The Proposal: Documentation

What's Going on Here?

Look farther down on this page, you see the code for the Portal page (with many transclusions). So you're thinking, "this is going to be confusing to new editors." Absolutely not. The good thing about the portal is that experienced users, if they want, can take the load off the new users by creating subpages in advance. For example, I created User:Joturner/Current Events Portal Redesign/July 2, 2006 by just going to the new page and typing {{subst:User:Joturner/Current Events Portal Redesign/DateHeader|2006|07|02}} (obviously this would change to Portal:Current events if this proposal were implemented). The border, date, day of the week, and edit link are all added automatically. So essentially, more experienced editors, if they want, can create future date pages ahead of time so new editors won't have to deal with that. All the new editors have to do is add one line, {{Portal:Current events/July 2, 2006}}, and it shows up on the page. To achieve the effect of having all the daily current events on the left side and the sidebars on the right, a table was used instead of the simple floating infobox style.

This same kind of technique (transclusion and all) can also be used for the other current event portal pages.

So Why the Transclusions?

Well, it helps make the page less cluttered. However, the main goal of the transcluding is to make other jobs easier. Archivals in the portal space would be easier than before because it isn't being done all at one time (see The Calendar) and also because the events could be simultaneously updated on the entrance to the portal as well as on the monthly subpages. In addition, the events could be in reverse chronological order on the entrance to the portal but forward chronological order on the subpages.

The Calendar

This could still be up for discussion, but the proposal is set up so the past seven days are the only days that remain at the front of the portal (under the old system June 30 events were not current events on July 1, but June 1 events were current events on June 30). So the calendar on the right would only link to the seven days on the portal homepage (this will need manual updating like in the original) and sometimes show the previous few days at the beginning of the month (like in this mockup).

A Downside?

Well, if we're still going to maintain the monthly archives in the article space, we'd have a huge problem because obviously we cannot have all this formatting in the article space. However, if we were to maintain the monthly archives on the Portal and just redirect the future monthly articles to their respective years, this would not be a problem. In my personal opinion, I like this idea because right now those month articles don't really say anything about the months (like articles). Instead, they are just the places we dump the old current events pages (like an archive, which is not what the article space should be used for).

The Code and Subpages

The code for this proposal of the portal page is very short because it includes many transclusions:

{{User:Joturner/Current Events Portal Redesign/Newsbrowsebar}}
{{User:Joturner/Current Events Portal Redesign/Highlights}}
{| style="background-color:transparent"
|valign="top"|
<!--
To add a new date, add the new day's template below (e.g. 
{{Portal:Current events/July 21, 2006}}) and remove the 
oldest date from the bottom, so only seven days remain on 
the portal page. Do NOT use leading zeros (i.e. use July 1, 
2006, not July 01, 2006).

If after saving the page a red-link shows up with the new 
date, click the link and enter something like...

{{subst:Portal:Current events/DateHeader|2006|07|21}}
|}

...where the first number is the year, the second number is
that of the month, and the third number is that of the date 
of the new day. The closing |} is very important.
-->
{{User:Joturner/Current Events Portal Redesign/July 1, 2006}}
{{User:Joturner/Current Events Portal Redesign/June 30, 2006}}
{{User:Joturner/Current Events Portal Redesign/June 29, 2006}}
{{User:Joturner/Current Events Portal Redesign/June 28, 2006}}
{{User:Joturner/Current Events Portal Redesign/June 27, 2006}}
{{User:Joturner/Current Events Portal Redesign/June 26, 2006}}
{{User:Joturner/Current Events Portal Redesign/June 25, 2006}}
{{User:Joturner/Current Events Portal Redesign/More events}}
|valign="top"|
{{User:Joturner/Current Events Portal Redesign/Current events}}
|}
{{User:Joturner/Current Events Portal Redesign/Events by month}}

[[Category:2006|*]]
[[Category:Portals under construction|Current events]]

<!--*** Foreign language links removed ***-->

/Newsbrowsebar

This includes the same "broswe bar" tables from the current Portal:Current events with the dark grey removed and a light blue added. The top table is now also 100% of the screen width.

/Highlights

This includes the same highlight table from the current Portal:Current events with the dark grey removed and a light blue added. The message regarding the Highlights / Main Page candidates are also included in this part and the two external links are also here as well. Note that the Adding a Date link will link to a piece on how to add a new date to the portal (although it's also in the comments on the entrance to the portal page).

/July 1, 2006, et, al.

These are the daily events transcluded onto the entrance to the portal. They could also be transcluded into monthly pages / archivals. Obviously, major changes were made to this part.

/More events

This contains the link to More June 2006 events.... I decided to make this a transclusion just because so many other things were transcluded.

/Current events

This is essentially the same as the original right sidebar, with some removals. Events was moved up because I felt they were more important than Recent Deaths. Some of the links, like the Wikinews, About This Page, and Wikimedia Commons links were moved to other parts of the page.

/Events by month

Nothing drastic was done to this section. The commas and colons were replaced with pipes and bullets, respectively, and the full months were cut down to three-letter abbreviations due to word-wrapping of the full month names in some resolutions.

Other Pages

/DateHeader

This is used when added a new date (it is subst:). It adds the help comments and includes /DateHeader2.

/DateHeader2

This contains the table frame and the

tag that goes with the calendar links. It prints the date and its day of the week.

/Current events box

Like with the original, this contains the calendar part of the /Current events transclusion.

So that's about it. Discussion, feedback, and suggestions on the proposal would be appreciated in the appropriate section below. Forgive my poor grammar if it exists in this post; it's getting quite late for me. joturn e r 05:59, 1 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Straw Polls

Just to get an idea of what's going on...

Overall Impression

Support Redesign

joturn e r 12:18, 3 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
—Nightstallion (?) 12:22, 4 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
-- ^Evanx(tag?) 13:06, 5 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
the wub "?!" 22:38, 5 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
NCurse_work 05:59, 6 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
LC@RSDATA 06:41, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
Batmanand | Talk 09:29, 6 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
--Jpkoester1 09:42, 6 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose Redesign

- I dont think that the light blue and grey go well.
- The third box with details about sisterprojects could be smaller
- I like the fact the the news is enclosed in a box by date, but there is too much white space in the second column
- The template currently used for List of Events by Month is more visually appealing imo.
Nice job, and I'll be happy to support if the above is addressed. --Osbus 23:29, 5 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Time of Archival

Daily Archives

This is the method displayed on this purpose whereby only a certain number of days (in this case, seven) are displayed on the main portal page and rest are on their respective monthly pages.

Monthly Archives

This is the current method on Portal:Current events and the former Current events. All the events for the month are kept on the main portal page until the end of the month when all of the months events are moved to another article (with the chronological order changed from forward to backward). The main portal page is cleared for the next month.

Location of Archival

Article Space

As currently: June 2006, May 2006, etc.

Batmanand | Talk 09:31, 6 July 2006 (UTC). They will, in the future, need to be wikified, but the material in them is encyclopaedic.[reply]

Portal Space

As such: Portal:Current events/July 2006, Portal:Current events/August 2006. etc.

Both

The full archives would be kept in portal space, but a shorter summary of the month should go into the article space.

joturn e r 01:09, 3 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Comment: It would be hard to maintain such a system (especially sicne this resembles double book-keeping). -- ^Evanx(tag?) 13:08, 5 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Method of Section Editing

Normal Section Editing

This method employs the use of section headers, like on most of Wikipedia (see this talk page here and the alternate design. Little formatting can be done.

Table Section Editing

This method employs the use of tables for each section, as in this proposal. Formatting possibilities are limitless.

joturn e r 01:09, 3 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
-- ^Evanx(tag?) 13:08, 5 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
the wub "?!" 22:38, 5 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Batmanand | Talk 09:32, 6 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

No Section Editing

This is how the current portal looks.

Your Straw Poll Here

Add a new straw poll at your leisure. joturn e r 01:09, 3 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion

Normal Section Editing

I love to see an option for normal section editing. Events by monts template should be widened as in original version though. -- tasc ^words_deeds 10:36, 1 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I've checked if you just take it out of the table it would work. Cheers. -- tasc ^words_deeds 10:38, 1 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Here's a version without the daily transclusions (but with this one, the entire month would have to be shown and monthly archivals would have to be done). I didn't get the change to widen the events by month template in this version; perhaps I'll do it a bit later. joturn e r 13:07, 1 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Well you're just taking template events be month out of table. and using current template - not the one you've created. Do you want me to show you? 2nd version is closer to what we have now. -- tasc ^words_deeds 13:28, 1 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Sure go ahead. You can put it in my userspace if you want (or yours). joturn e r 13:29, 1 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I made a change to the alternate version. joturn e r 13:32, 1 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, it's very close. I've added correction to the alternative version. The same I've proposed to your original variant (not an alternative one). -- tasc ^words_deeds 13:37, 1 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I see. Note also that "normal" section editing would only work properly if the daily events were in a table like on the alternate version. Wrapping the text around the sidebar, as you may remember, prevents that effect from showing up. joturn e r 13:41, 1 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I don't object to a table. Only thing what I was saying is that events by month template could be taken out of it. Cheers. Good job. -- tasc ^words_deeds 15:00, 1 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I incorporated the change regarding the month links into the main proposal. joturn e r 17:02, 1 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Looks perfect to me. Thumbs up! :) —Nightstallion (?) 23:08, 1 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Well done on the redesign. It is much more userfriendly. Hopefully, it will be much more userfriendly. Capitalistroadster 23:23, 1 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Archivals

Big question: should archivals stay on the article namespace (i.e. June 2006, May 2006, etc.) or should we keep all future monthly archivals in the portal namespace (i.e. Portal:Current events/July 2006, Portal:Current events/August 2006, etc.)? Regarding the issue, I stated (in the Documentation above):

Well, if we're still going to maintain the monthly archives in the article space, we'd have a huge problem because obviously we cannot have all this formatting in the article space. However, if we were to maintain the monthly archives on the Portal and just redirect the future monthly articles to their respective years, this would not be a problem. In my personal opinion, I like this idea because right now those month articles don't really say anything about the months (like articles). Instead, they are just the places we dump the old current events pages (like an archive, which is not what the article space should be used for).

However, Kayaker on the portal talk page stated:

Your idea about putting monthly archives like June 2006 under Portal:Current events (i.e. Portal:Current events/June 2006) is an interesting one that didn't come up earlier. Davodd (talk · contribs) envisioned a yearly portal e.g. Portal:2006 in a comment posted at Wikipedia:Portal/Proposals#Portal:Current events. It was and I think still is my thought that we need articles for each month and year in the article namespace for both a theoretical and a practical reason. The theory would be that a given month like May 2005 or year (e.g. 1066) is as much of an encyclopedia subject as anything else in article namespace. The practical reason for leaving them in article namespace is that there are lots and lots of links in article namespace to those months and years, so you'd have a greater and greater dependency on redirects if the current event archives are kept under Portal:Current events. Kayaker 05:59, 1 July 2006 (UTC).[reply]

So what does everyone else thing we should do? Archive in the article/main space or archive in the portal space? joturn e r 23:24, 1 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Also as a third option: I have nothing against keeping the years. 2006 looks like an article; June 2006 looks like an archive. Of course, we can always have both. For instance, we could make the June 2006 article more brief and more article-like like 2006 (see July 2006) and then link to the portal and its monthly archives. joturn e r 23:28, 1 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

A variation on your third option is to add a highlights section to the archive, explicitly sourced from the list of archived events but written as a narrative. Unlike a lot of new articles, an encyclopedic article about a month comes built in with reputable sources via the archive. If the mundane part of the current event archival process were to be improved that would free time that at least in theory could be spent on collaborating on a highlights section.--Kayaker 00:35, 2 July 2006 (UTC).[reply]

Series of incremental improvements

I like a lot of what I see in the new mockups, the code behind those mockups, and the processes implied by them. Before I start responding to specifics though, I'd would find it useful to understand what the priorities are. I think its much easier to arrive at a rough consensus if

the problem being solved or the requirement being addressed is identified
if the problems are numerous enough, a series of changes are proposed and adopted in a series of steps rather than as part of a big bang.

If I'm in the minority about this, I'll muddle my way through somehow, but I would like to see User:Joturner pick one or two changes included the proposals and let us focus on those first. Perhaps there's one easy one and one important-to-do-even-if-it-isn't-easy, or whatever.

Personally, I'm tempted to choose an improved archival process as the next priority. After doing the one for June 2006, I ended up with a list of five or six problems that need solving either in terms of improved documentation or changes to the way that the currents events portal is structured and maintained. The new proposals include changes in this area, so I guess I'm not alone in this.

Thanks--Kayaker 00:19, 2 July 2006 (UTC).[reply]

Overall Asthetics

The switch to a portal allows us to make a page more aesthetically pleasing. What falls under aesthetically pleasing varies from person to person, but I hope the introduction of a bit more color accomplished that task. joturn e r 02:44, 2 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I don't like pastel boxes so I disapprove of how every crazy little heading in this version is a pastel box. Ashibaka tock 06:12, 2 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

You have a mix of colors for the title bars of the various sections (highlights, day sections, events, events-by-month links, etc.) I'd be tempted to have a default color, probably gray, used for each title bar, and then let readers have more varied color via user styles.

I have two comments on the bottom box of User:Joturner/Current Events Portal Redesign/Highlights, the one with the Wikinews link:

It de-emphasizes Wikinews too much. Wikinews should have a lot of prominence on whatever aesthetic update we end up with; reducing it to the same size of screen real estate that Commons:Current events has provides the illusion that the latter is as actively updated as Wikinews.
All of the stuff in that box to the left of the two sister project icons is given a prominence over actual event links that IMHO isn't deserved. For the "To suggest a news story for the Highlights section" blurb, perhaps a link somewhere in the Highlights title bar would suffice :e.g. Highlights (suggest a news item) . I'd find an infobox-like side location for the "News about Wikipedia • About this Page • Adding a New Date" items.

Thanks--Kayaker 07:36, 2 July 2006 (UTC).[reply]

Also wanted to mention I liked your suggestion for having only a week or two of current events on the main portal page, with a "more July 2006" link. Kayaker 07:40, 2 July 2006 (UTC).[reply]

I made some changes to the Highlights section. joturn e r 20:11, 2 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Regarding the color scheme, mentioned by both Kayaker and Ashibaka, I'd like to point out that most portals (see Portal:India and Portal:War, both featured portals) have color schemes without the use of user styles. And yes, they have the pastel styles too. So the coloring here is actually quite tame. joturn e r 23:50, 2 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Improved Archival Process

The transclusions allow the archivals to be made easier, by allows the chronological order of the events to made much easier. However, none of other issues addressed in Kayaker's list of archival problems. joturn e r 02:44, 2 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

In addition, the archival would be faster because it would be done on a daily basis (moving the oldest date to the archive page) instead of on a monthly basis. At the end of the month, little additional work will need to be done. joturn e r 19:29, 2 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Section Editing

This is included in both the main proposal and the alternate version allow for section editing. This is accomplished through a table format where the daily events are in the left column and the sidebar resides in the right column. joturn e r 02:44, 2 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Problem with highlights section

File:Portalcorner.png

Two people, one of whom is using a customized version of Internet Explorer, reported a problem with the style settings for the hightlights section. You can see the thread of conversation here and the image at right is what the problematic part of the screen looks like in Mozilla. I don't have a way at the moment to test this on IE and am wondering if anyone else is seeing the problem. Kayaker 00:52, 2 July 2006 (UTC).[reply]

File:Current-ie1.gif

Internet Explorer Image 1

File:Current-ie2.gif

Internet Explorer Image 2

Yes I do see the problem in Internet Explorer 6 (WinXP). It's quite odd. Upon opening the page, you see Internet Explorer Image 1. Upon moving the mouse over some of the items, you get something along the lines of Internet Explorer Image 2. However, upon minimizing the IE window and going to another program, it reverts back to Internet Explorer Image 1. Very strange. Of course, I use Mozilla Firefox (which is, in my very humble opinion, a much better browser). By the way, I don't believe your image falls under fair use. You don't actually see any Windows Internet Explorer parts, so like with Image:Www.wikipedia.org screenshot.png and Image:He-Wikipedia.png, you don't need to credit Windows. But I'm not 100% on that. joturn e r 01:45, 2 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

For the record, this doesn't happen in this redesign. joturn e r 01:56, 2 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

By "this redesign" do you mean User:Joturner/Current Events Portal Redesign/Alternate?

You were prescient/smart/lucky enough to not attempt to change the background color of the in-the-news bullet items. :-) Ashibaka (talk · contribs) (I'm guessing an IE user) got annoyed enough about the behavior you documented to eliminate the color change in a check-in that produced this. I'm hampered by lack of IE access so I guess I won't attempt to sort through common.css, {{*mp}}, etc. to attempt to restore the gray background. Instead, I'm thinking that for now we could follow your example and do the highlights this way, adapted from User:Joturner/Current Events Portal Redesign/Highlights:

Highlights

Kayaker 06:39, 2 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

By "this redesign", I meant the main one (and will also mean the main one unless specifically said otherwise). However, it does not happen in neither design because they both have the same transclusions. The only reason the alternate was made was to demonstrate "normal" section editing, at tasc's request. joturn e r 06:43, 2 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

In other projects

IMO the in other projects box should be moved to the bottom to make the top less cluttered as it take up a lot of space above the fold which should be used for actual content. LC@RSDATA 06:45, 6 July 2006 (UTC)