Main Page redesign

[Sekoia]

I'd like to suggest a mild redesign to the front page. The redesign enforces a fixed 20em width on the right column, which has mostly shorter or static content. The left (main) column gets the majority of the width, allowing it to better display the Popular Destinations (laid out as a 2x2 grid instead of 4 columns) and the News.

http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/User:Sekoia/Sandbox/Main_Page

Opinions?

[taosin]

Like! *two thumbs up*

I do notice that is the browser is a narrow width, and you drag to make it bigger, the right column gets bigger faster than the left. Design?

Also noting I try to do a new news article at least once a week, and timely, so folks know to come here first!

May I make the following suggestions here?
• Can we add the official "known Issues" page  and add it to Official NCSoft links? And/or permanently in the recent patches section.
• May I update the Welcome To Paragon Wiki article (or someone) so that it presents City of Heros: Freedom, not CoV/CoH? And rerplace that graphic with something more relevant?
• Maybe we should quote NCSoft's own words about the wiki in there, from their newsletter? (discretely of course! :> )
• I would love to see a short hand reference to the level ranges in the Weekly Strike Targets, for example
"Operative Renault Strike Force (25+)" for at glance ease? That saves me and others clicking through to get it!
• At least on my browser the SMALL CAPS look for titles on that page does not look great, I'd prefer to see them just Bold normal case. They have enough emphasis due to the Boxes they are in not too need small caps. Again, my opinion only.

Just my two cents worth!

[Aggelakis]

I'm not sure I'm a fan of how far down the news gets pushed with the popular destinations in a 2x2 grid, but I can't figure out a layout that allows better placement without pushing something *else* "too far down". Tried the popular destinations on the right vertically and wtf/patches on the left above news, but that pushed about/help down too far. Tried a 3 column approach but that was too crammed in a small resolution and news was ridiculously long. Hmmm...

[taosin]

*tosses in an idle thought*

Maybe let news flow to two columns? I think (not sure) the Welcome and Helping sections could be shorter, and more clear, and in one box, as well. Will try a fangly version to see later (my Australian) tonight, anyway.

I think the news seems to be concise and clear as can be (more or less) and timely, and effective. Starting to notice more folks in game mentioning they heard stuff here not in the COH news area.... or referencing this to give other players the links to the relevant posts in COH Official. Frankly I would love that trend to continue. That's in keeping with the wiki's aims, yes? "First Port of Call"?

[Aggelakis]

Can't have news in two columns because then it would be a vertical layout and technically one column (since, um, it's currently two columns and if you stretch news out to two columns that means everything else is two columns, which makes it all basically one column...hurray circular logic)
"whatever on top"
"news"
"everything else and nobody looks at it"

I think the news seems to be concise and clear as can be (more or less) and timely, and effective.

My reference to news being ridiculously long was DIRECTLY TIED to my comment on making it a three-column styling. With three columns, news was really skinny which meant that since the blurbs are somewhat long, it was about twice the length as the other two columns.

[taosin]

Oh! Misunderstanding here, sorry.

No I meant maintain the two (equal) columns, but have part of the second column the flow on of news? Really not sure if this is technically possible, however, am thinking from a page production software angle not a mediawiki angle (which I do not know the cpababilities of).

So News as is (first column)
then the top of the  second column titled (smaller in the box) "new, continued" (if present)
then below that the welcome and helping out

And yes, indeed, "everything else and nobody looks at it". Not suggesting vast changes now, but my theory is if folks aren't looking at something of a front page of a site like this wiki, then what isn't being looked at needs to be thought about, over time, and evolved with feedback. Slow but consistently?

[Sekoia]

I do notice that is the browser is a narrow width, and you drag to make it bigger, the right column gets bigger faster than the left. Design?

Yep, that's by design. The right column doesn't need to get any wider. The left column is more important and thus giving it the extra width is better. (IMO)

I do notice that at lower resolutions, it actually goes the other way -- the left is wider. I'll take a look to see if I can fix that.

May I update the Welcome To Paragon Wiki article (or someone) so that it presents City of Heros: Freedom, not CoV/CoH? And rerplace that graphic with something more relevant?

That article is at http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Paragon_Wiki:About -- I certainly am not opposed to it being updated.

I would love to see a short hand reference to the level ranges in the Weekly Strike Targets, for example
"Operative Renault Strike Force (25+)" for at glance ease? That saves me and others clicking through to get it!

That can be done at http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Weekly_Strike_Target -- as far as I'm concerned, feel free to make that change.

At least on my browser the SMALL CAPS look for titles on that page does not look great, I'd prefer to see them just Bold normal case. They have enough emphasis due to the Boxes they are in not too need small caps. Again, my opinion only.

I think they look a bit funny, too. I was primarily keeping them to match style with the current layout.

I'm not sure I'm a fan of how far down the news gets pushed with the popular destinations in a 2x2 grid, but I can't figure out a layout that allows better placement without pushing something *else* "too far down". Tried the popular destinations on the right vertically and wtf/patches on the left above news, but that pushed about/help down too far. Tried a 3 column approach but that was too crammed in a small resolution and news was ridiculously long. Hmmm...

Even on a smaller resolution, the headline should still be visible at page load

I took a quick look at other gaming wikis and on many (such as http://www.wowwiki.com/Portal:Main) the news isn't immediately visible even on very high resolutions. It's waaaay down.

The fact of the matter is, we only have so much room, especially on lower resolution screens. Something has to get pushed down.

Maybe there's a better way to format the Popular Destinations section though. It has a lot of empty/wasted space. I'll play around with it some more.

[Sekoia]

Yep, that's by design. The right column doesn't need to get any wider. The left column is more important and thus giving it the extra width is better. (IMO)

I do notice that at lower resolutions, it actually goes the other way -- the left is wider. I'll take a look to see if I can fix that.

I wasn't able to figure out a solution to this.

However, I did make the following changes:

- Headings are no longer in small caps.
- Eliminated some white space around headings.
- Reworked the layout and styling for Popular Destinations. It's now much more compact. I included a font size reduction; however, even without that, it'd be smaller than previously (I think).

The news headlines should be a bit closer to the top. I did some screen resolution checks to compare my revisions versus the current main page. On lower resolutions, the news headline is more likely to get bumped down. However, on those resolutions, neither version looks good; it's just too cramped. So I'm not inclined to worry about that.

The new version should work quite well at resolutions of 1024x768 or higher. At 800x600, the new version suffers compared to the first primarily because the right column is too wide, but both are still usable. At 640x480, both versions are garbage. (Really, at 800x600 and lower, we shouldn't be using a two column layout at all if we want it to actually look good.)

[eabrace]

Looks pretty good to me.  Seems a bit better organized than the current main page.

[Aggelakis]

Okay, I made a little tweak on the layout (sorry for hijacking your userpage Sekoia, but it's easily undoable :p ) to make the popular destinations one row again. Due to the smaller font, it's preserved down to pretty low resolutions (down to 1024x768) without looking like total garbage though under that the amount of line-breaking is kind of silly.

This reduces the amount of wasted whitespace in the popular destinations box by A LOT.

To reduce the amount of line-breaking, we could get rid of the dark header, which removes the extra layer of cell-padding around the table itself. (example)

[Sekoia]

Okay, I'm sorry Agge, but I HATE the imbalanced columns. I frankly think it looks horrible. I'd sooner remove the fourth column from that section that keep it in with it being dinky like that. Maybe it makes it look better on smaller resolutions but on larger resolutions it just looks flat out absurd. I am 100% against using that kind of design.

EDIT: In fact, let me add that the current Main Page's imbalanced columns was what prompted me to do the redesign. I figured a redesign would be the best way to eliminate the alleged "need" for them.

[Aggelakis]

Returned to 25% though that makes for a bunch of wasted space in that column. But whatever.

[Sekoia]

I removed the header on Popular Destinations and tweaked the spacing some so that its cells fit in with the others. That does indeed save a lot of space.

I also made all heading font sizes 100% instead of 120%. No need for them to be bigger (but easily changed back if someone thinks they must be).

To reclaim the wasted space, I added a second column of bullets in the fourth Popular Destination cell. Can you think of five more short-title topics that we could add?

EDIT: I also fixed the Popular Destination cells so that if they aren't all the same height, their borders still fill their vertical space.

[Sekoia]

To reclaim the wasted space, I added a second column of bullets in the fourth Popular Destination cell. Can you think of five more short-title topics that we could add?

Nevermind, it doesn't work on MSIE, I'm reverting it.

[Sekoia]

Okay, new idea. I made whitespace non-wrapping in the popular destination boxes. This means that at higher resolutions, each box is 25%. If the resolution drops low enough that one of the boxes would wrap, it just stops shrinking and the others balance the loss among them.

The flip side to this is that it places an effective minimum width on each column -- which places an effective minimum width on the main right column. The left column also has an effective minimum enforced by the image it uses in the Welcome to Paragon Wiki section. Thus, the overall minimum width is (on my browser) 876px. The minimum for the News section is 606px (on my browser).

This means that browsers on screen resolutions with widths of 800 or lower will have to use horizontal scrolling to see everything. However, even at the lowest resolutions (640x480), each section is still wide enough to be read if you scroll to it. I think this is preferable to the previous situation where things got shrunk down to the point where each column was incredibly small with wrapping occurring after every couple of words.

[taosin]

Hey Sek,

I can't put my finger on it (yet) but not very liking that last redesign. Am going to sit on it for two days and try lots of things in four different browsers on four machines and try and give some thoughtful feedback

[WanderingAries]

Hahahahaha, I went to check this out (haven't been on wiki in a while) and read "Statesman Dead, ....-2012" and was about to ask how sad it was to have a (founding?) Dev pass away. :-p

[Sekoia]

Any further feedback?

Agge -- Are you happier with the solution I found for the popular destinations?

Taosin -- Did you figure out what you disliked about the later design versus earlier designs?

[Aggelakis]

Yes, I am happy with the redesign. Removing the dark header bar and reducing the text size makes for enough room that partial-width single row isn't unnecessarily squished. There isn't so much wasted space and nothing else seems to be pushed too far down.

I do agree with Taosin's suggestion of About/Help getting rewritten, shortened, and merged, but don't have any clever suggestions at the moment.

[Sekoia]

I made one more change. I noticed that the News section had a different color scheme for its heading bar than everything else. I tried changing just it to match the rest... and it was fugly. So instead, I changed everything else to match it... and now I think it looks much better.

I also agree that About/Help could use some work. I'm going to suggest we make that a separate project though, as it applies equally to the current design and my redesign. If someone wants to work on that, any of the layouts can get updated to incorporate that change.

[taosin]

Sorry, needed some time to well, shop for Christmas   :)

Some stuff first!
• New news weekly article up. Can we standardise on "Featured at the Paragon Market" as the general way we describe the routine weekly stuff? Unless something truly uber is in it maybe? Just for consistency but feedback!
Edited http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Weekly_Strike_Target/pairs to show level ranges, so they show on the front page when copied and pasted. I think this works, and is useful so folks don't need to click through and check stuff? (esp as the duals often mismatch in level range). Added VIP as a requirement to the last two.
• Added one extra sentence in that section so it shows on front page for absolute newbies, explaining level ranges (I hope succinctly and usefully here). Is this worthwhile?
• Request: can an uber-admin-editor please add Known issues under Official NCsoft Site links in the left hand side of the main page?. Link is http://na.cityofheroes.com/en/news/known_issues/known_issues.php[/li][/list]
• Request: Is it possible for a bot or something to easily go through and change all occurrence in the wiki of "NCSoft" to "NCsoft" (note the s is lower case). I don't relish the thought of manually changing and would prefer the wiki to use the capitalisation that NCsoft iteself uses!
• And still slowly building a hero/villain working methodology for myself, and generating a list of pages I am spot checking, and mulling some posts here on Classification of tips. Will try some after Christmas. Noting the the concept of 'alignment neutral' keeps popping into my head as a shorthand. Will post anything sensible I get that may be useful here before I any swathe edits!

Main Page Stuff! Moar!

looking at http://na.cityofheroes.com/en/news/known_issues/known_issues.php and the recent posts in this thread and stuff:

• I would prefer to see the news column a fair bit narrower! To me it is too wide, generates white space, and so on. And the wider column seems harder to read.

Ideally, (again this is personal preference) no more than 2/3 to 3/4 of current width.

Noting in FFox 8 and IE9 the bottom of the columns never balance vertiucally at  bottom! I do not mind this!

The horizontal scroll bar disappears in FFox at around 1077 pixels. I would dearly like it to vanish at no more 1024 pixels (preferably 960 pixels, however). These two numbers are what I consider common minimums and the latter represents iPhone4 btw. But yes! horizontal scrolling way to go for smaller browser windows,  and very readable and usable at quite the small browser window size, love that.

-> I guess the above boils down to reducing the news column width so no horizontal scroll when the browser window is at 960 pixels? (but see futher down)

• I am working (mulling in Word atm) a merged sharper more focussed Welcome to the paragon Wiki and Helping out Article. Will post a draft here in this thread within a few days (if that is ok, or...?)

• Question, for the life of me I can't follow part of this thread, and it's not you it's me! 

So asking: In terms of space (not wiki construction!): if we had balanced columns, and all the first column was clear for news, and half the second column was also available: can news be made to magicwikily flow from all of column one to the allowed space on column 2? (i.e if agreed, can the page be constructed so it happens?)

The above if feasable and chosen to pursue more or less mandates an article merge of about and helping if that is to be done, I would think, before we go there?

[eabrace]

• Request: can an uber-admin-editor please add Known issues under Official NCsoft Site links in the left hand side of the main page?

Done!   :)

[Sekoia]

New news weekly article up. Can we standardise on "Featured at the Paragon Market" as the general way we describe the routine weekly stuff? Unless something truly uber is in it maybe? Just for consistency but feedback!

I have no objection to this.

• Request: Is it possible for a bot or something to easily go through and change all occurrence in the wiki of "NCSoft" to "NCsoft" (note the s is lower case). I don't relish the thought of manually changing and would prefer the wiki to use the capitalisation that NCsoft iteself uses!

Sure. SekoiaBot just fixed all 38 pages in the main namespace that suffered from this issue.

• I would prefer to see the news column a fair bit narrower! To me it is too wide, generates white space, and so on. And the wider column seems harder to read.

Ideally, (again this is personal preference) no more than 2/3 to 3/4 of current width.

What size screen resolution are you viewing it at?

Especially if we further revise and condense the content in the left column (as you suggested), I really don't see why we'd want to make it wider? That just means it'd have even less vertical fill.

Noting in FFox 8 and IE9 the bottom of the columns never balance vertiucally at  bottom! I do not mind this!

No, the bottoms of the columns won't line up. I didn't think it was valuable padding the shorter column with extra vertical whitespace to make its last box extend down.

The horizontal scroll bar disappears in FFox at around 1077 pixels. I would dearly like it to vanish at no more 1024 pixels (preferably 960 pixels, however). These two numbers are what I consider common minimums and the latter represents iPhone4 btw. But yes! horizontal scrolling way to go for smaller browser windows,  and very readable and usable at quite the small browser window size, love that.

I'm not sure it's possible to do this reliably without drastically overhauling the design. The easiest way to fix this would be to use shorter text in the popular destinations at the top. If you shrink the window, you'll see that the longest text entry in each of the four columns limits its minimum width (and thus the minimum width of the News column). If we shortened those, the minimum width would get narrower too. Conversely, if we make them longer, the minimum width would get wider. Thus, the minimum width will vary as the popular destinations change over time.

I'll think on it, but I'm at loss for a workable solution, and I personally think it's acceptable to have some level of scrolling at 1024.

• I am working (mulling in Word atm) a merged sharper more focussed Welcome to the paragon Wiki and Helping out Article. Will post a draft here in this thread within a few days (if that is ok, or...?)

It'd be better to post your draft on the wiki, under your personal user page or something.

I support changing the Welcome/Helping section, but I don't think it bears any substantial impact on the redesign I'm proposing, and I'd rather not hold that up for this.

So asking: In terms of space (not wiki construction!): if we had balanced columns, and all the first column was clear for news, and half the second column was also available: can news be made to magicwikily flow from all of column one to the allowed space on column 2? (i.e if agreed, can the page be constructed so it happens?)

No. This is not realistically possible.


At this point, I think there's only two points you're objecting to the current design on. Everything else in your post was tangential. The two points being:
- You feel the page should have a lower minimum width, so that horizontal isn't required at 1024 width (pref. 960)
- You feel that the News column should have a smaller minimum width, so that at higher resolutions some of the excess space goes into the right column.
I'll ponder these but I'm at a loss at the moment for any easy solutions.

[Sekoia]

Okay, here's two minor variants on the design:

Original, with right column at a fixed width
Revised, with left column at 65% and right at 35%

Which do people prefer?

Note that, due to the minimum width constraint, you won't see much of a difference between them until you hit around 1280px width and higher.


EDIT: I think I also have an idea on the other issue. Right now, the Quick Reference boxes are displayed as one row with four columns. With some Javascript, I think I can engineer it so that when the browser width falls below a certain threshold, it turns them into two columns and two rows. That will make the Quick Reference bar consume more vertical space, but less horizontal. So the question is, which is more important:
- Keep the News higher/more visible even if it means making the page wider
- Better eliminate scrolling at lower resolutions even if it means pushing the News down some

[eabrace]

i think I like the look of Main_Page_Three better.  The right column seems a bit cramped in the other mockup.

[GuyPerfect]

What on earth is "most recent"?

[taosin]

Sek: What size screen resolution are you viewing it at?
Especially if we further revise and condense the content in the left column (as you suggested), I really don't see why we'd want to make it wider? That just means it'd have even less vertical fill.

I thought *panic* i said "I would prefer to see the news column a fair bit narrower!"  Not wider! Screen resolution is 1920x1080 and the main page I looked at was too wide at that display compared to ... all (?) the other websites I usually access in work and social? (too wide the diplay with no horizontal scroll, I meant); and the news column sisproportionate, of course this is what this redesign is aimed at! Murphy's choise, maybe. Screen rez. no bearing on browser width should not be relevant here!

Sek: I didn't think it was valuable padding the shorter column with extra vertical whitespace to make its last box extend down.

Agreed! Don't mind it at all, like I said, was just an aside.

Sek: I'll think on it, but I'm at loss for a workable solution, and I personally think it's acceptable to have some level of scrolling at 1024.

It's not a deal breaker, but reducing the news column width would likely bring it back to 1024 width or less.

Another way to look at this is to open a new browser window (any browser) and open in tabs (say) https://secure.ncsoft.com/cgi-bin/accountManagement.pl?language=en  and also in a second tab http://na.cityofheroes.com/en/ . now Set make the browser window wide enough to display all the conent.

Then in a third tab open http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/User:Sekoia/Sandbox/Main_Page . What is people's experience when doing that?

For me I get the horizontal scroll bars (and no dealbreaker!) and all of news and some of right column. But right column is cropped. (That is, information is not shown).

It's here where I was suggesting that this not occur, by reducing the width of the left column a few pixels in the page design. So that when when a user at typical browser widths opens the page it is all there at a glance without a drag-acrss to see all.

Sek: [re revised welcome et al] [revised welcome et al] It'd be better to post your draft on the wiki, under your personal user page or something.

Wilco! Thank-you, wasn't sure best way to approach that!

Sek: [bal. columns and flow ] No. This is not realistically possible.

Good to know. Sorry, just wished to clarify.

Sek:You feel the page should have a lower minimum width, so that horizontal isn't required at 1024 width (pref. 960)

Not exactly. The minimum width is very small! I meant the width at which horizontal scrolling vanishes, not quite the same thing!

Sek: Original, with right column at a fixed width
Revised, with left column at 65% and right at 35%Which do people prefer?

Hmm, either arre substantially the same to most users at most tiumes as far as I can tell. they pack and unpack nicely, and at usual browser sizes both are fine to use.

on balance, Main Page Three.

Thanks for your patience with this.

[Sekoia]

Screen rez. no bearing on browser width should not be relevant here!

Yes and no. It's relevant in that having a sense for what resolution you're at allows me to better guess at trying to replicate on my screen what you might be looking at. But it's not relevant in that a user can always resize smaller, and we want it to work at a wide range of screen resolutions.


In any case... possibly good news! I had a "Eureka!" moment and I now have a new version to consider that may address the concern for lower resolutions:
http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/User:Sekoia/Sandbox/Main_Page_Two

If your browser width is above a threshold (currently 1024 pixels), the quick reference boxes are shown in a single row. If your browser is below that threshold, they are shown in two rows of two columns. The display automatically changes as you resize bigger/smaller as needed.

I dummied my screen down to 800x600 pixels and at that resolution, I can still see all four Quick Reference boxes, the Weekly Strike Targets box, the Patches box, and the headline and first two lines of text from the News box.

Note that I implemented this with JavaScript, which means you may need to refresh your cache to pick up the script; try that if it doesn't seem to be working. If JavaScript is disabled, then the user will be left with the single row of boxes.

Also note that the threshold isn't perfect. It won't be possible to make it perfect, since the widths of the quick reference boxes will change over time. The threshold value can be tweaked though if need be.

At this point, we now have five options. I am interested to know which of the five people prefer:
Option 1: Original Main Page
Option 2: Revised, with fixed-width right column
Option 3: Revised, with columns at 65%/35%
Option 4: Revised, with columns at 65%/35% and with quick reference automatically changing between 1x4 and 2x2 layout
Option 5: (No example to show) Revised, with fixed-width right column (as in #2) and with quick reference automatically changing between 1x4 and 2x2 (as in #4)

Barring any additional major concerns, I'd like to pick one of these and implement it (provided consensus prefers something other than #1). Once we have the new design in place, other non-layout considerations can be discussed separately.

EDIT: Actually, another option occurred to me. Instead of going from 1x4 to 2x2, we could just drop one or two of the quick reference boxes if the screen is too narrow (ie. change to 1x3 or 1x2). That would keep it at one row, while allowing it to shrink better. If there's strong interest in this, I can put up a demo of it. Consider this an "Option 6".

[Sekoia]

Hmm... Just thought of yet another option!
http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/User:Sekoia/Sandbox/Main_Page_Four

This time, if the threshold falls below 1024, the quick reference boxes use the full width and push the right column down below them. If that's not clear, just test it out and you'll see what I mean. (Again, a cache refresh may be necessary.)

Revised option list:

Option 1: Original Main Page
Option 2: Revised, with fixed-width right column
Option 3: Revised, with columns at 65%/35%
Option 4: Revised, with columns at 65%/35% and with quick reference automatically changing between 1x4 and 2x2 layout
Option 5: (No example to show) Revised, with fixed-width right column (as in #2) and with quick reference automatically changing between 1x4 and 2x2 (as in #4)
Option 6: (No example to show) Revised, with either columns at 65%/35% or with fixed-width right column, and with quick reference dropping boxes as the screen narrows
Option 7: Revised, with columns at 65%/35% and with quick reference automatically changing between using just the right column or using the full width

[taosin]

I'd prefer to see quickref. using full width all the time, personally. Seems to heads the page nice that way, and as right of page will always be less verticaly full than left...  though I'd assume you'd get white pace i that happened, true.

However! I also personally dislike the way the boxes go form 1x4 to 2.2, it jars at me when the main page of a well-used site jumps like that, I expect such to be faitrly stable.

So.. preference/vote here to dismiss any page with a 2x2 jump of quick ref in it.

Leaves 1, 2, 3, 6, 7.

Six I like, as is based on 3 (which I like) and with quck ref dropping of page too narrow

... erm... no point putting the quickrefs in right column and not across top? Seems almost to be the space there?

Thinking also it is holidays an mad time, maybe folks need a few days longert to  review and so on, I'm in no rish, anyway!

Again, awesome Sek, amazed how this stuff (demo pages) just whims up in an instant

[Aggelakis]

I like #7. That's very cool.

[GuyPerfect]

Still wondering what Most Recent is...

[Sekoia]

Still wondering what Most Recent is...

Surely you're smart enough to infer what it's intended to be, and your point is that the title isn't entirely accurate for that box's contents? If so, I agree with you. Unfortunately, when I noticed that same point, I couldn't think of a better title that was still appropriately concise--and I suspect that's why it was put that way in the first place. If you have some better ideas for the heading name, please do share them.

Since the heading is in both the original and my revisions, and since it can easily be renamed to something else without having any substantive impact on the proposed redesigns, I wasn't going to worry about it right now. After all, I started this thread to primarily focus on layout, not content.

[GuyPerfect]

Surely you're smart enough to infer what it's intended to be, and your point is that the title isn't entirely accurate for that box's contents?

Tisk tisk. I haven't the foggiest what it's intended to be. Most recent edits? No, that's not it. News posts? Hrm, not that either. Based on the contents it seems to be Paragon Market-related, but the most recent in that are, like the news shows, the Winter Holiday Pack and a discount for character slots, so I'm grasping at straws here.

If it is supposed to be the Market features and is just out of date, then I'd pitch "On the Market" as the heading.

[eabrace]

Unless the intent is either "most recently added articles" or "most recently edited articles", I'd have to agree that I don't know what the intended purpose of that section is.  It's never really hit me that the articles that show up there don't really seem to fit either of those since I rarely visit the main page.

[Sekoia]

Well, I suppose if you want an authoritative answer on what it's original intent was, we'll have to prod Agge on it since she's the one who originated it. I always took it to mean something along the lines of "most recently added articles of note". *shrug*

[Derek Icelord]

As an "average joe" user, I think the most recent revision of the main page in Sekoia's sandbox space is the most appealing for both aesthetics and function.

As for the "Most Recent" column, whatever it's supposed to be I would suggest "Recently Edited" or "Recent Edits", "Recently Added", or "Recently Visited", whichever one fits the category.

[taosin]

Adding to the mix, while I think of it and this topic is up:

Is it worth considering a two line new box in one of the column spaces (low?), that shows the following or something like it? (and if we did does it break what the wiki is about etc).

Current world times:
4:00AM PST•7:00AM EST•12:00Pm GMT•1:00PM CET

Why?

Not all players are US based or in the main timezones supported by NCSoft. Such an at-a-glance small discrete real-time display would be incredibly handy (at least for some!) when working out when the d**n servers are going down for maintenance for updates. (every thursday 11PM for me atm, plus many tuesday PM too, sigh). And it takes up tiny real estate.

For example: we see "The Live European and North American City of Heroes servers will be taken offline for a Publish on Thursday, December 15, 2011. Start Time: 4:00 a.m. PDT /7:00 a.m. EDT / 12:00 p.m. GMT/ 13:00 CET Expected Duration: 4 hours..."

I think if you wanted to the times can be pulled from services available at timeanddate.com; my own world clock I keep handy, to work with other players, is at http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/personal.html?cities=240,224,179,24,220,136 by the way.

Just a thought!

[Sekoia]

There isn't a strong consensus but I get the impression that this option has the broadest appeal: http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/User:Sekoia/Sandbox/Main_Page_Four
And nobody sounds like they'll be overly upset by it. So unless there are any strong objections, I'll plan to update the Main Page with this within the new few days.

There are still other suggestions pending, such as overhauling the About section and possibly adding other things. These changes can always be applied in subsequent updates.

Is it worth considering a two line new box in one of the column spaces (low?), that shows the following or something like it? (and if we did does it break what the wiki is about etc).

We can easily do this using pure wiki code (using the #time parser function). Here's a demo page:
http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/User:Sekoia/Sandbox/Time
Unfortunately, it won't update in real time. It shows the time on page load only. I don't like that. If we do it, it should update in real time.

Updating in real time requires JavaScript, which is additional bloat on the main page. It can be done. If it's decided we want to do this, I can look into making it happen.

However... I honestly don't see a need for this. If I want to know what the world times are, I can go to timeanddate.com. This feels like it's outside of the scope of what ParagonWiki is about. No doubt some of our users would find it useful. No doubt we'd also have users who'd find it helpful to have a calculator there, or the server statuses, or any number of other utilities. None of that information is wiki-centric, though. I'd prefer not to include it.

[taosin]

Sek: I'll plan to update the Main Page with this (main page Four) within the new few days.

Cool and luverly! And ty for the time on this.

Sek: Updating in real time requires JavaScript, which is additional bloat on the main page. It can be done. If it's decided we want to do this, I can look into making it happen. ...However... I honestly don't see a need for this.

Yep. agree, after seeing the reasoning and also greatly wanting the main page to be slim taut and terrific (with a defined six pack? :) ). If it's adding bloat not a good idea at all. Can it!?!

Sek: There are still other suggestions pending, such as overhauling the About section and possibly adding other things. These changes can always be applied in subsequent updates.

Agree absolutely. Increments are fine and having a visual of the new live main page will help me greatly. I'll have something within a day or two and will should it in a new topic for clarity?

(rushed reply at work, apologies for any perceived terseness!)

[Aggelakis]

made a stab at merging and condensing the about/helping sections (this uses Sekoia's Main_Page_Four that brings the popular destinations up out of the left column at lower resolutions)

[taosin]

edit: tried with no small caps (where I could) : i think this is a clearer sharper look, and the About section deserves that amount of 'weight'. thoughts?

Beat me to it Agge!

• We were going to start a new topic for this? Too late heh.

Awesome job Sek.

I too made a stab at merging the about and help.

http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/User:Taosin/Sandbox/Main_Page

it's a bit longer, does happen to closely balance out on the new main page at 'common' browser sizes.

i do like the dark blue for the welcoem block. Am personally loathing Small Caps on an aesthetic level.

Here's my notes on my revision, for review only!, most still seem to apply to Agge's stab.

At this stage content only! I am not layout guy in wiki terms.

Welcome to Paragon Wiki, not welcome to City of Heroes. (very first sentence). I would think NCsoft can welcome players to the game, we can welcome readers to the wiki! Thoughts?

yes, as bold as news.

About the wiki in bold (no need for 'about the paragon Wiki' as it is redundant here, as this comes after that boxed heading)

Acknowledge there are French and German language servers and readers.

Moved the how to write part from here to below.

Thought very worthwhile establishing history of wiki; 2nd para in brief. A nod to the growing acknowledgements out there too (see CS thread). Also a nice positioning against erm, whatever that other wiki is.

Helping out Section this could be boxed tried a box like i said content for me :>

Starts with the donation, that's it! For those who love this and don't wish/can't write.

Kept the Wanted..Skillz heading!

Here's the place where i moved the bit from the about section (I do not think it belongs in an 'About' section?), and we start on editing content.

Tried for a slightly different tone , hopefully as clear and one iota less forma while still professional.

On Agge's page

think "Ad Free Fan Site" is not the right tone, personally.

Updating section: prefer 1st sentence in About.

[taosin]

Looking at Agge's demo:

I liked the old graphic shown on the front page in the about section, as it had colour and movement.

my thoughts:

I am strongly against just having the CoH:LF logo on the front page, as it looks too much like branding and an official endorsement to me; (and (this again my view only!) too 'corporate'.

Just putting this here for feedback and thoughts?

I'd prefer a similar image to the old one on the new front page.

Took a wallpaper, and did some work, resulting in:

http://paragonwiki.com/w/images//3/35/PwikilogoB450x100.jpg
http://paragonwiki.com/w/images//a/a9/PwikilogoB200x44.jpg

I very slightly accented the edges to maintain sharpness at smaller scale.

the original graphic is was replacing was native 443 x 95 px. These two are 450px x 100 and 200 x 44.

This lets the front page use it without scaling a larger image, i guess.

Do have a preferenence for no border and no rounded edges on grapgics like this on the front page, the small size does not warrant it (unless a one point outline!)

An example of the large one at 350 px is http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/User:Taosin/Sandbox/pwikiabout
An example of the 200px version is at http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/User:Taosin/Sandbox/Main_Page

Very prepared here to keep changing front page graphics as the game evolves!

edit: oh i guess i can show'em here!

native 200px version:
https://paragonwiki.com/w/images//a/a9/PwikilogoB200x44.jpg
native 450px version
https://paragonwiki.com/w/images//3/35/PwikilogoB450x100.jpg

And 200px with stroke:
https://paragonwiki.com/w/images//1/1b/PwikilogoB200x44edge.jpg

[Sekoia]

There isn't a strong consensus but I get the impression that this option has the broadest appeal: http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/User:Sekoia/Sandbox/Main_Page_Four
And nobody sounds like they'll be overly upset by it. So unless there are any strong objections, I'll plan to update the Main Page with this within the new few days.

I just updated the Main Page with this design.

[taosin]

Love it!

Also updated my sandboxything to see how it'd look with the diff. stab at the Welcome/help:

On the new SekV4 page it looks like this:
http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/User:Taosin/Sandbox/Main_Page2

The tao-esque-take on the Welcome/About is at http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/User:Taosin/Sandbox/pwikiabout

Not liking the real World hero gif, seems dodgy; am seeing if I can make a much cleaner one for 125x125px.

[Aggelakis]

Not liking the real World hero gif, seems dodgy; am seeing if I can make a much cleaner one for 125x125px.

What does this even mean? You're going to create a new RWH gif?

RWH is a charity event that runs every holiday season, they're the ones that supplied the banner/logo. That is their logo, so if you cannot reproduce it pretty much 100% faithfully, I respectfully request you to not do it at all.

Additionally, regarding your proposed about/help section: it looks messy and fairly unprofessional. I am not much of a fan.

[Sekoia]

Thoughts on the About overhaul...

On the whole, I like Agge's revisions. Further thoughts below mostly are using her revisions as a basis.

I'm inclined to drop the reference to Wanted Pages. I doubt many people ever go there to create new pages. I also don't think it's a very user-friendly way to jump into the wiki.

I think it could be valuable to make some reference to the wiki having been started in 2005. Possible points of inclusion:
- "Since 2005, the Paragon Wiki has been a central repository of all things that have to do with NCsoft's City of Heroes..."
- "Paragon Wiki has been an ad-free site since it's creation in 2005. If you find the wiki valuable..."

It looks like Agge dropped the references to the community portal and the Titan forums (ie the "Talk and more..." section). I am fine with that. Both of those are linked in the left-hand navigation column.

The CoH Freedom logo looks a bit too... I dunno, big? bold? However, I also don't really care for the image shown on Toasin's demo either. Do we really even need a logo/image? I think it looks better without.

Not liking the real World hero gif, seems dodgy; am seeing if I can make a much cleaner one for 125x125px.

I'm not sure what you intend, but the Real World charity drive ends December 31, so it's probably not worth spending time on it regardless at this point.

[taosin]

Agge: What does this even mean? You're going to create a new RWH gif?

Ahh, 'dodgy' is a useful Australian technical term <grin> (my slang slipped in)

What I meant was the current gif is not very legible, and is hard to read. To me it's not high enough quality to put on a well-run and patronised site.

I went back to their main site and tried a newer version that is somewhat cleaner when reduced to 125 px. (knocked the black back to a grey to put focus where it should be, more heavily stroked the "Real World Hero" so it stands out at 125px, stroked the explanatory text and removed MMO form the explanatory text. Am proposing 'click here' is redundant, as we can click for more-info as well. Down-sampled to retain sharpness; have a master larger copy is photoshop).

I'd never make a change to the front page and put it up without asking for feedback!

That version is here: RealWorldHeroMKII.png (current version to the right)
https://paragonwiki.com/w/images//4/4d/RealWorldHeroMKII.png    https://images.weserv.nl/?url=realworldhero.com%2Fbanners%2Frealworldhero125x125.gif

Does it seem cleaner to others?

If it ends Dec 31, that's fine, but handy to keep a cleaner image for next year? Not sure when it appeared on the front page.

As to the revision About Welcome! (just my thoughts and clarifications!)

• Yes, please reference the 2005 start date, preferably in the About section.
• Yes, of course Wanted pages can go.
• Dropping Community Portal and Titan Forums works, i was trying to replicate the existing information, and was at pains not to drop any of the detail already present.
• We can go without a logo/image! indeed. Of the available wallpapers, the one chosen was the most representative, it is however a bit ... pale and wan for my tastes. And again I was trying not to drop existing components present in the current About and Help.
• 'Additionally, regarding your proposed about/help section: it looks messy and fairly unprofessional. I am not much of a fan." noted! can only put em up!

In the above, I do believe very strongly that the wiki should have a strong encouragement for anyone to try and contribute, right there on the front page, no matter how short. Having said that i am now visualising a 'launch page' (new page) that various classes of contributors would find useful. It'll percolate for as few days.

Specifically on Agge's revision then:

About...

The initial two paragraphs (to me) are in the wrong order? Consider welcoming to the wiki, then promoting/explaining CoH.

• Would prefer it to start with "Welcome to Paragon Wiki", not "Welcome to City of Heroes"
• If " "Welcome to City of Heroes" is retained, please consider changing it to ' "Welcome to City of Heroes: Freedom"?
• The first paragraph is one long sentence.  Consider simplifying?

Taking Sek's points into account, this means that About Section would be shorter.

Updating and Writing Articles:
The first sentence does not belong here if we take the heading at face value: "To find information, use the search box on the left, or feel free to browse the available categories or view the table of contents."  It does not (in my view) belong as the first sentence of the rest of that section, at the least it should stands in its own paragraph.
• First sentence again (to me) does not read well. Consider bulleting into three points? Worthwhile as Finding Information is rather the key thing and could benefit from being separated out.

• I would prefer a request to readers (i.e. a courteous expectation, not a demand) that they become familiar with the guidelines and help pages. Currently it reads as a demand. (i.e. "make sure")

Looking at the first paragraph, it does not flow. This is resolved by rephrasing "Make sure to familiarize yourself with Paragon Wiki Article Guidelines and help page prior to making contributions" perhaps like "Before making a contribution, please familiarize yourself with Paragon Wiki Article Guidelines and help pages"

In the para "If you want.."

"If you want to dive into writing some highly needed articles from scratch......." is unclear as it stands. It also contains redundancy in the second sentence. So perhaps something like: 'If you want to dive into writing some highly needed articles, check out the list of Wanted Pages. These are pages that are linked to from other pages, but as yet have not been written.'

The second part of that paragraph again seems to have too many commas. Instead of "They are sorted by the number of links that point to them, so by filling in the articles towards the top of the list, you will be giving the most bang for your temporal buck." perhaps something like "They are sorted by the number of links that point to them. By filling in the articles near the top of the list, you will be getting the most bang for your temporal buck."

To me the latter reads more clearly? Same meaning, more simply and clearly said ?

Trivial: Not sure of US-usage, but here in oz we get bang for our buck, not give bang for our buck?

Ad-Free Fan Site

As mentioned by Sek, consider referencing six years here?

As mentioned in a previous post, I am not a fan of this title for this part!

Am fairly (not completely) sure that it should be "The staff of the Paragon Wiki do not see any.." (not does).

[Sekoia]

The image we're using for Real World Hero came from their site:
http://realworldhero.com/share/

We actually link directly to the image hosted on their server. I would recommend sending your revision to the Real World Hero crew and seeing if they might wish to adopt it. I'm inclined to use the images they request people to use to advertise their cause.

The initial two paragraphs (to me) are in the wrong order? Consider welcoming to the wiki, then promoting/explaining CoH.

This seems worth trying. I wonder if it will read awkwardly, but only way to find out is to try it.

• I would prefer a request to readers (i.e. a courteous expectation, not a demand) that they become familiar with the guidelines and help pages. Currently it reads as a demand. (i.e. "make sure")

I agree, a courteous expectation is better than a demand.

Trivial: Not sure of US-usage, but here in oz we get bang for our buck, not give bang for our buck?

The typical usage is get. But since it's in the context of contributing, give also makes sense.

However, I hope it's moot... I want to see that entire paragraph dropped. :)

Ad-Free Fan Site

As mentioned by Sek, consider referencing six years here?

Actually I suggested mentioning the year (2005), not the age (6 years). If we use the age, we'll have to remember update it each year, which may or may not happen in a timely fashion. Using the year is more future-friendly and conveys the same information.

Am fairly (not completely) sure that it should be "The staff of the Paragon Wiki do not see any.." (not does).

Refer to:
http://www.writingcenter.com/tenquestions.htm (point 8)
http://www.grammarbook.com/grammar/subjectVerbAgree.asp (rule 15)
http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Is_staff_singular_or_plural

The best solution here may be to reword to avoid the issue entirely. According to wiktionary, staff are employees. The wiki has no employees. How about "The administrators of the Paragon Wiki do not..." or "The admins of the Paragon Wiki do not..."?

[taosin]

Sek: We actually link directly to the image hosted on their server. (Real World Hero)

Just noticed this in retrospect before coming back to this thread. I certainly will nicely get in touch with them. I'd usually be inclined myself to only used 'approved; images, i do think their image is less than well done. I'll add back the "Click here" on  a 2nd version, and send both, and recap any correspondence when it is done in this forum, then!

Me: The initial two paragraphs (to me) are in the wrong order? Consider welcoming to the wiki, then promoting/explaining CoH. Sek: This seems worth trying. I wonder if it will read awkwardly, but only way to find out is to try it.

Ahh, am electing Agge as the holder  of the edits as we are working of his basis? (to avoid thrashing?)

I am noting on scanning the CoH site that the term City of Heroes is correct, and getting the sense of when they use the term City of heroes: Freedom.

Well, hmm, how about:

Base (Agge version):

Welcome to City of Heroes, the online world that's home to an entire multiverse of super powered beings, where you and thousands of other players take on the roles of super powered heroes and villains, vigilantes and rogues, in a stunning, 3D graphical world.

Paragon Wiki is intended to be a central repository of all things that have to do with NCsoft's City of Heroes, all the way from launch through the latest incarnation. This wiki is a community effort. If you cannot find the information you are searching for, please add it to the wiki for other users to see, or post in the Titan Network's Requested Articles forum.

Suggestion:

Welcome to the Paragon Wiki.  is intended to be a central repository since 2006 of all things that have to do with NCsoft's City of Heroes, all the way from launch through the latest incarnation, City of Heroes: Freedom. This The wiki is a community effort created and maintained by countless contributors.

City of Heroes is an online world that's home to an entire multiverse of super powered beings. you and thousands of other players take on the roles of super-powered heroes, villains, vigilantes and rogues. All in a stunning 3D graphical world.

Without strikes, a twist, and adding the To find bit as well:

Welcome to the Paragon Wiki. Since 2005, the wiki has been a central repository of all things to do with NCsoft's City of Heroes, all the way from launch through the latest incarnation: City of Heroes: Freedom. It is a community effort created and maintained by countless contributors.

City of Heroes is an online world that's home to an entire multiverse of super powered beings. You and thousands of other players take on the roles of super-powered heroes, villains, vigilantes and rogues. All in a stunning 3D graphical world.

To find information: use the search box on the left; feel free to browse the available categories; or view the table of contents.

Noting:
• "Welcome to Paragon Wiki." to me stands stroingly and simply on its own in its own sentence.
• the wiki is now a central repository, we've arrived, no intent is required? (more direct, hence strike out one)
• Added birth year  to first para, I hope elegantly?
• struck out 'have to do', redundant?
• prefer "the wiki" not "this wiki"
• "it is" used to open last sentence, I think this reads more easily without repetition, and the pronoun is clear here?
• slightly enlarged 'community effort' for emphasis, as it seemed to end abruptly without it, suspicious of 'countless contributors' but do feel that is a core of an About section?
• Second para split the info about the game into three sentences, each handling one subject. Seems to read better and more clearly to me?
• Hmm, added the To Find information here. I think it belongs here, not in writing and updating. just my two cents though. Did use : and ; to make a sentence list.

Sek: 'The best solution here may be to reword to avoid the issue entirely. "

Indeed. I like yours, and can moot: "No one associated with the administration, maintenance or hosting of the wiki see any..." (and leave out the term administrators?)

(edit stealth ps for fun only: Sek on Staff Do and Does correctly cites US American English and Usage., certainly correct for the wiki! Alas I usually correctly use normal (for me) and correct usuage in British and Australian English. I'll always be caught out (is pretty ingrained!). The Austrlian Gov. Style guide is not electronic, but http://www.englishclub.com/grammar/verbs-m_plural-singular.htm shows how this side use the term (generally).

[Aggelakis]

A little bit of a rewrite

[Sekoia]

A little bit of a rewrite

I like. :)

[taosin]

ooooohhhh. i like too  :>

Personally love it, so happy for it to go live.

Only quibble (and this is very much personal taste and can be happily ignored) is 'Ad Free Fan Site' as a heading. Well, yes it is! But would prefer the heading to be more direct as to what the text below is doing, which is asking for donations. My personal take is that would suit the tone of the site better.

ie headings more direct such as:
Help keep the wiki ad free!
Can you help keep the wiki ad free
etc.

If that was adopted, the first sentence would change to something like "Paragon Wiki is a fan-site and has been ad-free..."

Final (promise!) quibble is that by defining it as a fan site here, then I kind of think that it shouldealso have 'fan site' mentioned in the first para of the About, somewhere.

[GuyPerfect]

Srsly, what's "Most Recent" supposed to be? It hasn't changed since the last time this thread touched on it.

[Blondeshell]

According to the Quick Reference template, it appears to be a manually-updated list.  I like the thought of having a list automagically populated with, say, the newest new articles (not edits), but having to do it manually makes it almost not worth having.

[Sekoia]

Srsly, what's "Most Recent" supposed to be? It hasn't changed since the last time this thread touched on it.

Since it's apparently not clear and you don't like it, how about suggesting something better? Evidently you're not alone in finding it confusing, so a change would be warranted if someone thinks of something better to put there.

I like the thought of having a list automagically populated with, say, the newest new articles (not edits), but having to do it manually makes it almost not worth having.

Automatic generation sounds nice in theory but in practice I feel it would give us inconsistent results. Take a look through Special:NewPages. Some of the new pages are great candidates for the front page maybe... but others, not so much.

Plus, I looked to see if DPL could do this and, to my surprise, I couldn't find anything that suggests it can. (Of course, it's possible I'm just overlooking it.)

[GuyPerfect]

Since it's apparently not clear and you don't like it, how about suggesting something better?

"Better" would require knowing what it is in the first place. As far as I know, it's accurate just the way it is.

Who put it there? What do they say it is?

[Sekoia]

"Better" would require knowing what it is in the first place. As far as I know, it's accurate just the way it is.

Who put it there? What do they say it is?

If it's not working, then better would be something that works. That doesn't require knowing. :P Pretend there's a big empty gap there instead; what would you put there?

As I said before, Agge put it there originally. So she's the only one who can authoritatively answer what it's intended for.

[GuyPerfect]

Well, I kinda like what's in there--market stuff. If something's reflected in the news section I don't see why it couldn't also go into there. Discounts, new items, etc... Whatever's featured should be listed first in that box.

[Sekoia]

Well, I kinda like what's in there--market stuff. If something's reflected in the news section I don't see why it couldn't also go into there. Discounts, new items, etc... Whatever's featured should be listed first in that box.

So how about "Featured" for a title?

[Aggelakis]

It's just a quicklist of new market stuff. Sales and "featured but not new" shouldn't go in there IMO, not enough space (a limit of 5 features). So far it has been new stuff on the market that warrants an entire article. Doesn't mean it can't be a deeper link to a subsection of a page for something new on the market (e.g. Vanity Pets#Snowbeast, or whatever) but I haven't been using it that way so far. I haven't updated it in a while because to be honest I have been in a galaxy far, far away and haven't paid attention to the market features the last couple weeks. I am not 100% sure what is NEW and what is a rehash of stuff we already have somewhere else or has already been linked.

I don't care what it's called, I just put something that was short. "Featured" sounds fine, "New on the Market" sounds fine, it's all gravy.

[Sekoia]

How about "On the Market"? That lets us stray from strictly new stuff if needed. Plus it's a bit shorter, which is important for the headings.

[Blondeshell]

The items I just listed on that section were what I found to be the most recent pages created on the Wiki, using a bit of actual logic to avoid counting new talk pages, templates, and the like.  The title "Most Recent" gave me no indication that they were supposed to be new items on the Paragon Market rather than just new to the Wiki - they just happened to be related to that.  In my mind, we'd not want to limit ourselves to only using it for market-related items, so we could see new contacts, zones, game systems, whatever, that are "most recently" added to the Wiki as a whole, or significantly updated.

[Aggelakis]

Without any further commentary about the About changes, I implemented the new stuff on the front page. Now people can edit wording and tweak stuff without worrying about stepping on my userspace :p

----

I can see using the column as an "everything goes here" list, but honestly the biggest things I see most people asking about in game and on the forums is new market stuff.

Also, IMO I don't think anything should go there that's not available on the real servers. In your update, you added Archetype Enhancements which are only available on the beta server. IMO that shouldn't be there yet and would like to pose a restriction on beta stuff (especially since beta stuff can completely change - or be removed entirely).

[Blondeshell]

I agree with not listing stuff that's only on beta, so I've changed the list for that.

For the market stuff, though, most everything that's new should already be covered by the current news items listed on the front page.  Since those are up for multiple weeks at a time, and people can also go back through the easily-notated Archived News, I don't see the need to specifically duplicate them for just a five-item list.  It's fine if they happen to be the most recent work done for articles, but I don't think it should be an exclusive list.

[Sekoia]

Would "New and Featured" work as a heading for that section, then? It's purposely a bit ambiguous. We're generally putting new articles about new content in that list. Whether it's new or not, we're featuring it by putting it there.

[taosin]

I like "Featured" - just that one word. (edit: in preference to "new and Featured", I consider the 'new' redundant in the context below)

It's clear at any time by looking at the links under it what we are featuring, and it's ambiguous enough that we could choose to feature whatever we like at any given time.

Agree no need to put market stuff here. If there's a perceived need to list the most recent market additions, why not train folks to use the Paragon Market Page and have a dpl/magic bit at the top that indeed does recent markets pages? Am sure folks would love to have one spot they could link to for the market and go from there to whatever market bits the wiki has documented?

For example, when I22 arrives, i could see 'Featured" running links for Dark Astoria, Staff Fighting, Stalker Changes, Known issues (!), etc. The 'hot topics' that are hot for a couple of months after each release?

[Aggelakis]

Honestly I think we should remove the Known Issues page, many of those have been fixed by now, some of them are confirmed to be "working" (not necessarily as designed, but just "how it works") and it's no longer being maintained...and the article will keep getting bigger and bigger and bigger if it's maintained, since instead of just removing fixed issues, they just get dropped down to a fixed section that will continue to get longer and longer as more stuff is added to the top and issues are fixed.

Maybe simply link to the official known issues page (which admittedly isn't all the known issues, but let's be honest with ourselves again - we don't maintain minutiae like that very well here).

I adamantly refuse to not list market stuff there, because the whole *POINT* of a quick reference section is that you get to the hot bits fast - and the market stuff is pretty much always hot bits. I don't mind acceding to including non-market stuff in there but to advocate removing market stuff outright from there is kind of silly. New stuff is new stuff, featured stuff is featured, no matter what the source of it is.

[taosin]

Agge, (how's that cold?) I adamantly refuse to not list market stuff there, because the whole *POINT* of a quick reference section is that you get to the hot bits fast - and the market stuff is pretty much always hot bits. I don't mind acceding to including non-market stuff in there but to advocate removing market stuff outright from there is kind of silly. New stuff is new stuff, featured stuff is featured, no matter what the source of it is.


With regards to http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Known_issues, yes, I would strongly support this being deprecated and replaced by a definition style page. That page should have the link to the official known issues page, and possibly a link to the official forum sections where known issues are also reported (to either the forum or to the current thread, which is huge).

It should (I hope) also direct players to lodge issues not seen in those places via the appropriate NCsoft mechanism. This is important! (IMHO), the more VIP andf others who lodge tickets for issues the better the outcome. (I have 48 tickets since Nov 2011, a couple later made it to known issues and resolution, I am sure because many folks ticketed it this way).

With listing/not listing market stuff. Well, how about calling that blob featured, and mainly using it for market stuff, and have the privilege of using it for other featured at times?

Now, looking ahead, all i can see in an increasing rate of new market items being put to market over time. Because good market items generate cash for NCsoft. Are we ready for that, in the sense of more effort over time being needed to keep pace? I can see recent focus on the AT specific sets as an example.

I'd prefer to see a permanent link to the wiki 'section' about Paragon Market in the left hand nav pane, as well, or at least moot that as a possibility. I note the left hand Nav pane seems to be able to be added to without increasing visual clutter or decreasing clarity. It is significantly shorter than the main part of the page. And if the paragon market continues to grow in prominence, at some point (maybe now? Placing a market blob in the nav pane could/should make sense?

[Blondeshell]

I adamantly refuse to not list market stuff there, because the whole *POINT* of a quick reference section is that you get to the hot bits fast - and the market stuff is pretty much always hot bits. I don't mind acceding to including non-market stuff in there but to advocate removing market stuff outright from there is kind of silly. New stuff is new stuff, featured stuff is featured, no matter what the source of it is.

I would vote for titling the section "Recently Updated."  "New" is redundant for market items because they'll be indicated in the News section, and "Featured" is redundant because, well, we've already decided its featured because its listed there.  Using "Recently Updated" is general enough that it can include both significant new and newly modified articles, regardless of market or non-market status, and it gives people an idea as to what areas are getting some attention lately without having to sift through hundreds of updates on the Recent Changes page.  Granted, most of that content will likely relate to the market during the lulls between issues.

[taosin]

Blondeshell: "New" is redundant for market items because they'll be indicated in the News section, and "Featured" is redundant because, well, we've already decided its featured because its listed there. 

Agree 'new' is redundant. Featured is not (IMHO) because it accurately describes that we (the wiki) are featuring these, for whatever reason! And agree with you and Agge that usually this may be market items.

[Sekoia]

I'm not sure I like "Recently Updated". But I could live with it.

Maybe "Recent Highlights"? "Of Recent Interest"? "Recommended"? "Editors' Picks"? "Editors' Choice"?

"Stuff We'd Like To Think You Might Possibly Want To Read About"?  :o

[eabrace]

I'm sort of leaning toward "Featured Articles" or something like that.

[GuyPerfect]

Could save ourselves the trouble and just call it "Least Recent"

[Aggelakis]

Guy, if you don't have anything to add, shut up.

[Aggelakis]

Featured Articles is good, Editor's Picks is good too.

[GuyPerfect]

Guy, if you don't have anything to add, shut up.

The humor is lost on this one, Mr. President.