


 * Reply here - Urgent clarification requested Philralph 22:10, 2 March 2006 (UTC)


 * Mindspillage, given the "expert" stance of your contribution a bit of introduction might have been a good idea. --Tim Gray 09:16, 3 March 2006 (UTC)


 * Limited unprotection being tested on redesign, editing limited to signed in users Philralph 10:43, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

Vandalism
We seem to be getting colossal amounts of this now, presumably automated and by the look of it happening across Wikicities. That's leading to a lot of IP addresses being blocked. I wonder whether it's worth a box on the front page to say (a) we're getting a lot of "vandalism" from automated scripts that maliciously alter pages, (b) experienced users "revert" these back to the proper versions when we spot them - if you know how to do this we'd welcome your help, (c) we're blocking the IP addresses these attacks come from, but there's a chance this will stop legitimate users from logging in or altering pages - if this applies to you please [do something]. --Tim Gray 09:44, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

Proposal to archive
As most of the notes on this page are quite old now suggest archive most of them, within a week or so, if no objections Philralph 11:00, 10 May 2006 (UTC)