Talk:Crawl Wiki

Ideas for the main page

So a couple things about it:

• I'm not fond of the current design. It's kind of dull and scattered, and also just looks somehow outdated compared to the rest of the site. I'm not exactly sure what would make it more interesting, but before I go ahead and try, I want to know if this opinion is shared by anyone else - if everyone else thinks it's fine, there's no reason to try and think of ways to change it up.
• About the only concrete idea I have to spruce up the main page is that we could use a featured article, like NetHackWiki or of course Wikipedia. For one thing, I think that it would be useful to show to the people who still think of the wiki as an inferior source of information. Also, it's always good to show off our best work.
• The link to the old wiki - this should either be removed or made much less prominent. It should still be *somewhere* on the wiki, since it'll always be potentially valuable for its talk pages and history, but it's actually becoming more and more outdated. The average user should not get the impression that this wiki is being rebuilt, and the old one is the canonical source - that just isn't true any more, as virtually every article has been migrated, along with most images. I'm thinking it should be kept either in the Community Portal, or in a separate article about the history of the wiki.

Anyway, what are people's thoughts? -Ion frigate 09:39, 24 March 2013 (CET)

• You're right: the "main page" isn't a loved one by the active wiki community. Best proof is that nobody cares normally to hold the "News" section up to date. (Or has really nothing happened since last november?) That's the first that has to be changed.

  The reason why nearly none of is much interested in that entry page is that it is constantly the same table you look at. There's neither an "eyecatcher" (images? featured article) nor "useful" or hilarious info, e.g. statistics like an automated "fun table" of most looked up monsters/spells/game mechanics/editors.

  The link to the old wiki is still sometimes needed, yet it must no longer be that prominent at the main page. Just as you proposed, move it to the Community page!

Those are my ideas (on a cloudy sunday morning while the sun peeks sommetimes out). -- Bwijn 10:32, 24 March 2013 (CET)

So I'm thinking a featured article would be a good central element. We could try to do a scheduling thing like NetHackWiki, but the problem there is that a lot of the information will change before the article actually gets featured, so it may no longer be up to date. Definitely a featured article is something we need somewhat broader discussion on, though.

Some changes, off the top of my head:

• Rearrange the items section, putting the types of items first, then general articles about items (general articles may seem more important, but trust me, most often people come to a wiki looking for specific articles). And give the links images: on one side, the glyph, and on the other side (if possible), a reduced version of the tile.
• Maybe make the font bold or larger
• Those background colors. Maybe it's just me, but I'm not fond of them.

And numerous other ideas I'm sure will come to me in the next few days... -Ion frigate 11:35, 24 March 2013 (CET)

As a first step, I'm going to create a sandbox copy of the main page in my userspace - the preview function doesn't let you show things to other users, and I think it's well worth making sure certain changes are approved of before enacting them. -Ion frigate 11:41, 24 March 2013 (CET)