Talk:Main Page

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Shutting down,

Thanks to all who contributed over the years but with the shutdown of the BW server (thanks for all you did Jeramy) and virtually no progress made in the last two years, it is clearly time to let this project go. I was proud to be involved and I still think we built the most reliable and informative LEGO-related wiki out there. But clearly facts and history are not what the people want so I wish everyone good luck and Leg Godt. Tedward

It is sad, but not something that can or should be argued with. My own contributions have been at best sporadic. I hope that some of the content is preserved, but much has been long since outdated and no longer relevant (except to scholars of AFOL culture perhaps). I shall salvage what I find useful and remarkable. Claude Bombarde
And we may have a possible reprieve. Nothing concrete yet, but a possible solution that will preserve what we have and also bring in fresh blood to restart the project. Stay tuned! Tedward
Are the 'lights still on'? Or is it merely that my timezone is earlier than BrickWiki's? Claude Bombarde
The lights do appear to still be on, leaving the question, 'Is anyone home?' Is there any interest in further updates to BrickWiki? Claude Bombarde
Waiting on word still. Out of my hands. Not really willing to update if it's going to disappear. Tedward

New Image vs. Old Image

Which do you like? The old corner image or the new one? --Venkatesh 12:

Old. But I do like the BW on the studs, though, nice touch... Is there a way to get that effect on the old image? (what I like about the old image is the perspective chosen, and the shading/lighting... the shadows are less distracting, I'd have none at all!) ++
I'll rerender in flat and shadowless.
Can you use the same rotation and perspective settings too??? This one seems rotated down more, losing the emphasis on the multicolored plates on the sides... Personally, I prefer orthogonal to perspective so maybe try it that way too?? Thanks!!! ++
Orthogonal will deemphasise the colours more but I've just uploaded another one. Astro did the first one so if he'd like to email me the settings that would be nice.
No it wouldn't, I don't think... I think you're thinking of Isometric? Orthogonal in POV just means your perspective point is at infinity.. I agree that I'd tilt the top face up more, beyond isometric... Astro's probably in class right now or something. ++
Orthogonal is a superset of isometric (which is orthogonal at (45,33)) but I was wrong anyway. If anything it will make the colours more obvious.
I think removing the shadows will help emphasise the multi-colours too, but I think I also prefer the lower angle. Can you reduce it a bit without losing the effect of the BW logos? ROSCO 16:
Shift left New iterations Image:BrickWikiLow.png and Image:BrickWikiLowOrth.png.
How about now? --Venkatesh 19:
The last one is my favourite (LowOrth)
Mine too of the ones presented so far, but it is not orthoganal... it still tapers smaller toward the bottom. Still, I like it best so far. ++

Old stuff

Ok, so what should go on the main page? And do we need a list of topics that would be good starting points for work? (Lar)

Until someone comes up with a good design for the main page, it can hold the mission of the site and links to major articles. First and foremost, we need articles about the history of LEGOs, our policies, and some very common construction techniques. We could either organize by category (ie LEGO-related organizations, construction techniques, good ideas/bad ideas) or by letter. Both have advantages and disadvantages - categories are easier to use at times, but letters lend an encyclopedia-feel and let you see articles that are near one another. Thats an issue to be worked out soon. --Venkatesh
Works for me! I put one article in just to try to get the hang of it, it's just a stub, but then I found there was no stub template yet, so I made one by cribbing from wikipedia's defn... Also should we be using ® more? --


New Page

What do you guys think of the new front page? --Venkatesh

I'm digging it, lots! Nice work! There appears to be one link in the yellow part (help) that doesn't go anywhere. It's different than the link in the navigation box on the left which DOES go somewhere (but its hovertext seems incomplete)... ++

Current events

I liked having current events, though it could be a pain to keep up to date. ++

Current Events disappeared for a simple reason - a new, improved version is in the works. --Venkatesh 17 July
Rockage! ++

Administrator to User Ratio

Question for people involved with large or active or even moderately-sized websites/online communities. What is the conventional ratio of administrators to normal users? Is there any ratio? Does it matter? --Venkatesh 20 July

In my view (having been involved in administering several online communities, with varying degrees of success, depending on who you ask) I think it depends. It is always good to have backup but too many admins may not be goodness, idle hands are the devil's playthings and all that. Are you thinking you need more here? As long as you have coverage so the truck factor is not 1, I wouldn't add any more. ROSCO admins a smallish but important community in JLUG and may have thoughts too... ++
I was just thinking about when would be a good time (in terms of user number) to appoint new admins. In the past, I had always used the ratio 1:20 in forums and then added one base admin. However I have never administrated any forums or things like that that lasted for more than a few months. So I don't know when and was wondering if anybody knew. --Venkatesh 20 July
Phew, just found this - seeing the name's been mentioned I'll say that JLUG forum is still working OK with 2 admins for 125 users. And while it's hard to compare a wiki with a forum, I think the overall "admins not interfering much with content" concept is similar here. One big difference is that all registrations must be admin approved at JLUG, which will possibly reduce other admin tasks over time. I would say it is handy having admins in different timezones - makes it seem as if there's always someone there.
You put out a call for admins a while ago, presumably you got some candidates but haven't moved forward. Do we need more? What kind? The admin/sysop/bureacrat thing at MW with 3 different roles is one I haven't grokked. Stuff does seem to get done here soon enough, most of the time. Is someone in a different time zone going to have enough technical power and skill to solve things sooner than you could, V? If not, I'm not sure I see the need for more either, actually. User help issues, vandalism, etc, all that can be handled by users that watch recent changes, I think. but adding more isn't necessarily going to hurt anything so do as you want++
Here is the thing - I would like to have two more admins - one for Mediawiki and one for technical issues. I am trying to slowly create a split between the different classes of administration, the development team, the wiki team, and the server team. I wanted a board or group of some form to be formed, but there are too few active users to matter right now.
Also, lets say we get a new wiki admin now. What could that person do that they can't do now? They would be able to delete pages and rollback edits. Nothing major. If I go further and give them tech admin powers, they would get telnet access to the server. That would mean that they could fix or enhance anything, but it would also mean that I would need to get to know them much better, teach them my servers much better, and need to work up a system of access control and permissions on the server that would be beyond what I have now. I wouldn't be comfortable yet with giving out telnet access unless there is a group in charge of Brickwiki, rather than just me. --Venkatesh 22:

Purging

Since the main page has a very dynamic statistic on it (number of pages) that nevertheless doesn't refresh unless the cache is flushed it may be useful to execute a purge on it every once in a while if people remember. This flushes the cached value but does not itself cause an edit action against the main page in the log (if I read my MediaWiki helps right, that is) ++

Random Page

can we get the Random Page link back on the navigation box? I think it's cool. ++

Why do we link to an obsolete page?

Why does the main page link to the obsolete "Building with Bricks" page? Doesn't seem very friendly to the casual surfer...

I just fixed it. Well spotted

Spacing

Umm, I think that the right hand section of the front page (with News etc.) is much too narow. It needs to be at least half as wide again. There is no problem squeezing the About BrickWiki section that I can see.

I'd squeeze it more, it maybe needs to be 70/30 ratio wise. I gotta say I'm not clear on what the index part is trying to do, I think I liked the page better before. Also there is a missing image, before we use this index maybe that needs fixing? ++
This page isn't quite done yet. But that it because there is no amount of HTML magic I have been able to figure out that will make the width correct. I wanted it to be in the ratio before and if anyone can figure that out, it would be really helpful. If it can't be figured out soon, I will revert to the old page. Btw, what do you (pl) think of the new colors versus the old ones? And the new index section on the top? --Venkatesh 18:
I've fixed the width of the side column to 220px so it should look fine on any browser wider than about 600px (pretty much all nowadays). I would suggest editing a replacement page and copy-pasting only when done for edits of this for the future though. It looks a little unprofessional to have a constantly changing front page. I personally like the index, although I don't like the gold so much. What about bley?
The colors seem to have vanished, but I like it better without them. What do you all think? --Venkatesh 09:
I think it looks better. Less busy, more functional.
It was a database error, and now the colors are back. I'll get rid of them again. --Venkatesh 09:
I am happy to see them gone, I must say, as I didn't care for them much but wasn't going to say my preference as it was about a 2 importance (on a scale of 1-10)... stuff like MW extensions getting changed and getting categories right, etc seem more important. ++

Front page layouts

Do people like this new layout more (without color boxes) or the older, two-box layout? --Venkatesh 07:

It looks clearer which is good. I'm editing a copy of the index page somewhere with a fourth links box if anyone want to have a look/edit it's at: [[IndexScratch]]
Do you like the grey monobook logo back? Or did you prefer it white? --Venkatesh 19:
Grey I think.

Reverted

The edits today by an anonymous user (

  • (diff) (hist) . . ! Main Page; 01:23 . . 81.177.9.27 (Talk) [1]
  • (diff) (hist) . . ! Main Page; 00:15 . . 81.177.9.27 (Talk) [1]

) deleted most everything below the top, and added the URL of some website in russia. ( the value is (https://top.darktown.ru/ top.darktown.ru) ... I would NOT click that link!!! I was just showing its value) That seems suspcious to me so I am trying to revert it back to September. If that was actually one of our regular users who forgot to sign in, please explain what you were up to, OK? Suggest we watch this page to see what happens. ++Lar

  • They've been at it again today. I reverted again. It might be worth banning the IP responsible. Noone has come forth to claim the edit and have since edited the page again so I think it is fairly safe to say it is vandalism. Nslookup says that this belongs to majida.cit-network.nst
  • and again... but this time the talk page because the main one is blocked? Good work, Tim. ++Lar
Always seems to happens on my watch. Whether I always notice it or not is a different matter but I try to keep an eye out.
  • There's been more vandalizing to the talk page since then. Someone at this IP address removed the vandals' material: 10.170.42.30. To see the IP addresses of the vandals check the history. --Merond e

Wikicities?

Has anyone here considered running Brickwiki off Wikicities? It's free to do so, and all of your current content and formatting could be dumped onto their servers. Memory Alpha and Uncyclopedia are two projects that moved over their recently. -- user:zanimum

I'm starting to think this might be worth looking into. Performance has not really improved that I can see. We might lose support for a couple of extensions but that may well be worth the price... I will followup with Zanimum on Wikipedia.(suspect some communcation we had regarding a recently featured article in Did You Know that I did led Zanimum here) ++

A spotlight page?

Rather than having our basic front page first, what would y'all think of having a "spotlight" or "interesting thing of the day" page as the first page of BW? Something that'd showcase new, dynamic forces in the world of Legos. --128.220.39.234

Spotlight or interesting thing is a great idea but would not want it to be "of teh day" because it looks bad if it's tagged that way and doesn't change daily. We don't have the core of active volunteers that WP does to make that work. But ya, great idea! I'd say maybe model after WP's DYK? ++Lar: t/
I was thinking more like MIT's front page [1], which is primarily a "Spotlight" page with links to every major section on this site. Their site updates mostly daily, but not every day. One other good effect of this is that it'd be outside the mediawiki engine. That might help with site speed, which we could ask Venkatesh or Astronouth7303 about. --128.220.39.234


Bricks In Motion

The old Bricks in motion category has been emptied and can be deleted from the front page - assuming it will not simply disappear automatically at some point. Tedward

DB/Image Dumps

This link no longer works, and I don't think we need it any more, anyway. Maybe it should be removed? ROSCO