Talk:Main Page/Archives/2006-03

Main Page moved here; New Main Page
I moved [Main Page:English] with its long edit history from wikisource.org, along with its talk page (and that history), to Main Page.

All old talk from before this message, from the confusing time when it was taking place on several "main pages" at once, has been archived.

Several (7) edits to Main Page need to be done again (such as adding language links). These edits can be viewed by admins in "history" and are easily fixed.

I highly suggest we redesign the Main Page entirely! Look at German and French: Elegant and functional. Do others also approve of them as models?

I may do I couple more edits and then will probably not be back until Sunday. Good luck to everyone, and feel free to create a new Main Page in the meantime.Dovi 05:15, 16 September 2005 (UTC)


 * After looking at the French and German main pages...I agree! Our main page is not very aesthetic; the colors don't mix very well.  And the layout could afford to be revamped as well. 13:57, 16 September 2005 (UTC
 * The French main page also has in the bottom right corner a template gizmo for flagging up the the editorial state of an article - raw unedited text through to fully finished, etc. I strongly suggest we have it on the En page as well. Tony Woolrich (AKA Apwoolrich) Saturday 17 sept 11.am - still trying to sort is password out :(

Wikisource currently has -1 pages.
Oh dear. ~ Goodgerster Well done for the moving to en., etc, though. :)


 * It's fixed now. I don't know what caused it, though... 15:04, 17 September 2005 (UTC)


 * It's come back again. ~ Goodgerster


 * It's gone again. This is very odd. ~ Goodgerster

Copyright problems
Moved to Scriptorium.

Is some of Wikisource superfluous since we already have Project Gutenberg?
Moved to Help:Project Gutenberg.

Main Page Protected
Is the main page going to be protected from now on? Is there a reason for this? If so could a friendly admin please add a link to Proposed deletions on the community part as I don't believe there is a link elsewhere & it would be useful to have this signposted somewhere prominent so people know the proper procedure & place for deletions. AllanHainey 07:40, 4 October 2005 (UTC)
 * It is common practice to protect the main page of wikis. As they are the pages that are seen by visitors and new users, it is integral that they be protected from vandalism edits or page moves. 15:26, 4 October 2005 (UTC)
 * The "new texts" are really stale. I believe I did those about 6 months ago.  I'd be interested in keeping them somewhat fresher.  One way to enable this would be to transclude the new text table from a sub-article.  I doubt many vandals have the sophistication to figure out that as a vandalism route. Wolfman 22:22, 9 October 2005 (UTC)
 * Yeah, that sounds good. With the few admins we have, and the fact that we never update that section, it would be nice to have an alternative approach.  What do we have to do in order to get your idea to work? 02:14, 10 October 2005 (UTC)


 * Basically, it's a template. You could just a template for this.  Or, you can use esentially the same technique to include stuff from anywhere, not just Template space.  Have a look at the source of User_talk:Wolfman.  The transclusion trick is to simply include the name of any article in braces:  .  On my talk, I just created a subpage called sandbox, copied over the table, and transcluded it to my talk. That's probably the easiest way to do it, and the subpage slash notation (as on my talk) is likely to be maximally confusing to a vandal.Wolfman 02:42, 10 October 2005 (UTC)== Layout suggestion ==

The following page layout (transcluded from User_talk:Wolfman/sandbox) looks more appealing to me than the present version. The central box looks fuller. Also the text in the right margin is not forced to wrap because of the small space. The basic change was adjusting a table width from 75% to 50%, but there are also a couple other small tweaks.

If you want to use this, grab the source from my sandbox. Restore the template by cutting out the present table, at the places indicated in the html comments. Then revert Template:New texts back one version, which I placed in bullet list form to match my proposed layout.

Comments? Wolfman 01:20, 13 October 2005 (UTC)


 * This looks much better! If no one has any objections, I'll put it in place soon. 02:47, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

That's great, it looks much better & it'll be easier to update with genuinely new sources, well done. ... unsigned comment by AllanHainey

column justification
i turned up the text size on my browser today, to ease my weary eyes. the 'new texts' section of the main page looks just terrible that way. the right column is aligned 'justified', which seems to be the cause. it also looks a little bit funny with smaller fonts. justification generally works poorly on small row widths. i'd suggest standard left alignment for the whole column, except the 'index of authors'. 09:59, 21 December 2005 (UTC)
 * Really? I increased the text size on my browser and for me the text acts like it's left-aligned. 14:33, 21 December 2005 (UTC)
 * That's extremely odd. Last night on both IE and FireFox it looked awful, e.g. 'The Three Musketeers' had 'The' to the left & 'Three' to the right with a large gap between.  Today, it looks fine, but I don't notice anything in the edit history that should cause this.  I'm pretty sure I didn't change anything in my personal settings that would affect this.  Weird.
 * Btw, I find the recent change back to the pipe '|' separator on the right column unappealing. A list seems much more intuitive to me, as well as prettier.  Just my personal preference; I'm sure the formatting will evolve anyway as we add links to Birgitte's portals and the like. Wolfbot 20:38, 21 December 2005 (UTC)
 * Hm, I finally see what you're talking about with the justification. Left-aligning is much more preferable. 18:04, 29 December 2005 (UTC)
 * And, I think that we should go back to a bulleted list for the right column. It's easier to read that way, even though it does increase the length of the Main Page. 18:04, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

Main Page Redesign?
I know, I know, I'm just a newb here - but it occurs to me the main page could be much better more aesthetically pleasing with only a slight increase in load time if we replaced the table of categories with 70px custom images (similar to the current image of Shakespeare, I guess) for each section of "Songs", "Speeches", "Leaked Documents", etcetera - each of the images following a fairly uniform pattern and such. I don't know if there's any interest in this, but I could certainly help create the collection of images if there was interest. Sherurcij 03:57, 29 December 2005 (UTC)


 * Hi, sounds like an interesting idea. I suggest you create an alternative model, perhaps on a subpage like Main Page/New. If it is an improvement on the current Main Page and people agree, then we can replace the current Main Page with that.


 * By the way, what you are are suggesting sounds a lot like the system of icons to be found at the Hebrew Wikipedia. Dovi 08:02, 29 December 2005 (UTC)


 * I have one suggestion, though. I can't make you not redesign the Main Page, but I ask that you either wait until we've gotten our portals created, or you create a section of the main page that takes these portals into account.  Thanks. 15:10, 29 December 2005 (UTC)


 * Sure you can, from what I've seen you're the god of Wikisource :Þ No worries though, but I may just try my hand at creating some icons and posting them here on the talk page for feedback later, no real rush Sherurcij 16:49, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

Another thought
Not sure how we decide what goes on "New Texts", but it seems to me that we should try to make an effort to publicize texts like Osama bin Laden's January 2006 Audiotape when they're relevant (Only released 4 days ago), and people might be looking for them, or interested in reading them if they see it mentioned. Sherurcij 10:38, 23 January 2006 (UTC)
 * I've put this on new texts. We don't really have a policy on what goes on there, as long as it is newly added to wiklisource we can have it on there, though we do aim to have a bit of variety in what is listed there. AllanHainey 12:36, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

no offense but
that logo of the iceberg is awful. not only is it ugly to the eye, it also tells the first time visitor NOTHING about this site. &mdash;The preceding unsigned comment was added by 71.139.9.172 (talk &bull; contribs) 03:41, 1 March 2006.
 * Please see oldwikisource:Wikisource:Logo. // Pathoschild (admin / talk) 07:49, 1 March 2006 (UTC)
 * The words tell people about the site, the pictures aren't intended to (what, for example, does the wikipedia or wikicommons logos say?). There is a lot of different opinions about the iceberg logo, some don't like it some (myself included) think it's great. Personally I don't see how you can say it is ugly, it's much better rendered than the other wiki logos.AllanHainey 16:25, 1 March 2006 (UTC)
 * Funny how newbies (myself included) dislike what old-timers insist on calling a "logo". It's not a logo, it's a photograph. Funny too that It has to be said on a place like this. Besides, the imprecise copyright situation (I'm trying to figure it out), and its poor usability on support others than a computer screen, and in sizes smaller than 100px wide, seems to mandate its change, or at least a vote on the eventuality of a change... --Kcyclopedist 00:40, 2 March 2006 (UTC)
 * And again, please see oldwikisource:Wikisource:Logo. There's already discussion and many proposals concerning the new logo. // Pathoschild (admin / talk) 01:06, 2 March 2006 (UTC)


 * Actually, I beg to differ. It says a lot about the site, and the people it caters to. Its a great metaphor them and the types of work that can be published here... premodern work of antiquity. non-icebergs works are prohibited to be published here. H0riz0n

New Logo contest on International WS
Discussion moved to Wikisource:Scriptorium#Time for change?. // Pathoschild (admin / talk) 11:08, 2 March 2006 (UTC)