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}}.

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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

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)

Follow-up to the Mancester Arena bombing

In response to the Manchester Arena bombing at a concert by Arena Grande, there is going to be a concert, featuring Grande and other celebrities, including Take That, Coldplay and Justin Bieber. Is this worthy enough to go in Wikinews? I would think it is. The tickets for this concert sold out in a few minutes, as was broadcast on the BBC Radio Four news tonight (June 1 2017). Vorbee (talk) 19:33, 1 June 2017 (UTC)

@Vorbee: If you're interested in writing something for Wikinews, I'd recommend looking through WN:PILLARS (it's a compact overview of what we do), then WN:WRITE is a good tutorial on how to write a first article. --Pi zero (talk) 19:36, 1 June 2017 (UTC)

Selecting stories as leads (June 2017)

Seems that there have been disagreements on ordering the stories as leads. I thought that 200 deaths is a huge number, but Afghan deaths story is considered the top story. Meanwhile, the Anime expo and the posthumous marriage thing (well, I created it) are considered bigger stories than the death stories, especially in the mobile version. While the "Original report" is great, I am uncertain whether it surpasses the Sri Lanka one. Well, I don't know what readers would like to read first. --George Ho (talk) 08:55, 4 June 2017 (UTC)

Maybe I'll switch the Sri Lanka and the marriage story. How's that? Therefore, the Anime expo is still the second lead. --George Ho (talk) 09:01, 4 June 2017 (UTC)

Number of deaths is not an issue. Neutrality must be reflected on the main page as well. But ORs are kept higher in the list, and the other reason to keep that article about Sri Lanka in the fifth due to its length. Lead articles are not the order in which the articles were published. And it should not be monotonous.
acagastya 09:59, 4 June 2017 (UTC)

I rearranged the leads, and the changes were accepted. --George Ho (talk) 19:46, 4 June 2017 (UTC)

I seriously thought about rejecting that swap. I almost did. There's a different truck-related incident in the news now, though, so I figured making the other article less prominent might reduce confusion. And even so I almost rejected it, on grounds that the publishing reviewer had made a different call. --Pi zero (talk) 20:03, 4 June 2017 (UTC)

Acagastya, would you like to review the lead selections please. Thanks. --George Ho (talk) 08:48, 12 June 2017 (UTC)