Wiktionary talk:Main Page/2009 redesign

For earlier discussions, see /Part 1 and /Part 2.

Tweaks to enact and other things to work out

Tweaks I need to apply

• Restore original font size for Whatever-otd's done
• Align everything on the left-hand side done
• Recolor the "Wiktionary in other languages" box done
• Re-do the language indexes box (that's Mzajac, actually, but see below re: human vs. computer indexes) done
  • Merged the two listings. The current list of indexes could probably stand to be improved, though.

Other things that would/might need to be done

• Decide ASAP whether we want to use the design proposed by user:213.163.65.33 current proposal seems better
• Once icons are selected, we should ask at commons for them to be remade in the same hues.
  • Will do this ASAP, though it is not necessarily a major requirement. I've tweaked/shuffled several of them. Any comments?
• Figure out the names for the third feature
• Are we keeping that weird licensing link or not?

Circeus 10:40, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Icons and "Indexes" section

Icon changes

• Foreign word speech bubble taken from a Wikinews icon. Small changes (i.e. getting rid of the small background) can be easily enacted when I do the request for color harmonization.
• Book icon moved to "indexes" section, as it is much more representative of what these pages are about.
• "Globe" icon switched down to foreign languages wiktionary links and swapped for the translation of the week icon

Indexes section

It came upon me that this section is poorly named, and does not accurately reflect its contents, and is confusing because of the section below it. A new title might be appropriate. Circeus 11:07, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Third feature

Although I really like the idea of a day-based scheme along the lines proposed by DAVilla (talk • contribs), I very much dislike the introduction of the days in the header. I feel like it would deprive us of flexibility and it seems just distracting, so I'd like some further discussion about that. Circeus 11:07, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Can we display this on the main page soon?

I'm itching to see this new page here. Of course, we'll need to sort out the WOTD, interesting stuff, and the Word du Jour bits first, but it looks better than the old one. --Jackofclubs 01:01, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Y.know, because of the way conversation had died, I had forgotten about this. I'm going to smooth out the kinks outlines above and try to reignite the discussion soon. Circeus 09:42, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

The biggest concern I have is that it's not clear to me how the new page will acquire each day's WOTD information. Will there be (another) template revision? Will a bot or code parse the contents of the appropriate day's template? I'd feel better if I knew. --EncycloPetey 13:03, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Well, I did say earlier that the templates would have to be reworked. Basically, in this layout, all the pages using it (that means primarily the archive pages) would need to be redone. However, I can see an alternate option. Basically we could use (I'm fairly sure it possible) the #titleparts: ParserFunction to check whether the transcluding page is the Main Page or not. If it is, then transclude only the relevant part of each of the three templates, if not, translate a boxed version of only that daily feature. Other options are replacing the template wholesale and fixing transclusion (primarily the archive pages) with a bot, and splitting the template into two to remove the calling of a partial table formatting. Circeus 17:13, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Requested entries - new feature

This could be a new feature on the main page and I just wanted to mention it here in case someone is interested in coding it. The idea is to have a simple mechanism to request a new entry and it could be similar to the accelerated translation code that Conrad created. A drop-down could be used for language selection (listed with their actual names and not their language codes), and a text entry field is needed where a new word can be requested. The code could check if the entry already exists, if not, it would add it to the Wiktionary:Requested entries:<Language name> page. There are many questions: How should multiple entries be requested and handled, should the length of the text field be limited to prevent vandalism; should the entries be monitored and impossible requests deleted from the appropriate language pages; would this increase the amount of patrolling, etc. --Panda10 22:35, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

I like the idea. --Vahagn Petrosyan 22:52, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

The structure might make some patrolling more automatable. I'm not sure that it should be on the main page as opposed to one or two clicks away. DCDuring TALK 22:58, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

There's only so much that can be included directly and usefully on the main page, but there is room for one or two small "see also" small links, where this could be included. Mind you, the Wiktionary:Things to do link is very similar. Circeus 21:56, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

You're right. Another option could be this page: Wiktionary:Requested entries. Thanks. --Panda10 23:28, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

I know about Wiktionary:Requested entries. It just seems mildly redundant with Wiktionary:Things to do, where it is the first suggested place. I'm sure it wouldn't be difficult to find other pages that would be mor interesting to link. Circeus 00:55, 21 June 2009 (UTC)

Inclusion of wiktionaries with just over a 100 entries

The "Wiktionaries in other languages" takes up quite a bit of space on the main page (both proposed and current). What if we were to remove the list of 100+ entries? I don't think they're very useful links. Also, we only include sidebar links for those > 1k, so limiting it to the same amount on central part of the page would seem natural. Why would we want a Basque wikt link in the central part but not the sidebar?. Here a comparison of the lower limits of the other "large" Wiktionaries:

• 100k: fi
• (20k: English Wikipedia)
• 100: zh, it, hu (though not too organized)
• no listing at all at the bottom: fr, el, io, lt, pl, ru, vi, tr

--Bequw → ¢ • τ 19:20, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

See earlier discussion at Wiktionary_talk:Main_Page/2009_redesign/Part_2#Trimming_down_the_supplementary_bits. In my opinion, any cut-off is arbitrary, and any-sized list should serve as a gateway to all Wiktionaries by linking to the full list. And there's no reason at all to have each name appear in two languages.

So our home-page list needn't take a full screen of vertical space. But it's not the end of the world if it does. —Michael Z. 2009-06-20 20:43 z

I'm not entirely against an English-only policy, but I'm not sure it is so easy to enforce. Maybe we can (should?) debate it separately from the broader question of the design? Circeus 21:59, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

Questions

I am really confused as to what's going on with the redesign. If anyone could answer these questions it would be much appreciated.

1. This hasn't been edited in months. What are people waiting for? Did the redesign discussion just die, or was there some decision that the redesign wasn't a good idea?
2. Assuming that the redesign is going to happen, is there really not going to be the number of entries on the front page with a link to Special:Statistics?
3. About Word du jour and About Interesting Stuff are broken links. Has nothing been set up outlining what they are or are they just outlined on some discussion page somewhere or were they just sort of basic ideas without much depth yet?
4. What's with the "from Eastern Europe" thing? Does that mean that all Word du jours will be from Eastern European languages?

Thanks in advance. --Yair rand 12:26, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

1. As far as I can tell, indeed the redesign enthusiasm seems to have died out. In part, I suspect, because people don't want to go through the hassle of setting up the addition daily features (which I can understand to a certain degree).
2. I fail to see the usefulness of such a link except for the stats wonk and similar ilk (not to mention the page is particularly not very useful on wikt:). plus it took highly value vertical-space real estate (one of my major reason to redesign was to increase the prominence of links that go to actual content)
3. That's normal, since they were, and still are limbo proposals. There was no reason to start the pages until it was agreed to actually have the processes be used.
4. I believe at that point the idea was that each word du jour would be ascribed to a world region (maybe on a weekly cycle, like the one that was at some point discussed for "interesting stuff"). From a design standpoint, it comes from a need to have smaller-sized text next to the large-size "Word du Jour" without just pointlessly repeating "for April 1".

Do feel free to resurrect the discussion. My opinion that the Wiktionary MP is not very effective has not changed! Circeus 14:59, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

Wiktionary:Interesting stuff/Nominations

As it seems the Interesting stuff feature is going to be implemented on the main page, I started a nominations page for it. The page has no descriptions of the "Interesting stuff" features, as I really don't know what they were going to be (hopefully someone who does know can add descriptions). As it is, I don't think that the Interesting stuff or Word du jour features should really be started until they are properly explained and there is at least a month or two's worth of nominations. (Another thing that needs to be done unrelated to this is rewriting the Wiktionary:Tutorial if the words you can edit are going to link to it)--Yair rand 01:02, 18 October 2009 (UTC)

Okay, I added descriptions to those that I could figure out what they were. The other three I can't understand exactly what they're supposed to be, but they look like they would be very difficult to keep up. Also, I think a good replacement for "from Eastern Europe" if we're not going to do the alternating parts of the world thing, would be the language that the Word du Jour is in. --Yair rand 00:27, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

Note: Circeus has added descriptions to the last three. --Yair rand 00:28, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

This claims to be English language Wiktionary, and Multi-lingual. Confused?

The opening paragraph says

"Welcome to the English-language Wiktionary, a collaborative project to produce a free-content multilingual dictionary."

Well, my understanding is that ALL the Wiktionaries are working toether to produce a free-content multi-lingual dictionary ?

So what makes this edition different to the others. The difference is that this one "has the explanations in English". Somehow we need to put that in there up front.

My suggestion is "Welcome to Wiktionary, a collaborative project to produce a free-content multilingual dictionary. This edition uses English for all the explanations",

Now, no doubt someone could phrase that more eloquently. But my point is that it needs saying up front. For quite some time I did not appreciate what the different lnaguage versions of a MULTI-LINGUAL dictionary were for. Now of course, it's obvious to me.But let's make it obvious to newbies to. --Richardb 05:49, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

I do not see that sentence in the redesign. It is my understanding that the welcome paragraph is to be removed following implementation of the redesign. Are you suggesting that the paragraph, or some version of it, be kept? --Yair rand 06:10, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

Where are we supposed to see what the redesign looks like ? As someone else said here, to paraphrase, what the heck is going on? What I am requesting is, simply, that some part of the redesigned front page address this issue. Period.--Richardb 12:12, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

Click on the "Project page" link at the top of this page to see the current redesign. There's no intro paragraph. What exactly would you like to add, and where? --Bequw → ¢ • τ 15:39, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

I do agree that some line would be good. How about changing the header to read:

the free English dictionary of

all languages that you can edit

--Bequw → τ 14:46, 5 March 2010 (UTC)

"The word out"

This feature seems not to be part of the regular rotation according to Wiktionary:Main Page/interesting. I'm actually in favor of not having that feature as it sounds impossible to do regularly, but strangely, it still seems to be part of the rotation in Wiktionary:Main Page/2009 redesign/interesting. Anyone know why? --Yair rand 19:20, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

Wiktionary:Newly discovered

Does anyone know what this is? This seems to have the same name as one of the new main page features. Could the neologisms on that page be used here? --Yair rand 06:06, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

This was the nomination page set up for that proposed feature. --EncycloPetey 23:59, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

Proposed changes

To try to lighten the added work that will come as a result of implementing the redesign, I propose the following changes:

1. Word du Jour does not require audio.
2. "The word out" and "Funny quote" features are eliminated.
3. "Newly discovered" is moved from Wednesday to Saturday, so that it, "Literary progenitor", and "If words could talk" are each only once every three weeks. "On equal terms" is then moved to Wednesday to fill the space.
4. Word du Jour words do not necessarily have to be "interesting" in some way. The fact that it's a foreign word in and of itself makes the word interesting. This means that if no better words can be found, we can search random words until finding something that is correctly formatted, isn't a Tbot entry, and has pronunciation information.

Hopefully, these could lower the added work to a workable amount. --Yair rand 06:36, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

My suggestion would be to only have one other feature on the page and not prescribe on which day it is what, then all we need is someone to create the first few months worth, and we'll be away. This design is a clear improvement on the 2007 version, so once we have enough features (set up like WT:WOTD), we can go for it. (yes, it seems like a lot, but we'll need a new months worth every month, which requires someone dedicated). Just because a word is foreign does not make it interesting. Conrad.Irwin 00:13, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

Let me rephrase that: just because a foreign word is not particularly interesting doesn't mean it can't be on the main page. I don't really understand what you mean by having one other feature on the page and not prescribing on which day it is what. Could you clarify a bit more? --Yair rand 00:31, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

Okay, how about this: Saturdays and Sundays are just whatever's available from "Literary progenitor", "If words could talk", "The word out", "Newly discovered", "Funny quote" and "For your eyes only" with no specific order. The other features are basically standard rotations, except when we don't have one available, in which case we can take one of the other features. What we could do for "In tongues" is semi-revive a version of "Translation of the Week" in which each week we have one word to translate into six languages, which is then featured on the main page each Monday. --Yair rand 07:59, 27 December 2009 (UTC)

Here's another possibility: Saturday, Sunday and Monday take from "Literary progenitor", "If words could talk", "The word out", "Newly discovered", "Funny quote" and "For your eyes only", "In tongues" is eliminated, "If interest" appendices and glossaries are featured Tuesdays, "On equal terms" (Wikisaurus entries) on Wednesday, "Rhymes with chimes" Thursdays, and "Friday's foreign phrase" on Fridays. At the moment, we have about two months worth of nominations for these, and 21 23 26 nominations for Word du Jour. --Yair rand 04:34, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

We could also include foreign words that are useful in Word du Jour (but not phrasebook entries as those would go in "Friday's foreign phrase") and particularly well-done entries, as has been done a few times in Word of the Day. --Yair rand 23:46, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

small change

Why include a link to abbreviations? We don't include links to Category:Symbols by language or any other L3 header. Let's remove it. --Bequw → τ 14:29, 5 March 2010 (UTC)

Hm, maybe it should be replaced by a link to WT:Idioms or Category:Idioms? Or maybe stuff about given names and surname? Or something else that WT has that ordinarily wouldn't be assumed to be in a dictionary? There are quite a few things that could go in that section... --Yair rand 03:04, 7 March 2010 (UTC)

I've replaced "Abbreviations" with "Names", linking to Category:Names by language. --Yair rand 17:27, 29 March 2010 (UTC)

Vote

The vote on whether to use the redesign has begun. --Yair rand 19:07, 11 April 2010 (UTC)

You are completely right about my vote :) if you want, sometimes I am on IRC, we could discuss it. Thanks Yair :) Pharamp 20:50, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

too many other wikts

I think the "Wiktionaries in other languages" section is too big (vertically). Perhaps only listthe ones with 10,000+ entries? Or even 100,000? Or perhaps use a smaller font? Or only list their English names? Or some combination of these? Just a thought.​—msh210℠ 18:59, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

Yes, please. There's already a link to All Wiktionaries, so we there's no reason to subject a new visitor to this great stew of text. And why include each link in two languages? – Is there evidence that throngs of Kazakh readers come to this URL looking for the Kazakh Wiktionary? —Michael Z. 2010-05-14 21:45 z

I'd support removing all below 10,000+ and removing the English names. (I should point out, though, that this redesign isn't going anywhere if nobody volunteers for the new features...) --Yair rand 21:57, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

Why would we remove English names from the English Wiktionary's home page? Is there evidence that foreign readers who can't recognize the English name of their language are ending up on our home page looking for foreign-language Wiktionaries? What do you think is the purpose of this huge block on our home page? Maybe we should remove it altogether. —Michael Z. 2010-05-14 22:08 z

Looks much neater without the translations, which serve no purpose except to show off our mad translation skillz. Some visual clutter can be removed without readability suffering at all, too. —Michael Z. 2010-05-14 22:08 z

Hm, maybe we should get rid of it altogether. Specifically saying the amount of entries doesn't actually seem like a good idea, maybe they should just be in one big box? --Yair rand 22:21, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

Also, foreign-language links appear in the Main Page's sidebar, so they truly are redundant in this box. —Michael Z. 2010-05-15 05:14 z

Wiktionaries in other languages

This is the English Wiktionary: it aims to describe all words of all languages using definitions and descriptions in English. For example, see dictionnaire (a French word). In order to find a French definition of that word, you would visit the equivalent page in the French Wiktionary. For more information, see our Multilingual coordination page and Multilingual statistics.

100,000+ entries  Finnish · French · German · Greek · Hungarian · Ido · Italian · Lithuanian · Mandarin Chinese · Norwegian · Polish · Portuguese · Russian · Swedish · Tamil · Turkish · Vietnamese

10,000+ entries  Afrikaans · Arabic · Breton · Bulgarian · Catalan · Czech · Dutch · Estonian · West Frisian · Galician · Icelandic · Indonesian · Japanese · Kannada · Korean · Kurdish · Hebrew · Lao · Limburgish · Malayalam · Occitan · Persian · Romanian · Serbian · Sicilian · Simple English · Spanish · Telugu · Thai · Ukrainian · Volapük

1,000+ entries  Albanian · Armenian · Asturian · Azeri · Corsican · Croatian · Welsh · Danish · Esperanto · Georgian · Greenlandic · Guaraní · Hindi · Interlingua · Irish · Kashubian · Kazakh · Kyrgyz · Latin · Latvian · Malay · Min Nan · Nepali · Old English · Low Saxon · Slovak · Slovene · Upper Sorbian · Southern Sotho · Swahili · Tatar · Turkmen · Urdu

100+ entries  Amharic · Aragonese · Aromanian · Basque · Belarusian · Bengali · Bosnian · Burmese · Cambodian · Cherokee · Cornish · Divehi · Faroese · Gujarati · Interlingue · Inuktitut · Kinyarwanda · Macedonian · Malagasy · Maltese · Manx · Marathi · Mongolian · Nahuatl · Norwegian · Oromo · Panjabi · Quechua · Sängö · Scottish Gaelic · Serbo-Croatian · Sindhi · Sinhalese · Sundanese · Tagalog · Tajik · Tigrinya · Tok Pisin · Tsonga · Uyghur · Walloon · Wolof · Yiddish · Zulu

All Wiktionaries⇒

Wiktionaries in other languages

This is the English Wiktionary: it aims to describe all words of all languages using definitions and descriptions in English. For example, see dictionnaire (a French word). In order to find a French definition of that word, you would visit the equivalent page in the French Wiktionary. For more information, see our Multilingual coordination page and Multilingual statistics.

Afrikaans · Albanian · Arabic · Armenian · Asturian · Azeri · Breton · Bulgarian · Catalan · Corsican · Croatian · Czech · Danish · Dutch · Esperanto · Estonian · Finnish · French · Galician · Georgian · German · Greek · Greenlandic · Guaraní · Hebrew · Hindi · Hungarian · Icelandic · Ido · Indonesian · Interlingua · Irish · Italian · Japanese · Kannada · Kashubian · Kazakh · Kurdish · Korean · Kyrgyz · Lao · Latin · Latvian · Limburgish · Lithuanian · Low Saxon · Malay · Malayalam · Mandarin Chinese · Min Nan · Nepali · Norwegian · Occitan · Old English · Persian · Polish · Portuguese · Romanian · Russian · Serbian · Sicilian · Simple English · Slovak · Slovene · Upper Sorbian · Southern Sotho · Spanish · Swahili · Swedish · Tamil · Tatar · Telugu · Thai · Turkish · Turkmen · Ukrainian · Urdu · Vietnamese · Volapük · Welsh · West Frisian

All Wiktionaries⇒