Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Sidebar redesign

{|style="background:#f9f9f9"
 * width="210px" valign="top" |

2006 Original


navigation
 * Main page
 * Community portal
 * Featured content
 * Current events
 * Recent changes
 * Random article
 * About Wikipedia
 * Contact us
 * Make a donation
 * Help

search 

toolbox
 * What links here
 * Related changes
 * Upload file
 * Special pages
 * [ Printable version ]
 * [ Permanent link ]
 * [ Cite this article ]


 * width="210px" valign="top" |

Proposed design


navigate search 
 * Main page
 * Contents
 * Featured content
 * Current events
 * Random article

interact
 * Help
 * Community portal
 * Questions
 * About Wikipedia
 * Contact us
 * Make a donation

toolbox
 * [ Cite this article ]
 * [ Permanent link ]
 * [ Printable version ]
 * Related changes
 * What links here
 * Recent changes
 * Special pages
 * Upload file


 * width="210px" valign="top" |

Actually used


navigation
 * Main Page
 * Contents
 * Featured content
 * Current events
 * Random article

interaction search 
 * About Wikipedia
 * Community portal
 * Recent changes
 * Contact Wikipedia
 * Donate to Wikipedia
 * Help

toolbox
 * What links here
 * Related changes
 * Upload file
 * Special pages
 * [ Printable version ]
 * [ Permanent link ]
 * [ Cite this article ]
 * }

=Reasons behind the changes=
 * Logo
 * old logo (Wikipedia-logo-en.png) replaced with new logo (Wikipedia-logo-en-fixed-bg.png), to eliminate white-matte artifacts. See #Logo changes on the talk page.
 * Navigate box — designed as a reader-oriented set of browsing links
 * Contents link added
 * Interact box — designed as an editor/meta-oriented set of information links
 * Questions link added
 * Toolbox — designed as a per-page-oriented set of links
 * separated the contextual/local links (top) from the fixed/global links (bottom)
 * moved the Recent changes link to here, from the navigation box, as contextually appropriate.
 * reorganised to place "Cite this article" and other reader-oriented links at the top. (a straight reversal of current ordering)

There are a number of links that could have been included (in both the navigation box, and the interaction box), but were left out of this redesign draft. Primarily, to keep the initial redesign simple, and agreeable-to by all, but also because many of them are not currently at a suitably high-standard. We envision some/many of them being added at a future time (it's easier to add links later, than to re-argue them at each draft stage).

=Toolbox variants in different namespaces=

{|style="background:#f9f9f9"
 * width="220px" valign="top" |

Article namespace
toolbox
 * [ Cite this article ]
 * [ Permanent link ]
 * [ Printable version ]
 * Related changes
 * What links here
 * Recent changes
 * Special pages
 * Upload file


 * width="220px" valign="top" |

User namespace
toolbox
 * User contributions
 * E-mail this user
 * [ Permanent link ]
 * [ Printable version ]
 * Related changes
 * What links here
 * Recent changes
 * Special pages
 * Upload file


 * width="270px" valign="top" |

Wikipedia namespace
toolbox
 * [ Permanent link ]
 * [ Printable version ]
 * Related changes
 * What links here
 * Recent changes
 * Special pages
 * Upload file


 * }

{|style="background:#f9f9f9"
 * width="220px" valign="top" |

Image namespace
toolbox
 * [ Printable version ]
 * What links here
 * Recent changes
 * Special pages
 * Upload file


 * width="220px" valign="top" |

Special namespace
toolbox
 * Recent changes
 * Special pages
 * Upload file


 * width="270px" valign="top" |

History & recentchanges
toolbox
 * Related changes
 * What links here
 * RSS · Atom
 * Recent changes
 * Special pages
 * Upload file


 * }

...and so on, for the "Block user", and "trackbacklink" links.

Note: The toolboxes for the namespaces "Template", "Category", "Portal", "MediaWiki", "Help" and all forms of "Talk" are identical to that of the Wikipedia namespace.

Links

 * MediaWiki:Sidebar
 * Developers