Talk:Main Page/intro

message: * Might there be use for adding a line of whitespace between the intro tag line and the 'browse | ' etc.  seems to be done and sticking.
* and maybe another line below the two Browse lines?
Something like: 
 
 
 Welcome to Wikipedia, a free-content encyclopedia that anyone can edit.
 
 
 In this English version, started in 2001, we are currently working on  articles.
 
 
  Browse: 
 Culture | Geography | History | 
 Life | Mathematics | Science | Society | Technology
 Browse Wikipedia - Article overviews - Alphabetical index - Other category schemes
 
- Ozzyslovechild 16:44, 30 Jan 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Not enough whitespace? 

message: Since this is something that practically all Wikipedians will notice & have an opinion on, shouldn't we put this change to a general vote? Abruptly making changes like this without any prior notice will only create resistance to any improvements, & create ill-will.
Although a glance at this page shows that I am in the minority in disliking this new look, I'm perfectly willing to abide by the decision of a vote on this issue. -- llywrch 20:21, 24 Dec 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Why not vote on this change? 

message: *Started in 2001, we are currently working on 431931 articles.
this is not English (*sob*). it should at least be 'having started', but even that would be questionable. I also miss the link to the statistics. gripe, bitch, gripe. dab (ᛏ) 20:29, 24 Dec 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Why is the statistics page that important? How can we make it an obvious link? Tom- 20:32, 24 Dec 2004 (UTC)

text: it is one of the few links on the Main Page that I have actually used. But I am more upset about the syntax than about the link ;o) dab (ᛏ) 09:12, 27 Dec 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: How can it be rewritten in a way that makes sense, but is similarly terse? Although I don't really have a problem with the original... Tom- 09:15, 29 Dec 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: dangling participle

message: *'Wikipedia' is bold, which draws the eye to the welcome text.
*The text is significantly larger than body text, which again draws the eye.
*'Wikipedia' is not a link - the user has just arrived at Wikipedia, so how can there be a link to Wikipedia..? (Would someone who's just surfed in read that article?)
*Does not mention January - is the month Wikipedia started in that important?
*The second line is the same size as the body text - three text sizes in three lines looks bad, plus the small text is hard to see.
===I'm happy with this version===
#Dan100 21:26, Dec 24, 2004 (UTC)
#Norman Rogers\talk 21:44, 24 Dec 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree, and I am quite happy with the compromise, yay Tom. Suggestion: English WP has some 143M words right now. Maybe we could include the number next to the article count?  (see also Template_talk:Wikipedialang#effects.3F) dab (ᛏ) 12:48, 30 Dec 2004 (UTC)
replies: text:  I don't really find the word count all the meaningful, and I think having loads of different numbers will just get confusing. I think it's best to come up with one single, specific and very impressive statistic. Tom- 16:26, 31 Dec 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  A ''few points, feel free to add more (for and against''): == 

message: #Dan100 21:26, Dec 24, 2004 (UTC)
#Norman Rogers\talk 21:44, 24 Dec 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: I'm happy with this version

message: #Wikipedia should link to Wikipedia, it should read "January 2001", and the NUMBEROFARTICLES variable should link to the statistics page. BLANKFAZE | (что??) 21:33, 24 Dec 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree, and I am quite happy with the compromise, yay Tom. Suggestion: English WP has some 143M words right now. Maybe we could include the number next to the article count?  (see also Template_talk:Wikipedialang#effects.3F) dab (ᛏ) 12:48, 30 Dec 2004 (UTC)
replies: text:  I don't really find the word count all the meaningful, and I think having loads of different numbers will just get confusing. I think it's best to come up with one single, specific and very impressive statistic. Tom- 16:26, 31 Dec 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: I am unhappy with this version and want something different

message: (NB this is a comment on the usability of the new intro. I make some comments on the design in the vote, above.)
I can understand that people who have used Wikipedia for some time believe that where-ever possible words should be wikified and that as much information as possible is available as soon as possible - that's how Wikipedia works. 
However a new user (ie someone arriving at www.wikipedia.org for the first time) may well have a different perspective. For starters, someone who has just 'surfed in' could surf out again just as easily unless their attention is caught and held. They also most likely have a short attention span - if they get bored, they leave. Wikipedia isn't the most interesting article ever and is very long; I defy anyone to say that it would be interesting to a new-comer. Nor is free content - being "copyleft" or whatever is not important to someone viewing Wikipedia for the first time. 
However the Wikipedia:introduction pages are brief, attractive, and explain Wikipedia's 'killer app' feature - collaborative editing - in a quick, effective manner. Explaining how any page can be edited by anyone provides the hook which keeps people interested. The final page then serves as a jumping-off point to explore the rest of wikipedia now they are interested. It does also include a link to Wikipedia! By that stage, they might have enough interest to read it, but if they at least they know what Wikipedia is about by then and probably won't just leave the site.
Dan100 12:38, Dec 25, 2004 (UTC)
:I'll refrain from making facile remarks about people with short attention spans and how much we need them on Wikipedia. :-) Your point is, of course, that first-time visitors to any websites will deliberately have short attention spans, because they don't like wasting time. I put it to you, however, that the Main Page will hold people's attention even if the intro said "Hello, welcome to this page" or something equally inane. Don't overstate the importance of the intro, either. The category bar and "Today's featured article" are big eye-catchers as well, for example; let's not pretend everyone will docilely follow the links to the intro.I'm not arguing that the old intro wasn't in for improvement. But I have absolutely no trouble claiming that Wikipedia will be interesting to some newcomers. No, really. My first instinct when I visited Wikipedia was not: "Oh, great! I'll just start editing rightaway and hope I don't break anything". My first instinct was: "What? Anyone can edit this? And it's free? This is mind-boggling. Who's behind this and how can they possibly think it'll work?" Mindlessly playing around with it was not my first instinct.Keep the current fast-track to editing, sure. But give people like me an immediate link to the beef. I would not waste my time on the introduction to finally get to page 3 with follow-up links. (Maybe Wikipedia is not the right one; perhaps there is no right one—Wikipedia:FAQ is just an overview page with lots and lots of links.) Make it the second sentence of the intro, for all I care, or put it after a huge whitespace gap. Hell, make the link to the intro blink for all I care. The beef-eaters will now how to dodge that.Finally, it's very true that people will not be interested in what "free content" is, initially. But then you need a damn good and obvious way to inform them of that fact after their first edits, otherwise you'll get newcomers with all sorts of misconceptions about how Wikipedia content can be used and who "owns" the edits. To this end, I think the boilerplate below the editing box could use some tweaking as well. It's not particularly clear, because it mixes up several goals: inform people to please not make bogus edits, inform them that their writing will be mercilessly edited, and by the way, don't submit copyrighted work. Eh. But that's not the subject of this discussion, of course... One thing at a time. 82.92.119.11 15:46, 25 Dec 2004 (UTC)
replies: text:  "Don't overstate the importance of the intro"??  on a page that was created specifically because the import of that one little bit was so great that it was deemed to merit separate discussion from the Main Page's discussion?  Now that's rich.. -Ozzyslovechild 03:30, 18 Feb 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Wikipedia users vs New users 

message: (this section transplanted from Talk:Main_Page/test)
IMHO, in the intro line and the linked intro pages, just as important as conveying that 'anyone can edit,' is that Wikipedia is valuable, not just a strange knowledge project in which 'anyone can mess with pages.'  We have to remember that many visitors may be initially skeptical of the idea.
I think the easiest way to work toward this is to (1) link  to largest encyclopedia, or to (2) merge some of the points discussed on largest encyclopedia into Special:Statistics.  The general public only minimally cares how Wikipedia collects its statistics, which is what the Special:Statistics link covers at the time of this writing.  What is relevant about the statistics, is how they compare with other encyclopedias. 
An early criticism of Wikipedia thought Wikipedia's ambitions of reaching 50,000 articles were laughably ambitious.  However, most readers will not realize what  articles means unless we tell them.  --Nectarflowed 00:11, 24 Dec 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Absolutely. For some reason, " articles" doesn't actually look all that impressive... but I'm not sure why. Nor am I sure how you get across Wikipedia's importance and size well in a very small space. Fairly meaningless statistics don't really do that. Tom- 11:28, 24 Dec 2004 (UTC)
replies: text:  One way that may work is to say it in words, eg, wikipedia now has over 4 hundred thousand articals, somhow sounds more impressive than " articles" tooto 13:54, 24 Dec 2004 (UTC)
replies: text:  I agree - but probably looks best as "over 400,000" --Cjnm 14:11, 31 Dec 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Intro: 'Is Wikipedia valuable?'

message: The text "In this English version" reads very awkwardly and any purpose it may have is highly unclear to me. It gives the impression that not only are there multiple other Wikipedias (i.e. the other languages, already prominently mentioned on the side) but multiple other versions, or forks, of the English Wikipedia. Yes, there is Simple, but its real value is subject to debate, plus it already gets grouped in with the other languages and properly so, I think. Anyway, rather than let the text continue to creep along, I propose to remove this. --Michael Snow 17:34, 4 Jan 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree with Michael on this; perhaps "over 440,000 English articles" instead?  +sj + 14:19, 7 Jan 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Sounds reasonable, edited accordingly. --Michael Snow 06:43, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Where's the fork? 

message: I'd like to see all the intro text back to a single size, and run together in one paragraph.  It was cute to try making it two separate lines, but they break into three lines for many sets of {screen width, font prefs}.  +sj + 18:08, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I prefer the different sizes; I think the first sentence is substantially more important than the second, and I like the visual effect of the contrast. I agree that we should aim for not breaking into three lines if possible, even at 800x600, but can we try a little more editing first? Cutting "free-content" back to just "free" would help in this respect, and I also think it would be more NPOV because it avoids favoring either side of the open-source/free-software semantic debate. --Michael Snow 00:04, 9 Jan 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't think we should be afraid from choosing whatever wording that applies best to us; I wonder what "open" really is to an encyclopedia, and many will do the same. Therefore, we can choose without thowing ourselves into any debate. ✏ Sverdrup 02:09, 10 Jan 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, I wasn't suggesting that we start calling Wikipedia "The Open Encyclopedia", certainly. I just mean that I think attaching "-content" is not terribly necessary. The terms are part of that debate, whether we think we're participating in it or not. --Michael Snow 03:03, 10 Jan 2005 (UTC)

text: Hey I love the new intro, is what I'd like to say to all of its creators. The font size is good because it puts one sentence out from all the others on the first page, and delivers special punch to the final link in the sentence (to me), the introduction link. ✏ Sverdrup 02:09, 10 Jan 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Perfectly stated. BLANKFAZE | (что??) 03:20, 10 Jan 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: What's with the big font?

message: Might it be possible/desirable to make the links in the tagline appear to be more subtle?
It seems distracting to have them bolded, in different colors, and underlined.  
I do think they should somehow call to the viewer that they are in fact links and I can understand the inclination to want to make the "anyone can edit" bit really stand out, but taken as a whole I think it winds up being more distracting than useful to anyone who is actually reading it for the first time.  
I think at the very least the color should remain the same as the other text in the sentence.  
Can't recall if you can specify a slighter underline in CSS; don't think you can so maybe keep it and see how it works with same color?  I'd also say loose the bolding on 'Wikipedia' and maybe on 'anyone can edit,' but that's secondary to loosing the color.
Thoughts?
-Ozzyslovechild 02:47, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  New CSS style for links in the tagline? 

message: Why is Wiktionary missing so many accepted words?
Seems like that's a kind of barn-raising that would be easy to accomplish with a little love from her neighbors o'er yonder at Wikipedia.
* A Prominent announcement for a brief bit somewhere on Wikipedia that some month/week will be "Fill in the Holes Week" on Wiktionary, or some such. 
* And some wee bit of facilitation on the "Here's how to be a Wiktionarian" front.
* And maybe some facilitation vis-a-vis "Missing Word List" type stuff.  A simple 'Open Words' 'Words that need Some Help' list should do.
And then just get 'er done.  Or at least get her Great-Leaped-FWDed.
Anyhoo, just a thought.
-:)Ozzyslovechild 03:36, 20 May 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Fund/Time-raiser to populate Wiktionary? 

message: I have created my own fork of Main. It is much the same, but it features less and cleaner HTML and gets rid of annoying extra margins and paddings. This is what I consider the most important change. Of course I have changed a few other things to my own prefs, like portals instead of categories, and the intro text. Please take a look. Also if anyone knows what exactly class="MainBG" does/means I would like to know. --MarSch 18:10, 3 Jun 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  fork of Main 

message: I think that the current date and time should be displayed on the Main Page. It might give visitors a more "welcome" feeling. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 04:35, 16 Jun 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Date and Time