Dear all, I have a little suggestion to the home page redesign, it looks really great but should we also add in a translation bar and the sister projects bar at the bottom? BTW, I am Gabriel Lee, 13 from Hong Kong. Gabriel
2014-02-26 8:12 GMT+08:00 Isarra Yos zhorishna@gmail.com:
On 24/02/14 23:14, Quim Gil wrote:
On 02/24/2014 01:54 PM, Isarra Yos wrote:
'Get MediaWiki'? We've already got that in the sidebar. We have a mainpage to go beyond what's in the sidebar. What are the current releases? What's the status? Is there any important security information we need to know about? This stuff is important, and not everyone subscribes to the release lists (and even if they do, we can't expect people to rely on them). The mainpage would be the obvious place to look for updates.
Based on https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki/Homepage_ redesign/Design_Document , we have been betting for a simple "Get MediaWiki" button linking to /Download, but we are happy to discuss better approaches.
How much extra details do we want to provide in this homepage targeted mainly to new adopters?
Why would it be targeted mainly to new adopters? They're only one of the groups who would be using this.
Should we also add the version number of the last estable release, linking to e.g. https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki_1.22 ?
Should we really go further into the other two releases we are manintaining, security notices, and so on? Or should we keep channeling users to https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Download , improving that page to answer these questions about previous / security releases faster?
Your feedback and your proposed implementations are welcome.
All of the current/supported ones should be listed, with either EOL, release dates, or both for each, and anything about new security releases should probably be either bold or emphasised some other way. You could put it all on the button, but that'd be a bit odd. Currently there's a button with the specifics under it; perhaps that's the way to go?
Also some other random thoughts -
What's the Publish/Discuss/Translate/etc blocks for? They look like navigation but don't seem to go anywhere or correspond to anything.
They attempt to summarize the best features that MediaWiki can offer. Indeed, there are no detailed product descriptions to link to, but this is because we don't have them. I would say this is better than nothing. Currently you either know what MediaWiki plus selected extensions can offer, or you guess it by becoming a Wikipedia power user, or you need to connect many pages in mediawiki.org.
Then they should say that. They should say what they are, they should explain the distinctions between core and extensions. They should show how modular and capable it is without trying to fit some template, because that just doesn't work here.
And other features - it's open source, it's created with collaboration between projects (TWN anyone?), etc. These are actually rather important things.
They're also not consistent
One of the reasons for moving our prototyping to a wiki page is to welcome edits improving our the current texts.
- for instance 'Translate' is an active verb
probably referring to TWN (I guess? TWN isn't exactly specific to mw; they handle translations for a lot of other projects too),
No, it refers to the fact that you can translate you wiki content in your wiki (using the Translate extension). You can publish, discuss, and translate content.
That is definitely something that should be made clearer, then.
and 'On the
go' is a random statement that I don't know what it's referring to at all. I mean, 'Ready for mobile devices and tablets' certainly isn't true of MediaWiki. It can be made to work for them, but it can be made to do just about anything.
We are betting on MobileFrontend here. It provides a mobile view, possibility to edit, upload... It does look like one of the MediaWiki strengths to me.
MobileFrontend is an arse to setup and a lot of it is either specifically coded to suit Wikipedia, or it makes assumptions, such as the skin, that are often not viable for other projects at all.
It exists, which is certainly something, but like VE it's far from ready for advertising in this form.
I also still haven't seen an answer to what that big picture is actually
for. So what's it for?
With the design in the mockup we are betting on a big wide image with a slogan on top. The current image is the best image we have found so far, coupled with the best slogan we came up with. If you have better images or better slogans they are welcome.
But WHY? What purpose does it serve?
Images being used to illustrate links should also link to the target as
opposed to the image (such as the documentation, support, etc), because people are more likely to click on the image than the small text caption. You will need to find PD or other non-SA licensed images to do this, however, because you will lose the attribution for the images.
Yes, we need to solve this problem. It is being discussed at https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Talk:MediaWiki/Homepage_ redesign/Preview#Clickable_images_in_gallery
Bugzilla should have a prominent link. Sysadmins and other users who
found bugs are not necessarily looking to 'get involved'. They found bugs and want to report them or find fixes. They're looking for a bug thing. Where is that?
"Support" links to https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Project:Support_desk , which is where many MediaWiki sysadmins go when they have/find problems. Bugzilla is not visibly featured there, and it probably should be.
Is this enough? Do we need a direct reference to bug reporting in the homepage, apart from the quite hidden "Bug tracker" link in the sidebar?
What bawolff said here.
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