Erik wrote:
>...
>and the background color for non-article pages
>(special pages) has been changed to a light metallic blue.
Please change that back. The metallic blue is ugly (the page looks dirty) and
we have used light yellow so long it has become part of our unique
look/trademark. There is /no/ need to make an arbitrary change like this -
without the yellow it doesn't look like Wikipedia.
I like most of the changes though (don't know about the ugly box around the
footer though...)
-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)
What about giving the reader more control over things like font type and
size ?
This is really not so hard to do. A special page could offer choices in
font size, style and colour. The choices would be stored in a cookie
(ok, a small minority will not benefit from this). Settings are applied
through javascript after the page has loaded. So, minimal overhead for
the server, it just includes a static js file. Direct feedback for the
user, click a different size and presto! view the results. These
formatting options might be added to the preferences page.
See for an example of font type switching this service page: (it is in
Dutch but choices are obvious):
http://www.gemm.nl/webgemms/service.html
In this case the javascript changes from one CSS file to another. That
is too complicated too maintain. Instead all preferences could be
applied on the go by javascript iself.
For example my Wikipedia statistics pages remembers table font size:
http://www.chello.nl/epzachte/Wikipedia/Statistics
Erik Zachte
Erik wrote:
>Here is an alternative (4 levels) without reverting
>to those oversized fonts:
>
>http://members.chello.nl/epzachte/Wikipedia/Temp/HeaderSizes2.png
I very much like this alternative - if an article needs more than 4 heading
levels after H1 then their is something really wrong with the organization of
that article.
--- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)
Erik wrote:
>... I'm personally quite sick of the obnoxious
>yellow, though,
Then reduce the saturation of the yellow - like the
fill color used in the "Community" box on en.wiki's
Main Page. But the metallic blue seems really cold and
looks more like a monitor glitch than a fill color
(eeek! my monitor is going dark!). We should have one
color and stick with it - changing the one we already
have to another hue is arbitrary. If you think it is
obnoxious then try different variations of the same
hue - please don't change hues.
-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)
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Erik wrote:
>Making a site like Wiktionary or textbook.wiki
>international is a lot of work with the current
>setup. A copy of the code and a new database
>has to be created for each language, and the
>relevant texts have to be adapted.
Brion's idea for a multilanguage Phase IV where all the now separate Wikipedia
wikis would be in a single database under a single software installation
would help a great deal (skins would take care of localization).
We could extend that idea by having separate databases/software installations
only between different Wikimedia projects (which should all have their own
domain names anyway). Subprojects/language versions within the same Wikimedia
project would all be in the same database; each wiki page would need a
language/subproject tag - or table thingy - and those wiki pages would be in
their own directories (again the directories would be named after the
appropriate language code).
Side note: IMO, "MediaWiki" would be a good name for our officially nameless
software. "PediaWiki" never worked for me since the software is used in at
least several non-encyclopedia contexts and will likely be used by many more
in the next several years.
But all that is less important than optimizing the current code.
>It is better to wait a bit, but keep internationalization
>in mind from the start. The "textbook"-wiki will likely
>be relocated to wikibooks.org, where we can then
>use the scheme that Mav proposes.
Hm. The last thing we need is a porn site at wikibooks.org so since everybody
is referring to Wikibook as Wikibooks I went ahead and bought
wikibooks.org/.com too. And while I was at it I went ahead and purchased
WikimediaFoundation.org/.com as well.
All these domain names will be donated to Wikimedia as soon as it is able to
accept a legal transfer of ownership. It will be up to the Foundation to
decide what to do with all these domain names and whether or not it makes
sense to renew them (if so then I'll probably help to finance that too but
I'm sure I won't be the only one).
But for now they are safe from cyber squatters for at least the next year (I'm
still mad at myself for not purchasing wikimedia.com before a squatter got
it).
-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)
I've been working on creating diagrams for the playing arenas of various
sports (for instance see
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_rules_football), using sodipodi
(an SVG editor) and then exporting to PNG.
It seems to me that it would be useful for the purposes of future editing
if people had access to my SVG files. At the moment, if people want
to change the diagram they either have to ask me to make the changes, mail
me for a copy of the SVG, or try the hack of modifying the exported bitmap
on the site.
Obviously, I could upload the SVG source, but is this appropriate (we don't do
this for any other type of file because of the bandwidth and storage issues)
but where would be an appropriate place to put it?
So, basically, I'm raising the topic of whether and how we should handle
"source files" for media we place in the Wikipedia.
--
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Robert Merkel
rgmerk(a)mira.net
Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.
-- Albert Einstein
They laughed at Einstein. They laughed at the Wright Brothers. But they
also laughed at Bozo the Clown.
-- Carl Sagan
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
I am a bit concerned about the pace at which new Wikipedia spinoff
projects are created. Wiktionary was a good idea, because it filled a gap
that was there -- we received lots of dictionary entries, so it seemed
like the logical conclusion to start a wiki-dictionary.
But now we have a new "Textbook-Wiki" which was started without much
discussion - possibly a good idea, but also possibly too specific - and
shortly afterwards, a "Wiki-Quote" project was created. Now people are
talking about creating a "Wiki-Piki" for pictures.
This is all nice and good, but haven't we learned anything from the
Wiktionary experience? Wiktionary was set up without much thought as to
how the wiki process could be applied to a dictionary; it took months to
formulate some kind of standard template, and we still don't have
Wiktionaries in other languages. Wiktionary could have benefitted a lot
from better planning before it was set up. I'm not sure I like the Wiki-
Quote idea at all, as it intersects a lot with Project Sourceberg, is not
very wiki-like (a quote is a quote) and not very compatible with the open
content idea. Wiki-Quote was only very briefly discussed.
Furthermore, it's not exactly like we have lots of free resources. Our
database server, pliny, is down on its knees, the full text search on the
English wiki is now permanently disabled, we have only a couple of active
server administrators, and hardly enough developers to address problems in
the software.
I propose that
1) we do not start any new Wiki spin-off projects until our current
resources have been substantially expanded;
2) we formalize a process for starting such projects, e.g. a planning
period of at least 3 months on Meta with exact specifications as to what
is to be placed there. After this period, users on the Meta wiki should
vote on whether the new wiki should be set up or not. 3 months may seem
long, but if interest can't be kept up that long, the idea may not be so
great after all.
Otherwise I see the danger that we'll end up with lots of nice ideas that
all go nowhere, like the sep11.wikipedia.org (which IMHO should never have
been set up in the first place).
Regards,
Erik
Wikipedians,
I have set up a new logo contest at
http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_logo_contest
Please consider adding a link to this meta page, or a translation in your
language, to the Main Page of your respective Wikipedia, so that the
largest possible number of talented artists can be directed to this page.
The deadline for logo submissions is August 20. All further discussion
should take place on the Meta talk page.
Regards,
Erik
--- Lightning <lightning(a)chaos-productions.com> wrote:
if i can get a higher res original i could play
> with.
Ditto
but I put my own proposition nevertheless (which could
be improved with the high res)
http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_logos
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