Wikipedia talk:Today's second feature

DYK / POTD layout
Originally on Talk:Main Page

So we have another couple of days to go before the next weekend of swapping DYK for POTD. I'm suggesting that we change the Main Page, so that the bottom right quarter is changed to be the 'Second Feature' which alternates between DYK - weekdays and POTD - weekends. To allow for planning, the link to the second feature is changed to

which transcludes daily subpages similar to "Today's featured article".

I've put a sample at User:Solipsist/MainPageTemp. And to show how the next few days might pan out;
 * Fri 22 July &mdash; MainPage 22 &mdash; Wikipedia:Today's second feature/July 22, 2005
 * Sat 23 July &mdash; MainPage 23 &mdash; Wikipedia:Today's second feature/July 23, 2005
 * Sun 24 July &mdash; MainPage 24 &mdash; Wikipedia:Today's second feature/July 24, 2005
 * Mon 25 July &mdash; MainPage 25 &mdash; Wikipedia:Today's second feature/July 25, 2005

As an extra challenge, the Featured Picture for the 23rd is due to be User:Geocachernemesis's rather nice panorama of Wellington, NZ. If the panorama proves too difficult to layout, we might be able to use a sample of the full panorama such as just the port.

Note that I've also placed the section title in the subpage so that it can also alternate, although at the moment there seems to be an extra blank line in the layout. -- Solipsist 21:00, 21 July 2005 (UTC)


 * Please note that headers like within the template mess up section editing on pages this template is transcluded on (like userpages). Has there been a bug report for this? If there's no section edit link on the header, I don't want it to be seen as such. - Mgm|(talk) 21:37, July 21, 2005 (UTC)
 * If they can be included without that problem, I think it's worth trying. Though, I think it's a good idea to have a poll to get general concensus before fully implementing it. - Mgm|(talk) 21:40, July 21, 2005 (UTC)

I can say with over a year's expereince writing up the FA that very wide pics are very bad for the main page. As such, I suggest solipsist use a different picture for Saturday. Sunday's Art Nouveau write up, on the other hand, looks spectacular. &rarr;Raul654 22:38, July 21, 2005 (UTC)

It should be pointed out that this setup assumes that there will be one DYK per day. This has been the case over the last few days while I've been following it, but I know in the past it's been updated several times per day and in fact the guidline is only to not update it any more frequently than once every 6 hours. MacGyverMagic, what do you think?--Pharos 00:09, 22 July 2005 (UTC)
 * Actually that gives me an idea for an easier way. Double redirects don't work, but double transcludes do. So is there a problem with just putting Did you know on the weekday [Wikipedia:Today's second feature/xxx] pages?
 * Yep, that'll work. Once I or anyone else has more time, DYK could be updated more than once a day (4 times at most). - Mgm|(talk) 11:23, July 22, 2005 (UTC)
 * I've changed the example for the 25th above to show this. -- Solipsist 08:59, 22 July 2005 (UTC)
 * There is the guideline Avoid using meta-templates, which emphasises that there can be performance problems with double transclusions. Clearly performance issues affecting the Main Page are going to be important to consider. My impression is that the performance hit comes from updating a template that cascades on to a large number of pages forcing them out of the caches. In this case, the double transclude should be fairly static and only used on a couple of pages, so is it likely to prevent the Main Page from being cache properly? -- Solipsist 06:09, 23 July 2005 (UTC)

Following up on Raul654's comment on the problem with wide images: I guess the issue is with people who use narrow browser widths. What is the maximum image width that avoids too many problems?

I've changed Wikipedia:Today's second feature/July 23, 2005 to use a narrower detail from the full panorama. Not sure I'm totally happy with it though. -- Solipsist 22:57, 22 July 2005 (UTC)

Wait... if today is the 22nd (or the 23rd, according to the user's time zone), why does the DyK for July 25 show up in the Main Page??? --Titoxd 02:49, 23 July 2005 (UTC)

I put this in a related discussion above but I figure I should probably put it here too. I'm proposing, for several reasons including the change to featured pics on weekends, extending the DYK eligibility to 7 rather than 3 days. See the proposal and discussion at Wikipedia talk:Did you know.

I'd like to make a humble suggestion here -- why not have the featured pictures on weekdays, and did-you-know on weekends? That way, the articles that go on DYK can be polished up and expanded so as to be of high calibre. &rarr;Raul654 05:35, July 23, 2005 (UTC)
 * I think the problem with that is we inherently want a lot of DYKs, because new quality articles is what Wikipedia is all about. But see the link to my alternative proposal above.--Pharos 05:48, 23 July 2005 (UTC)

A few changes I made
I've created TSFfooter to better reflect the layout of the other footers, such as TFAfooter. I also delinked the heading as that is better included in the footer. It has a more consistent look with the rest of the front page now. violet/riga (t) 22:37, 23 July 2005 (UTC)

Protection / unprotection
Currently the Main Page uses

Under this scheme, every day one page has to be protected, and one unprotected. I intend to change this to

which links to Today's second feature/Monday. That way, there will only be 7 second feature subpages, which can be left protected indefinitely. If you want to archive the featured picture blurbs from weekends, it should be easy enough to move Today's second feature/Saturday to Today's second feature/August 6, 2005, for example. dbenbenn | talk 14:01, 4 August 2005 (UTC)


 * I went ahead and implemented that change. dbenbenn | talk 14:14, 4 August 2005 (UTC)

Heading
I dislike the inclusion of the header in this template. I think ideally second feature would transclude DYK and/or POTD as appropriate for that day and add the appropriate heading. If there are performance issues, then second feature should be eliminated and substituted directly on the main page. In either case the following code would work. Change the comment tag to swap.

Did you know...
Note that Today's featured picture/July 29, 2024 does not work yet.--MarSch 10:54, 14 August 2005 (UTC)

Space on MainPage for TFPictures on weekends
Is it a good idea to encourage our TFArticle director, User:Raul654, to schedule longer TFArticles on weekends ? We can't predict nor control what will be on ITN. Having longer TFArticles means there is a better chance of having ample space for TFPictures, avoiding imbalances on MainPage. For instance, swapping Acetic acid and Black pepper on Today's featured article/December 2005 now is much easier than deciding, at 0:01 UTC on December 3, whether the bottommost blurb on ITN is old enough to get trimmed off. This is not sth we absolutely need to do, but I think will make life easier for those fellow admins who keep MainPage neat and tidy. IMO, MainPage looks very ugly when the right side is longer than the left. -- PFHLai 05:40, 29 November 2005 (UTC)