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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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#Clic...
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?
[1] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki/Homepage_redesign/Preview