Wikipedia talk:Community portal/Draft/Archive 1

Index of Wikipedia namespace pages
I have generated a list of pages in the Wikipedia namespace, from the January 25th enwiki db dump. The total number of pages is 102,574, so I have weeded out duplicate RFA, VFD, POTD, ... pages to a more manageable number. I also sorted the list by # of hits, and have listed the 1,000 most popular pages: I have begun sorting through these pages, as well as those beyond the 1,000 most popular. This will be useful to better organize the community portal, as well as Help:Contents. --Aude ( talk | contribs ) 16:24, 8 February 2006 (UTC)
 * Sorted by popularity
 * Sorted alphabetically

Design style
I suggest the community portal adopt the same design styles used in the main page draft. The TOC can go right in the header and include key links, such as About as well as links to sections below in the community portal page. --Aude ( talk | contribs ) 18:05, 8 February 2006 (UTC)

About Wikipedia
I like the archives added, though I'm thinking that the "About Wikipedia" section makes the community portal page too lengthy. All this information is more appropriate in About, and there could just be a link from here to there. Or maybe just include the very most important and popular "about wikipedia" links here, and a "see also" link to About --Aude ( talk | contribs ) 19:16, 8 February 2006 (UTC)

First things first
Let's make a draft with all the contents of Community Portal plus Goings-on, stick it up on the Community Portal, and then start reworking the content in the draft. You're conversion of the material to the main page design gives it a slick look, BTW. --Go for it! 20:01, 8 February 2006 (UTC)

Featured status announcements
I just moved the feature status announcements beneath the main goings-on. Perhaps, instead of each featured item going on the next line, as a bulleted list, we could list them all in the same row (with word wrap, when necessary). For example:


 * Articles that gained "featured" status:
 * Prostitution in the People's Republic of China (December 15), De Lorean DMC-12 (December 15), Fred Phelps (December 15), White's tree frog (December 15), History of the Australian Capital Territory (December 15), Dietrich v The Queen (December 15), Douglas Adams (December 15), Blues (December 15), The West Wing (television) (December 15)

This might not be a perfect solution, but I don't think we should push all the collaboration and project info way down, that one needs to scroll to see it. --Aude ( talk | contribs ) 19:59, 8 February 2006 (UTC)


 * Rows are good. --Go for it! 20:02, 8 February 2006 (UTC)

The boxes starting with Writer Refs don't line up to the ones above
I think you are faster than me at reformatting that kind of stuff. --Go for it! 20:08, 8 February 2006 (UTC)


 * I noticed that too. Will look into it later.  --Aude ( talk | contribs ) 21:06, 8 February 2006 (UTC)

Should we encourage editors to read books?
I would like to suggest including in the How to help section the following:


 * Pick a topic you enjoy and read a book about it. Use what you learn to make improvements in articles covering your topic.

For what it's worth, my own experience is that when I do this, I learn all sorts of new things and make my most useful edits. Moreover, for many topics, there's quite a bit more information available in books than on the Internet.

I'd be curious to know if other people think this is a good idea (or not). Opus33 18:33, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

suggestion
I don't like the colors...esp. the blue border. I like the Revision as of 21:23, 5 March 2006 onw, although the heading didn't match up w/ the CBB. Osbus 02:15, 27 March 2006 (UTC)
 * Nvm, compared to the current main page, this design looks much better, even w/ the blue border. It's cleaner and more organized...Osbus 17:34, 28 March 2006 (UTC)