Wikipedia talk:2015 main page redesign proposal/draft/Guy Macon

Suggestion:

Hheading of "Today's featured content", "In the news", and "On this day" downcased for consistency. Also, I'm unsure about the order of sibling projects—most readers aren't software coders, nor WMF insiders, so you might consider pushing the WMF and MediaWiki down. Should Wikidata go straight after Meta, which could drop the "-Wiki" for ease of distinction? So ... Commons, Wikidata, and the rest, with the in-house Wikimedia Foundation and Meta at the bottom? Tony (talk) 15:41, 31 May 2015 (UTC)

Those all sound like real improvements. Feel free to edit the page yourself and make it just the way you like it -- I fully agree with the direction you are taking here. --Guy Macon (talk) 02:13, 1 June 2015 (UTC)

Reviews

Strong support

Perhaps a second search bar and the "Welcome to" preceding "Wikipedia" isn't truly necessary. Regardless, brilliant work. Thank you for reproposing this design. JKDw (talk) 06:05, 5 July 2015 (UTC)

Actually, I would prefer to delete the tabs and the search bar from the top on the main page. Anyone coming to the main page doesn't need tabs for view source, view history or talk. The entire bar on the left side should also be deleted on the main page as well. Nobody visiting the main page needs to see links to What links here, Related changes, Upload file, RTRC, Special pages, Permanent link, Page information, Message names, and Debug mode. It's all added weight that we don't need. Look at how simple the Google main page is. That page was designed by a designer. Our main page was designed by a committee. Literally. ==Guy Macon (talk) 06:45, 5 July 2015 (UTC)

See Winter if you haven't already (a vision of the future Wikipedia, that addresses most of these problems). The interface and main page need to be simplified, and there also should be consistency between main pages of other wikis. I'm pro-democracy generally speaking, but yes, a majority won't necessarily produce the best result here when it is formed of change-resistant non-designers. Look at the age of the current main page and the Media Viewer incident on the German Wikipedia. I once heard If the iPhone were designed by the public, they would have asked for a stylus. JKDw (talk) 00:51, 7 July 2015 (UTC)

I am really liking that "sidebar hide" feature. --Guy Macon (talk) 05:21, 7 July 2015 (UTC)

Strong oppose

While it will likely vary by day, our main page is currently a slim 72 KB. We don't need to harm:

All featured content processes, by removing one of the main drivers of getting pages/images/etc. ready for anniversaries. Further, the mere possibility of a main page appearance has been sufficient to help negotiate content releases, this would be defunct in a moment.

Likewise, this would probably kill off the Did you know? process, by removing all prominence. In the news and On this day would likely die as well, but those probably have less role in encouraging content creation.

The justification for this drastic step, with all the harm it would do seems to be based entirely on a discussion about the need to get a webpage under 150KB. We are already well under 150 KB. I can only presume the proposal didn't bother to check the size first. Adam Cuerden ^(talk) 21:05, 10 July 2015 (UTC)

Given the background was written independently, I wouldn't assume it's the only basis for the proposal's design; perhaps also to remove (what I at least perceive as) harm to the public perception of Wikipedia generally, by convoluted appearance and function. Guy Macon can confirm or deny this. I agree that the smothering of DYK and OTD will probably extinguish them, but I respectfully disagree that this would be necessarily undesirable. JKDw (talk) 13:11, 11 July 2015 (UTC)

You are correct. My main motivation for this is because reasders do not respond well to cluttered main pages. This has been tested and confirmed multiple times. Also, when I wrote the proposal several years back Wikipedia was taking about 5 times longer to load than Google. Today it is about twice. We got a lot better in number of bytes but we still have way too many objects, each requiring a separate HTTP negotiation.

As for DYK and OTD, Adam appears to be assuming that most users don't care enough about them to click a link with well-written link text in order to read them. Perhaps he is correct (or perhaps giving DYK and OTD their own pages will increase readership), but this is another place where it would be trivial to serve each version to a random sample of users and collect data instead of guessing. Remember, Web pages are not printed on paper. You can have a version of the main page that is exactly as it is now and a version built per my proposal and let the user select which page to see.

Finally, and I know that this opinion will upset some people, it is my considered opinion that the effort we spend creating ephemeral content that gets shown on the main page for a short time distracts us and distracts our readers from our core mission of being an encyclopedia. --Guy Macon (talk) 16:24, 11 July 2015 (UTC)

I'd certainly support this as an alternate, but never as a default. And, the thing is, it's already technically available as an alternate. If you care to get a link to a main page lite added to the main page, I'd be fine with that, if it's worked in well. But you're removing even the featured content sections. Adam Cuerden ^(talk) 17:10, 11 July 2015 (UTC)

Another alternative would be my basic idea (replace content on main page with links to the same (or better -- more room) content on subpages), but with a completely different set of choices concerning what we link to. Putting featured content right at the top would be fine, or even links to four or five seperate sections on the featured content subpage. It could very well be that the links I chose as my example wee poorly chosen. --Guy Macon (talk) 03:29, 12 July 2015 (UTC)

I'm completely against hiding featured content by default at all. Being able to share things you're passionate about with the world is the big reward of Wikipedia; we shouldn't dilute that by shoving the main page reward for best content into a ghetto. The numbers of clicks through decreases rapidly with distance from the main page. Adam Cuerden ^(talk) 03:41, 12 July 2015 (UTC)

In my opinion, this particular reward does not serve our readers. They are looking up something in an encyclopedia, not looking for featured content. Look at Google: they have dozens of available features (Gmail, google translate, etc.) but the main page is not cluttered with any of that and focuses on what most users want to do -- web search. We should do likewise and focus on our primary mission. --Guy Macon (talk) 04:40, 12 July 2015 (UTC)

I think you are missing a fundamental difference. Google is a search engine. It does not produce content itself. We do. Adam Cuerden ^(talk) 13:48, 12 July 2015 (UTC)

It is a difference that doesn't matter. There is nothing about being an encyclopedia that requires a cluttered main page, and nothing unique about being a search engine that allows a simple main page. The important similarity between the two sites is that in both cases the vast majority of visitors already know what the site is and does, and are looking for something specific. In both cases first time users are a tiny minority (extra tiny in the case of the English Wikipedia because so many first time users go to www.wikipedia.org/www.wikipedia.com instead of en.wikipedia.org on their first visit). In fact, https://www.wikipedia.org/ is a really good example of an uncluttered main page. I really can't see how it could be simpler and still have the attribute that someone going to the page who's language skills are such that only the "Sinugboanong Binisaya" makes any sense to them sees a link in their own language. --Guy Macon (talk) 13:30, 17 July 2015 (UTC)

Well, it's never, ever going to get community support, so... I'm done arguing. There's literally no point; this proposal is dead in the water, and always will be. Adam Cuerden ^(talk) 19:35, 18 July 2015 (UTC)

I don't even understand why this is necessary. The main page isn't even necessarily the only page that people searching Wikipedia on Google find. We also have http://www.wikipedia.org which is precisely the kind of minimalistic search page that seems to be proposed! It's only if you click on the English Wikipedia link on that page that you get our main page with all of its 'bloat', if you can call it that. You don't need to visit the main page in order to do a basic search on Wikipedia. Also, I'm not trying to dismiss the low bandwidth issues in third world countries, but that blog post was written in 2012 and refers to an event that occurred 3 years prior to that. So we're talking about 6 years ago. I think we can safely assume that the average bandwidth in the developing world has increased dramatically in the last 6 years. I'm sure there are still pockets of poor internet connectivity and they may well be struggling to view content on the internet quickly, but it's stupid to neuter our main page just for that. Also, I'm guessing that most people in the developing world are actually accessing Wikipedia on a mobile phone. The main page is already quite minimalist for mobile browsers. Ðiliff «» (Talk) 08:12, 20 July 2015 (UTC)

Strong support

I can't adequately express how strongly I support this proposal. Wikipedia is not Myspace circa 2005 and Wikipedia readers want to look up the topic they're looking for quickly and easily, not to see "readers sharing the things they're passionate about". I suspect a lot of the opposition this proposal will inevitably attract will be from DYK/ITN/TFA etc regulars horrified at the possibility of discovering just how few Wikipedia readers actually care about all the stuff currently cluttering the main page. To repeat something I said once before:

I would love it if the WMF configured the Main Page to make every feature opt-in and cookie-controlled, meaning people (including the general public, not just logged-in users) interested in DYK, TFA, OTD etc could choose to keep seeing them, while people could perma-hide those parts they aren't interested in. Not only would it give fields not currently represented on the MP—random articles, featured sounds, country- or topic-specific FAs—a chance to prove their worth, it would also drive home how little most readers care about some of Wikipedia's Cherished Institutions™. I would give reasonable odds that given a free choice, more than 50% of readers would opt for a Google-style main page and choose to hide every element other than a searchbar, and more than 90% (probably more like 99%) would choose to hide In The News and On This Day. Because it holds such exalted status in Wikipedia's internal MMORPG, it's easy to lose sight of how little the outside world cares about the content of the main page. Taking 1955 MacArthur Airport United Airlines crash (not to single it out for any reason, but just because it's a recent TFA on a reasonably interesting topic), it got 18,742 page views on its day in the sun. On the same day, the main page got 17,081,542 page views, meaning the highest profile link on Wikipedia's main page had a click-through rate of roughly one reader in a thousand. It would also finally put a stop to the interminable discussions at Wikipedia:Main page redesign proposals which have been going on without result for eight years now."

 – iridescent 12:09, 17 July 2015 (UTC)

Part-oppose

Sorry iridescent, I see this as a symptom of the dumbing-down of the general populace/readership. Part of what we do is (hopefully) educate and enlighten people and kindle a thirst for knowledge. And I think having selected tidbits on the page helps with that. Yes only a small minority click on links but I think if even of a fraction of those are motivated to keep reading and learn then that is a Good Thing. e.g. >400,000 people viewed the Pluto page recently. I agree it should be simpler and made more dynamic, but the page proposed as is is too simple. I don't recall....have we had a poll of mainpage visitors/readers previously? Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 00:41, 20 July 2015 (UTC)

NB: If 18000 folk decided to read something obscure, I think that is a Good Thing...and it is probably 17,800 more than would look at it another time. We need to kindle interest in learning by all/any means. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 00:43, 20 July 2015 (UTC)

• I agree. It reminds me a bit of the struggle that the BBC here in the UK is going through at the moment. The conservative government is keen to de-fund it and/or make it self-supporting, and the counter-argument is that the BBC is, and has always been, striving to show content that is not always what the viewer would choose, but what the viewer would benefit from. It all sounds a bit anti-democratic when you put it that way, but I actually agree with it in principle. The BBC has created a lot of great educational programs that would likely never have survived if forced to compete in the commercial TV marketplace, like Horizon or the BBC Natural History Unit. If the BBC were commercial, the vast majority of documentaries would be dumbed-down, lowest common denominator infotainment. When it comes to educational content, sometimes you have coaxed into something you didn't or wouldn't necessarily choose. Likewise, I see the main page as something a bit like that. Ðiliff «» (Talk) 08:00, 20 July 2015 (UTC)
  • I don't think either argument is valid in the case of a wiki, particularly one such as Wikipedia with such a density of internal links. The job of Wikipedia is to give people what they're interested in and to suggest other linked items in which they might be interested, not to dictate to them what we think they should be interested in. If the aim is to encourage readers to click on internal links to articles they weren't previously aware of, people are far more likely to follow links from articles in which they're interested, and the best way to serve them is to get them to what they're looking for as easily as possible. (Cas, I doubt you believe for one second that ">400,000 people viewed the Pluto page recently" is the result of it being linked on the main page, rather than its being the top Google hit on a subject currently generating public interest. To put that in perspective, Terminator Genisys has over a million page views so far this month without ever having been linked from the main page.) Per my earlier comments, I'd love a poll of mainpage readers (not logged-in editors) with a series of "do you want to keep this?" yes/no checkboxes for TFA, DYK, OTD etc. Because Wikipedia's internal culture has spent so long believing that DYK etc is so important, I suspect a lot of editors would be shocked at just how few readers actually want to see it. – iridescent 09:45, 20 July 2015 (UTC)
    • We're not dictating what we think they should be interested in, we're broadening their horizons by giving them links to our highest quality articles and media on subjects that they may not have thought of searching for. And regardless of what users 'want', I still consider it a public service (a-la BBC) to provide an educational mainpage. People don't always know what's good for them. ;-) I'm not suggesting we should only provide links and not allow people to search (that would be like the early internet, where companies like Yahoo provided a huge index of information but without a quality search engine). I'm just saying that we can provide a main page that has a 'did you know...?' style while still allowing people to search for what they really want. The two are not mutually exclusive. In fact most people access Wikipedia articles directly from a Google search anyway, I'd imagine, rather than searching from within Wikipedia. So if they simply want to skip to the article that they're looking for, it's easy to do so. Ðiliff «» (Talk) 10:00, 20 July 2015 (UTC)
      • Oh, please—this is DYK as I write this. What public service does in 1933, Warner B. Snider was a delegate to Oregon's convention that voted to repeal the Eighteenth Amendment and end prohibition in the United States and the like serve to the extent that you can equate it to Life on Earth? If the main page were really about directing readers to quality articles they might not discover on their own, we'd select a pool of interesting and well-written articles and draw randomly from that; by highlighting "Wikipedia's newest articles" and "in the news" we're by definition directing readers to Wikipedia's most incomplete and unstable articles, and then we wonder why new editors think edit-warring and poor quality writing is the natural order of things. – iridescent 10:23, 20 July 2015 (UTC)
        • I was referring to the featured article more than the DYK section. Both are in the 'did you know...?' style, but I appreciate that could have been misunderstood. Even the DYKs can be quite interesting. Perhaps more so for anoraks though, rather than for the average user. Obviously a DYK or even a featured article is not going to have the scope of a documentary like Life on Earth, but that doesn't mean it doesn't serve the same basic purpose - to broaden the horizons of the average reader. I think the 'in the news' section is also quite useful. Yes, it's constantly changing and being reverted and debated, etc, and doesn't reflect our best work. But it's often a better starting point to understanding the news than any given news article on a commercial site from my experience. Many news articles assume background knowledge or have an inherent bias due to pressure from the media outlet's owner, whereas our articles usually explain the background or history leading up to the event with multiple sources, or reference other articles that serve that purpose. Anyway, we're getting a bit off topic now. Ðiliff «» (Talk) 10:37, 20 July 2015 (UTC)

Main page mockup layout using cards

The biggest problem with the main page isn't the content; it's that it's cluttered, busy, ugly, and distracting. It has the design aesthetic of a Yahoo portal circa 1997. By sacrificing some of the text in each category, you could get something cleaner and more modern-looking while retaining (some of) the content-curation processes that currently converge on a main-page appearance. If we had any sense the main page would have moved to a cards/tiles-style layout in 2011 or so and we'd now be arguing about whether cards are passe yet. Opabinia regalis (talk) 00:43, 23 July 2015 (UTC)

Normal-strength oppose

I actually think that the TFA summary would be more important and relevant than all of the links to other areas of wikipedia and to sister projects. If the designs just had the wikipedia logo, the search field, and below it the TFA box (and below the box a small collection of important links - which I dont think would include many of the ones currently included) that would be both aesthetically better and a more serious design. Minimalism is good - but only when it still performs the main function of showcasing the product and attracting interest. The TFA box I think is the best way to do this. But yes all of the other clutter would be better left out.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 09:07, 22 July 2015 (UTC)

Which is why I think surveying readers (not editors) to whether they want to see each of the main page elements individually is the way to go. I suspect TFA would probably scrape through; I doubt one reader in a thousand actually wants to see "On this day", "Today's featured picture" and all the other background noise. – iridescent 09:20, 22 July 2015 (UTC)

You're saying that the opening of an article with or without a picture is clearly what readers want, but a summary of an article with a high-quality image isn't? Because TFP is basically the latter. Wow. Nice job denigrating work you don't actually do. Adam Cuerden ^(talk) 09:27, 23 July 2015 (UTC)

Are you even bothering to read what you're replying to? What makes you think I believe "the opening of an article with or without a picture is clearly what readers want"? I think TFA might just scrape through with roughly 50% support and thus "no consensus to remove" (although I'd happily consign it to oblivion altogether as an outdated relic which causes far more trouble than it's worth, not just relegate it to a sub-tab as Guy proposes), because readers are used to seeing it and people tend to support the status quo, and I believe an expanded and more intuitive search box would be overwhelmingly supported. I have no doubt at all that if the WMF ran a straightforward "Do you want this element to be on the main page? Yes/No" checklist among readers, TFP, DYK, OTD and the rest of the alphabet soup would all struggle to get a "support" percentage in double figures. ("Does this picture pique the interest of readers enough to make them follow the link to find out more" isn't a great metric, but it's currently the only one we have; of the first five TFPs this month, the click-through figures were 5657, 4475, 2299, 4488 and 5394. These are figures which are lower than even DYK.) – iridescent 19:06, 23 July 2015 (UTC)

If you two want to get into a fight, please do it on your own talk pages. If you want to comment on a proposal I have made, please do so without incivility or personal comments. Talk about the content of the proposal, not about other editors.

Getting back to the topic at hand, in my opinion if anyone thinks that there will be a problem with users not clicking on a link to see TFA, DYK, etc. then they are simply admitting that those particular bits of content simply are not very interesting to those readers. Who are we to shove unwanted content down their throats? --Guy Macon (talk) 19:50, 23 July 2015 (UTC)

That is a silly argument, noone is shoving anything down anyones throat. Those links are for showcasing our best work, and attracting attention to our core mission. The front page is viewed and articles get more hits when they are on the front page because people do click those links because they do want to read those articles thjat catch their interest and not just do searches. Wikipedia is not just a tool for searching but also a medium through which readers may come into contact with knowledge they didnt know existed. This is a central part of the mission and it should not be jettisoned over something as inconsequential as loading times. A much better proposal for that effect would be to have an alternative wikipedia front page that can be accessed by users with slow connections.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 07:46, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

Question for those who oppose my basic concept

I have a question for those who oppose my basic concept of replacing most of what we have now with links to subpages with the same content. Assume for a moment that Wikipedia is going to do it my way (yes, I know, not likely at this point). Given that assumption, do I have the right links in the right order? Let's leave the support/oppose issue in the other sections and in this section just discuss possible improvements to my proposal without changing the basic concept. Thanks! --Guy Macon (talk) 19:57, 23 July 2015 (UTC)

Paradoxically, given my contention (which I still maintain is correct) that 99% of readers don't give two hoots about "Today's featured content", I think that if you're going to keep it, this gives a huge opportunity to expand the range of featured content. Since in your model space effectively ceases to be an issue, it creates the opportunity for Featured Sounds, Featured List etc; and also for more specialist things for any project who feels they have sufficient material to run a viable daily or weekly page (Today's Featured Milhist Article, Today's Unusual Article, even such things as Today's Featured Userpage or Today's Featured External Link). Since the pageview stats for the subpages will provide instant feedback on whether people are actually interested, it would be possible very quickly to find out what readers actually find interesting, rather than the current system where a self-appointing clique decide for themselves what readers ought to find interesting. – iridescent 20:50, 23 July 2015 (UTC)

That's a very good point. In fact, if we were already doing it that way and I proposed changing to a single page with a small area for featured content, I suspect that the negative pushback against such a restriction would be overwhelming. --Guy Macon (talk) 20:57, 23 July 2015 (UTC)

• No, in spite of your links to featured content your front page seems to be attempting to send readers almost everywhere except our actual encyclopedic content. Having featured content as links is not particularly useful - noone would click on those without some kind of specific hook to draw attention (such as the TFA). It would be more useful to have links to some main topic portals, e.g. science, US-history, world history, pop culture etc. so that readers can go to the section they are interested in an start browsing if they dont want to do a specific search. The sister project links should be a single link "sister projects", and so should the "other areas". If we are to redesign the mainpage it should be a design that is more contemporary which means using a better graphic design, including images, and which centers on our content and invites readers to engage with it. ·maunus · snunɐɯ· 07:51, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

Inclined to agree. In the current design, it's clear what everything is because it's right there. In yours, it's a sea of undescribed links. Google can have a very minimalist design because every aspect of it points directly to content. It's a search box. Even accepting we want minimalist (and, let's be clear: we do not, the minimalism comes at the cost of hiding the main search box of Wikipedia behind a sea of other options, and would need a giant search bar to compensate. So this design is doomed to failure from the start. Also, it has no way to reach other language Wikipedias, uses unexplained Wikijargon (Today's featured content; also "In the News" could, without an explanation, be Wikipedia in the news, or...) AND it uses the Wikijargon wrongly ("Featured articles" does NOT link to WP:FA, but to Today's featured article, ditto all other content.) It's just bad. Adam Cuerden ^(talk) 17:52, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

I'm not sure why Wikipedia is being compared to Google. Wikipedia ought to be compared to websites that produce their own content. The home pages of YouTube, news websites and even Facebook (once you join) are full of text and pictures. And just as importantly, they are full of suggested content, not just articles or images/videos that the user specifically searched for. Gizza ^(t)(c) 12:06, 26 July 2015 (UTC)

Agreed. Adam Cuerden ^(talk) 16:05, 26 July 2015 (UTC)

What about the mobile view?

I can understand that this is for people with low bandwidth Internet connections. But surely they would be better off accessing the mobile view Main Page, i.e. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Main_Page&mobileaction=toggle_view_mobile ? Because of this I feel it makes this Main Page redesign proposal moot. The mobile view might better suit this proposal. --Jules (Mrjulesd) 14:01, 30 August 2015 (UTC)

Alternate proposal

I have created an alternative proposal at Wikipedia:2015 main page redesign proposal/draft/Mrjulesd. Any comments there would be welcome. --Jules (Mrjulesd) 14:13, 30 August 2015 (UTC)

2016 proposal

Is this main page redesign going to be proposed again in 2016, User:Guy Macon? JKDw (talk) 01:34, 7 January 2016 (UTC)

I proposed a partly-inspired design. JKDw (talk) 02:27, 29 January 2016 (UTC)