Forum:Proposed changes for Wowpedia's main page

To improve the look of the current main page, I'd like to propose the following changes from my sandbox. Among other things, the most noticeable updates are:


 * Added the "Featured article" and "Featured media" sections once again and updated their respective design templates to function more appropriately. Links are now incorporated throughout the featured article section to attract users to other pages around the site that might pique their interest. Both the FA and FM sections are ready for new content to be nominated and added by the community.


 * Added some shiny icons to the "Wowpedia content portals" section and brought back the "featured critter" template.


 * Condensed and changed the color of the "Public Test Realm" box (which I recommend we turn into its own template to use for future patches) for Patch 4.3.


 * Added some simple yet valuable statistics beneath the "Welcome to Wowpedia!" heading to show the progress between our site and that of our rival (this might encourage editors to come here more often to contribute and help promote a more active community).

As more information about Mists of Pandaria becomes available, I recommend that we change the overall structure of the main page (especially in regards to several of the now outdated Cataclysm links). In the meantime, I hope these present changes will make the main page appear more friendly and appealing to new visitors and current users alike.

Any questions, comments, or feedback are welcome below. ~ Tycerius (talk) 13:43, 13 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Voting Results: 12 for, 1 against. &mdash; foxlit (talk) 01:50, 3 December 2011 (UTC)

Comments

 * I'd like to "like" this status :p
 * Thumbs up
 * 13:48, 13 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Definitely need to update for Pandaria, or at least 4.3. Your structure looks fine, I don't know if I like the box around the Welcome part though. -- 13:56, 13 November 2011 (UTC)
 * I think we'd all agree that FA should eventually be added to the front page; however, I'd much prefer it if we updated the FA rotation before then rather than after. The existing rotation is somewhat aged; and has been "ready for new articles to be nominated" for about a year now -- so it'd be nice to be sure that the FA content is still relevant, and that there are still people interested in maintaining it, before adding content that hasn't been updated for a year (at best!) to the front page. Personally, I'd also like the FA rotation to slow down a bit -- perhaps pick a new article to feature on the front page daily, rather than on every refresh, so that we don't exhaust our comparatively small pool of interesting articles in a few hours.
 * Other changes I'm less positive about:
 * Adding "featured critters" to random navigation boxes seems pointless to me.
 * "Simple yet valuable statistics" (number of articles) are downright harmful, especially if used to encourage comparison with wowwiki. For one thing, the sites do not use the same definition of an "article", so any comparison based on those numbers is flawed to begin with. The number of articles is also not an indicator of anything meaningful -- the majority of content on both wikis is item/quest data copied from other databases; advertising those numbers is akin to saying "we have pages for 9001 items while they only have 7000!" which isn't really interesting when one is using wowhead to look up items anyway.
 * Perhaps the portal navigation box should be removed rather than prettied up (as its links are already on the navigation bar). We could then move the FA box to the right rail, which would let us get at least some temporally-relevant navigation links onto the first screen's worth of content. Where that leaves FM is an interesting question. &mdash; foxlit (talk) 15:39, 13 November 2011 (UTC)
 * I'm in general agreement with foxlit, except where it concerns the portals. I would argue that we should move the portal links down rather than remove them completely; probably below the news on the right, or otherwheres, pending other tweaks. --Sky (talk) 18:31, 13 November 2011 (UTC)
 * I'm really interested in starting the featured articles up again.-- 19:02, 13 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Looks pretty nice, and we need fresh air. I support it :).--Lon-ami (talk) 15:32, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

I admit that it is pretty, and all, but... I think it is premature. These first two points are my only "Full stop, dig in heels" objections. Maintainability first, because someone will have to do that. A few lesser points, though: --Eirik Ratcatcher (talk) 00:31, 16 November 2011 (UTC)
 * I dislike how Featured Article is implemented. The text of the featured article seems to be embedded in FA.  This creates a higher minimum skill needed to prepare articles to be added to the Featured Article rotation.  I would much prefer if the individual articles were separate templates that FA included (or translcuded, if you prefer) in some fashion.  As well and at a minimum, FA should show a documentation page that describes how to add, remove, and alter articles.
 * Similarly, Wowpedia:Featured articles currently appears to be a hand-edited page separate from the template. A mechanism similar to what creates the FA rotation should empower the (show me all) Featured Articles page.  You know what will happen if someone has to hand edit each separately.  Perhaps use a category to automatically collect the featured articles?
 * I feel we should better describe how we handle featured articles: Are some purely "topical" vs others "(semi) permanent"?  Does FA (and FM) fall under BOLD, or is there some criteria for who can alter it?  There are likely other similar questions I haven't thought of.  These could all best be described on the featured articles or FA template documentation.
 * I would like to see volunteers to maintain a featured article system. FA (and even FM) is a nice thing to see, as long as it shows SOME change, every now and then.  My wish list would include some way to flag that the FA system was still being tended, but I have no particular ideas on how to implement something like that.
 * No Video links for the Featured Media. Entirely too much controversy and drama around who gets linked to. You've got images there now, but unless we state at the outset "no video", I predict drama to come.  As an additional benefit, we don't make our entry page take forever to load up because we've salted it with embedded video.
 * I would guess that the number of images for Featured Media will swell to start with and then come almost to a halt. FM is located so that it could be "turned off" without greatly disturbing the page.  If we don't have enough images to support a full time "Featured Media", would you consider having it part time, or disabling it for fallow periods?
 * I've updated Wowpedia now, and addressed some of the issues pointed out here as well. FA no longer contains the featured article spotlight text, which is instead stored in subpages of Wowpedia:Featured articles, which also lists the current rotation in a semi-automatic way; similarly, Wowpedia:Featured article/Media lists everything in the current image rotation. I've also slowed down the rotation in FA (changes daily) and FM (changes every 2 hours) -- just to add some meaning to the "featured" concept, and avoid exhausting the comparatively small featured pools early. Having said that, the FA pool in particular is rather ancient -- so if you can think of a good article to spotlight on the front page, nominate it! &mdash; foxlit (talk) 22:51, 5 December 2011 (UTC)