Talk:Main Page/Archives/2010

Wikimedia Canada

I am interested in starting a Canadian Chapter of Wikimedia. Is there anyone else interested? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 05:22, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

Hello Jmh649. See Wikimedia Canada for work being done to set up a Canadian chapter, and the Wikimedia Canada mailing list for occasional discussion. —Pathoschild 05:41:37, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

Redesign and being inclusive

Some designwork would be nice. We might also more actively include and highlight work on other useful wikis, from chapters sites out to cousin sites such as wikieducator and wikitravel.

There are a growing number of projects in line with our work, that we actively coordinate or collaborate with, that aren't Wikimedia projects -- as in the first years of the project when most people who showed up had come from a relatd site elsewhere. A renewed focus on things like interlinks and welcome pages for members of other communities arriving here for the first time might be appropriate.

What about encouraging the use of this wiki for meta-planning for other free knowledge / free culture projects? We're very good at wiki maintenance and moderation, whereas lots of co-aligned projects that need a place for meta-discussion (and even think to set up their own mediawiki instance for the purpose) are not. –SJ · talk | translate 19:48, 6 October 2010 (UTC)

Re: the idea of meta-planning for other free knowledge / free culture projects, we do have the Free Culture Alliance NYC page hosted here.--Pharos 03:39, 8 October 2010 (UTC)

Redesign submission

I began a subpage in my userspace to create a new version of the main page. It can be found here. I posted this on its corresponding talk page: it's largely taken from the code on this version of Strategywiki's Main Page and adjusted with meta's content, a slightly different color scheme, etc. Several people have posted comments and concerns on said talk page, and I've tried to accommodate the ideas posted there. I thought the next logical step would be to present it here. Killiondude 02:50, 11 October 2010 (UTC)

I do like the existing 'Notification/Goings-on section', and think that would be good to keep. Also, it would be nice if we could have a picture somewhere so everything isn't so dry, maybe something again from a recent real-life event.--Pharos 18:11, 11 October 2010 (UTC)

Yes, I thought about carrying that over. However, the last 20 edits go back till May. It seems silly to display something that no one is willing to keep updated and organized well. If we want another content area (either from "real-life events", a "notifications" section, or something else), we could push the current floating box up to the right side of the intro text and put another (maybe larger?) floating box roughly where the current one is located now. Killiondude 18:21, 11 October 2010 (UTC)

It may not be very actively edited, but it does usually have information on things that are happening this month. And seriously, if we can't at least aim to keep something this basic up to date, what's the point of having meta at all?--Pharos 03:47, 12 October 2010 (UTC)

I think most people wonder that. This wiki is mostly where banned users can make noise or pages can be imported in order to sit and rot. --MZMcBride 05:33, 12 October 2010 (UTC)

Be that as it may, I do support having another floating box for notifications, as a small strike against entropy and chaos.--Pharos 18:16, 12 October 2010 (UTC)

I'm with Pharos here, the "Information thread" definitely should not be removed. Cbrown1023 talk 00:44, 13 October 2010 (UTC)

I was looking at the changes. I see that tswiki:Query_service has been removed, and it isn't in Meta:Requests and proposals neither (this page doesn't contain similar things); but it's really important (a database report can help/organize the work of dozens of user and thousands of edits on a project), and quite active. I agree with the removal of "utilities", but perhaps we should find a way to advertise categories a bit, now that we've removed Meta:Categories. There's a whole lot of pages and categories which are not represented at all in the main page. In particular, I wonder how many users know that there are language specific categories, and navigation of translated content is very difficult (at least we should check that they're visible in the respective main pages). --Nemo 10:35, 23 October 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, I killed a few links, mostly for balancing the page a bit. The Main Page doesn't need to be an index of every link on the site. The "Query service" is sort of used, but it's kind of a pain in the ass and a mess. I'd rather see a better system implemented at Meta than linking people to a separate wiki (the Toolserver wiki). I agree with your comments about emphasizing categories and other pages. --MZMcBride 16:07, 23 October 2010 (UTC)

I don't say that it must be on the main page, but it should be possible to find it somewhere, and I don't know where to put it. --Nemo 18:07, 23 October 2010 (UTC)

Community grants wiki?

This is mentioned in the intro, but I don't think such a thing actually exists, at least not yet (there may well be plans for something like this in the future, though).--Pharos 18:18, 12 October 2010 (UTC)

http://grants.wikimedia.org is long dead. That's all I know. --MZMcBride 18:50, 12 October 2010 (UTC)

I don't know of any plans for a separate wiki, but we could turn that idea into a portal here on Meta. –SJ · talk | translate 13:51, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

Main pages

Unless there are objections, I'm going to unprotect (and likely redirect a lot of) the main pages in other languages. They're outdated and there's absolutely no reason to have them fully protected from editing. --MZMcBride 06:57, 22 October 2010 (UTC)

Makes sense. The previous discussion about this is Talk:Main_Page/Archives/2008#Protection_of_all_language_Main_Pages. --Nemo 10:06, 23 October 2010 (UTC)

I totally agree here and didn't want them protected in the first place. Cbrown1023 talk 01:45, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

+1 Agreed, not totally sure they should have been in the first place. Jalexander 01:53, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

Absolutely. The Vietnamese main page languished for years until a couple active Wikipedians finally asked for access. – Minh Nguyễn (talk, contribs) 04:28, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

Agreed. There is no need to protect main page version of other languages, unless persistent vandalism is going. — Tanvir • 17:03, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

• Why shouldn't we use a single main page and translated versions of it? Like they did in translatewiki or incubatorwiki. Then all main pages will be up-to-date. Some communities, who think they can frequently update the page, like French maybe, can opt-out this and use their own "localised homepage" instead of a "translated homepage". --Joseph48 21:01, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

  Agreed. I tried editing the Tagalog page to no avail just earlier today so I can update it to the current version. :( --Sky Harbor ^(talk) 00:23, 28 November 2010 (UTC)

  I don't understand how what Joseph48 suggests is different from what we're currently doing, sorry: could you explain? I've unprotected all main pages. --Nemo 15:27, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

Currently we have independent pages for every language. What i suggest is; we'll only have a big template for translated homepages. We'll only translate words or sentences like "projects", "complete list", etc. We'll not use any formatting or styles. You can check this page to see what i mean. --Joseph48 18:44, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

I see. I'm not sure: first of all, who updates the pages? A similar system is used on foundationwiki, but translations (made on Meta by translators) are implemented by few skilled users who know templates etc. Moreover, the layout of the main pages is not updated so frequently; some languages may prefer not to translate some parts but still have their main page, and the untranslated parts should be removed; finally, several main pages are customized, although just a little, and this makes sense, because if you know English you can just use the English main page to find all English pages, but if you don't know English you want a place (the localized main page) where to find all relevant pages and information in your language. --Nemo 22:24, 5 December 2010 (UTC)