Wiktionary talk:Main Page/Redesign 2006

Many people (including me) believe our Main Page needs to be redesigned. Let us use this page to discuss how to do this. Gerard Foley 05:26, 22 January 2006 (UTC)Reply


Here are some pages that have been started up by some users: User:Ncik/main page, User:Dangherous/Main Page

List of what might go on the main page edit

Feel free to add to the list, and please link to the discussion below
  1. Short explanation of what Wiktionary is
  2. Word of the day
  3. Translation of the day
  4. Word puzzles
  5. Quick index
  6. List of words which are often mispelled

Short explanation of what Wiktionary is edit

The main page doesn't explain how Wiktionary works (it tries, but I don't think it is very good). I think it needs a short explanation as the system is hard to understand for newcomers. Gerard Foley 05:26, 22 January 2006 (UTC)Reply

Word of the day edit

People have been working on the word of the day project, can we get it onto the main page? Gerard Foley 05:26, 22 January 2006 (UTC)Reply


There should be something to read on the main page, as there is on the 'pedia. Therefore I think that Word of the Day at least should be expanded so we can see it, rather thazn just a link. However, any and all of this is an improvement on the current main page. Widsith 10:17, 11 February 2006 (UTC)Reply
Yes, I also suggest to show only the title of the word of the day, since a word seldom have only one meaning. And like that it invites people to click on it if they don't know this word. - Dakdada 13:14, 11 February 2006 (UTC)Reply

Translation of the day edit

To go with the word of the day, why not a Translation of the day? Gerard Foley 05:26, 22 January 2006 (UTC)Reply

Word puzzles edit

Can be quite fun to have some word puzzles on the main page. Could be riddles, wordsearch, crosswords (I think Wikinews might do them) or something from Countdown. Comments and/or ideas? Gerard Foley 05:26, 22 January 2006 (UTC)Reply

Other wikt's edit

When looking at what works and what doesn't, it helps to look at what others have already tried.

I think the other Wiktionaries may use en: as an example of what not to do.  :-)

What follows is my personal opinion of the appearance of other language Wiktionaries...


  • de: has an interesting front page, but a bit busy. Most outstanding feature (to my eye): the have consistent heading bars with consistent color schemes (with the exception of the new WOTD thing which doesn't seem to be getting updated.) They've eliminated the peach and yellow gunk. (Yay!)
  • fr: has a very lean and mean main page, but consequently is skimpy on eye candy (a few icons only.) They also have the best background color (for all pages, not just main page) of all site; not the harsh white of en:. The "Other Wiktionaries" layout is a notable improvement, but they decided not to keep consistent heading bar colors for it.
  • it: and nl: seem clean but boring.
  • pl: and fi: are actually very cool. Again, the consistent heading bar (different color choice than de:, but perhaps better) and the single headingbar color add tremendously to helping one's eyes find the next section.
  • es: is unattractive.
  • da: has removed far too much; not enough remains to be very useful.
  • co: seems more concerned with pictures (photos) than lexical content
  • bg: has some very cool features (keyboard) which we should glom for our edit box.
  • io: is interesting. Incomprehensible, but interesting.
  • ko: has the prettiest icons and logo.
  • th: has another keyboard layout we should glom.

I didn't see any of the top language Wiktionaries retaining our weird date format at the top right. Most have pared the introduction text down to something reasonable. Very few actually have a WOTD feature; those that do don't seem to update it very often. (I used to subscribe to m-w.com's WOTD mailing list...that was nice. But on the front page, I'm not convinced it adds anything.)

The layouts that "work" have the introduction text in a box up top, and the rest of the page either 100% width or 50%/50% widths. The right-sidebar concepts end up detracting rather than adding.

--Connel MacKenzie T C 07:10, 22 January 2006 (UTC)Reply


About the French Main Page : I created it following several points that I wrote on the talk page. I tried to mimic the style of the French Wikipedia Main Page, so that it looks more complementary (although the layout is quite different). Also the contents are in templates : it is easier to change (the links are in the talk page) without editing the Main Page every time there is something to change (an annoucement template for example). I tried to make it shrinkable/expandable so that it can fit on any screen (I hope) ; it is already the case here, but be careful with that ;)

The « Browse Wiktionary » has been reorganised, and I suggest that the actual English section « Articles » and « Appendices » should be changed too : the content is currently arranged alphabetically and is to condensed, it is not really good looking and usable, I think. A thematic order would be better and more easy to use. Seperating grammatical and lexical informations could be very useful for example.

The French has been clearly separated from the other languages, since it is a French and French<->other languages dictionary, and maybe it should be displayed somehow like that on the English Main Page…

I hope you can make some use of this :) - Dakdada 19:08, 23 January 2006 (UTC)Reply

A new "Polish" version edit

I've taken the liberty to retry a rewrite of the Main Page. I've taken the Polish Main Page design as a model, and kinda amalgamated it with An old version I was working on. There's a spare section there, which I'm sure we can find a use for. Maybe the keyboard that Bulgaria has, or a "Short explanation of what Wiktionary is", as Gmcfoley suggests. The translation of the day and word puzzles do not exist, so I've discounted them from the plan. As for WOTD, it does add something. I'm sure that its far too prominent on my version (I was a little biased, having set up ws:wotd n'all). I'll ask in ws:bp for a vote if ws:wotd should be included, or toned down. But hey, at a first glance it looks alright. I'll try to change things about, being open to suggestions, but I strongly encourage others to play with the page and make it better. Ta, --Dangherous 17:25, 29 January 2006 (UTC)Reply

Quick index edit

I've started working on a new version of the "Quick index", first at Talk:Main Page#Other scripts revisited and now at User:Dcljr/Scripts. When I get a complete first draft, I'll post about it here. - dcljr 23:33, 31 January 2006 (UTC)Reply

I like it very much. Good job --Dangherous 23:46, 31 January 2006 (UTC)Reply
The latest version of the "selected entries" section (see also my comments in the next section below) might seem a bit unbalanced, but that's because there's eventually going to be many more links under "Various other scripts". Right now they just include the most common scripts, according to a couple of lists I found. I'll continue to fill this out in the near future. - dcljr 20:36, 9 February 2006 (UTC)Reply

Bold update edit

Well, I've been bold and updated this page without any further discussion. You can revert it if you want (previous link is to version in history), but I think it might be better to work off of this version from now on, because I've gone through and wikified everything (no extraneous HTML), and made the formatting more a little more straightforward (I think) — e.g., no more div's. Some of the code was a little "broken", too, probably from repeated edits. I've also inserted my latest version of the "selected entries" section ("quick index", etc.). The other version didn't scale well (try making your browser window narrow and you'll see what I mean). Anyway, try not to be too savage in your criticisms... <w> - dcljr 20:38, 9 February 2006 (UTC)Reply

Wow, that is beautiful! I think it needs to include {{wiktionarybiglangs}} for interwiki links though. (Looks like you actually read and addressed most or all the concerns being discussed, at first glance.) --Connel MacKenzie T C 22:03, 9 February 2006 (UTC)Reply
Heh, it changed while I was commenting on it. The extra blue now seems heavy...but consistent. Great work dcljr! --22:10, 9 February 2006 (UTC)Reply
Perhaps the color used at the top of WT:BP would be even more consistent? --Connel MacKenzie T C 22:27, 9 February 2006 (UTC) I prefer the current colour. — Vildricianus 22:34, 9 February 2006 (UTC)Reply
I shall defer to you guys on the color. As long as shades of red are reserved for error, deletion and blocking pages, yellows and oranges for warnings, then anything else should be fine for just about anywhere else. You guys have good taste. You know what you are doing. I'll shut up now. --Connel MacKenzie T C 08:25, 10 February 2006 (UTC)Reply

Indeed, it's very good. Layout remains consistent no matter what font size you set. Looks good on different browsers, too. I think those columns need to correspond in width, though. — Vildricianus 22:22, 9 February 2006 (UTC)Reply

The comment about addressing "most or all the concerns being discussed" is funny since, truth be told, I didn't even read all of the prior discussion before making my changes! I just (mostly) went with what was already there and "cleaned it up" a bit. Given the positive comments so far, I think I'll leave the tweaking up to others (quit while I'm ahead!) and concentrate instead on adding more scripts to the "Various other scripts" section. One thing I've found, though: we'll definitely need to link to a more comprehensive "browse by script" page (which I'll be working on) since there are so many of them, and Unicode tends to break up scripts into very different ranges of characters. The first 5 European languages I checked, for example, have a total of 18 identifiable ranges, including capitals, lowercase, accents, "supplementary" characters, etc. - dcljr 05:03, 10 February 2006 (UTC)Reply
What scripts are you planning on including? If you include all the NanshuBot contributions, you may end up with 22,521 first "letters" in your index. (At least, as of the January 30th XML dump, by my rough estimate.) --Connel MacKenzie T C 08:19, 10 February 2006 (UTC)Reply
Excluding the three-byte and four-byte unicode character ranges, I count 537 first letter unicode characters, here on en.wikt:. --Connel MacKenzie T C 08:34, 10 February 2006 (UTC)Reply
I'm not sure what you mean. I'm not talking about doing every single letter, only ranges of letters (/characters/symbols). For example, (Modern) Greek only needs 3 ranges: capitals (Α–Ω), lowercase (α–ω), and an "extended" range (ἀ–ῼ) for special characters. Only when languages start having many thousands of entries would it be worth breaking it out into individual characters, IMO. - dcljr 21:24, 12 February 2006 (UTC) — And as for the Chinese characters, they can be indexed by radical, and there's less than 300 of those. - dcljr 21:55, 12 February 2006 (UTC)Reply

Index edit

Sorry, I meant to break this out so section edits would be isolated from this. --Connel MacKenzie T C 19:35, 10 February 2006 (UTC)Reply

Index breakdowns edit

Perhaps User talk:Connel MacKenzie/todo's style ==Language== breakdowns would be more helpful? If I were to generate a list of each "alphabet" for each language, and listed only the characters applicable?

Regenerating such a list once a month (or once per XML download from http://downloads.wikimedia.org/) would that be useful? Should I leave my valid "language" criteria at 50 entries or more, or lower it a bunch?

--Connel MacKenzie T C 09:06, 10 February 2006 (UTC)Reply

Hmm. I don't know. Note that we already have index pages and (even better) categories for browsing by language; I'm talking about a new index/search page specifically for scripts — each of which may be used for several languages. (Special:Allpages is necessarily based on scripts, not languages, since it's based on Unicode sort order.) Anyway, you can do your idea and I can do mine; maybe they'll both be useful for different purposes. BTW, I was going to include "all" scripts, whether or not they have entries yet. - dcljr 21:52, 12 February 2006 (UTC)Reply

First character indexes edit

s x="" k z f s x=$o(^wiki2(x)),y=^(x,"name") s z=$s($a(y)<192:$e(y),$a(y)<224:$e(y,1,2),$a(y)<240:"Kanji",1:$e(y,1,4)),z(z)=z
s x="" k z f s x=$o(^wiki2(x)),y=^(x,"name") s z=$s($a(y)<192:$e(y),$a(y)<224:$e(y,1,2),$a(y)<227:$e(y,1,3),$a(y)<240:"Kanji",1:$e(y,1,4)),z(z)=z
s x="" f i=1:1 s x=$o(z(x)) q:x="" w !,"[[Special:Allpages/",$$uni^wiki2(x),"]]" ;"|",$$uni^wiki2(x),"]]"
s x="" f i=1:1 s x=$o(z(x)) q:x="" w !,"[[Special:Allpages/",$$uni^wiki2(x),"|",x,"]]"

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א ב ג ד ה ו ז ח ט י ך כ ל ם מ ן נ ס ע ף פ ץ צ ק ר ש ת װ آ أ إ ئ ا ب ت ث ج ح خ د ذ ر ز س ش ص ع غ ف ق ك ل م ن ه و ي ١ ٹ پ چ ڈ ک گ

฿ Allpages/‎

Indicating other Wiktionaries edit

The choise to have copies of the different logos of wiktionaries is horrible. It only leads to the creation of more logos that have an equal right to be there. Equally deserving projects are not shown. Personally I prefer the way it is done on the Dutch Wiktionary, all languages are indicated in their own language/script. It works well.

For me this is enough to oppose this change. GerardM 09:36, 11 February 2006 (UTC)Reply

The original purpose (on fr) of this section was to lighten the main page, since there are many of them, so it was just a link to a general page with all the languages. It didn't lead to the pages indicated by the images at first. Maybe those links should point only to a page like Template:wiktionarylang ? But if you think it is incorrect, we should come back to the old version.
The other languages are already displayed on the left, there is no need to repeat them like on the Dutch Wiktionary, I think. Why not display only the English names of those languages (or both, like the current version...) ? The purpose of them is no only to give a link, but also to show (even to those who don't know how to read these languages) what are the other Wiktionaries. For example, I don't know what اردو means. - Dakdada 13:04, 11 February 2006 (UTC)Reply

Bold update 2 edit

I've changed those borders a bit. Feel free to revert if not good. — Vildricianus 14:00, 11 February 2006 (UTC)Reply

I tweaked "Things To Do" to match column widths. --Connel MacKenzie T C 20:14, 11 February 2006 (UTC)Reply

Date/time edit

The date/time thing on the original page was meant as a catch for mirror sites that copy content (especially without attribution, which would be a violation of the GFDL.) That is, a visitor to a mirror site should know that content at that mirror is out of date (if it is out of date) and should know where it came from, i.e. e-n-.-w-i-k-t-i-o-n-a-r-y-.-o-r-g so they can check for updates if they arrive at an older page. Especially one that programmatically substitutes the word "Wiktionary" for their own name.

I agree that the format of the date/time thing could be improved. I think a one-line small tagline at the very bottom should suffice. Should I be bold, or do others have better ideas about it? Actually, about either of the two separate issues: outdated mirrors and non-attesting mirrors. --Connel MacKenzie T C 16:54, 15 February 2006 (UTC)Reply

A little more thought on this: Perhaps we should manually update the date/time the page was last edited? Sites that mirror w/o honoring the GFDL are using the XML dumps, so any automatic date-stampping is lost anyway. Also, at the bottom, it shold probably have something like "from en.wiktionary.org, GFDL licence." Perhaps? --Connel MacKenzie T C 16:25, 25 February 2006 (UTC)Reply

Too blue edit

Who is your target audience? Shouldn't someone who wants to contribute be directed to the Community Portal? Sorry, this isn't a criticism of your work. I don't find the Main Page to be very useful in its current manifestation. It doesn't even have a link to the pronunciation key, and I know what a "pronunciation" is, quite frankly. Davilla 17:06, 15 February 2006 (UTC) Hey, I can edit it! Still find it confusing, though. Davilla 19:20, 19 February 2006 (UTC)Reply

Dangherous edit

I'd like to applaud Dangherous for being bold. I've semi-protected it (and it's templates) to coincide with his act of boldness. --Connel MacKenzie T C 17:57, 22 February 2006 (UTC)Reply

Make last two sections match? edit

Can someone please make the headings "Wiktionary in other languages" and "Other Wikimedia projects" match the other headings? Is there any reason not to? We don't use a TOC on the main page, so reformatting them isn't the issue, right? --Connel MacKenzie T C 23:25, 22 February 2006 (UTC)Reply

Will this do ? The template of the sister projects should be transparent or the same color, though. - Dakdada 00:09, 23 February 2006 (UTC)Reply
Yes, that's what I meant. Could you do it to Main Page please, with the template corrections as needed? --Connel MacKenzie T C 00:14, 23 February 2006 (UTC)Reply
Ok, it's done. - Dakdada 16:54, 23 February 2006 (UTC)Reply
Looks very clean. Thank you. --Connel MacKenzie T C 20:01, 23 February 2006 (UTC)Reply

Two items edit

  1. I'm tempted to replace Main Page/Redesign with a redirect to Main Page now that it is semi-protected and someone's been bold. Is there a better place to keep this conversation?
  2. http://is.wiktionary.org/wiki/Fors%C3%AD%C3%B0a has really sweet looking navigation bar stuff - this is done with css, right? Anyone know exactly how this is done?

--Connel MacKenzie T C 16:15, 25 February 2006 (UTC)Reply

Do you mean the round corners? Personally I don't like that. — Vildricianus 16:23, 25 February 2006 (UTC)Reply
Yes that is what I meant. OK. Never mind then. --Connel MacKenzie T C 16:29, 25 February 2006 (UTC)Reply
The corners of our new Main Page are prominently squared now. Rounding those nearby ones to the left would generate inconsistency and conflict. I'm quite fond of the current .css (with my own minor tweaks then). — Vildricianus 16:40, 25 February 2006 (UTC)Reply

Internet exploder edit

On a whim, I opened en.wikt in Internet explorer today. There is an error being reported on line 945 character 20 (because it is IE, I can't tell exactly what file that was in.)

The yellow bar running across the bottom didn't. Instead, it started at the same left margin as the content frame.

I'm pretty sure this wasn't borked when the main page first got put in place, but I may have simply overlooked these.

Anyone see the error(s)?

--Connel MacKenzie T C 20:57, 28 February 2006 (UTC)Reply

Main page revision edit

Since white type on a black background is always more difficult to read, it might help if the writing in these boxes were a few sizes bigger. Eclecticology 08:44, 24 February 2006 (UTC)Reply

Browser testing edit

If anyone needs browser testing I have

  • Opera 9
  • IE 6
  • IE 7 beta
  • Firefox 1.5
  • Netscape
  • Mozilla

and whatever else needs testing, but seriously, Opera, IE, FireFox and we're good. I wonder if we could get away with being the first project to add a "get firefox button :)" -- Tawker 07:59, 30 March 2006 (UTC)Reply

RFD discussion: March–June 2019 edit

 

The following information has failed Wiktionary's deletion process (permalink).

It should not be re-entered without careful consideration.


Old; irrelevant. DCDuring (talk) 15:44, 18 March 2019 (UTC)Reply

I think it will please @Dangherous for this page to be deleted. - TheDaveRoss 19:16, 18 March 2019 (UTC)Reply
There are incoming links. Why delete? At the very least, userfy and fix the links. —Justin (koavf)TCM 19:18, 18 March 2019 (UTC)Reply
Why waste time fixing anything? It's dead. It has joined the choir invisible. All of the junk that we retain clogs up one or more special pages, this one clogs up wanted pages because of the redlinks. If it isn't junk, someone should say why. DCDuring (talk) 22:33, 18 March 2019 (UTC)Reply
It seems like you are contradicting yourself: this isn't currently on any report from a special page but introducing redlinks will put it on one... Why is that a good thing? —Justin (koavf)TCM 01:11, 19 March 2019 (UTC)Reply
I’d say see whether there are elements worth importing to the current Main Page (the quick alphabetic links look interesting), remove links from other pages to it, then delete it. Do the same for other Main Page experiments (I think there are a few, like "Wiktionary:Main Page/Old 2007" and "Wiktionary:Main Page/Old versions"). — SGconlaw (talk) 01:15, 19 March 2019 (UTC)Reply


Return to the project page "Main Page/Redesign 2006".