Talk:Main Page

For discussing a specific main page, please see Short view (archive), or Expanded view

---

Expanded main page up front

Suggestions have been recently (and in the past) made to make the Expanded Main Page the default welcome page. I've updated the expanded page with some of the more recent additions, and made a copy of the current main page at Categorized Main Page. Most of the reasons can be found here. Opinions and comments wanted, since this is the main page three votes will not really suffice. - Combuster 19:40, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

• Pro - I voiced my reasons in the linked thread already. -- Solar 09:36, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

• Yea - I find myself getting annoyed when I have to click through to the expanded page to find the information I'm looking for. The generic main page wasn't really useful at all. --Lithorien 10:48, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

• Agreed - The short view is good, but the referenced pages show too little of what the entire wiki has to offer. I vote for the expanded main page.--Creature 14:28, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

• Sure - Why not, there is no sense hiding anything. --Brynet-Inc 18:16, 28 April 2010 (UTC)

• Yes - It's been ages after I came to this site until I noticed there was an expanded main page.--Love4boobies 21:02, 28 April 2010 (UTC)

"Thee votes will not really suffice" - well, we got five. ;-) Do we pick up the discussion again (seing how the linked thread derailed and was closed), or do we consider this 5-to-null vote to be sufficient? (I'm itching to get working on the Wiki, and this *is* the starting point.) -- Solar 08:19, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

Well it's not unanimous but 5 vs 1 (see heading below), but that is still about as much as you'd normally see on a wiki vote. Will perform the update later today when I've ran out of appointments ;) - Combuster 12:50, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

And... updated - Combuster 16:35, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

It's a bit annoying that it shows "(Redirected from Main Page)" - I couldn't see a "move" link. Perhaps making a copy called Main_page and deleting this one will do the trick? --Love4boobies 19:40, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

The main pages have the protect flag on to prevent erroneous edits (edit the templates instead). - Combuster 08:51, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

More info needed

The main reason I like the short form is that it's short. I'm just looking for an entrypoint to the wiki, and I don't need 3 screenfuls of info. On the other hand, the short page AFAIK is entirely formatted via a template. I have no idea how to even edit that template. So (at least the last time I thought about doing it) the short main page is basically uneditable to the uninitiated. Which is probably one reason why it is not rationally organized, and does not really represent what's in the wiki, currently. Especially the OS Theory block.
In some sense, it's a good thing to discourage tinkering at the topmost level of the wiki by novices. But it makes the main page severely out of date.
So the main question in my mind is -- is the expanded view any better? Is it still a template and not a normal page? And since it's so expanded, why not have a "Categories" section in it, that gives direct access to the Category system, and thus incorporates the functionality of the short view? Bewing 14:26, 28 April 2010 (UTC)

The many "more..." links cover the category tree very well. It is still based around templates for redundancy reasons. You can find the relevant templates much easier than for the current main page, as they're all named as Template:Main2/(...) (If you have the name, you can find the category templates for the current main page). I can try to categorize the main page templates for easier locating if that's what you want. - Combuster 18:51, 28 April 2010 (UTC)