Talk:Main Page/Archive3
From Simple English Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
[edit] Conversion to MediaWiki
Simple English was only put on the new software on December 18, so there remain some things to be fixed.
Still to be fixed:
- fix links
- fix and add interlanguage links
- upload pictures and replace the existing image links
Mostly complete:
- remove the /talk links from articles
- move talk pages to the talk namespace
- move user pages to the user namespace
- move user talk pages to the user talk namespace
- move capitalised titles to proper title names
- move Wikipedia pages to the Wikipedia namespace
[edit] Why so condescending ?
I went throught WP Simple English and I was appalled by its condescendence! [For those non familiar: condescendence is a dominating attitude, someone thinking he is superior tries to help, but he is more rude than really usefull because he sounds despising.]
We agree that the section should be written by people at ease with English, for non-native English speakers -- with access to Internet. Believe it, among those, there are some people who don't know a 1000 words of English, but who rule a whole country and would beat any logical GRE score of yours. Why explain to them that:
- "You don't have to spend any money to do useful things for astronomy."
as if you were adressing a retarded person?
Maybe you were aiming at simple-minded Americans, with access to Internet, in need of a dictionnary. If they come across a word they don't know, I think they would rather turn to someone around or a dedicated paper-dictionary.
IMHO, most "simple:" users are (should be) native-language users, who look for a definition they cannot understand using Google, because of vocabulary. This suppose we should look actively for links toward the others WP -- links I do not see at all. Remember we are addressing people like you, with less vocabulary, that is all. Anyhow, people who would not get that :
- "Only add text which is released under the terms of the GFDL"
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- That's a good point. Only the language needs to be simplified, not the ideas. Angela 21:42, 17 Jan 2004 (UTC)
The real question is: Is the whole concept of "simple English" condescending?
- Ack! I actually read the astronomy page and I DO agree it IS condescending...
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- Condescending and utterly useless. I thought these articles were supposed to be 'translations' of the original article, to which this bears no relation. That is the principle on which I am working anyway. Shantavira 14:41, 12 Apr 2004 (UTC)
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- As a tutor working on a voluntary basis with adult students, most of them orally fluent in English, I find this site a blessing. If you have ever worked with an adult literacy project, you will understand how very, very hard it is to find material that is both of interest and at a satisfactory reading level. I think the whole argument of "condescension" is a little suspect in any case. I studied French for a number of years, and even as an adult, I did not find "la plume de ma tante" offensive - it was just material I could read. I believe those coming to this project with respect for their readers will naturally be sensitive to how condescending they sound. Just my 25¢ worth. DWindrim 20:35, 19 Apr 2004 (UTC)
- That is to say, Denni. Denni 21:14, 19 Apr 2004 (UTC)
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I protected the Main Page because it was continually being blanked or edited to something useless. --Cprompt 02:46, 30 Jan 2004 (UTC)
- Unprotected for now, unless someone is persistent in damaging it.
- --Cprompt 03:20, 30 Jan 2004 (UTC)
- --[Adipex] - January 31, 2004
I would imagine that this concept will only be able to be implemented for communities and am surprised I am even allowed to post here. I have seen a lot of Wiki pages left open to EVERYONE and this will not be a good thing when someone invariably becomes angry and destructive. This is a great, great concept otherwise.
[edit] Wrapping issues
The following was brought up on the Latin Wikipedia, which is where our page design came from originally:
- ...do you realise that on a 800x600 screen, the title "» V I C I P Æ D I A « · » L A T I N A «" wraps onto a second line.
The same happens on our main page because of the spaces between letters in the title. So, I've replaced the spaces with nbsp to stop individual words being split up when it wraps. Does this look ok to everyone? Angela 20:47, 4 Mar 2004 (UTC)
- Yep. Now it forces the browser horizontal scroll to expand, always making a word in a line, not broken. -Menchi (Talk). 07:59, 5 Mar 2004 (UTC)
- If possible, you should use the 'letter-spacing' CSS style for this, and not hack it together with non-breaking space characters.
[edit] Table of languages
The other languages section on the bottom of the page does not link to the complex English section, but does link to Simple. Can this be fixed at all? SimonMayer 01:31, 10 Mar 2004 (UTC)
[edit] Main Page subject links
I removed Esoterism and Spatial science b/c, despite my ready grasp of English (and my studies of physics and philosophy), I could not tell you what these things are. They also have no simple articles written about them. I also added two- and three-word descriptions of some topics which are difficult to grasp. (what is archaeology, after all? not just the study of buried cities, of course, but that's a stab at it...) Sj 10:58, 13 Mar 2004 (UTC)
- and I hope my simplifications of the main page aren't condescending.
[edit] Translating Articles & Links
Where possible, I will be bringing articles from the existing Wikipedia and modifying the vocabulary level. However, the process leaves the new page bleeding red. I'm sure the regulars here have given this some thought -- how do you want to handle it? Delink judiciously, leave the words linked as they come, create stubs? I have no real preference, though I like the first choice least, and would do the latter if I didn't see the need to get some real content happening here. Thoughts? Denni 04:02, 20 Apr 2004 (UTC)
I think Wikipedia should aim high and we should aim for all of these articles to be created, someday. I think that Simple should have more links than en, because a lot of the users will fail to understand some basic words.
SimonMayer 21:17, 20 Apr 2004 (UTC)
I agree. Link everything that could possibly need to be linked, and we'll worry about articles later. If people are reading and find a red link we can hope they would go and fill it in if they could, so red links should increase article creation. Whether or not to create stubs is another matter, I personally like stubs, once you have a stub people can just add a line at a time until you have a big article, before the stub is created those same people will ignore it. The other side to the arguement is that red links make it clear an article needs work, blue links to stubs don't. -- Tango 21:59, 20 Apr 2004 (UTC)
Good point, Tango. It also allows the possibility of doing something here that isn't happening on the main Wikipedia. I think it's unfortunate the Wiktionary has become a separate entity; I'd much prefer a seamless interface. So, for instance, an article might look like this:
[edit] Article
An article is a written description of a person, place, or thing.
The blue links are standard wikilinks to articles. The yellow links would link to a definition in the Wiktionary, (which would appear in a pop-up window) and the red links would allow creation of either an article or a definition. Ultimately, it would be nice to have both articles and definitions available through a pop-up dialog/left-right mouseclick/click-click&hold, or whatever. I can see someone wanting to look up the meaning of, say. philosophy without running into a 3000 word article on Freud and Jung. Am I asking way too much of Wikipedia? Of course! But a person's reach should always exceed her grasp. Denni 01:02, 21 Apr 2004 (UTC)
You are asking much, but right on target! There is a hypertext editor called [Thinker] in which every word can be used as a link target. It should be possible to do this using HTML only, while not underlining and highlighting every word. This relieves the author of explicitly marking up every occurrence of intended link targets and still lets the reader use every such occurrence. It should still be the norm to explicitly mark up relevant references for the reader's benefit. Whether Thinker gives any indication of whether there is a page at the end of the link, I do not know. A disadvantage would probably be the size of the HTML (times four, maybe). A better technical solution than using HTML href anchors would be to have the browser implement this. The "invisible" default link for each word should point to the dictionary entry for that word. This might be user-customizable, so that the links point to an interlanguage instead of to an intralanguage dictionary. Additional functionality for explicitly marked-up words might be attached to little graphical symbols or letters following the reference, as the asterisk in "Xyz*". Rainer
[edit] Format suggestion
A number of the links here will do little more than attach to definitions of words. I suggest the following format:
'''Word''' means (simple definition here). ''Variation'' means (modified meaning). Other words with the same meaning are ''[[word1]]'', ''[[word2]]'', and ''[[word3]]''.
See analyse and foolish as examples.
Just for continuity's sake, and to make the job of filling in those poor little links easier. Denni 00:13, 3 May 2004 (UTC)
- Seems a good idea. Angela
Does the width look ok on all browsers now? I'm not sure why it was ever set to 85% when it could be 100%. I think the main page could do with a "coummunity" section as well, with links to things like wikipedia:Simple talk, wikipedia:cleanup, wikipedia:requested articles, help, policies etc. Angela 20:52, 16 May 2004 (UTC)
- Looks fine to me. -- Tango 21:07, 16 May 2004 (UTC)
[edit] Some Ideas
I am brand new here, quite active on English, but only 1 article on Simple so far. I have a suggestion that we begin to start interlinking more (to English Wikipedia, English Wiktionary and German Wikipedia for example). If I were a semi-English speaker and understood an article in it's entirity, though felt somewhat dissatisfied with the length - an English wikipedia link would be very useful. I bring this up due to my having noticed lots of articles are not linked. Also, it seems a shame that we simply duplicate English images - I recommend Simple wikipedia support the Wikimedia Commons project - an idea to have all media on a single database. --OldakQuill 09:36, 30 May 2004 (UTC)
[edit] Rollover text
I have noticed that the rollover text (what appears as a caption when you put the mouse over a link) on Simple still has the en settings: recent for newest etc. Since I think these may be used for the visually impaired I would have thought we need to correct them but I really have no clue how to do this. One for Angela? --BozMo|talk 12:16, 23 Jul 2004 (UTC)
- Please make suggested changes at
Wikipedia:New messages in 1.3Wikipedia talk:MediaWiki namespace and any administrator can change it using the MediaWiki namespace. It's the messages that start "tooltip-" that you want to change. Angela 23:27, 29 Jul 2004 (UTC)
[edit] WikiP in other languages
The list of WP in other languages now appears three times on the front page and seriously squeezes out other content. Can't we agree that one is enough? --BozMo|talk 12:38, 17 Aug 2004 (UTC)
- I assume you're not using the monobook skin since in looks fine it that? I've reduced the number of interlanguage links to match what the English Wikipedia does. Is this any better? Angela 08:45, 18 Aug 2004 (UTC)
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- Actually, I don't think it was related to the skin. When I wrote that I assumed you meant the links were at the top and bottom of the screen, which is why it showed three times, but then I realized it was probably due to duplication in the interlanguage links. Monobook refers to new style skin that was applied recently. You can choose others in your preferences, like "standard" or "cologne blue". Angela 22:04, 18 Aug 2004 (UTC)
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[edit] date & time on main page -- discuss!
I strongly suggest the use of the date & time on the main page. I would prefer the date to be linkable as well. This serves two purposes. 1) An indicator of today's date, like you would see on the TV news, or daily newspaper. 2) Clickable dates. The user can click on the date and see what happened on this day in history. Since every day is a different date, this serves as an interesting method to find out about history.
I'd like anyone's opinion about whether they support this idea or not. I strongly support this idea and will not agree to it's removal from the main page unless many people don't agree with this idea for the main page. 81.86.110.57 03:29, 24 Sep 2004 (UTC)
- No, it doesn't belong. Too many Month/days are still red links. Wikipedia is not a newspaper, it is an encyclopedia. There is no relevant reason for such a large display. -- Netoholic @ 06:22, 24 Sep 2004 (UTC)
- I'd also point out that whatever timezone you chose, it would be incorrect for most of the world. The moment the date changes also varies based on timezone... this would be confusing. -- Jtheory
[edit] Protection of main page
After several attacks on the main page I suggest that the main page is protected like in en: and most other wikis. Instead of directly editing the main page, parts of the page are edited through various templates. Other parts of the main page should only be available for administrators to edit. This is not completely waterproof but at least presents some hurdles to vandals. --Eddi 20:41, 10 Nov 2004 (UTC)
[edit] Yes: Protect main page
- Yes. --Eddi 20:41, 10 Nov 2004 (UTC)
- Netoholic @ 23:11, 12 Nov 2004 (UTC) -- I think I am leaning this way. I don't like protection either, but our front page should remain fairly stable. Any changes not available via the Template inclusions would probably be a major layout change requiring some buy-in. I'd like to leave some sort of notice on the Main page about how to request a change, though.
- Yes: User Patze from German Wikipedia. Some people are posting disgusting contributions which have nothing to do with Wikipedia. This is not supposed to happen, especially not on a main page.
- Yes, But... -- User AskTbird, a prolific but anonymous donor. The front page can remain locked, but it needs to explain a) what Simple English is, in a grammatical sense, and b) how to add or edit a page in Simple English. A tutorial page might help. Do we conjugate verbs, or keep them in present tense? Do we have compound/complex sentences? Is there a word limit for sentences, paragraphs or articles? Or is Simple to be simply described as "keep it simple"--?
[edit] No: Don't protect main page
- Angela No. Protected pages considered harmful. There are very few admins here, so it would never get edited. Most wikis do not have their main pages protected.
