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Wikivoyage talk:Main Page Old/Destination of the Month

Destination of the week ??
What would other contributors think about replacing Destination of the Month on the Main Page with Destination of the Week ? A weekly changeover might create more interest by showcasing more destinations and creating an appearance of greater vitality..... A month is a long, loooooong time on the web! (WT-en) Pjamescowie 16:52, 16 Jul 2004 (EDT)

 * Maybe first we need a place to discuss which articles might be worthy of being the featured destination. Then, if the queue of good articles is too long, we can switch to weekly.  I personally don't have a feel for how many truly complete articles are available for featuring. -- (WT-en) Colin 17:02, 16 Jul 2004 (EDT)

 * I second the idea of an Article of the Week. I also propose that it be chosen democratically: we create a talk page for suggested Pages of the Week, put our user name next to the one that we choose, and have discussions there about why each page should become an article of the week.  (WT-en) Chip 20:16, 16 Jul 2004 (EDT)

 * We'd run out of articles very quickly. We only have so many articles that are complete enough to showcase them. -- (WT-en) Nils 04:17, 17 Jul 2004 (EDT)

 * I suggested that we move to a Weekly basis partly to emulate the success that Wikipedia has had with the weekly featured article..... The aim can be not only to showcase completed articles, but also to stimulate extra contributions. Wikipedia concentrates on taking a stub and improving it - we're probably not ready for that yet (or are we?) - whereas we could experiment with taking a reasonably good destination, showcasing it and urging improvements..... I also agree with the democratic choice option - it's easy enough to organise shows of support, as Wikipedia does with its featured article. Shall we go ahead and implement this? Opinions? Finally, what's with starting the month (if it must be monthly....) on the 19th? Couldn't we push it forward / back to the 1st for neatness? (WT-en) Pjamescowie 07:06, 17 Jul 2004 (EDT)

 * Just leave Geneva up until July 31st, then put something new there. I like the idea of taking some stub to try and get people to improve on it, but I'd say our userbase isn't yet big enough. I'd suggest adding a second "Feature Box" called "Help Wanted". Change that weekly, and include a direct link to the stub list page. Keep Destination of the Month as it is now for the "readers". -- (WT-en) Nils 08:55, 17 Jul 2004 (EDT)

Destination of the week ??
I too believe that we should have a Destination of the week instead of the destination of the month. In order to guarantee some kind of fairness for all the differente countries, we could do something like FIFA was trying to do, that is, each week we choose a new destination fo the week with a place from a different continent, after 5 weeks the first continent gets a new place

User:(WT-en) Rtercero

Destination of the Month
I'm adding a link to an "archive" article to the mainpage. Who / how is Dest. of month decided? Is Geneva June or July 2004? -- (WT-en) Nils 04:08, 16 Jul 2004 (EDT)

 * Good question - there should be some indication as to which month we're talking about..... Also (and I riased this question in Talk:Main Page), mightn't it be a good idea to make it Destination of the Week? This would probably increase interest, showcase more articles, and create an impression of greater vitality (a month is such a long, loooooong time on the web.....). Any opinions? (WT-en) Pjamescowie 16:57, 16 Jul 2004 (EDT)

 * Geneva was on there in June, so I'm assuming that we need something new. I guess anyone can choose. Though I wonder if there is a script in the Mediawiki software that could be used to change it automatically? There must be, since Wikipedia has a daily featured article. --(WT-en) Dawnview 02:49, 17 Jul 2004 (EDT)

 * We only have a handful articles long enough to be featured... Most is really very, very stubby still.- Destination of the Month works well, in my opinion. At least for now. I think what we should do is put nominations on the talk page of Main page and someone (Evan maybe?) arbitrarily choses one of them on every 1st. A nomination must have a picture too. Also, any given location should only ever be DoM once, unless there is a very special reason (say, it hosts olympic games or football championship; then it may make sense to feature it even for a second time) or we ever happen to run out of articles... -- (WT-en) Nils 04:27, 17 Jul 2004 (EDT)~

 * I believe that the month in Dest. of the Month starts on the 19th of the month, so the changeover should happen two days from now, unless we seek to reset the clock, which would make it a very short month for whatever page goes up for July 19th - 31st.  Or, perhaps to be fair we can roll it back two days at a time until we hit the 1st going backwards. -- (WT-en) Mark 05:40, 17 Jul 2004 (EDT)

Oh, and, should we move this to Talk:Main Page? -- (WT-en) Nils 04:27, 17 Jul 2004 (EDT)

 * Yeah, probably -- (WT-en) Mark 05:40, 17 Jul 2004 (EDT)

 * I plunged forward and created Project:Destination of the Month candidates, modeled on Wikipedia's Featured article candidates. Add candidates to the page itself, and discuss the selection logic in the Talk page. (WT-en) Jpatokal 10:08, 18 Jul 2004 (EDT)

Off the Beaten Path
This sentence makes uses a word "invew" that is not found in any dictionary: "It has excellent hiking options full of scenic vistas and offers an invew of an American small town feeling."

I'd suggest "It has excellent hiking options full of scenic vistas and offers an American small town feeling." (WT-en) DavisGL 11:09, 17 March 2011 (EDT)


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Wikivoyage talk:Main Page Old/Jan 2006 to Dec 2006

This is an archive of discussions about the Main Page from January 2006 to December 2006 inclusive.

Un-Englishing the main page
If my top-o'-the-napkin calculations are to be believed, around October 2006 this year the majority of Wikivoyage's content will be in languages other than English. Is it time to start considering a language-neutral front page, akin to that seen for Wikipedia or Wikinews? That is, wikivoyage.org/en will stay as is, but plain old wikivoyage.org should present a list of languages available. (WT-en) Jpatokal 11:58, 15 Jan 2006 (EST)

 * I'd like to do it slightly differently: that is, I'd like to use the browser's built-in language preferences to redirect users automatically from http://wikivoyage.org/ to the best available language version, and have the default go to en:Main Page. Using content negotiation should make this quite easy.

 * That should cover the mainline case of a French language speaker wanting to read the French language Wikivoyage. Users who are using a French-language configured browser but want to read, say, the Swedish Wikivoyage should be able to find the sv: link on fr:Accueil anyways. --(WT-en) Evan 13:15, 15 Jan 2006 (EST)

 * OK, so, this is the way it works now; we're doing HTTP/1.1-compliant content negotiation (thanks, Apache!). Users who've configured their browser to prefer English will see Main Page; users who've configured their browser to prefer German will get de:Hauptseite. Users who have their browsers configured solely for a language we don't support (say, Spanish) will get the English main page. Users who have configured their browsers in complicated and interesting ways will get complicated and interesting HTTP/1.1-compliant results. I invite folks to try http://wikivoyage.org/ and see for themselves. Try fiddling with your browser's language preferences and see what happens. --(WT-en) Evan 01:57, 17 Jan 2006 (EST)

 * Neat! Just a tiny bug, though. My browser language is English (New Zealand) i.e. Lang = en-nz (in the HTML header). That version of English is ignored and instead I get the next language in my browser list. Initially I only had my own variant of English in the browser list. My browser appears to be configured that way by default - and I suspect lots of others are configured that way too, with only one highly specific language. The English page only appeared if I had Lang = en - for generic English - ahead of the other (generic) language options on the language list. If the browser language option is not set to the 2 letter generic language option then even the generic version of prefered language is not be served - I tested them - and it appears as if you do not have an English or other language setting. Only the generic language setting results in the correct language version being served. My browser (Internet Explorer) gives the following specific versions of the languages we currently use:

 * de (German) : de-at (Austria), de-ch (Switzerland), de-li (Liechtenstein), de-lu (Luxembourg)
 * en (English) : en-au (Australia), en-bz, (Belize), en-ca (Canada), en-gt (United Kingdom), en-ie (Ireland), en-jm (Jamaica), en-nz (New Zealand), en-ph (Philippines), en-tt (Trinidad), en-us (United States), en-za (South Africa), en-zw (Zimbabwe)
 * fr (French) : fr-be (Belgium), fr-ca (Canada), fr-ch (Switzerland), fr-lu (Luxembourg), fr-mc (Monarco)
 * nl (Dutch) : nl-be (Belgium)
 * ro (Romanian) : ro-md (Moldova)
 * sv (Swedish) : sv-fi (Finland)
 * I do not know if this is just a Microsoft thing or if it is W3C standard language (dialect) representation, but I can see it causing problems for anyone who has had their (IE?) browser configured to one of these language variants, without being configured for the generic language as well. I think this happens by default when the language is selected and people would not be aware of the problem unless they specifically reconfigured their browser's language settings. Could cause all sorts of grief for someone in Switzerland or Luxembourg if they had French and German variants and got the English page! It would definitely upset French Canadians if they found out. -- (WT-en) Huttite 20:35, 17 Jan 2006 (EST)

 * Grrrr. I couldn't find the twiddly bit that says, "for people who say that they want en-xx, serve them the en one. And so on for other languages." So I just copied your fine fine list above. It worked for me with en-ca and fr as my two language settings (correctly gave Main Page), so I think it's right. I'll continue scanning Apache docs, since I find this part of the Web fascinating. --(WT-en) Evan 23:35, 17 Jan 2006 (EST)

 * Another thought: If we had a multi-language common page that appeared when none of the current languages were detected as being used by the browser, would that be better unenglish solution? -- (WT-en) Huttite 20:35, 17 Jan 2006 (EST)

 * That sounds like a good idea. I can probably whip up an Esperanto common page. --(WT-en) Evan 23:35, 17 Jan 2006 (EST)

Rolled back google link
I rolled back a link to "http://google.com", since it wasn't really given any context and I don't think it's necessary to have it on our main page. --(WT-en) Evan 14:28, 15 Jan 2006 (EST)

Statistics
This is probably something only an actuary or accountant would pick up - the main page says there are 6875 destination guides, while the link through to the site statistics says 6877. Which is correct? (WT-en) Yzerfontein 11:14, 27 Jan 2006 (EST)

 * The site statistics page. The Main Page gets cached so it gets served real fast (it gets hit about 100 times more than the average page on Wikivoyage), and the cached page only gets re-generated when the actual Main Page article is changed (or a linked article is created or deleted, or a couple of other reasons). This has the unfortunate result that the statistics don't get updated.

 * I need to change our caching system so that when new pages are added (or pages are deleted... sigh) pages that have dynamic content (like the number of articles) get invalidated and re-generated. It's a lot of work for a teensy gain, and it's going to mean the Main Page gets regenerated every time a page is created. I'd prefer to just have something like "almost 7000 articles" or "more than 6800 articles" on the front page. But we've all gotten used to having a running tally on this page, so c'est la vie. --(WT-en) Evan 13:29, 27 Jan 2006 (EST)

Very Important
Hey my name's David, I'd like to create this web in Spanish. ow do I do?¿? (WT-en) Cdavid

 * It is very important. You should sign up for the Project:Spanish Wikivoyage Expedition, our project for getting the es: version off the ground. We're almost ready to go with it. --(WT-en) Evan 17:38, 28 Jan 2006 (EST)

Afrikaans
Any chance of getting wikivoyage going in the Afrikaans language? (WT-en) Yzerfontein 00:39, 29 Jan 2006 (EST)

 * Hey, take a look at Project:How to start a new language version! (WT-en) Majnoona 00:48, 29 Jan 2006 (EST)

No edit section
So, I saw on de:Hauptseite that the " " line was added, and it turned off all the little edit links. These never work for me (I always get the wrong section), so I figured it was good to turn them off here, too. --(WT-en) Evan 19:43, 30 Jan 2006 (EST)

 * Thanks, Colin. No wonder that feature isn't documented. --(WT-en) Evan 21:56, 30 Jan 2006 (EST)

But there should really be a good way for a first time user to edit the main page in a legitimate way rather than confront him with ugly tables. Right now, the page looks like a trap. Whatever the first time user does will be a mistake. --(WT-en) Ravikiran 01:29, 31 Jan 2006 (EST)

Why haven't you upgraded?
Your version of mediawiki is quite old, 1.4.14 in fact, while the current version is 1.5.6. There are new features, such as "print this page" which would be very useful in wikivoyage. i'd strongly suggest upgrading.

 * Are you joking? It's less than a month old! 1.4.14 was released on January 19th, 2006!

 * The 1.5.x branch made significant changes to the database structure, which makes upgrading time-intensive and difficult. We have about 10+ custom extensions - around 5,000 LOC -- that run on Wikivoyage, and making this upgrade is going to be difficult.

 * Upgrading to 1.5.x is on my list of things to do, but it's not at the top. --(WT-en) Evan 12:01, 12 Feb 2006 (EST)

 * Just to follow up: Evan did the upgrade. (WT-en) Majnoona 18:21, 11 March 2006 (EST)

Article templates
The 'article templates' page is reporting an error and cannot be accessed. (WT-en) WindHorse 12 Feb 06

 * Argh. That's really bad. Error messages aren't supposed to be cached. I'll take a look. --(WT-en) Evan 12:13, 12 Feb 2006 (EST)

Including CSS on Wiki Edit Page
Can someone please help me out with this: I am trying to design a wiki myself, and I've noticed that CSS is included right on the wiki pages of WikiTravel and its templates, for example: How do I achieve this same effect on my wiki? It just shows up as text on the page! Many thanks!
 * align="left" width="35%" style="background-color:#FFF7F7; border-top:1px solid #AA8888; border-bottom:1px solid #AA8888; border-top:1px solid #AA8888; padding-top:5px; padding-right:10px; padding-left:10px; padding-bottom:10px;" valign="top"|

 * I had never noticed that.. Regardless it seems to me that it's almost always better to set the styles in an attached or imported stylesheet. -- (WT-en) Mark 03:19, 21 March 2006 (EST)

Hierarchical Directory
How is the Hierarchical directory created at the top of site listings, e.g. Asia: Middle East: Iran? It is not on the wiki edit page itself. Is there a table in the MySQL database with this hierarchical information? Who rearranges a new page into this hierarchy? Thank you.

 * It's a mediawiki extension by User:(WT-en) Evan which gets its data from RDF embedded on the pages. There's a template called "isIn" which lets us add the RDF pretty much painlessly. -- (WT-en) Mark 05:44, 21 March 2006 (EST)

 * And we call it Breadcrumb navigation. (WT-en) Ricardo (Rmx) 13:15, 11 May 2006 (EDT)

How to behave in a restaurant/bar etc
I think this is also a very important subject but missing on this project. You Probably think "why?" but have you ever considered this questions? There are far more of these subjects I think.
 * -In some cultures it is insulting to tip (You tip prostitutes, not waiters) or at least not expected
 * -varying cultures have different attitudes or different social status for bartenders. In some countries almost 90% of waiters are just students doing a summer job. In other countries more than 50% of the waiters have serving as a fultime job with years of experience in it and therefore expect much more respect from the custommers thowards them then e.g. in UK.
 * -sometimes it is impolite to call a waiter, they come tom you every some minutes to ask you if you need something else, in other countries this is never done. The waiters wait for the custuommers until they call them.
 * -How do you call the waiter?
 * -When should you leave? Sometimes they say it to you, sometimes you should now it by yourself, also the same with stopping drinking alcohol.
 * -What service is considered normal? Can you ask the waiter to buy a packet of cigarettes around the corner of the street?
 * -How do you pay when you are with a group? Is it OK to pay all seperately?

 * These details are supposed to get covered in the Country-level article. See USA, which has a section on tipping for an example.  There's a lot of incomplete Country articles at the moment. -- (WT-en) Colin 14:00, 28 March 2006 (EST)

Wikivoyage sold to Internet Brands?
Possible to get some info about this in english?
 * Have a look at Project:20_April_2006. -- (WT-en) Jonboy 16:43, 21 April 2006 (EDT)

Yes now they can go about making money on all this free content. Good to see users helping build another company!! -- anonymous

 * And you can make money off of it too. Set up a mirror and put some Ad Sense ads on it.  Print the guides out on glossy paper and sell them, or print them out on big sheets of paper and distribute them at hotels.  You can sell add space to the restaurants, etc... There are some folks already doing this in Paris using our maps as a base.  There are probably a thousand ways to make money off of Wikivoyage.  Go for it!  Free content is all about you being able to use the content the way you want to, including making money. -- (WT-en) Mark 11:58, 22 June 2006 (EDT)

 * Mark, out of curiosity, do you have any more info on your maps being reused? That would be another milestone for us! (WT-en) Jpatokal 12:22, 22 June 2006 (EDT)

 * I found them at l'Hotel du Nord et de l'Est, and remembered somebody contacting me a few months before to see if I really meant it when I released them under the CC-by-sa. Anyhow, it was the map of the 11th, and what they had done was printed it on large square sheets and sold ads to put in the margins.  I'll try to dig up the map to get the name of the company. -- (WT-en) Mark 12:27, 22 June 2006 (EDT)

I feel like a complete blank. That's how it is. I can't be bothered with anything recently.

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Make news & discover more prominent?
I almost never look at the Main Page, and one reason is that it seems rather static and boring. However, with the addition of the "Discover" section there is now content that seems interesting, and that is fairly frequently updated. Unfortunately, you have to scroll down to see it, and that makes it easy to miss. The "World" section of the front page, while useful, is fairly static and boring, so what about moving "Discover" (and possibly also the "Travel News") to just under the "DOTM" and "OTBP" sections? Increasing the visibility of a fairly interesting bit of content might encourage people to return to the site more often, and the "World" navigation section is still there for those who need it. There is an anonymous comment on Project:Discover about this same issue, so I'm apparently not the only one with the idea. Thoughts? -- (WT-en) Ryan 23:43, 13 June 2006 (EDT)

 * Evan raised the IMHO rather valid objection that the main point of the site is the travel guide, and the "World" index should at least be visible on the first pageful. It's still visible now, barely, but if we stick Discover above it, it won't be. (WT-en) Jpatokal 00:01, 14 June 2006 (EDT)
 * Here's what the moving the only the discover section would look like- User:(WT-en) Sapphire/Sandbox/Main Page 2 and to contrast moving the discover and news section User:(WT-en) Sapphire/Sandbox/Main Page. I like the idea of moving the discover section to a more visible part of the main page, but I do believe the objection noted above does hold a rather large amount of water. - (WT-en) Andrew Haggard (Sapphire) 00:11, 14 June 2006 (EDT)

 * The issue of this being a travel guide and needing the "World" index prominent is a valid point, and the only counter-argument I can offer is to question whether or not users actually are using the "World" index to browse. Personally I always use the search box to find a place instead of browsing, but I'm not sure if I'm unusual that way.  The fact that the top-level articles such as Europe and North America rarely get edits has me thinking that I'm not unique, however.  If most users of the main page aren't browsing to a destination then putting an unused block of text prominently on the page probably isn't the best use of screen space, and it would be worth considering putting something there that's more likely to invite users into the site.  The webalizer stats aren't showing stats on specific pages, but perhaps looking at the usage stats for articles such as North America and Europe would shed some light on this. -- (WT-en) Ryan 00:25, 14 June 2006 (EDT)

 * I rarely (once every month?) use the "World" index. I'd much rather see the discover section under the DoTM, because it inspires visitors to look up other interesting potential destinations. It wouldn't be too hard for visitors to scoll down and see the rest of the World section so I don't have a problem with moving the Discover section, and I'll actually promote the change. I don't support moving the news section, because I simply dislike the (WT-en) layout. - (WT-en) Andrew Haggard (Sapphire) 01:29, 14 June 2006 (EDT)

 * Sorry, I just think having the browseable world listings gets across the idea of a travel guide better than trivia does. I like the discover info, but I don't think it's important enough to put above the fold on the Main Page. --(WT-en) Evan 17:38, 17 June 2006 (EDT)

 * I think the best solution in the long run would be to drop the current layers-of-cake approach and move towards a multi-column approach like Wikipedia. Interestingly, though, they only have eight 'portals' linked in from the very top box and then the rest of the Main Page is all sorts of in-the-news, new-articles, this-day-in-history, isn't-this-pretty kinda fluffy stuff. (WT-en) Jpatokal 18:00, 17 June 2006 (EDT)

 * It`s important to keep in mind that "we" (ie folks who get involved in discussions about the main page lay out) are not the average users of the site. The fact that we dont use the World for navigation doesnt reflect how a first or tenth time user interacts with the site. I think the usual assumption is that about 50% of users like to browse and the other half like to search, so it`s pretty important to have multiple navigational points of entry. (WT-en) Majnoona 20:30, 18 June 2006 (EDT)

 * Are there any stats available about whether people are actually using the "world" index to browse the site? The webalizer stats don't provide info on individual pages, so my guess that people aren't browsing the site was based mostly on the fact that there are relatively few edits to the top-level articles like North America and Asia.  The suggestion to move the "Discover" section up the page was motivated specifically by a desire to invite more new users to explore and re-visit the site.  If those users aren't using the browse functionality (and they may be, in which case it should be left where it is) then maybe it wouldn't hurt to try pushing it down the page and putting something else into that prominent position to see if it invites more users to explore the site.

 * Well I can tell you that before we had it, we ended up with lots of email from confused and frustrated users asking how the heck they were supposed to find things. This was in the first few months when we were a little too focused on contributors and hadn't yet realized the imporantance of easy navigation for readers/newcomers. I'm sure we can find a compromise here... (WT-en) Majnoona 00:51, 19 June 2006 (EDT)

 * If the consensus is that the main page should stay as-is, that's totally fine with me - I'm not of the opinion that it must be changed. My only motivation for bringing this issue up was that the main page just seemed so static and, well, dull that there wasn't really a reason to look at it after one visit.  The Discover information finally provided content that was updated regularly and worth checking out, but it was hidden at the bottom of the page, so moving it to a more prominent location seemed like a nice win.  The issue of making it clear that this is a travel guide is a good point, and if users were emailing asking how to navigate then that's enough of a reason to not change things without considering trade-offs.  I can live with leaving the page as-is, although if there was some way to provide obvious "browse" navigation while still making the dynamic content prominent I'd obviously be in favor. -- (WT-en) Ryan 01:05, 19 June 2006 (EDT)

 * An alternative approach might be to implement Jpatokal's suggestion and just drop the sub-sections of the "world" index and simply display the top-level articles next to the project description at the top of the page - something like (WT-en) this. That would leave the site browse-able for those who want to browse, and provide the needed screen real-estate for the more dynamic content tailored to those who might want to explore. -- (WT-en) Ryan 23:43, 18 June 2006 (EDT)
 * I like your sandbox main page. How about asking a few people who have never used Wikivoyage to visit and ask what their opinions are? I'll ask my pops to stop by tomorrow and check out the different versions. - (WT-en) Andrew Haggard (Sapphire) 01:15, 19 June 2006 (EDT)
 * I also like Ryan's version. It'd be nice to have someplace to show off new articles though -- or is Discover enough for this?  (WT-en) Jpatokal 03:56, 19 June 2006 (EDT)

 * What you said, and I don't think Discover is enough. We need a rolling showcase of good articles. And I am concerned that after every redesign, we end up looking more similar to WP rather than less. — (WT-en) Ravikiran 04:34, 19 June 2006 (EDT)

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Mention of IB
Several new users have suggested mentioning that Internet Brands now owns Wikivoyage by noting this in the first box of the Main Page. I think this would be a good move and help show the transparency IB states they want. -- (WT-en) Andrew Haggard (Sapphire) 22:10, 17 July 2006 (EDT)
 * I'd jut like to point out for those not following the latest discussion Re: Transparency by IB for New Users (not to mention those who weren't active at the time of the changeover), it has been going on at Wikivoyage_talk:Internet_Brands (WT-en) Weaponofmassinstruction 05:01, 18 July 2006 (EDT)

Main Page Update
It's very late and I'm very tired, which is the only excuse I can offer for again bringing up a subject that some people feel very passionately about. However, we never did fully resolve the discussion above ("Make news/discover more prominent"), and left it with some people expressing an opinion that the front page needs a browse option, while others felt it was too static. Having had another month to think about the matter, I really do think that the large text "browse" box conveys the wrong message. I realize the purpose of that text area is to provide a list of high-level topics AND to showcase good articles & give different cities a chance to be featured, but I think users AND Wikivoyage would be better served by having a more dynamic and concise front page.

I've proposed User:(WT-en) Wrh2/Sandbox as a possible update that offers a high-level browse index while at the same time removing the "rotating cities" list. My reasoning is in the previous discussion, but to recap I think that having a list of ONLY the high-level topics is good enough for users who want to browse, while getting rid of the rotating cities makes the purpose of that index clearer, looks more professional, and is less confusing (over the years there have been numerous edits to "fix" the fact that a place like Sleepy Hollow is listed but New York City is not). The proposed new layout moves the dynamic information to a more prominent location and (IMHO) makes the main page more interesting and worth visiting multiple times. It isn't perfect - Ravikiran's suggestion that it should have a distinct look from Wikipedia is a good one - but I think it's an improvement and hopefully a good compromise that offers both a browse-able index and a main page with dynamic content. Thoughts, suggestions, criticisms, insults, and/or gifts of cash are welcome. -- (WT-en) Ryan 05:08, 12 August 2006 (EDT)
 * Can I give you my credit card number? I like your design and I second using it to update the main page. -- (WT-en) Andrew Haggard (Sapphire) 05:25, 12 August 2006 (EDT)

 * Me like, and I'll sponsor the effort with one million billion dollars from the Bank of Hell. But the one thing now missing is a way to showcase new articles, which is what the current rotating index (somewhat fitfully) tries to do — one way would be to re-engineer Discover to showcase facts from newly added/upgraded places.

 * As for looking different from Wikipedia, I think finally changing the stylesheet to something other than Monobook would be the best way of doing it... (WT-en) Jpatokal 05:54, 12 August 2006 (EDT)

 * The moustache of the guy on that bill rules. I kind of like the idea of also having a rolling list of the newest articles - it would add a bit more dynamic content, and it might also be cool to include something like the newest articles to reach guide+ status, and maybe also a link for the COTW.  Let me see if I can put my (limited) design skills to use to cook something up... -- (WT-en) Ryan 12:41, 12 August 2006 (EDT)

 * I agree that it's an excellent start, but it would be nice to have more "featured" space. I think it would help keep the page from being too static. I await your next creation with baited breath. (WT-en) Maj 12:51, 12 August 2006 (EDT)

 * There's a second attempt on User:(WT-en) Wrh2/Sandbox that tries to add a "Featured Articles" section for the COTW and newest "Star" articles.  Some issues:

 * The "Featured Articles" box includes a "Newest Articles" section, but I don't know if that's feasible - especially as Wikivoyage grows I think it's going to be impossible to keep the five newest articles on the front page unless there's an automated way to do it. We might want to consider something else - maybe have 5-9 star articles, the COTW, and do away with "New Articles"?
 * The current layout creates a lot of whitespace in the travel news box. Having a shorter list of featured articles would fix that, or we could jigger the travel news (I didn't want to touch those templates since it would affect the current main page).
 * In the final version I think the "Featured Articles" should be in their own template to help simplify the main page layout. It will also make it easier to update that section.
 * The CSS is slightly off with IE. That can be easily fixed, but I'm too lazy to spend much time tweaking CSS for a test page ;-)

 * I won't beg for money this time (although it worked surprisingly well last time, hmmm...) but comments and suggestions would be welcome. -- (WT-en) Ryan 13:54, 12 August 2006 (EDT)

 * I removed the "New Pages" section as I don't think it can be maintained. That leaves a list of "Star" articles and the COTW - any suggestions for a third category to add would be welcome, although I don't think two looks that bad. -- (WT-en) Ryan 17:39, 13 August 2006 (EDT)

 * So, I have to say that I like your design, and you've managed to keep some browsing, and making it even higher on the page (although much abbreviated). I wonder... what if we made a World page just for doing a browsing-style interface? The microbrowser you have on the main page would be a good starter, but we could also have a bigger, full page dedicated only to browsing. We could even make the continents "isin" the world page, so it would be accessible as the top of the geographical hierarchy. Feelings? --(WT-en) Evan 21:32, 13 August 2006 (EDT)
 * Great idea! -- (WT-en) Andrew Haggard (Sapphire) 21:34, 13 August 2006 (EDT)

 * Great work on version 3! I'm super impressed at how much you have going on and yet how clean and usable it is. I think we've had a problem with a lack of a good starting point for browsing since day 1, so I'm pretty into the whole idea of having a World page. I also like the idea of adding it to breadcrumbs... (WT-en) Maj 21:39, 13 August 2006 (EDT)

 * I've fought the good fight with IE's CSS, and I think the User:(WT-en) Wrh2/Sandbox page should be OK now, with the exception of the double-border around some of the news items (fixing that issue requires a template change that will affect the current main page). It sounds like most of the people commenting are happy with the new design, but it might be worthwhile to wait a bit longer before replacing the current main page in case anyone else wants to comment - I'd be especially interested in any reports of broken CSS.

 * The World page sounds like a potentially interesting idea. Would it be handled in the same way as the current "World" index on the main page, or do you envision something slightly different? -- (WT-en) Ryan 21:54, 13 August 2006 (EDT)

 * I think that it would probably be handled in the same general way (I think of it as the Dmoz layout), but maybe we could go into more detail. After all, we'd have a whole page to work with. --(WT-en) Evan 22:27, 13 August 2006 (EDT)

 * Given the lack of objection to the (WT-en) new main page design, is there any reason not to make the change? -- (WT-en) Ryan 15:30, 14 August 2006 (EDT)

 * I think we have overwhelming interest in seeing this go. So, please do it! --(WT-en) Evan 18:30, 14 August 2006 (EDT)

 * Done. -- (WT-en) Ryan 18:51, 14 August 2006 (EDT)

Other languages into two tiers: under-1000 and over-1000
Once Japanese reaches 1000 articles (which will in all likelyhood happen before the end of the month), I'd like to split the "Other languages" box into two tiers: over 1000 articles (German, French, Japanese), in a bigger font, and other, in a smaller font. This will allow readers to pick out the big ones easily, allow squeezing in more small fry, and encourage them to contribute more. (WT-en) Jpatokal 05:13, 16 August 2006 (EDT)

 * 1000 articles crossed today, so I'm going to plunge forward and do this. (WT-en) Jpatokal 02:16, 20 August 2006 (EDT)

Fatal error
Did anyone else see this message on the main page: Fatal error: Class name must be a valid object or a string in /var/www/wikivoyage/mw/includes/SkinTemplate.php on line 126? -- (WT-en) Andrew Haggard (Sapphire) 23:52, 19 August 2006 (EDT)

Cincinnati DotM
should probably mention something about the Oktoberfest, but I don't know what. — (WT-en) Ravikiran 02:04, 1 September 2006 (EDT)
 * How about the text that I have (WT-en) here? -- (WT-en) Andrew Haggard (Sapphire) 10:19, 1 September 2006 (EDT)
 * I've added it with minor changes. — (WT-en) Ravikiran 14:31, 1 September 2006 (EDT)
 * Looks good and thankfully Jonboy caught a stupid mistake which I overlooked while editing the original text. -- (WT-en) Andrew Haggard (Sapphire) 02:03, 2 September 2006 (EDT)

Discovery - "R" in Slovenian.
Actually, the R in Slovenian is most certainly not a vowel. It is somewhat rolled, like the Scottish R, but not a vowel. What you see here is an example of the vowel not being written in the word. Until sometime in the 19th century or early 20th century the "uh" sound in words like cmrlj (pr. chm-uh-rlj - the last sound is actually the difficult part, combining a rolled r and a rolled l. Some places it's pronounced chmuh-roo. It sounds like English "churl", only with an m after the ch.) and vrt (pr. vuh-rt) was written as an E. Thus cmerlj and vert (the e pronounced as "uh").

Trust me, R is pronounced R. Only sometimes the vowel isn't spelled out. I'm Slovenian, btw.

Bubbling under?
In the languages section, I see "Bubbling under". What does this mean? Is it vandalism that's not been repaired?--(WT-en) justfred 12:04, 25 October 2006 (EDT)

 * It's just a colorful reference to the fact that these sites are still percolating, and haven't reached 1000 articles yet. - (WT-en) Todd VerBeek 12:07, 25 October 2006 (EDT)

By Bicycle
Please help. Some places in this wiki have information on getting around also by bicycle as well as taxis, buses etc. but some do not. The info is very helpful for people who cycle in deciding where to go. What specifically is useful in this regard is info on

 * general conditions for cycling (NOT scaremongering - many non-cyclists or casual cyclists might say things like "too dangerous, don't do it" - I once read such a description about Naples after I cycled there for a few days - the description was rubbish)

 * info on hiring bicycles - for example in Beijing its easy and cheap to hire from many places, many hotels etc, in San Fancisco its quite expensive to hire and there aren't so many places to hire one from - its useful to know that

 * info on how prevalent bicycle theft is - for example in Turku, Finland its very safe and there is little bicycle theft but in the Netherlands its not and you are advised not to expect a decent bike to not get stolen

 * info on laws/restrictions and whether they are upheld. For example information on the web tells me that bikes in Beijing must have registration plates but the reality is very different because its not enforced.  Information on spain is that cycle helmets are compulsory - I have yet to see whether it is enforced.

I've not been a contributor to this wiki before so I don't know whether there is a basic form for an entry but it looks to me like there is, except sometimes it has cycling in and sometimes not. I am suggesting the community adopt the convention (if not already) that there always be a cycling entry in whatever the basic template is even if nobody filled that part out yet. Cycling is good for the world - (green arguments, global warming etc.) and is also good fun.

If I posted this comment in the wrong place I apologise and will watch this page for responses and try to do it right next time.

Thanks

andy

 * Plunge forward! Go ahead and add the information and don't worry about the details, others will fix up after you if needed. (WT-en) Jpatokal 08:42, 29 October 2006 (EST)

Description
So, people at IB have asked about the description tag that we have on the main page -- they're concerned that it wasn't descriptive enough of what we're doing here. I've added their suggested text at the bottom of the page in the marker as a starting point for future edits. Please feel free to edit to a consensus text, with the caveat that "magic words" like, piped (or any other kind) of links, and pretty much any fancy wiki text doesn't work very well and isn't really appropriate for description meta tags (which are supposed to be plain old ASCII text). --(WT-en) Evan 14:34, 30 October 2006 (EST)

 * The fact that the Wikivoyage content is licensed under an open-source license is very, very, very important, so I've re-added "free" to the description. -- (WT-en) Ryan 14:40, 30 October 2006 (EST)

 * Indeed it is! I've done you one better and added the phrase "open source", which may or may not be kosher (the CC licenses haven't been submitted for approval by the Open Source Institute). I've also synchronized the description template used for articles that are about a place, MediaWiki:Travelguidedescription. --(WT-en) Evan 14:49, 30 October 2006 (EST)

 * What exactly does that template do and is it visible (I may be overlooking it)? -- Sapphire

 * Do you mean Template:Description or MediaWiki:Travelguidedescription? The MW string is used as follows: for every page that is marked as describing a place (if it uses the IsIn or Geo templates, for example), a "description" meta tag is added in the head section of the HTML output. This is used by some Web spidering software as a description of the page; you can also see it in Firefox by pressing Ctrl+I (Tools/Page Info). I think it's accessible in Internet Explorer, too, but I'm not sure how.

 * For pages that aren't descriptions of a place (like phrasebooks, itinerary, etc.) the description tag is just the first paragraph of the article. Typically this is a good description of what the page is about.

 * Template:Description is a way to override these default behaviors. will make some text here the contents of the description meta tag.

 * The reason business folks care is that if you see a Wikivoyage guide in Google (like this: ), it's the description that shows up underneath the title page. So they want to make sure that people who are looking for a travel guide know that this particular search result is worth clicking on.

 * This works in all the Wikivoyage language versions, but I don't think any ones except Wikivoyage have the template customized. You can read more at Project:RDF Expedition/Description. --(WT-en) Evan 15:09, 30 October 2006 (EST)

 * Is it possible to add the      to this template or will this confuse the software? It would be great to include you explaination directly to the template! --(WT-en) Flip666 04:50, 26 January 2007 (EST)

Hiding the "Main Page" in Main Page
At the risk of looking even more like Wikipedia, would it make sense to just remove the page title from the Main Page? It is taking up valuable real estate without any benefit. I looked around to find out how it is done and I found this hack, which I am thinking may not work here because of caching. Before I experiment, does it make sense to try? — (WT-en) Ravikiran 22:19, 26 November 2006 (EST)

 * Sorry it's taken so long to respond. Yes, I think it would be nice to do, although I don't see anything about a title hack in that message you point to. --(WT-en) Evan 16:23, 1 March 2007 (EST)

Prices
This is my first look at Wikivoyage so I have obviously looked at my home area. I notice that there are prices quote for all the hotels and B&Bs. Are these going to end up like most hotel sites on the WWW where the prices bear no relationship to reality i.e. usually a year or so out of date and things "from £xx" where this is calculated on full occupancy of the room then converted to per person? --194.247.44.96 09:45, 3 December 2006 (EST)

 * Well, Wikivoyage has a marked advantage over "most hotel sites on the WWW" in that anybody can go and fix up an incorrect price. But naturally it's just a snapshot of a very fluid situation, and the main point of the price is to give a comparative benchmark so you know that Chateau Ritzy will cost more than Flophouse El Cheapo. (WT-en) Jpatokal 09:58, 3 December 2006 (EST)
 * Flophouse El Cheapo? I thought you said your Spanish was rusty? -- (WT-en) Andrew H. (Sapphire) 12:47, 3 December 2006 (EST)

 * Agreed. It's unlikely that we'll ever have dynamic pricing charts showing the price of each room at each day of the week in each season of the year. The point is to give a rough idea of a price, hopefully with a range of high price to low price, at a level of accuracy that helps planning and doesn't give much of a surprise when you actually book the room. --(WT-en) Evan 00:01, 13 December 2006 (EST)

Semi-protect this page?
So, I'm no fan of protected pages, but I wonder if it's time to protect this page ("Talk:Main Page") from edits by anonymous users and new users. But this page has very little editing apart from the multiple vandalizations per day. It's tiresome and wastes admin time. Any opinions? --(WT-en) Evan 15:38, 13 December 2006 (EST)

 * I don't think it has become such a problem to require protection and I would loudly object to any such action. We have new and anonymous users who may edit the main page and if they have a question they're likely to ask that question here.  Also, new anonymous users, who are clueless about how Wikivoyage works, occassionally use this page to ask questions about the project.  It would be ill conceived to protect this page.  There isn't any reason I can see why we need to protect this page.  Using it's tiresome and wastes a user's time as reasons seems to be an attempt to excuse laziness on our part. -- (WT-en) Andrew H. (Sapphire) 17:18, 13 December 2006 (EST)

 * I've been supported full protection (+ templatization) for a while, so this seems like a good compromise. (WT-en) Jpatokal 23:51, 13 December 2006 (EST)

 * I also would prefer to leave the page open to edits as I believe blocking it is unlikely to deter potential vandals. Instead, they will most likely just express their pent-up 'vandalistic' tendencies and energy on other pages. Also, I would prefer to uphold the spirit of non-protectionism as much as possible. However, I have no real strong opinion about it, and will go with the flow of consensus. (WT-en) WindHorse 01:02, 14 December 2006 (EST)

 * No not the main page. Evan wants to protect this Talk page.  For reasons I can't quite comprehend, very few people vandalize the main page anymore -- maybe they're used to Wikipedia where they just can't.  -- (WT-en) Colin 01:08, 14 December 2006 (EST)

 * Yeah, I understood that it was the talk page. Maybe I should have written 'open to comments' rather than 'open to edits.' Apologies for the confusion. (WT-en) WindHorse 01:43, 14 December 2006 (EST)

 * I don't think the talk page is worth protecting - it's inevitable that the spammers will eventually move on to other pages, so I think we need a solution other than page protection. Tweaking the spam filter rules to include patterns that better catch common spam (such as the filters based on CSS patterns) might be a better solution, and others probably have their own ideas. -- (WT-en) Ryan 01:55, 14 December 2006 (EST)

 * I go with Ryan's solution. (WT-en) WindHorse 02:11, 14 December 2006 (EST)

 * Yes, I did mean this very page ("Talk:Main Page"), which gets hit with automated spam 2-3 times a day. I probably should have put this discussion on "Talk:Talk:Main Page", but MediaWiki doesn't work that way. B-) "Semi-protection" would prevent anonymous users and new registered users (I think it's less than 48 hours or something) from editing. I'm pretty vigorously opposed to protecting pages, but the edits of T:M_P seem to go around any other patterns. They're from random IP addresses, so they're hard to block, and the content includes URLs only sometimes, making them hard to catch with the blacklist.

 * I can definitely live with not protecting the page, but I wanted to offer this tool as a possibility. The best Wikivoyagers have better things to do than roll back edits by a robot spammer -- for example, rolling back edits by human spammers. B-) --(WT-en) Evan 09:13, 14 December 2006 (EST)

United Nations
Should the United Nations Headquarters in the New York City area have its own article? It is considered to be "international territory", having an extraterritoriality status, in which it borders Manhatten, New York City, New York, USA. Its general public tours tends to be a popular tourist attraction. —The preceding comment was added by (WT-en) UniReb (talk • contribs) 28 Dec 2006

 * See Project:What is an article?. Basically, you can't sleep at the UN, so it's not an article.  Extraterritoriality in itself doesn't matter, otherwise we'd be listing every embassy and diplomatic residence in their own articles... (WT-en) Jpatokal 01:39, 28 December 2006 (EST)

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/


text:
Wikivoyage talk:Main Page Old/Jan 2007 to Dec 2007

This is an archive of discussions about the Main Page from January 2007 to December 2007 inclusive.

Protected
The recent changes page is turning into a mess, so I've temporarily protected this page. The vandalize & revert every two seconds isn't worth it... Please unprotect ASAP. -- (WT-en) Ryan 18:38, 5 February 2007 (EST)

 * If we're changing our editing behavior to suit a software problem, it may be time to file a bug report. -- (WT-en) Colin 18:46, 5 February 2007 (EST)

 * Protection reverted. Trolls are looking for attention - reverting their edits immediately gives them that attention. It takes literally seconds to clean up after them once they are gone, but encouraging them to stay around makes a mess of the recent changes for those trying to keep track of what's happening on the site. -- (WT-en) Ryan 18:45, 5 February 2007 (EST)
 * History has shown that not reverting them immediately also provides sufficient attention. Many times Willy has come and happily wiped out a few dozen pages and left before anyone bothered to intervene.   It seems to me the only recourse is temp-bans.  But since it's policy to not do that, I really don't see how we can avoid messing up recentchanges.   Also, I'd appreciate it if anyone who thinks recentchanges ought not be messed up (and it's not just you) would propose that as a policy so that a debate about dealing with this could happen outside of an actual event. -- (WT-en) Colin 18:53, 5 February 2007 (EST)
 * Discussion started on Project:How to handle unwanted_edits. -- (WT-en) Ryan 13:23, 6 February 2007 (EST)

 * One point: there is not a policy that forbids banning users. We've had a very strong social norm against using those tools on Wikivoyage, and many of us consider it a point of pride that we don't ban users. I've noticed as a Wikipedia admin that when a vandal starts a run on the wiki, about half the users spend time cleaning up and rolling back the mess, and the others spend their time banning the new user accounts that get registered every minute or so. So it ends up being more work than not doing a ban at all.

 * I think part of our process of choosing admins to work in this community is choosing people who'll make this decision wisely if they need to. I think all our admins know that this isn't a toy to play with, and that it's never been a big part of our local culture. I'm glad to know that this tool is in the admins' toolbox if they need it. I'm also glad it's so rarely used. --(WT-en) Evan 14:24, 6 February 2007 (EST)

 * Can't we just semi-protect this page? It'll add no hassle for logged-in users, and will save us from the increasingly tedious job of having to revert this page multiple times daily.  Worse yet, though, is that any actual discussion here tends to get buried under the spam attacks. (WT-en) Jpatokal 05:53, 20 February 2007 (EST)

 * Bumpity-bump. See?  Another two reverts made to the page, and nobody notices my actual edit. (WT-en) Jpatokal 22:05, 20 February 2007 (EST)
 * I'm with Jani on this one. Vandalism of this page has gone far beyond the bounds of toleration, and semi-protection should stop that while allowing the main functionality to be retained.  It's an unfortunate step, but about time. -- (WT-en) Bill-on-the-Hill 22:15, 20 February 2007 (EST)

 * By semi-protection, are you suggesting making it something that only logged-in users can edit? That seems reasonable given the amount of spam this page is hit with.  Alternatively, someone had an interesting idea (which was reverted without comment), and that was to add a word to this page such as "SPAM_PROTECTION_KEY", and then add that to Project:Local spam blacklist.  An additional note was then placed at the top of this page indicating that to save an edit either the spam list should be edited to remove that value, or else the term in question should be removed as part of the page edit.  I think I prefer limiting edits to logged-in users, but it's an interesting alternative. -- (WT-en) Ryan 22:18, 20 February 2007 (EST)

 * Unfortunately that wouldn't stop the spammers who blank most/all of the page, so I'd prefer the semiprotection. I'd also wager that the average newbie would find an incomprehensible warning message about blacklisted SPAM_PROTECTION_KEYs far more intimidating than a clean error telling him that he needs to create an account to edit this page. (WT-en) Jpatokal 22:46, 20 February 2007 (EST)
 * Or, for that matter, two sections which state "This is spam!" -- (WT-en) Jonboy 22:51, 20 February 2007 (EST)

 * I'd support protecting this page by allowing only logged-in users to edit it, provided a pointer is added indicating that you must be logged in but that anonymous users can still edit the Pub. -- (WT-en) Ryan 11:43, 6 March 2007 (EST)

 * What version of MediaWiki are we running here? CAPTCHA image confirmations (, ) will probably solve the bot problem without having to protect the page from human edits. --(WT-en) NJR_ZA 13:18, 6 March 2007 (EST)

Temporary Protection
I've protected this page against edits by "unregistered users" since it appears that our spamfilter is currently borked, and the spams are coming a bit too fast. I would like to unprotected it, but can we get the filter running again first? -- (WT-en) Colin 00:13, 22 February 2007 (EST)
 * Spam filter is up again, so I've unprotected. -- (WV-en) == High praise for [[Talk:Main Page ==

esta pagina es muy buena

it is page is very good

 * Thanks. We've worked very hard to make this the best Main Page discussion page it could be. --(WT-en) Evan 10:31, 26 February 2007 (EST)

 * Haha, you mean, "This page is very good", I think :) (WT-en) Dwringer 22:50, 28 November 2007 (EST)

We've had some discussion in the past about the title of this page. If you do a search on Google or Yahoo or whatever, it's hard to tell what Wikivoyage is from the title that's shown: "Main Page - Wikivoyage". To make this a little nicer, I wrote a quick extension that adds a new tag,, the contents of which become the HTML title of the page. I've tried it on Main Page, and it seems to work fine. I've added some potential text for the title, which I think captures the essential part of Wikivoyage (free-as-in-freedom and worldwide) without having the full mission description. Of course, the title can be edited; I just wanted to get the discussion started with something useful. And, if it really bothers people, I think it's fine to remove the override, too. --(WT-en) Evan 16:20, 1 March 2007 (EST)
 * That's a good idea, and it reminded me of this idea here . I don't know what the hell happened to the message I wanted to link to, but I found this which seems to be a fairly simple way of removing the title "Main Page" from the main page and saving some space. — (WT-en) Ravikiran 00:24, 2 March 2007 (EST)

IB ownership
So I don't object in principle to noting that Wikivoyage is owned by IB, but the very first sentence is not the place to put this — it's just not that important. Why not stick an IB logo next to the CC by-sa or MediaWiki ones? (WT-en) Jpatokal 04:48, 23 March 2007 (EDT)

 * As an attorney, I have to tell you that most folks I speak to (whether they're coming to the question from a utopian socialist property-is-theft point of view or businessman wishing to exploit a market advantage) do believe ownership to be important - especially as with the look and feel of Wikivoyage they may feel cheated or misled if IB ownership is "hidden".
 * ...(WT-en) Gaimhreadhan (kiwiexile at DMOZ) • 09:49, 23 March 2007 (EDT)

 * I suppose you can always go back and point out that the first word of the opening sentence "Wikivoyage is a project to create a free, complete, up-to-date, and reliable world-wide travel guide." does contain a clickable link to an article that (currently) does clarify ownership of the project. I think your idea for displaying the IB logo is a good one, though. I presume this is a job for User:(WT-en) Evan?
 * ...(WT-en) Gaimhreadhan (kiwiexile at DMOZ) • 10:13, 23 March 2007 (EDT)

 * Since appearances are important, I wouldn't mind seeing the IB ownership thing more prominently on the main page, whether via Gaimhreadhan's edit or an IB logo - doing so makes it clear that Wikivoyage isn't trying to hide the fact that a corporate entity controls the servers. There have been a few users who, despite the CC-SA licensing, complained that they weren't aware they were contributing to a "commercial site" (their words), so this would give us one more way of making it clear that Wikivoyage is an open source site that is hosted by a corporation, thus helping to avoid any appearance of "hiding" the IB association. -- (WT-en) Ryan (talk) 12:00, 23 March 2007 (EDT)

 * The problem is that, if we state "Wikivoyage is a site owned by Internet Brands", 99.9% of the people seeing that will assume that the site's content (and hence anything they contribute) is also owned by IB. Thanks to the magic of copyleft, this is of course not the case: IB only owns the trademark and the domain, and the users retain the copyright to their own contributions. (WT-en) Jpatokal 12:06, 23 March 2007 (EDT)

Yes, the site's ownership is important. But no, it is not more important than the mission of the project. If we're going to put an ownership statement on the main page, I'd prefer something clearer as a closing statement, such as "The contents of this guide are owned and freely licensed by its contributors. The Wikivoyage trademark and site are owned and operated by Internet Brands." —The preceding comment was added by (WT-en) TVerBeek (talk • contribs)

 * On de: we've put Wikivoyage and World 66 are presented by Internet Brands, Inc. (though the literal translation is "operated". To clarify - we put the disclaimer in the footer, but we didn't make use of a logo (technical limitations of some kind, though, that may have changed since).  -- (WT-en) Sapphire • (Talk) • 16:30, 23 March 2007 (EDT)

This is John from Internet Brands. We don't desire that our ownership of Wikivoyage be hidden, but we also don't consider it to be the main point. As stated here, the content isn't ours to own, per CC-SA. We're open to the consensus of the community. From our perspective, we'd opt for IB having a lesser profile than Wikivoyage, since most users care a lot more about the latter than then involvement of the former. -- (WT-en) Redondo

 * So you'd be happy with a link on the main page featuring the IB logo provided it was of a discrete size and placement? Would you prefer the link to go directly to your website Internet Brands, Inc. or to an intermediate Wikivoyage page Internet Brands? I presume the former, as that would be less prone to vandalistic attack ...(WT-en) Gaimhreadhan (kiwiexile at DMOZ) • 07:39, 24 March 2007 (EDT)

Main Page & Talk:Main Page both locked
Swept in from the pub:

Is this intentional/permanent?

If so, the main page blurb needs updating:

 * First, understand: We want you to edit this page. Like nearly every other page on this site, the Main Page is open for anyone to edit.

Also, might be a good idea to add an explanation to the top of Talk:Main Page. ~ 203.147.0.48 04:49, 30 August 2007 (EDT)

 * I've unlocked editing privileges for both pages, as neither protections were justified on Project:Protected pages per Project:Protected page policy. We should be more systematic about protections, IMO. --(WT-en) Peter Talk 05:05, 30 August 2007 (EDT)

 * Thanks, appreciated. How about Project:Local spam blacklist? ~ 203.147.0.48 05:11, 30 August 2007 (EDT)

 * The local spam blacklist is a bit more important security wise, since it is a principal tool on this language version for keeping our guides spam-free. We have had one excellent anon contributor in the past (possibly you?), but the blacklist does necessitate a slightly higher ease of communication/coordination, which anonymous use does not facilitate. I'm not necessarily opposed to a semi-protection of the Main Page either, but I'd prefer we do that systematically, rather than just sliding into it. --(WT-en) Peter Talk 05:18, 30 August 2007 (EDT)

 * Thanks for your reply. I've just posted a comment at Project:Local spam blacklist, which is where I should have asked my original question, apologies for the duplication. ~ 203.147.0.48 05:26, 30 August 2007 (EDT)

Protection?
Was there a decision to keep the main page and the talk page protected? I missed it. — (WT-en) Ravikiran 07:19, 13 May 2007 (EDT)

 * As far as I'm aware the main page should only be protected against moves. Based on the edit comment from when the page was protected it looks like the current protection was meant as a temporary way of stopping persistent spamming, so I think it can be removed, although I may have also missed a discussion somewhere. -- (WT-en) Ryan • (talk) • 13:01, 13 May 2007 (EDT)

 * See the "protected" section further up on this page... – (WT-en) cacahuate  talk 17:52, 13 May 2007 (EDT)

 * I was wondering about the protection myself. I saw in the logs that it was protected on April 11th. I think it should be removed. -- (WT-en) Tom Holland (xltel)

 * This talk page is protected against anonymous edits due to the high amount of automated spam it receives. Aside from a few times where a registered user failed to log in the vast majority of main page edits by anonymous users are also spambots, so would there be any objection to protecting that page against anonymous edits as well?  It doesn't seem like too high of a barrier to ask someone to login to edit the front page. -- (WT-en) Ryan • (talk) • 19:47, 1 June 2007 (EDT)

 * I would be in favor of the proposed protection. Yes, our general philosophy is to have a wiki that "anyone can edit."  The content parts of Wikivoyage still fit that heading, and I would not want to see protection extended to individual articles unless something is coming under violent and persistent attack, bilious edit wars, etc.  But the front page isn't just another content page; it's our face to the world.  Protect it. -- (WT-en) Bill-on-the-Hill 20:06, 1 June 2007 (EDT)

 * I'm supportive of this. - (WT-en) Todd VerBeek 12:54, 2 June 2007 (EDT)

 * I've added protection against anonymous edits only. Logged-in users can still edit the main page. -- (WT-en) Ryan • (talk) • 02:42, 3 June 2007 (EDT)

This page was previously protected against anonymous edits - that protection was removed on 30-Aug. From previous discussions (above, and further above) it seems that the consensus was that protection was reasonable since the page is a spam magnet - we're getting numerous edits a day on this page that are spam, and all of the reversion hides valid discussion. Is there a reason why this page shouldn't be protected, or why the old protection was removed? I don't see anything above that would indicate why the page shouldn't be protected against anonymous edits. -- (WT-en) Ryan • (talk) • 14:43, 27 September 2007 (EDT)

 * See Project:Travellers' pub
 * The spambot problem could be resolved by making this page a redirect to Talk:Main Page/Jan 2007 to Dec 2007 and then protecting the redirect page. ~ 203.144.143.6 15:17, 27 September 2007 (EDT)

 * Sorry, didn't mean to go against consensus. I unprotected the Main Page and Talk:Main Page because, when the above anonymous user asked why it was protected, I checked Project:Protected_pages and there was no explanation there (which is required per Project:Protected page policy). Accordingly I didn't have an explanation handy so I unprotected both pages.

 * Personally, I don't see any reason to protect the page. I've become somewhat of a knee-jerk soft protection advocate recently and if anonymous ips have a question or suggestion regarding the main page, why shouldn't they be allowed to voice it here? It's not like we have any difficulty keeping up with the spam edits—everyone who patrols at all has this page on their watchlist. But far be it for me to overturn an existing consensus. In any rate, I would appreciate it if people would enter a reason on Project:Protected pages when protecting. --(WT-en) Peter Talk 15:27, 27 September 2007 (EDT)

Title and search box
Two tweaks:
 * 1) Is there a way to get rid of the rather pointless "Main Page" bar?
 * 2) The Finnish Wikipedia's main page starts with a Search box with a cursor blinking it right off the bat, which usabilitywise is the coolest thing since sliced bread.  Any chance of making this happen here too?  The code seems fairly trivial, just an inputbox with type=search2. Testing: (WT-en) Jpatokal 03:41, 28 May 2007 (EDT)

 * Well, last November I wondered about the same thing, did some research and found that it involved a Javascript hack. Unfortunately, I pasted the wrong link so the research will have to be re-searched. — (WT-en) Ravikiran 03:58, 28 May 2007 (EDT)

 * Well, here is the hack — (WT-en) Ravikiran 04:02, 28 May 2007 (EDT)

 * Wouldn't it be better to just find a way to have the cursor blinking in the already existing searchbox in the left nav rather than add a whole new one? I agree it would be cool not to have to click in the search box first – (WT-en) cacahuate  talk 22:49, 11 September 2007 (EDT)

 * I made a tech request to enable Common.css and Common.js over one month ago, but still no response. Is there problem to enable them like security issue? -- (WT-en) Tatata 00:16, 12 September 2007 (EDT)

 * BUMP! Can't we get rid of "Main page"?? It would look nicer without, we don't be needin that. Here is Tatata's tech request: wts:WtTech:Use of Common.css and Common.js – (WT-en) cacahuate  talk 01:57, 24 November 2007 (EST)

Protected
I've protected the main page from user edits because some fifteen year old, who just got out of school and doesn't have a date, and wants to fuck around on Wikivoyage's main page. As the main page is important for new users because it helps navigate them around I decided temporarily to protect the page from user edits. -- (WT-en) Sapphire • (Talk) • 01:14, 16 June 2007 (EDT)

Category 5 Felix barrels toward Central America
ORANJESTAD, Aruba - Felix rapidly strengthened into a dangerous Category 5 hurricane and churned through the Caribbean Sea on a path toward Central America, where forecasters said it could make landfall as “potentially catastrophic” storm. Felix was packing winds of up to 165 mph as it headed west, according to the U.S. National Hurricane Center. It was projected to skirt Honduras’ coastline on Tuesday before slamming into Belize on Wednesday. “As it stands, we’re still thinking that it will be a potentially catastrophic system in the early portions of this week, Tuesday evening, possibly affecting Honduras and then toward the coast of Belize,” said Dave Roberts, a hurricane specialist at the center in Miami.

American Virgins vs Virgin America
Jani, why did you revert my edit in which I changed "American Virgins" to "Virgin America"? The name of the airline noted is Virgin America, not American Virgins. I feel it is innapropriate to screw it up. Tell it like it is, shall we? --(WT-en) Rogerhc 13:15, 11 September 2007 (EDT)

 * It was poetic license. I agree that "American Virgins" is more interesting writing, and would prefer to keep it. -- (WT-en) Colin 13:30, 11 September 2007 (EDT)
 * There was going to be a parade of virgins, but one was sick and the other one would not march alone ;-) .. (WT-en) 2old 13:34, 11 September 2007 (EDT)zz

 * Sorry Roger, that was my doing in the first place, and you weren't the first to try and change it... That's the news section, so think of it like a newspaper where you might have a schnazzy heading that is a play on words... though admittedly most papers probably wouldn't have opted for that particular phrase ;) Anyhow, the best thing that someone can do is just come up with a new piece of news, since it's the next one to be bumped off anyway! – (WT-en) cacahuate  talk 19:38, 11 September 2007 (EDT)

 * Slightly off topic, but I am looking for some American virgins in Warsaw. If you know any, please send me an email through Wikivoyage, seriously – the mail order girlfriend Evan was supposed to send me last year never arrived. ;) -- (WT-en) Sapphire • (Talk) • 19:43, 11 September 2007 (EDT)

Hiroshima photo
I'm aware that there is dissatisfaction with the photo used for this month's DotM (Hiroshima). Without taking particular sides in the debate, I've gone ahead and put that photo up, simply because it's now the first of the month and time to do something. If somebody has a compelling alternative, there's always the good old "Edit" button ... -- (WT-en) Bill-on-the-Hill 16:56, 1 November 2007 (EDT)

Vandalism @ 14/Nov/07 2:19 PM CET
The main page has been defaced, and it seems that only registered users can modify it. A registered user is needed to rollback the main page.

 * Done, thanks. -- (WT-en) Tatata7 08:43, 14 November 2007 (EST)

Ending the cooperation with WikiOutdoors
I propose to take WikiOutdoors out of the list of sites linked to on the left-hand sidebar. WikiOutdoors has become an un-maintained spam magnet (I'm an admin there and nobody else has done maintenance on it in weeks) that in no way enhances Wikivoyage by association. Please discuss on Project:Cooperating with WikiOutdoors. -- (WT-en) Bill-on-the-Hill 00:07, 19 November 2007 (EST)

travel news glitch
what's with the little white box next to the Travel News banner? – (WT-en) cacahuate  talk 23:55, 19 November 2007 (EST)

 * Don't see any problems on my browser...? (WT-en) Jpatokal 02:08, 20 November 2007 (EST)

 * Hmm, me either. That cacahuate dude be smokin some k-r-a-k – (WT-en) cacahuate  talk 01:45, 24 November 2007 (EST)


text:
Wikivoyage talk:Main Page Old/New layout

Moved from Talk:Main Page by (WT-en) Evan

NOTE: The "new layout" referred to on this page is the OLD new layout (last seen here). If you're talking about the new table-based layout, check out Talk:Main Page/New new layout.

I'd like to hear some comments on the new Main Page layout. Is it too tight? Jacob Nielsen says you shouldn't have any scrolling on a main page... I dunno. -- (WT-en) Evan 08:30, 31 Oct 2003 (PST)

 * Jacob Nielsen can kiss my shinny metal wiki. It looks good... I was actually thinking that it needed more stuff, and more updates...(WT-en) Majnoona

 * I think it is tight. I would consider moving the whole Destinations section off this page.  And, I'm a big Jacob Nielsen fan. (WT-en) Hanzo 10:52, 31 Oct 2003 (PST)

 * I was just having a quick look at Wikivoyage, and when I saw the main page my first reaction was: "WOW this is nice!" Perhaps the format could change a little... but still I think it's good work. (WT-en) D.D. 10:55, 31 Oct 2003 (PST)

 * How about a compromise-- make the destinations a list of just the top-level areas? that should shorten it up a lot without loosing that point-of-entry.(WT-en) Majnoona

 * Yes. I think that would work fine. (WT-en) Hanzo 11:28, 31 Oct 2003 (PST)

---

Hey, so what happened to the above idea? I'm talking about wikivoyage on bootsnall and I just got this comment:

''My first impulse was to look up local info to see how everything was structured and what kind of entries were being made.

''Problem was, other than the search feature (which I don't like using) I couldn't find a simple way there. I want to be able to click through to get to where I'm going.

''ie: Index > N. America > Canada > British Columbia > Vancouver

Maybe I was missing the easy way to look that up?

And I actually didn't know what to say. How do we expect people to get to the content? I'm wondering if we need to think a bit more about readers and not just contributors (ie we head to the recent change or something and start from there).... comments? (WT-en) Majnoona

 * So can we add a link to List of countries from the front page? And maybe one to the content that was in the destinations page? I know that was too much stuff for the front page, but I didn't realize it was totally gone... (WT-en) Majnoona

 * You worked on it! B-) Anyways, although I originally proposed it, I agree that the loss of the destinations section might be a little much. After all, most people who are going to be coming to Wikivoyage's main page will be looking for travel info, not looking to share. (Sad but true). What if we did this?

Welcome to Wikivoyage! Blah blah blah!

+--+ |        Destinations             | +--+           |                                  | |                                  | |                                  | |                                  | +--+

+--+ +-+ | Featured    | |    Community    | +--+ +-+ |             | |                 | |              | |                 | |              | |                 | |              | |                 | +--+ +-+

+--+ |            Logbook              | +--+           |                                  | |                                  | |                                  | |                                  | +--+

It'll scroll and stuff, but... Well, I don't know how to fit it all in, otherwise. --(WT-en) Evan 14:30, 1 Dec 2003 (PST)


text:
Wikivoyage talk:Main Page Old/New new layout

move from Talk:Main Page by (WT-en) Evan

OK, so, I gotta make some comments on the new new Main Page layout:

 * 1) It looks really good. Nice work, (WT-en) Dhum Dhum.
 * 2) Did Dhum Dhum update the page? It was done by an anonymous user, but it's nearly identical with User:(WT-en) Dhum Dhum/Main page. I find it hard to believe that he'd go through 10+ changes without noticing he was logged in. Doesn't really matter, but...
 * 3) I don't like dealing with heavily-tablized pages. I'm going to have to steel myself to edit this from now on.
 * 4) It's really spaced out, and there's a lot of screen real estate that's dead. Like all the space around List of countries... couldn't that be tightened up some?
 * 5) I think I mentioned Jakob Nielsen before... anyways, one of his principles is that people don't scroll. So, it's important to put important nav stuff up in the first half of a page, if it scrolls at all. I'd love to tighten up some of the dead space on this screen to make it not scroll.
 * 6) I think we could get away with moving the destinations section off to a directory-style page. That would free up a lot of real estate.
 * 7) It might be worthwhile to go over Nielsen's Home Page Design Guidelines.

OK, that's my deux sous. -- (WT-en) Evan 08:19, 22 Nov 2003 (PST)

 * What a surprise to see my draft version of the main page as the actual main page. Evan, here are my answers to your questions (my numbers correspond to yours).

(WT-en) DhDh 14:58, 22 Nov 2003 (PST)
 * 1) Well, thanks Evan...
 * No, I didn't update the page. As you say, it was done by an anonymous user, so I started investigating. I looked at User:203.109.249.138's contributions and I found that he had written the last entry on Talk:Maramures and the Mountains Tour. Even if he was not logged in he signed with User:(WT-en) Ronline. So, discarding the possibility that some other user signs as Ronline, there's a high probability that it's him.
 * 1) We've had a short discussion about that on User talk:(WT-en) Dhum Dhum/Main page. I respected your point of view and I still do.
 * 2) I agree, but I think we should keep this important link on the main page. See point 6 for more.
 * 3) I agree again.
 * 4) One of the things I didn't like was exactly this. To me, the destinations section is just a list of countries. There's no particular reason to keep them on the main page.
 * 5) I haven't done so, but I'll surely will in the next few days.
 * 6) Something extra: as I said before, I was surprised to see my experiment surface as the actual main page. I was even more surprised that there had been no discussion about it. I do think that a radical change of such an important page needs to be discussed beforehand (and maybe now is the time...). As a side note I'd also like to mention that User talk:(WT-en) Dhum Dhum/Main page has also been changed (albeit slightly). I thought it was a tacit convention that user pages and their subpages are normally not changed by other users.

 * Yes - it was me who updated the page with the tables. I didn't log in due to the my automatic login being disabled (I'm changing that now ;-) I think the page with the tables is so much better, but it's really good that you guys are discussing potential improvements! -- (WT-en) Ronline, 23 Nov 2003

 * I do like this main page much more than the old one. It's simply more lucid. Btw, what should be bad with the tables? The main page isn't something that the "HTML-have-not"s need to edit. And even lynx can handle tables quite well. So, there shouldn't occure problems with poor browsers. -- (WT-en) Hansm 10:01, 2003 Nov 23 (PST)

 * I am an HTML have-not, and I need to edit the page. I find the table-based layout hard to edit and update. It doesn't use markup sections, so I can't edit one section of the page at a time. I have to navigate through lots of td's and tr's and br's just to find the section I need to add a link to. We're a Wiki site, we should use Wiki markup. Formatting shouldn't be my problem -- it should be the Wiki engine's problem. My problem should be content. Anyways, the whole thing incented me to add Project:Avoid HTML. -- (WT-en) Evan 11:28, 23 Nov 2003 (PST)

 * OK, than I understand the problem. At the end, it will remain the admin's decision. Anyway, I like the new look. -- (WT-en) Hansm 06:47, 2003 Nov 24 (PST)

 * Well, I have a bit of a "double" feeling towards the new main page.
 * On the one hand, I can't deny that this page looks better than the one before. The main page is often one of the first pages a Wikivoyage visitor will see. So, apart from the content that should draw their attention, we might as well have something that looks nice too.
 * On the other hand I feel quite uncomfortable with the way this has happened: no discussion, no consencus, just one user who made the change. I'm still convinced that radically changing an important page like this one needs to be discussed properly beforehand.
 * The fact is that if we do want the main page to have a nice table format with colours, we just have to use HTML for now. At present, I see no other way. I don't know much about HTML either. Everything I've learned comes from tables in Wikipedia. That's also where I got the idea for creating User:(WT-en) Dhum Dhum/Main page.
 * So, why don't we build a bridge between those so-called HTML-haves and HTML-have nots. I made Main page/test, where we can test things out and try to make a page that both looks good and is not too difficult to edit. That should be possible, no? I started with copying what I have in my user space at this moment. Anyone who's interested? But keep in mind: it should be nice and simple at the same time. (WT-en) DhDh 11:51, 24 Nov 2003 (PST)

So, I just filed a RFE against MediaWiki in SourceForge asking for a table markup language. Turns out there already is an undocumented one, which will be in the next stable release. Looks like we'll have a Wikimarkup table-based Main Page sooner rather than later... --(WT-en) Evan 18:57, 28 Nov 2003 (PST)

Hey, so what happened to the above idea? I'm talking about wikivoyage on bootsnall and I just got this comment:

''My first impulse was to look up local info to see how everything was structured and what kind of entries were being made.

''Problem was, other than the search feature (which I don't like using) I couldn't find a simple way there. I want to be able to click through to get to where I'm going.

''ie: Index > N. America > Canada > British Columbia > Vancouver

Maybe I was missing the easy way to look that up?

And I actually didn't know what to say. How do we expect people to get to the content? I'm wondering if we need to think a bit more about readers and not just contributors (ie we head to the recent change or something and start from there).... comments? (WT-en) Majnoona

 * So can we add a link to List of countries from the front page? And maybe one to the content that was in the destinations page? I know that was too much stuff for the front page, but I didn't realize it was totally gone... (WT-en) Majnoona

 * You worked on it! B-) Anyways, although I originally proposed it, I agree that the loss of the destinations section might be a little much. After all, most people who are going to be coming to Wikivoyage's main page will be looking for travel info, not looking to share. (Sad but true). What if we did this?

Welcome to Wikivoyage! Blah blah blah!

+--+ |        Destinations             | +--+           |                                  | |                                  | |                                  | |                                  | +--+

+--+ +-+ | Featured    | |    Community    | +--+ +-+ |             | |                 | |              | |                 | |              | |                 | |              | |                 | +--+ +-+

+--+ |            Logbook              | +--+           |                                  | |                                  | |                                  | |                                  | +--+

It'll scroll and stuff, but... Well, I don't know how to fit it all in, otherwise. --(WT-en) Evan 14:30, 1 Dec 2003 (PST)

So, I've been thinking about the main page, and looking over Nielsen's Home Page Design Guidelines. I'm not going to copy them here, so you should look at them; but here's my comments on each:

 * 1) Our tagline is more than one sentence, but I think we meet this.
 * 2) Our title tag -- weird, I never thought about this -- is actually "name of page - Wikivoyage". I can't tell which is better or worse -- it might be nice to reverse that for the Main Page.
 * 3) We have an "About Us" page (actually, lots of them), and we group them together. This is good.
 * 4) This is where I think we fall down. I'll say below what I think our 1-4 tasks are.
 * 5) Got it.
 * 6) We have "featured" stuff, but not really any examples. More on this below.
 * 7) This one seems fine -- our article naming conventions almost demand it!
 * 8) We don't do this. Probably should, too.
 * 9) We hardly have any images -- probably fine!
 * 10) Again, fine -- just one image (the logo, and only on one skin).

I'm counting 6 out of 10. Not bad, but we can do better.

Now, about our viewers' goals. Here's the four goals I think people coming to the main page have:

 * 1) Find information about particular travel information. These people are casual browsers who think of us as a travel guide. That's great! Because that's what we are. We have to accommodate these people, because... well, that's our goal! Make a travel guide! Duh! B-)
 * 2) Find out what kind of information we have. These people have heard about Wikivoyage, and want to look us over before they decide whether we're any good, and whether they're ever going to come back. It's good to accommodate these people, because they will either join our effort themselves, or give us good word of mouth.
 * 3) Find out what Wikivoyage is about. These people have heard about Wikivoyage, and want to know more about the project. Similarly, we want these people to get what they want, since they may join us or tell someone else who will.
 * 4) Start editing, discussing, policy-making, whatever. These are people who are Wikivoyagers already, and they want to know what's going on, what's new, whose articles are featured, etc. Considering that this is us B-), of course we want these people to get what they need.

You can kinda divide these goals into a matrix of two variables: purposeful versus browsing, travel information versus Wikivoyage information. There's a gradation from the first to the last: purposeful about travel info, browsing travel info, browsing project info, purposeful about project info.

Anyways, I'm thinking that maybe we can divide the main page into two big sections instead of three: travel info, and project info. I think doing it side-by-side would look weird, so maybe we can do it top-to-bottom. Another thing I'm thinking is that we can kinda borrow the same layout, for the travel info, that the Open Directory has (and lots of other directory sites -- I think Yahoo! did this first). Lastly, I'm thinking that the "featured" section would become our base, but more geographically oriented than not. So, we combine "featured" and "destinations".

Here's what I'm thinking:

Welcome to Wikivoyage. Blah blah blah. We are so great.

+-+ |                     Wikivoyage Guides                          | +-+ |                                                                | | Asia                            Africa                          | | Bangkok, India, Tokyo,         Cairo, Capetown, Zaire,         | | Angkor Wat, more...            Timbuktu, Madagascar, more... | |                                                                | | Europe                          Australasia                     | | Oradea, France, Flanders,      Hobart, Christchurch, Perth,    | | Barcelona, more...             New Guinea, Sydney, more... | |                                                                | | North America                   South America                   | | Santa Barbara, Boston,         Lima, Argentina, Rio de Janeiro,| | Banff, Florida Keys, more...   Caracas, Surinam, more... | |                                                                | | Island nations                  Phrasebooks                     | | Jamaica, Havana, Papeete,      French, Spanish, Romanian,      | | Tahiti, Guam, Fiji, more...    Dutch, German, more... | |                                                                | | Itineraries                     Travel topics                   | | Two weeks in Vietnam,          Driving in Australia, tips for  | | Hiking in New Zealand, more... flying, Common scams, more... | |                                                                | +-+

+-+ |                     Wikivoyage Project                         | +-+ | (pretty much what we have in "Community" right now)            | |                                                                | | Logbook                                                         | +-+

Some points about this: note that nothing's called "featured". Like DhDh said, if it's on the front page, it's featured! Duh! B-) Second, I figured it'd be better to put the project stuff after the travel stuff, since people looking for project info will probably feel more comfy about scrolling down to look for it than people looking for travel info.

That top table might actually fit three or even four across, rather than two across. That's OK! This looks a little more like DhDh's first pass at this, too.

Lastly, I wonder if we should maybe do some "pull quotes" -- one or two sentences from good articles, with links to the article. That'd be pretty fancy, and would show off our good stuff.

OK, that's my thoughts for now. --(WT-en) Evan 19:45, 1 Dec 2003 (PST)

 * After reading all this I must say I agree with most things said above (guidelines and 4 goals). When I took out the Destinations part I tore it out with roots and all - and that was probably too much. So I like the idea of having two sections on the main page. I do have some remarks though:
 * I think we should make a difference between the purely geographical part of the Guides section and the rest (itineraries, phrasebooks, travel topics, etc.) The geographical part will most probably be quite stable over time, but the other part will not (new expeditions worth mentioning will be created, etc.) Within this section it could be separated by a horizontal line or made a separate column.
 * The same goes for the Project section: separate the Community and Logbook parts in the same way.
 * The geographical subdivision by continental regions is fine, but which articles are we going to put under them? It seems to me that this is done a bit randomly in the example.
 * About point 8 (top ten guidelines): we could include a Main Page/Archive page.
 * (WT-en) DhDh 08:56, 2 Dec 2003 (PST)

 * Good point about the continental sections, etc. What I was thinking was that the directory part, on top, would act both as an entry way into our geographical hierarchy, and as a "Featured" section. We could rotate in different articles from all levels of the hierarchy -- cities, regions, districts, countries, sections, etc. -- in that right-under-the-continent part. That way, we can highlight our best articles, and help people navigate the site. Anyways, that was the idea. --(WT-en) Evan 09:24, 2 Dec 2003 (PST)

 * OK, if the idea is to have a combination of the two, I'm all for it. I'll try to experiment a little with the test page. Luckily we didn't throw it away :-) (WT-en) DhDh 12:25, 2 Dec 2003 (PST)

 * I commented on my Main Page draft on Talk:Main Page/test (WT-en) DhDh 14:20, 2 Dec 2003 (PST)


text:
Wikivoyage talk:Main Page Old/Split layout

New new new layout
OK, not quite a new layout, but an attempt to get rid of some whitespace and those honking big HRs. Work in progress at User:(WT-en) Jpatokal/Main Page. (WT-en) Jpatokal 11:09, 23 Mar 2005 (EST)

 * Hmm-m, can't seem to get NOTOC working...? So never mind the main guide box, but the Travel news and Wikivoyage Project sections are now prettyformatted. Opinions, please. (WT-en) Jpatokal 11:22, 23 Mar 2005 (EST)

 * What do you think about saving a little more on Logbook layout by moving previous entries, Today over the frame (as in my (WT-en) Main Page proposition)? Also if you don't think making continent names inline, maybe, at least, kill whitespace under (eg. no vertical whitespace between Europe title and Rome, Paris, Belfast entries). Another idea -- to consider removing [edit] tags on Main Page.

 * Please edit User:(WT-en) Jpatokal/Main Page freely! If you mess it up too badly I'll just revert =) (WT-en) Jpatokal 12:17, 23 Mar 2005 (EST)

 * Anything that compacts the main page is good to me. -- (WT-en) Colin 14:19, 23 Mar 2005 (EST)

Time for a redesign?
Frankly, I am bored of the main page. It looks like it is doing a great job of announcing "Hey, nothing is happening on this site", which is of course not true. --(WT-en) Ravikiran 01:29, 31 Jan 2006 (EST)

 * So what are you suggesting? Automated "tickers" for things like the newest articles or news items from Wikinews would be nice, but need a lot of work to set up.  For occasional visitors, the DotM and the admittedly infrequent changes in the destination lists should be enough to keep them entertained, I hope. (WT-en) Jpatokal 06:43, 31 Jan 2006 (EST)

 * Yeah, but ... it's been a while since we've had a Main Page change, and I think it's in order.

 * How about splitting the page into a "project" home page and a "guide" home page? I think it would be easier to find things if this were the case.

 * Some other ideas: change DotM to DotWeek; featured user of the month (project page); automated feed of 5-10 most edited pages in the last few days; "challenge" projects ("let's all work on London"). --(WT-en) Evan 11:23, 31 Jan 2006 (EST)

 * I agree with Ravikiran. The front page design has definitely passed its expiry date. (WT-en) WindHorse 31 Jan 06

 * Tangent: I would love to see a "Collaboration" or "Challenge" destination regularly featured. I started the "Collaboration of the week" discussion on Project:Articles needing attention (actually, I started it in the pub), but it didn't go anywhere at the time. (WT-en) Hypatia 01:19, 15 Feb 2006 (EST)

Adding a section
There is currently (2 April 06) a discussion going on at the talk page for Project:Destination of the Month candidates, about possibly adding an "Off The Beaten Path" box to the Main Page. (WT-en) Todd VerBeek has genned up a sample of what this might look like, appearing on the Project:Graffiti wall. The idea is to accommodate a wider range of DotMs than can currently be done, since there's beginning to be a substantial backlog of attractive candidates. This idea seems to have legs; if interested, drop by the talk page ahd join the discussion. -- (WT-en) Bill-on-the-Hill 23:33, 2 April 2006 (EDT)

Protecting and template-ifying the Main Page
Time to raise this again, not for the first time...

So I'd like to suggest that the Main Page be protected, but the content sections — Travel guide, Travel news, DotM, CotW &dmash; be read in via templates that are freely editable. This would both make vandalism a little more difficult and make keeping the page fresh and up to date a little easier — it's a real pain to find the correct section in the Main Page now, esp. since the Edit links are disabled.

If we're going to go ahead with this, it would make sense to simultaneously implement the guide/portal split and add in the "Off the beaten path" DotM discussed over there. Thoughts? (WT-en) Jpatokal 23:39, 13 April 2006 (EDT)

 * Protecting the front page is a concession that an occasional (0-5 times a day according to my count) vandal is more powerful than our collective effort. I don't think that's in any way true. Having the Main Page free for anyone to edit really shows that we mean it when we say anyone can edit any page.

 * A protected Main Page tells people that they have to go looking into the wiki to find the area that they're really allowed to edit, and they never really know which page is too important for us to live up to our principles. Is London too important? Asia? Minot? Protected pages make a distinction between the insiders and the outsiders; the face we show to the world is a statement of hypocrisy and distrust instead of AssumeGoodFaith.

 * Finally, I think from a security standpoint, it's better to leave the Main Page open. Anyone can edit it, which means anyone can revert, too. We can count on the whole Wikivoyage community to maintain it, rather than a tiny minority. It gets new users in the habit of reverting. It doesn't alienate people and make enemies. People won't look for a way around the protection. It is a magnet for vandalism, which means we don't have to watch the rest of our articles so closely.

 * I think templatizing the main page sounds great, and I think making a guide/portal split is also a good idea. I don't think protecting the main page is necessary or preferable. --(WT-en) Evan 10:14, 14 April 2006 (EDT)

 * So I've done a first draft of the new Main Page (only) on User:(WT-en) Jpatokal/Main Page, comments welcome. And yes, it's mostly ripped off Wikipedia, but if it ain't broken...  No templatizing yet, and the Travel news section has the extra line in there because I can't fix that without breaking the currently used templates. (WT-en) Jpatokal 11:28, 27 April 2006 (EDT)

 * On first look I like what you've done! I certainly prefer having the DotMs highlighted and pulled out of their corner... and yay for easier editing with templates...(WT-en) Majnoona 14:39, 27 April 2006 (EDT)

 * I'm extremely pleased to see the featured and unbeaten destinations both clearly highlighted. Great job! -- (WT-en) Colin 15:07, 27 April 2006 (EDT)

 * So now we need to design and name the project/community portal/workspace. Any takers?  202.156.2.35 22:07, 27 April 2006 (EDT)

Wow
The new main page looks really great. I'm happy to see the changes, and I think dividing the content from the project info has been long coming. Thanks to everyone who made this happen -- Jani and Todd in particular. --(WT-en) Evan 17:39, 1 May 2006 (EDT)

 * Now it's your turn to finally get Mark's skin installed. =P (WT-en) Jpatokal 23:20, 1 May 2006 (EDT)