MediaWiki talk:Sidebar

Link to NewPages?

What do you think about adding link to New pages just below Recent changes? -- Lahwaacz (talk) 08:40, 24 February 2014 (UTC)

Why not take inspiration from Wikipedia:MediaWiki:Sidebar and create our own "interaction" menu? Besides Special:NewPages we could move there Special:RecentChanges, Category:Help, and add links to ArchWiki:Contributing, ArchWiki:Reports and ArchWiki:Requests. -- Kynikos (talk) 14:52, 25 February 2014 (UTC)

Just brainstorming here, but also a link like Recent changes (alt) could encourage participation in talk pages. -- Kynikos (talk) 04:20, 26 February 2014 (UTC)

I like the idea, however as you noted earlier, the anchor text should be a system message so that it has available translations. Is that still a requirement? We won't probably find a suitable message for all these links... -- Lahwaacz (talk) 05:58, 26 February 2014 (UTC)

Of course you make a good point with translations. Actually that's never been a strict requirement, in that discussion it was more of a proposed improvement, since that link was the only untranslated one in the whole sidebar. Maybe if we force English on all the links in this new "interaction" menu it won't look bad at all even in non-English interfaces.

I've been bold and updated the sidebar, let's wait for reactions and opinions.

-- Kynikos (talk) 10:14, 27 February 2014 (UTC)

For the moment I've left the available translations to see if users of non-English interfaces like it or not. I also haven't added the Recent changes (alt) link because I'm waiting for an inspiration for a better name. -- Kynikos (talk) 10:29, 27 February 2014 (UTC)

Well, it uses the inverted filter, so it could be either "Recent changes (inv)" or "Recent changes^-1". You could even invert the word "main" as the only namespace not being matched, so "Minor changes" or "Subsidiary changes" are other alternatives. I would not invert "recent" though, "Ancient changes" looks too weird :) -- Lahwaacz (talk) 22:33, 8 March 2014 (UTC)

What would you think of "Recent talks"? Would you find it too misleading? It's not only talks, but it would serve well the purpose of inviting people into discussions. -- Kynikos (talk) 02:01, 9 March 2014 (UTC)

I could probably live with that, though I would prefer something more accurate. Or just use "Recent talks etc."? -- Lahwaacz (talk) 09:05, 9 March 2014 (UTC)

There's also the problem that a too-long name would probably wrap (or overflow if we use non-breaking spaces), just test some of them with Firebug or similar: I'd like to limit the name to two words and use only letter characters also for visual consistency. "Minor changes" is as inaccurate as "Recent talks", i.e. not all those changes are "minor". I'm reconsidering your "Subsidiary changes" instead, after all "recent" can be understood by the similarity with "Recent changes".

But there's another aspect to consider: would two different links to Special:RecentChanges confuse inexperienced users, and possibly have the opposite effect, i.e. discourage them from checking one of the two pages?

Finally, I think adding the hidemyself=1 filter would be useful too, what's your opinion?

-- Kynikos (talk) 10:26, 10 March 2014 (UTC)

You are right about the title length, definitely the shorter the better.

I've got another idea, based on "Changes under the hood", which is obviously too long: "Background changes" or "Underlying changes" (pick the better wording). There are probably better alternatives, my language register is not very large.

I have been thinking about "Recent talks", and it really starts making sense. It is the most simple, and the only drawback is not very important - the non-talk namespaces included in the filter are not changed every day, and if so, there is usually a discussion preceeding them.

Adding an additional link, even similar to "Recent changes", can be only an improvement. I can't think of a situation when the users resort to checking only the new link and forgetting about "Recent changes", the changes from the Main namespace would be heavily missed. So either they adapt to checking both, or stay checking only "Recent changes".

I would not add any additional options to the filter, especially hidemyself=1 could be problematic (e.g. some user could do some change, refresh the list, not see his own change and ...). IMO this option is useful only to very active users, which is a minority. (I thought that this option is configurable from preferences along with hidebots etc., but it is not.)

-- Lahwaacz (talk) 16:06, 10 March 2014 (UTC)

Ouch, just tested "{Subsidiary|Background|Underlying} changes" and they all wrap on my browser... Using a non-breaking space doesn't really overflow at least on Firefox, but it doesn't feel safe either, it probably overlaps a padding or margin and seems too hackish to me. Maybe "Recent talks" is really the only viable solution, I've just implemented it (without hidemyself), let's wait for feedbacks. -- Kynikos (talk) 13:21, 11 March 2014 (UTC)

Remove "Random page"?

While we are at it, is there some particular case when Special:Random is useful? Or is it in the menu just because it is used on Wikipedia, probably added by default and nobody removed it yet?

I find it useless because it does not stick to one language, though I think it sticks to the Main namespace (it is hard to verify this empirically). So even if we moved each language into its own namespace, it would probably work only for English.

-- Lahwaacz (talk) 22:20, 28 February 2014 (UTC)

It does stick to the Main namespace. I happen to use it, e.g. when I want to test Wiki Monkey on random pages. I think it's also been used in the past to fix the style on random articles instead of using a page list. I'd keep it, maybe we can leave this discussion open to hear more opinions. -- Kynikos (talk) 01:30, 1 March 2014 (UTC)