Talk:Main Page

This page is for discussing the Main Page only. This is not a place to ask general questions. If your query is not really directly related to the Main Page, consider the following locations: To discuss issues regarding the Wikinews community, visit the Wikinews:Water cooler. For writing or proposing articles or connecting with the Wikinews community, visit the Wikinews:Newsroom, the hub of Wikinews operations. If you're looking for help, start at the Wikinews:Introduction.

Templates

The following templates are in use on the front page:

• {{Main page header}}, {{Lead article 1}}, {{Lead article 2}}, {{Lead article 3}}, {{Lead article 4}}, {{Lead article 5}}, {{Main page portals}}. The three centre sections may not maintain a consistent order; they are taken from: {{Main devel}}, {{Main historical}}, {{Main interviews}}, {{Main original}}, {{Main popular}}, {{Main about}}, {{Main around}}, {{Main write}}.

---

Archives

Archive 1, Archive 2, Archive 3, Archive 4, Archive 5, Archive 6, Archive 7, Archive 8, Archive 9, Archive 10, Archive 11, Archive 12, Archive 13, Archive 14, Archive 15, Archive 16, Archive 17, Archive 18, Archive 19, Archive 20, Archive 21, Archive 22, Archive 23, Archive 24, Archive 25, Archive 26, Archive 27

Other

• General talk → Wikinews:Water cooler
• Admin attention needed → WN:ALERT

Two stories about Jong Nam's death in the main page

Shall we have two developing stories about Kim Jong Nam's death? To me it looks awkward. I want to switch the older one with the studies report about homophobia and sports. Thoughts? --George Ho (talk) 22:05, 23 February 2017 (UTC)

@George Ho: I have no objection if you wish to do that; it seems harmless enough. Were we to do that too often, at a time of low output, we might eventually have a problem with needing to de-lead an article so we can archive it, but we're not there yet. And the homophobia report has some staying power, as a lead. --Pi zero (talk) 22:13, 23 February 2017 (UTC)

Done. --George Ho (talk) 00:44, 24 February 2017 (UTC)

To me, having at least two related stories about one event, like Jong Nam's death, on the Wikinews Main Page would affect its balance. I prefer having five different unrelated stories about unrelated events. By the way, how are de-leading an article and "archiving" (do you mean "full protection"?) related? --George Ho (talk) 03:39, 24 February 2017 (UTC)

@George Ho: Unrelated stories is something not easy to achieve. When I wrote the UEFA Euro 2016 articles, two articles were there in the lede. But when two stories, one with the update on the previous one, like "Manchester United sacks van Gaal after winning FA Cup", and "Manchester United appoints José Mourinho as new manager", we replace the older story with the newer one.
acagastya 07:54, 24 February 2017 (UTC)

Oh... I realize I must distinguish "related" and "updated" next time. I checked Lead #1, lead #2, lead #3, lead #4, and lead #5 at the time of publication. I would consider the UEFA Euro '16 a "category" as the three stories from that "category" were slightly not related to each other. Nevertheless, how do you describe it in your own way? --George Ho (talk) 09:15, 24 February 2017 (UTC)

I was aware, when updating the leads, that one article was kind of an update of the other. It was a near thing, which lead to replace; most times I make the other call, and I was probably distracted this time by the fact that our output is slow atm.

Yes, our use of archive is kind of overloaded. The 24-hour horizon we generally describe as "when the archive policy kicks in". However, the verb form, "archive the article", refers to putting the article into "the archives", fully protecting it. The act of archiving an article, of putting it into the archives, removes it from the main page. It is the last milestone that all successful articles must pass in their lifecycle (any particular curation action won't usually be to all the articles systematically). --Pi zero (talk) 12:59, 24 February 2017 (UTC)

Image of Emmanuel Macron

The original version of commons:File:Emmanuel Macron campaign poster in Paris 2 (cropped).jpg is nominated at Commons for deletion due to copyright concerns. There are other images of Emmanuel Macron as replacements. --George Ho (talk) 18:52, 10 May 2017 (UTC)

Somehow, the image is immediately deleted. I added the colored map of France, separated by districts, as a stopgap image, though it's shielded from general view. --George Ho (talk) 18:55, 10 May 2017 (UTC)

Redesigning the Main Page

In response to Acagastya's comments about redesigning the Wikinews Main Page via sandbox, here's my draft redesign. Compare that to the other (ugly-looking) one just for brainstorming. --George Ho (talk) 12:53, 13 May 2017 (UTC); clarified. 12:55, 13 May 2017 (UTC)

I created another draft. Almost the same outlook, but the coding is different. I'd like to copy and paste the whole code, but that may interfere the archive coding. --George Ho (talk) 13:05, 13 May 2017 (UTC)

Compare the coding to that of Wikibooks and Wikisource. --George Ho (talk) 13:12, 13 May 2017 (UTC)

What is changed (all told), from the current main page? --Pi zero (talk) 13:16, 13 May 2017 (UTC)

In the latest working draft, I separated the {{Main page header}} from the table. Therefore, it can be free to grow taller or smaller or wider. Also, I eliminated class="the_table" as unnecessary; class="the_table" has borders outside the whole Main Page, so eliminating it would eliminate the borders. I broke one table into two tables; between two tables is the {{Main page portals}}. Also, I separated the "{{sisterprojects}}" and "{{Wikinewslang}}" sections from the table. However, I put the projects section above the languages one. --George Ho (talk) 13:29, 13 May 2017 (UTC)

Almost forgot: In the first draft I did, I changed ! into | to de-bold the header. Even separating the header from the table also de-bolds the header. --George Ho (talk) 13:34, 13 May 2017 (UTC)

Evidently, you did not work out why we really require the classes and ids you removed. For the mobile site, (which, by the way, is really good. I assume SGN designed it. Thanks a lot) it gives the feel of the five articles published recently, and one button to create the articles how it should be. Your edits (1) (2), on the other hand, added the "Welcome to Wikinews", "Donate" and other links, "Latest News", "Continents", "Categories", "recent interviews", "Original reporting", "About Wikinews", "Wikinews's best work", "Sister projects", "Wikinews in other languages" and other information which a) makes the mobile site looks congested b) should not be on a mobile site. Mobile site should me carefully designed to provide most important information (news, for a news website) and minimise clutter.
acagastya 13:49, 13 May 2017 (UTC)

It also messed up with the alignment of the lead articles.
acagastya 13:50, 13 May 2017 (UTC)

Compare the mobile sites of Spanish, French, Russian Wikinews with Portuguese. And then with Catalan to see the difference.
acagastya 14:00, 13 May 2017 (UTC)

Not surprising that tinkering with the main page is tricky; it's complicated markup. A general remark on the concept of decoupling different elements: it could cause strange things to happen under varying screen-size conditions.

I'm leery of making the header taller; it seems to me Wikiversity and Wikibooks don't have the same interest as Wikinews in making the header very slim (vertically). On the other hand, as pointed out, Spanish Wikinews does have a much taller header; I think I like getting straight to the current articles, though I can see how one might want to emphasize various more general facilities of the site. Perhaps that is something to revisit as we get other infrastructure improvements on-line that are now in development, so there are more interesting things to link to. On a related note, I'm working slowly on a major overhaul of our archives splash page (for the curious, User:Pi zero/Archives).

Btw: no page-specific CSS page for the main page. MediaWiki:Common.css/Main Page. The specific CSS for the main page is in MediaWiki:Common.css. --Pi zero (talk) 14:27, 13 May 2017 (UTC)