User talk:Jillium

Archives: 2009 to 2011

May

Yo

You're a crat, gonna edit anymore? Ty 19:27, 17 May 2013 (UTC)

October

What is your opinion?

It appeared to become unfeasible (and has been throughout your absence) to maintain an encyclopedia and frequent updates on the Wiki. I propose to refocus on content that maintains its value throughout time - that is any content built upon research quotations as a foundation, testimony, guides and archive material that isn't outdated or historically important. The question is then whether to retain it within a restructured Wiki or move it to a new-look, streamlined CMS (Wordpress?) and archive the Wiki with all of its inactive projects. The Admins (talk) 17:43, 7 October 2013 (CEST)

In my opinion, restructuring the wiki would be a better choice. The standard blog format, with recent posts burying older ones, doesn't make sense for timeless content and can be difficult to navigate. A CMS without the blog format would be okay, but probably even less successful in encouraging collaborative article editing, which MediaWiki is designed for.

Moving to a CMS while archiving the wiki would leave two versions of the same content. Duplicate content doesn't fare well with search engines, and the version already established on Google (wiki) would presumably become outdated. There's also the French translations to consider. We could still modernize a bit by editing the stylesheet to hide wiki functionality from logged-out users who don't need it. (Just as examples: [1] [2] [3][4] [5] [6] [7])

Regarding your BC post, I doubt MediaWiki's learning curve is much to blame for the state of NW. There are after all very active wikis about Thomas the Tank Engine and every other trivial subject, and our old WordPress is even deader than this wiki. There just aren't many people who have the stamina to contribute on any platform in this cultural climate.

Do you have any intentions for the splash page? If the forum's not coming back, I could create a new link image for some other section if you want. The font is D3 Egoistism. Jillium (talk) 02:10, 9 October 2013 (CEST)

What I have been looking at is a reader-friendly application of WP (could also be a refreshed MW - which you appear to be more familiar with), where the blog format is either absent, or used as a front page (site root) for pointing to recent updates, etc. The format of MW seems to cause problems with editing conflicts, regardless of what effect it has on participation - for example, there is plenty of unencyclopedic and inconsistently formatted content on this Wiki that probably needs modifying or removing altogether. It puts a burden on admin users to police bad formatting and fluff editing. However, given that there is no forum (is there anybody with the will to moderate one?), I don't rate the chances of attracting a large team of editors, let alone those who are capable of generating useful content. In fact, I don't object to two or three active editors contributing only useful material that will be seen by more readers - which opens up the possibility of using MW, as those editors would not be constantly cleaning up.

If the MW were to be archived, it would have to be edited to exclude useful material that were moved to WP and redirect its traffic to the new interface. If it were just to be altered, I'd favor making MW the site root. We would have to draw a line between material to delete, material to label archived and orphan from the new directory structure and the core projects which will be maintained by a small team of editors and kept up to date. The Admins (talk) 14:19, 10 October 2013 (CEST)

That sort of WordPress sounds fine. This site does look nice. I just think it might be easier to restructure the wiki than set up a new platform and maintain both (the software is supposed to be kept up-to-date, etc.).

In case you decide to stick with the wiki, I made a quick Photoshop of what a simplified skin might look like, though I don't particularly like the way it turned out: this (alt font). Do you have anything in mind for the style/colour scheme? Jillium (talk) 02:06, 11 October 2013 (CEST)

Regardless of the platform, I propose we replace the bullet point format of the Testimony and Research projects with this to allay the wall-of-text effect. (Only a stylesheet change is required, the wikitext would remain the same.) Jillium (talk) 22:13, 12 October 2013 (CEST)

That's just fine. I'm in favor of changing the whole site design, as it has come slightly unstuck over a PHP upgrade that bridged 4 years. If this can be done in MediaWiki, then good - please look for more templates that may be preferable with MW as the front page. The type of theme you presented above (with a homepage) is the kind of thing I'm talking about - and I don't care much about the color scheme - light and user-friendly should do. The Admins (talk) 01:18, 19 October 2013 (CEST)