[Wikipedia-l] Re: Some answers with the "users'" point of view in mind.

[Daniel Mayer]

On Wednesday 16 October 2002 12:01 pm Ruth Ifcher wrote:
> Hi Members,
>.....
>      First, in regard to "redirect highlighting" proposed by Mr. Manske, I
> think that a regular Wikipedia reader will find this quite disconcerting.
> At most, I think it should be a logged-in user's choice.

I must have missed that one. Yeah, I agree, highlighting redirects is a bad 
idea. If there are valid alternate ways to title something then an alternate 
but still perfectly valid name shouldn't look different. At worst this would 
be very confusing, at best this is needless feature creep. 

>      Second, in regard to the "first page" or "main page" contents, I think
> the main page, as it is, is far too "busy" for the everyday user. They
> should be looking for a choice of language and a place to put a search
> argument. I think that is pretty much all that belongs there, in terms of
> content. This doesn't mean the page cannot be attractive.

For the main or 'gateway page' for the whole project I tend to agree -- but my 
view of what isn't too "busy" may differ from yours. 

However the whole 'International Wikipedia gateway at www.wikipedia.org' thing 
has one very serious flaw as it is now; There is no direct and obvious link 
to Recent Changes. 

In our rush for the URL switch, it would have been a mistake just to put up a 
static page at www.wikipedia.org that merely directed users to each 
language's Main Page. IMO what really is needed is a combined Recent Changes 
at www.wikipedia.org. That way somebody landing at www.wikipedia.org can look 
to the top of their page, hit Recent Changes and see the last 100 edits made 
for the whole project (each language). Until that is possible, I don't think 
a gateway page will work at all. 

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)