Talk:Main Page/Archive 4

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The general discussion previously on this page can be found on this archive page.

Browse SmashWiki

I took out the link to SmashWiki:Browse because it's redundant with the main page. Should we expand the main page a little bit, to perhaps include "Smashers" as a category, or maybe link to some Help topics? I plan to retouch the main page but I want to gather your opinions first. – MaskedMarth ^{(t c)} 17:56, February 5, 2007 (GMT)

I'm not sure about including Smashers as a category, but I'm certainly open to other layouts for the Main Page. Maybe you could make a sample Main Page and put it as a subpage or a user page or something? Making the help section more obvious would make sense, I think. --Kirby King 20:36, February 5, 2007 (GMT)

Main Page seems bare

Shouldn't the main pageinclude stuff, like, the current number of articles, and maybe, perhaps, an article of the day/week? I'm just wondering, as mostother Wiki have those sort of things. It's a work in progress, right? There will be stuff like that eventually, right?

-Brawlmatt202, Feb. 6, 2007

That's a good point. The "article of the week" sounds like a good idea, and I think Alt's old wiki had something like "did you know?" that would be interesting to incorporate, too. Since we're still in development (hmm, maybe we should include that fact in the main page!), I'd say it's better to brainstorm a little before making any big changes, as long as we have a bombastic main page when SmashWiki is fully released. – MaskedMarth ^{(t c)} 04:30, February 7, 2007 (GMT)

I think articles of the week were discussed before. The problem was that we don't have many really good articles. Probably not enough to do without recurring pages. Development must be mentioned very subtily, if at all. We don't want a big posterboard board which basically screams "Wait! It's not done yet!" What exactly would the "Did you know?" incorporate? It seems like it could definitely be decent filler. -- Bean 06:42, February 7, 2007 (GMT)

Well, Smiddle's old wiki can be found here. So that's the type of "did you know" information we might have. – MaskedMarth ^{(t c)} 03:32, February 8, 2007 (GMT)

Did you know, that Luigi's voice is in fact a sped up version of Mario's from Mario 64? I like the Did you know, and hell, I already learned something. I think it's a good idea. -- Bean 04:45, February 8, 2007 (GMT)

An article of the week (or day, or whatever) would be great, and an article counter would be perfect for measuring how close the site is to being "done." WaluigiIsAwesome 02:16, February 10, 2007 (GMT)

Also, having articles of the week will encourage better contributions and editing. In theory anyway. -- Randall00 20:23, February 15, 2007 (GMT)

I certainly think so. I don't think an article of the week has to be a particularly good one, perhaps we can use such a feature to encourage a week's worth of activity to an article that desperately needs the thought. AOTW could be used more as an improvement drive than a quality showcase. I think the first such article should be one of the main game modes to the original Super Smash Bros to start with. Erik the Appreciator 04:53, February 16, 2007 (GMT)

I agree about the improvement drive idea. I guess AotW is already for quality articles, but I think it's important that we include a few links to some articles that are in some real need of expansion and that we think casual users can contribute to if they come across it. --Kirby King 19:08, February 18, 2007 (GMT)

I kinda like that I put heal instead of edit, records instead of history and so on ^_^ – Smiddle ( Talk • Conts ) 19:36, February 18, 2007 (GMT)

That will require tweaking the help articles to say "heal" instead of "edit," but I can do that. – MaskedMarth ^{(t c)} 22:52, February 18, 2007 (GMT)

Uhh...heal? -- Randall00 05:58, February 19, 2007 (GMT)

Alt's idea. I was trying it out. I think I'm changing it back though. "Records" is clear, but "heal" isn't. – MaskedMarth ^{(t c)} 16:27, February 19, 2007 (GMT)

I'm not honestly sold on the "records" idea. I'd rather keep things nice and clear, because if I didn't know that there's supposed to be a history tab there I don't think I'd get that that's what "records" is supposed to be. (Plus the tie-in to SSB seems pretty shaky to me.) --Kirby King 04:47, February 20, 2007 (GMT)

"Records" does not make sense to me at all. I think almost anyone would expect to see high scores when they click on it. And per se Andy 14:31, February 22, 2007 (GMT)

"History" makes sense, there's a reason it's the default. Besides, there's certainly more important things to be worrying about on SmashWiki than distinguishing ourselves from other wikis with unorthodox names. -- Randall00 15:14, February 22, 2007 (GMT)

I changed it back. – MaskedMarth ^{(t c)} 15:21, February 22, 2007 (GMT)

"Records" also make sense. When we don't can find anything to worry about, the only thing to do is distinguishing ourselves from other wikis with unorthodox names. We want to be original, it's better to see some new stuff, than "Oh! A link saying 'history'! That's really original" and "The 'edit' button really surprised me". – Smiddle ( Talk • Conts ) 15:35, February 22, 2007 (GMT)

I'm not that concerned with distinguishing ourselves, really. How many other Smash Bros. wikis are out there? Even then it's much more important to me that we remain easy to use and edit, and changing all the labels around startled me, and I'm a sysop on this thing. (As a side note, when I see other wikis that play around with those labels, I think it's corny. It's putting form over function, at least to the extent to which a button's label can do such a thing.) --Kirby King 16:03, February 22, 2007 (GMT)

About the DYK: I think anything we put there must (a) be totally true, and not something that we can't actually verify like "Koopa was supposed to be in SSB64 but was cut due to time constraints," and (b) is actually mentioned in the associated articles. Right now, the fact about Mario's Wario costume is entirely true, but strangely enough the costume isn't mentioned on either Mario's page or Wario's. Seems to me if it's not worthy for inclusion on those pages, it's way too trivial to be Main Page material. --Kirby King 04:52, February 20, 2007 (GMT)

Maybe. I have an idea here speaking about the DYK. – Smiddle ( Talk • Conts ) 07:56, February 20, 2007 (GMT)

Page Layout

As we add things to the main page, I'm afraid that we're gravitating toward a layout that's a bit too Wikipedia-like. Does anyone want to try their hand at coming up with a design that seems a little less influenced directly by the English Wikipedia's Main Page? --Kirby King 04:49, February 20, 2007 (GMT)

What's so wrong about that? When I think at Wikipedia, I associate encyclopedia, facts, etc. So if the main page looks like Wikipedia's, then... – Smiddle ( Talk • Conts ) 07:51, February 20, 2007 (GMT)