Wikipedia:2013 main page redesign proposal/RFC/Full comments

This is a list of all the comments that were broken in the RFC page for clarity and ease of discussion. The comments here are primarily only the ones which have been internally broen. Separate comments in different contexts are not listed here.

The Current Main Page

Comments by Tom Morris

I broadly like the Main Page, but the only real problems I can find:

FA and DYK are often niche. The sort of content that FA and DYK promote tend towards the non-academic and are usually "quirky and interesting" rather than necessarily useful encyclopedic content. Part of the problem with this is that writing an FA on some obscure battle that nobody but military history types care about is possible, but getting, say, Philosophy or Biology or the United States to FA would be impossible. DYK elevates stuff that Wikipedians just happen to find that's weird and obscure and not yet written about to the front page. Our featured content processes don't reward the improvement of the tough but important key articles.
The style of the Main Page is very "Web 1.0". Featured pictures, for instance: why not have them take up the whole width of the page, with a semi-transparent overlay above them? Rather than 'recently featured', let people tap a 'next' button and have the next image slide in. People using touch devices could swipe the images to see the next one.

I'm not sure radical redesign is needed, but it's always worth having discussions about the future of the Main Page. —Tom Morris (talk) 09:50, 6 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I don't agree that it is impossible to get Philosophy or Biology to FA status. This could be done quite easily, it only requires editors with the motivation to put in the work. United States might be more problematic because current events tend to make it unstable, but it is still quite doable in principle. There is nothing wrong with "quirky and interesting", that's what gets people reading the articles. An interesting fact can be found in even the most dry academic subject. In fact, I think DYK has just the opposite problem - a great many of their hooks are dull and uninteresting. I really think they should be brutally selective about what gets in rather than "give every chap a chance". It would then be possible to let the ones that do get in have a decent amount of "air time". Spinning Spark 00:04, 7 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Comments by Morgan Leigh

I have a special love hate relationship with the random page link. I love it because it takes me places I would never have gone. But I hate it because it shows me so many poor pages. Maybe the random pages could be selected from pages of a certain quality and higher? Also the content In The News section really needs improving. It seems to select strange things for inclusion while big events get missed. Why not link it to wikinews and feature content from there? Morgan Leigh | Talk 02:03, 8 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Main page aims

Comments by Spinningspark

Two things I think the main page should be doing but currently is not:
1. Showcasing recently improved articles but still at a lower quality standard than FA. At one time there was a proposal to allow recent GAs into DYK but this never got approved. I think there is still a need to somehow showcase improvements in quality as opposed to DYK's current emphasis on improvements in quantity.
2. Help with navigating Wikipedia should be more prominent. A lot of users are going to be coming to Wikipedia to get a specific question answered like can dogs see more colours than cats. I'm sure their reaction to the front page is "yes, very pretty, but where's the answer to my question. Spinning Spark 06:35, 6 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Comments by Edokter

The three main goals should be:

Showcase featured content
Help readers find what they are looking for fast
Help new editor become involved efficiently

— Edokter (talk) — 10:02, 6 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Comments by Khajidha

I would make the search box more centrally located. This is an encyclopedia, the thing that lets you look things up should be more prominent. I would put more emphasis on the range of articles by increasing the size of the portals section and making the random article function more centrally located. This could also be done by changing the focus of DYK to intriguing facts from ANY article, not just recently added content (I've found quite a few horribly subpar articles linked through DYK lately). I would do away with ITN completely; we aren't a news site and no matter how much we tell people ITN isn't a news ticker they still act like it is. I have no problems with OTD. The various featured content sections I find rather annoying as it seems to drive this concept of so called accomplishments that leads to users basically getting into pissing contests about who's done more and better things. You shouldn't need an incentive to make articles better. If your every edit isn't about making the site better, why be here at all?Yeah, I don't really expect my suggestions to go over well, but here they are. --Khajidha (talk) 14:33, 6 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Comments by Rd232

Core aims:

Help readers find what they're looking for (bearing in mind that if it was easy to find, they'd probably not be going to the Main Page - so maybe more search help, prominence to browsing options, pointing to sister projects, and Reference Desk prominence)
Encourage readers to become editors (see eg Wikipedia:Village_pump_(proposals)/Archive_54#Main_page_Article_Editing_-_reboot)
Make editors feel good by showing off content