On 12/16/2013 10:59 AM, Chad wrote:
I'm not sure either. I'd rather just see bold edits to the homepage that make it look nicer.
This is a content thing, not a software design thing imho.
If interested users can't edit the homepage on mw.org, we can fix that easily too.
"make it look nicer", heh. :) The mediawiki.org homepage needs more than that.
When you want to improve something complex, it is good to know what you want to improve, why, and how. Brena is working on the answers to these basic questions in order to propose a plan. Bold edits might lead you to a good solution by chance, but the chances of failing, delaying, and wasting energy unnecessarily are high.
From a technical point of view, bold edits are not that simple in a
homepage that is pulling 35 templates, 21 of them exclusive to Main_page. Any significant change probably involves editing/creating wikitext, graphics, HTML, and CSS sitting in different places. I'm not a designer, but as a content editor I would also welcome a plan agreed before jumping there.
From a social point of view, bold edits to the homepage of a popular
community site are only productive when you know where you are heading, the community is aware as well, and there is consensus. The chances of someone asking 'Why are you doing this?' before reverting are just too high, unless you limit yourself to polish non-challenging details.