User talk:Tariqabjotu/Current events/Redesign

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. joturner 05:59, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

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)

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)

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. joturner 13:07, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

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)

Sure go ahead. You can put it in my userspace if you want (or yours). joturner 13:29, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

I made a change to the alternate version. joturner 13:32, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

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)

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. joturner 13:41, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

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)

I incorporated the change regarding the month links into the main proposal. joturner 17:02, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

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

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

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).

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