Talk:Main Page/Archive 22

More mainpage maddness

I personally don't think it looks very good to have the about us off-centered. Bawolff ☺☻ 23:33, 29 March 2009 (UTC)

Also I think "About Us:" should be changed to "About Us". There is no reason to have a colon in a heading. Personally, I find the About Us section rather large as well. Every sentence is on a different line. Maybe some them can be combined. A smaller font may also be useful. Cheers, Van der Hoorn (talk) 12:01, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

Shouldn't it be "aboot us"? It is Canadian Wikinews afterall, eh? --216.75.93.110 13:09, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

Canada?

Canada's wikinews? Why does it say Canada's wikinews! Papercutbiology (talk) 10:39, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

April Fools :-D DragonFire1024 (Talk to the Dragon) 10:41, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

Ohhh, I hate you guys. xD I forgot about that. April Fools. Papercutbiology (talk) 10:45, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

Main Page redesign, take two

I have another proposal for a main design at User:Tempodivalse/Yet Another Main Page idea, which I actually used on the Main Page (but reverted it later because I wasn't sure it looked all that good). Thoughts? ♪ Tempodivalse ♪ 02:26, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

Hmm, I don't really like the scrollbar coming that early in the page. Perhaps we should try and draw out (as in on gimp/photoshop) what the ideal main page would look like, and then try to implement it. That way we'd have a more clear view of what we are going for. Bawolff ☺☻ 05:01, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

I agree. What happens if you keep the page in the same format, but remove the scrollbar? You could reduce the font size to keep the right side still compact. Also the "Most popular" section is below the list of articles by date, so you may put it at the top or remove it completely (which again saves space). See also my sandbox for a similar proposal. Cheers, Van der Hoorn (talk) 12:28, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

I'd also prefer not to have a scrollbar at all; I like Van der Hoorn's alternative. I know you're trying to conserve space but to me the scrollbar on the current and the idea main page makes it less convenient to access earlier days' news, which people do when they miss it or want to refer back to it. GeorgeII (talk) 19:44, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

The problem with not having a scroll bar, or something similar, is that the whitespace that appears at the bottom of one of the columns becomes highly variable. If, on one week, we have an unusually large amount of stories, then the column with the latest news stretches down a mile, creating a big blank space on the opposite side. If, on the other hand, we have too few stories a certain week, then the whitespace extends in the opposite direction. With the scroll, we keep the columns at a fixed height. Since it seems many people are adverse to the scroll, we could simply make cascading boxes for the past few days' news, as I have done here (though I'm not sure that looks that great either). ♪Tempo di Valse ♪ 19:53, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

That works for me. It's what we have now, minus the scrollbar. GeorgeII (talk) 21:09, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

Can't you do something like: the amount of links visible should not exceed 15. Example: April 5 has currently 4 links; April 4 has 8 links; April 3 has 10 links. Thus April 5 + April 4 = 12 links, which is smaller then 15, so those links will be visible. April 5 + April 4 + April 3 = 22 links, which is larger than 15, so April 3 should not be visible (but a cascading box instead). So you always see the latest links, but limited to the amount of news we have: if there is less news on a certain day, you see more news of older days. This keeps the whitespace at the bottom within a certain margin. (I chose 15 arbitrarily). Cheers, Van der Hoorn (talk) 23:28, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

Hm. I'm afraid I don't know how to do something like that. If it is possible, it would probably require some complex formatting and markup. I know little about wiki-markup, so perhaps someone with a better knowledge of it could tell us whether such an idea is possible to implement? tempodivalse 23:35, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

When I open a section, the previous one collapses. But I don't have the latest browser versions, so maybe it's different for me? GeorgeII (talk) 20:04, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

That happens on my browser too, I think that is intentional. tempodivalse 20:07, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

So am I misunderstanding Van der Hoorn? "the amount of links visible should not exceed 15. Example: April 5 has currently 4 links..." As long as the number of articles in any one section doesn't exceed 15, then that satisfies that condition. He makes it sound like previous sections stay open. Perhaps it's his (not my or your) browser? GeorgeII (talk) 20:12, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

What I think he means is that there should be a limit to how many articles should be visible in the non-cascading section of the "Latest news" (i.e., the headlines from the latest three days, which don't go into the blue boxes). tempodivalse 20:17, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

Ahh! Couldn't we make it less technical by adding the 3rd day to a collapsible box, as "older news". Two days worth of news should be managable until WN starts getting lots more news every single day. (A flipside to the argument is What if there's only a few articles in the last 2 days, making WN's offerings look more paltry. I don't have an answer there.) GeorgeII (talk) 20:25, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

My original idea was to remove the cascading boxes altogether, and simply display the last 30 or so headlines, to reduce the whitespace. Again, though, I don't know whether it is possible to implement it. I'll experiment a bit in my sandbox and see what I can come up with. tempodivalse 20:31, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

Well, after a bit of tweaking, I managed to sort of get the results I wanted: see User:Tempodivalse/Yet Another Main Page idea. The number of articles has limited to thirty. Unfortunately, now the dates have disappeared from the list. Is this a viable alternative? tempodivalse

The list on the right looks pretty overloaded without some breaks (a function provided by the dates). --Resplendent (talk) 20:50, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

To a respond to a comment up a little ways, to stop the boxes from auto-closing, don't specify navOnce as a template option. See the dynamic nav template page for how the options work. As for having a specific number of pages displayed, we have a couple options:

1. Stop caring about whitespace
2. Use special mainpage javascript that deleted a bunch of headlines to make it all work (but the deities of web design will hate you for using non-behavioral js)
3. Use a DPL (sacrafices the date header. could put the date when it was added to category beside each entry, but i don't really like that) (aka Tempo's demo)
4. Use very very complex wikimarkup ({{#expr:.. combined with {{PAGESINCATEGORY... combined with {{#tag for dpls with changing counts) However this still isn't perfect. In paticular, it would be messed up if an article has a dateline that is on the page, but isn't published. Headers also take up a different amount of space, so 10 articles spread out over 5 days is much more than 13 articles spread out over 3 days. (In a nutshell, good luck to anyone who tries to implement that :P)
5. We could use a tab box (similiar to {{htab-box}}/{{picture select}}) and have one tab Latest news (5 article DPL) than next tab yesterdays news, and so on.
6. Invent some system similiar to dynamic nav that is more suitable to our needs.

Those are pretty much all our options. I don't like option #2, #3 and option #6 is not likely to happen in the near future. So that leaves not caring, complicated wikimarkup, or something to do with the tabber stuff (I don't really know if tabber would work or not, it really hasn't been explored). Bawolff ☺☻ 23:01, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

Well, we could probably safely strike out Nr 1 as well -- the whitespace can really deface the page, especially on days when we have very many or very few articles. The dynamic page lists I think are an okay option, although it does make the right column look a bit clustered. The tabbed boxes might be too confusing. I don't know anything about wikimarkup, so I can't say anything about Nr 5. Alternatively, we could simply not use the {{Latest news}} at all, and make use of {{Secondary articles}} instead, but that requires a lot of manual effort as it does not automatically update.

All in all, it seems like this boils down to a choice of the least of evils. I'd say either use the scroll (though a lot of folks are adverse to that) or DPL (not great either). Anyone got any thoughts or suggestions? tempodivalse 23:39, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

Two more:

7. Whitespace with a reduced font size.

8. Whitespace with a reduced line spacing.

(In which case I would prefer 7 over 8) Cheers, Van der Hoorn (talk) 23:47, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

I was under the impression that the issue is more with inconsistent room taken up, rather than amount of room. Reducing the font size does make it smaller, (which may or may not be a good thing - I find small text annoying to read) however the total room still varies. Bawolff ☺☻ 23:50, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

Demo for tabbed box just to see what it looks like (bear in mind colours and stuff could probably change to something better). - User:Bawolff/sandbox/tab-Latest news. Bawolff ☺☻ 00:00, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

It looks very nice, but it has the same whitespace problem. Or do you want to include scrollbars as well? Van der Hoorn (talk) 00:09, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, it looks nice, but ultimately it doesn't solve the problem with the variable whitespace. Might not be a bad idea, though. tempodivalse 00:10, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

Thread bump. We need more input so we can reach a decision on this. tempodivalse 19:26, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

(Unindent) I think the tab idea is a good one, although as you pointed out will still end up being variable in size. I'm not sure there is a real solution to this, as some days just won't have as much going on as others. If you make the tabs static in size, that will obviously be a problem for when there's more stories than room. --Resplendent (talk) 20:00, 12 April 2009 (UTC)

This is probably a stupid idea, but I thought something like this would be a possible design, or at least the idea of section-tab boxes could be used. --Resplendent (talk) 16:35, 14 April 2009 (UTC)

Hum! I think that is a worthy idea. I like the tabbed boxes, looks quite professional. We could even use DPLs for them, to limit the variability of the whitespace. Perhaps it would be a good idea to look at the front pages of other news sites, to see how they format their main page, to get more ideas. tempodivalse 16:41, 14 April 2009 (UTC)

Well, after a bit of tweaking, I've created a tabbed box for the latest news, what does everyone think of something like this? tempodivalse 18:21, 14 April 2009 (UTC)

I don't think this is a good solution as a replacement of {{latest news}}. The advantage of latest news is that you can see _at once_ which articles you have viewed and which you have not. The categorization by region is not a good idea, because you may miss an article (if no regional category is present) and you may find several duplicate articles in the lists. Also, I have to click 6 times(!) to see whether there are new articles. I think Bawolff's solution is still the best way to go. It also gives the least variable whitespace (which was the initial problem).

Hm. I'm struggling to think of something that everyone would agree upon ... I still think the DPLs in my original demo are our best bet, although I'm not adverse to the idea of tabbed boxes. I'll tinker around in my sandbox a bit more, perhaps, and see what other ideas I can come up with. tempodivalse 19:48, 14 April 2009 (UTC)

I really like the new design, but i think (this is just my opinion and means no offense):

1)The latest headlines should be on the LHS (they represent the main content IMHO and .'. should take center stage)

2)I prefer the headlines sorted by date in boxes like http://en.wikinews.org/w/index.php?title=Main_Page&oldid=762081, apparently the problem was that that design left too much whitespace but, surely news per 3days isn't going to vary more than 20 lines, so if it's setup right one column will be at most 10 lines longer than the other (the js boxes may be a personal preference thing, but the headlines by date is pretty important)

3) is there a need for the two columns to be equal, i prefer the main content on a page (LHS) to take up more space. but perhaps that's just me?

4) There aren't many articles so the most popular boxes looks a bit silly, IMO

5) the news in pictures has too much text, a single line describing the picture should be enough e.g Protesters on the first day of the pirate bay trial.--82.45.165.69 00:34, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

As feature: "BC election writ drops; referendum campaigns underway"

If I may be allowed to advocate for this article as a feature, the referendum is big news. It has a good chance of winning and it would be the first government, at the level of province / state or higher, to move away from Single Member Plurality in the US or Canada in recent history.

I have looked in the policy section and did not find criterias or a decision making process in terms of features.

Jlam (talk) 21:11, 14 April 2009 (UTC)

"Features".... by that I assume you mean the four stories that are at the top of the Main Page? There really is no policy regarding what stories get those slots, aside from that they have been published, and that the stories that are already there are older than half a day. If you want, you could edit one of the slots yourself to update it, by clicking the small "edit lead" button and replacing the current story with the new one. tempodivalse 21:17, 14 April 2009 (UTC)

Done. Thanks

Jlam (talk) 21:34, 14 April 2009 (UTC)

Hmmmmmm..... I noticed I changed the most recent feature. I changed the Coleman/Franken lead because I felt it was the least news worthy of the 4, but I agree its a subjective call. Perhaps a policy suggestion would be to remove the oldest lead when changing leads?

Jlam (talk) 21:43, 14 April 2009 (UTC)

Actually, there really is no "policy" on this matter; what I stated above was really more of a rule of thumb than anything else. I don't recall there being a policy about the main leads. tempodivalse 22:16, 14 April 2009 (UTC)

Jlam, as said, no actual policy on this - really never has been. What goes up as a lead article is always a judgement call. A hard-and-fast "replace the oldest" rule would not be appropriate. That could lead to the main story being replaced with something of lesser import than other leads. Sometimes you have to move lead 2 to lead 1 and then update lead 2.

What you can find, is that if you don't have editor status you could change a lead and it doesn't show up. If this happens, I'd recommend hopping onto IRC and looking for help getting a revision sighted. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 08:38, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

I think we should implement some sort of policy (or at least guideline—does Wikinews differentiate between the 2?) on what should go in the lead and when, or we could simply have the newest 4 published articles (automated, like almost everything else on Wikinews is), but overwritable if a story is considered important. Dendodge _T\^C(en.wp) 20:39, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

Location of new article box

I have a feeling that the 'new article' box is too far down the main page - in fact, actually at a point below where most people will ever really scroll to. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 15:26, 13 April 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, I was thinking something similar earlier – any suggestions where to move it to, which don’t look out of place? Brian | (Talk) | ^{New Zealand Portal} 21:58, 13 April 2009 (UTC)

hm, looks like it got bumped down even further, to the next-to-bottom row. The problem is that there is really no convenient place for the box further up, the leads, latest news, and stock market feeds take up all the space at the top. I suppose we could put a link to creating a new article at {{Main page header}} or something. tempodivalse 00:36, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

Images overlapping sections

Example: Screenshot is from RevID: 819063.

I have a widescreen monitor, so this problem is a bit more than others might see, but the main page consistently has this problem. Images from different leads are overlapping sections. This really shoot be fixed. I'm thinking larger leads or just a bit of white space. Take a look at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/ and their main lead has bit of whitespace under the prose.

Thoughts? Calebrw (talk) 02:53, 17 May 2009 (UTC)

Yep, I see this as well, or at least I did until DragonFire made the images smaller. I think there's a way around this by changing the table formatting ... I'll look into this when I get a chance. Tempodivalse [talk] 02:55, 17 May 2009 (UTC)

Okay, I tweaked the tables on the main page a bit to level them. Does it look better now? Tempodivalse [talk] 02:59, 17 May 2009 (UTC)

I like that, but what I was thinking is here: User:Calebrw/Main Page. Calebrw (talk) 03:06, 17 May 2009 (UTC)

Ah, I see you used the {{-}} line breaks. That never occurred to me. It's a good solution to the problem. IMO though, having both rows of leads levelled might look a bit tidier, and avoid a variable whitespace at the bottom of the page. Tempodivalse [talk] 13:54, 17 May 2009 (UTC)

On second thought, perhaps your version is better - the leads don't have as much space beneath them in your format as in mine. This is especially noticeable when one lead has a long synospis and the other one a very short one (which is currently the case). I went ahead and changed it to your version. Tempodivalse [talk] 02:39, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, I think it looks pretty good. I don't know that it's perfect but the {{-}} seemed to be the only thing I could think of. Rows might work, but it would take a concerted effort to keep them level without too much whitespace. Calebrw (talk) 18:35, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

Actually, there are plans to completely revamp the main page, so this should only be a temporary fix until someone gets around to an overhaul. See user:ShakataGaNai/Main Page and user:Tempodivalse/mainpage for some proposals. Tempodivalse [talk] 18:40, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

Note to stop it from overlapping, you just need the next lead to clear right. You shouldn't need an actual page break (which introduces unnecessary whitespace). Bawolff ☺☻ 20:52, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

I rather too like your design Tempodivalse, but there are some elements of ShakataGaNai that I like as well. Good point Bawolf. Calebrw (talk) 23:34, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

Latest news updating

Just curious if

1. all articles tagged as Published appear under "Latest news"?
2. How much time it takes for the articles to get there?
3. Does "Latest news" get manually or automatically updated? I did refresh the cash.

I'm eager for my first major contribution to get under "Latest News" http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/BC_election_writ_drops;_referendum_campaigns_underway

Jlam (talk) 20:28, 14 April 2009 (UTC)

They do. The person who reviewed your article forgot to "sight" the article, as required by Flagged Revisions. This prevented it from appearing on the main page. I've sighted it for him, and it should now appear immediately. Thanks for pointing this out. Gopher65_talk 20:35, 14 April 2009 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Answers:

1. Yes, if they are sighted.
2. As soon as they are marked with the publish template and "sighted" by a user with the editor permission.
3. It updates automatically.

Note that sometimes, if the reviewer fails to "sight" your article after publishing it (which is what seems to have happened with your article), then it may become lost, because it will not appear in either the Main Page or in the Wikinews:Newsroom. If this happens, just drop someone with the "editor" permission a line, and they should "sight" the article so that it will appear on the front page. tempodivalse 20:39, 14 April 2009 (UTC)

Why don't we allow sighting beforehand? Cheers, Van der Hoorn (talk) 21:03, 14 April 2009 (UTC)

We generally discourage that, as it makes it difficult for users without the editor status to edit articles that are still developing. Plus, since the developing stories don't get any traffic since they're not on the front page, there's really no need for the quality control provided by the flagged revisions. tempodivalse 21:19, 14 April 2009 (UTC)

Why is it hard to edit? Editing the article still works. Only for users that are not logged, the standard version is shown instead of the draft version, so it doesn't really matter. Sighting is for ensuring users that are not logged in, don't see any vandalism. So if editors don't see any vandalism (and if the article doesn't have the publish template), then they can sight the article, even if the article isn't checked for other issues. Cheers, Van der Hoorn (talk) 21:32, 14 April 2009 (UTC)

Flagged Revisions (and thus, sighting) is our method of editorial control. Googlenews demands that we maintain some control over the front page (which is where their bot parses for stories). If stories are sighted by an editor before they are ready to be published, than any random person can come along and put an {{published}} tag on the page. Even though a non-logged in user will see the "stable" page instead of the draft, it will still show up on the front page. We would then have unreviewed articles on the front page. And, since googlenews automatically takes anything in the main namespace that is linked to from the front page, those unfinished articles would show up on googlenews too. And then we'd be delisted:P. Gopher65_talk 01:27, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

[unindent] I understand that, but that doesn't mean you can't sight the article _beforehand_ (if there is no {{publish}} template). Articles will not get lost and the only ones who see the draft page, are the users who are not logged in (which isn't that bad, since the article isn't published anyway). Cheers, Van der Hoorn (talk) 08:20, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

Somewhere in the above discussion there is a big mistake. The only way an article can end up on the front page is if the {{publish}} template is present, and that revision is sighted. Where only one is present, it will not appear. If a developing version has been sighted, then the only way it can get to that stage is where someone with editor status adds the {{publish}} template - unlikely.

Brion VIBBER (talk · contribs) and his merry men have really gone out of their way to make flagged revisions work for us, and to meet Google's criteria for listing in their news aggregator. Some of the tweaks have been done based on early experience with the FR plugin, this is why even if you have editor status your articles don't start out sighted. What we have works pretty well, but there are always going to be the odd cases where some step gets missed. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 08:32, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

Exactly my point. Thus, sighting an article before it is published doesn't result in any problems and gives the advantage that we won't 'forget' to sight the article after the publish tag was added. Cheers, Van der Hoorn (talk) 10:21, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

Completely unsighted articles turn up in recent changes with a red "!" in front of them. This is a good thing and not sighting prevents someone accidentally reviewing the changes and either missing the addition of the {{publish}} template, or assuming it has been added and the article reviewed but not sighted. I think it is only common sense to avoid sighting until a review is done; apart from anything else it keeps editors and other users the same up to the review point. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 11:59, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

Sidebar

I'd like to see a change in the sidebar, at least for the main page - if not for all article pages.

Firstly, I'd prefer to see the regions box above the languages box.

Second, can we have a world map at the top of the regions box which employs an image map so you click on Europe or North America and you go to the appropriate portal? --Brian McNeil / ^talk 12:01, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

for first point - its editable in mediawiki:Sidebar The only problem is if the languages are below regions, than languages are so far down that no one sees them. Second point is more difficult. I doubt its possible without javascript or having the skin modified. (with javascript we can easily inject the apropriate html) Bawolff ☺☻ 03:02, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

New Overhaul in progress

New overhaul of the mainpage is in progress. Stop by User:ShakataGaNai/Main Page and leave a comment. Making drastic changes. As of them moment it's starting to get where I want it - but needs much finishing work. There are more than a few reasons for the overhaul, most that I don't feel like explaining - but everyone knows we need a more major change. Also check the talk page for addl stuffs. --ShakataGaNai ^{^_^} 04:19, 13 May 2009 (UTC)

And now you've got some competition. I, too, am dissatisfied with the current main page, so I set up a proposal for a main page design at User:Tempodivalse/mainpage. Comments and suggestions at the talk page are welcome. Tempodivalse [talk] 20:44, 13 May 2009 (UTC)

How often do we have to overhaul the Main Page? Can't we have it stable for a while? Cirt (talk) 21:13, 13 May 2009 (UTC)

Ew, I agree - just returned from inactivity to find this ghastly new look. I hope we return to the old version with the floating boxes of stories ranked by importance. This looks like shit. Sherurcij 00:32, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

I think, as a new user, it should be set out slightly more like regular news pages-with sections for sports, technology, etc. And get rid of the oil prices etc. Dottydotdot (talk) 18:52, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

Top bit

It seems the Best of Wikinews is quite outdated & doesn't really showcase the best neccesarily, just giving the wrong impression to people, so how about replacing it with a link to Audio Wikinews, which at the moment is going strong- User:Dottydotdot/sandbox? Dotty••|☎ 10:53, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

I think the only reason 'The best of Wikinews' isn't getting updated is because it getting much exposure and isn't a necessity. It wouldn't take much to bring it back at all and it could come back at any moment so I think replacing it isn't necessary. Putting the Audio Wikinews along side it on the other hand would be more of a possibility.
What happened to the Wikinews Media section that had the News paper version of wikinews and a play button for the wikinews brief on the front page, bottom right-ish? --James Pain (talk) 11:15, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

the print edition isn't currently being updated-although I have an idea for that over the next few weeks. I see your point about the best of bit-so alongside maybe-admins please? Dotty••|☎ 11:59, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

{{editprotected}}

I have a copy of the OpenOffice template that used to be used to create the Wikinews print edition. Email me if you want a copy. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 12:43, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

English Wikipedia down

This would probably be worth putting something together about, since there are certainly several thousand/million people who want to know what's up. See my post (sorry, I don't have an account here) and the admin response here. 64.123.246.100 (talk) 22:59, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

From what i gather, the master db had a problem, and it took longer than the devs would have liked for them to switch over to the backup db. I don't really think this is news worthy (or more specifically, something more geared to the w:WP:SIGNPOST). Bawolff ☺☻ 06:07, 2 July 2009 (UTC)