[Commons-l] About the current Commons homepage

[Hay (Husky)]

Everyone,
i'd like to invite you to look at the current state of the Commons
main page in a web browser with a 1024x768 resolution (according to
recent reports, that's the most common resolution for around 25% of
all internet users). Imagine you're a first-time visitor, who's never
heard of Commons. If you're lazy you can also click on this link for a
screenshot:

http://twitpic.com/1o0lx0

The main page is supposed to be a showcase on what a great collection
of free media we have, right? Well, let's just look at what a
first-time visitor encounters on the main page:

* A paragraph of text talking about a 'setup page' for the media of
the day, for 'ease of translation' in something called 'Template:motd'
and 'Template:potd'. Obviously, a first-time visitor won't have a clue
about what all those terms mean and if they're important to him/her.
* A link urging people to vote for the picture of the year, but that's
only for 'eligible voters' (i am an eligible voter? how do i know?)
* 'Welcome to Wikimedia Commons!'. Finally a warm word of welcome.
Hooray! Apparently i can somehow be involved in this as well.
* An enormous list of languages to choose from. Why would i want to
view this page Suomi? I've got my browser set to my language and i'm
coming from a certain country, right? And why can't this simply be in
a dropdown list?
* A picture, finally! Note that for all those 1024x768 users only the
first 100 pixels or so of this picture are displayed, the rest of the
picture disappears under the fold.

(scroll, scroll, scroll, scroll)
* Aha! A box about how i can participate. Cool! A pity i had to scroll
down all the way to the bottom to find that.

Now, i'm not trying to insult anyone, but i really think we should do
a big redesign of the current main page, focusing on presenting what
we've got and how we can invite new people to join the project. I'm
not sure if the current grant from the Ford foundation also includes a
homepage redesign, but that might be very helpful.

We did a little brainstorm during the multimedia usability meetup last
november in Paris, and this was the result of a 90 minute 'How would
you redesign Commons from scratch' session:

http://usability.wikimedia.org/wiki/Multimedia:Meeting_in_Paris/Notes/User_Experience

Maybe we can take that as a starting point.

What do you think?

-- Hay