This is an archive of past discussions about Wikipedia:Recentchanges. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

What the heck? That table looks horrid. Why in the world do we need a table here? I also protest the removal of the direct links to NPOV our naming conventions etc. --mav 22:50 Feb 15, 2003 (UTC)

It's useful to separate the links from the "Welcome, newcomers" text. They have a different target audience.
Aligning the text in a table looks better.

The colors etc. can be messed with, but I think the table makes sense. As for the other links, we should try to avoid link overkill, like we did with the Main Page intro. The "Welcome, newcomers" text is intended as a quick reference to the most important links for newcomers. The policy page has links to everything newcomers should know about, if NPOV is not reasonably prominent there, that should be changed, but sticking a fat link on NPOV on every page will not make our users any more likely to adhere to it. --Eloquence 22:56 Feb 15, 2003 (UTC)

I agree with Maveric, I don't like how that table jumps out at me every time. Not to mention once again giving the September 11 terrorist attack way more prominence than I believe it needs in a general-purpose encyclopedia (Recent Changes is where I live).

I just thought of an idea; why not give every registered user their own copy of special pages such as this one, and allow them to edit it? That would give way more customizability than skins allow, I could put anything into the header of my own Recent Changes page. Bryan

I think the jumping out is due to the colors, not the table. And I do think we need to either give the Sep.11-Wikipedia some more exposure, or abandon it. There are 12 pages there, so it wouldn't be a big loss. As for the customization, while such tools are certainly nice, I'm not sure the RecentChanges page is the right place for such customizations. Perhaps a customizable sidebar makes more sense. --Eloquence 23:04 Feb 15, 2003 (UTC)

Re sep11-wiki; months ago the Cunctator said he was going to provide a list of pages to move over there, and then never did. Nobody's ever really touched it since. If given such a list, I'll be happy to move the pages... --Brion 23:15 Feb 15, 2003 (UTC)

I'll get started on that. Bryan

Okay, here's a list: Talk:September 11, 2001 Terrorist Attack/Memorial wiki pages Bryan

It's ugly - esp at high resolutions. I'll get back to that issue later. But what about adding new text and a link to the edit page boilerplate. replace the second, third and fourth sentences with: "By saving this page you indicate you agree to the terms and conditions of this website. DO NOT SUBMIT COPYRIGHTED WORK WITHOUT PERMISSION!" --mav

Our policies are not a set of terms and conditions. People like Cunctator are eager to point out that these are "rules to consider", and there would certainly be much gnashing of teeth if we presented them as conditions for participation. But a policy link could certainly be put in there, and NPOV *is* one of our "real rules". --Eloquence 23:08 Feb 15, 2003 (UTC)

Actually, the fact that the content of this website is under the GFDL is very important IMO and new users definitely need to be made to understand that putting stuff here places it under those terms (and that if they don't have the legal right to place it under those terms, they can't put it here). Bryan

Misunderstanding - no objections from my part to the copyright warning (which already exists), just to linking to Wikipedia:Policies and guidelines as "Terms and conditions". --Eloquence 23:17 Feb 15, 2003 (UTC)

Notice the link to Wikipedia:Policy and not Wikipedia:Policies and guidelines. I've said many times that we should have one page that sets out our real policies and terms of use. These policies and terms do exist but they are lost in a buzz of "rules to consider" which need to be excised from Wikipedia:Policies and guidelines and placed on their own page. --mav

(Discussion moved to Wikipedia talk:Policies and guidelines) - Enchanter

I don't mind the table, although it does jump around a bit when the page is loading due to a browser glitch (Maybe serves me right for using IE5.0).

I would like to see a fairly minimalist page here - more or less just the stuff in the table. For example:

It is regular users who are addicted to recent changes - newcomers often take a while to find it. So this isn't a particularly good place for a link to Welcome, newcomers.. The same goes for the link to the FAQ - this isn't the most logical place for it to be.
There is a clear copyright warning when you edit a page, the link to copyrights here doesn't really add anything to that.

Enchanter

I think we should have mention of NPOV & copyrights on this page. They are our key policies. -- Tarquin 10:32 Feb 16, 2003 (UTC)

I agree. Mentioned. --mav

Can we please put back the copyright warning. The amount of violations seems to have increased recently IMHO. Aldie 17:28 Mar 16, 2003 (UTC)

We have a big fat copyright warning on every edit page, where it belongs. If there's an increase in violations, that's probably because there's also an increase in traffic because we're on Google again. --Eloquence 18:45 Mar 16, 2003 (UTC)

IMHO this is now looking too cluttered, with lots of links. With the lines in the table getting longer, they are more likely to cause line breaks depending on browser settings (as they are for me - and it looks horrible!). I would prefer only the most important links, and ditch:

Sep 11 Wiki - gives it more prominence than it needs here.
Mailing lists, IRC chat - not hard to find elsewhere for people who want to. They are not links that people will come back to again and again, so no need to give prominence here.
Naming conventions - now that moving pages is easy, it's not much of a problem if someone gives an article an inappropriate name. Naming conventions is not a key policy that everyone needs to know about in the same way as NPOV or copyrights - only people who care about these things really need to read it.

Yes, I agree. Along the same lines:

I don't like all these links on the Recent Changes page. In my favorite font size 26 lines fit in my IE window, but 25 are used up by headers and links, so without scrolling I see almost nothing of what the page is supposed to be about, Recent Changes. If they have to be there, maybe they can be put in a smaller font than the Recent Changes themselves, and/or more compactly with less white space, or in a box like the Special pages box, or after the Recent Changes instead of before them? - Patrick 00:08 Feb 18, 2003 (UTC)

If all that is needed is to ruduce the width then I just did that. I for one find it very useful to have all the links on RC so long as they don't cause nasty things like line-breaks at lower resolutions. --mav

That's an improvement with the line breaks. I still think that this is too cluttered and taking up space with links that are rarely needed and irrelevant to the recent changes page. If anything I think there is a case for taking out some more links to free up some space.

In particular, I would prefer to take out the links to Neutral point of view, Wikipetiquette and Copyrights, and just have the link to Policies and guidelines.

The reasons for this is that few people actually need to read these policy pages. A new user isn't going to wade all the way through the Neutral point of view article or the Wikipettiquette policy before they start editing - and nor should they have to. In the majority of cases, people just need to be told "don't be biased, don't infringe copyrights, be nice, and here's where to go for more info" - which is what the policies and guidelines page does. I suggest just linking to there.

Enchanter

Hm. That would also reduce the line hight by one so that peole with lowver res screens might actually see recent changes in their first screen. I'll work on it. --mav

That's looking better! There's still quite a few links there but it's not too overwhelming. I think the current size of four lines should be considered the maximum, and we should try not to go over it in future. Enchanter

OK, first we should understand that there are two different goals of putting links on a frequently visited page like RC:

providing a handy reference to useful pages (bookmark-style)
providing additional exposure to important pages.

Right now we mainly have links in category 1. The reason I added the IRC channel is that it needs exposure to grow (and, as a matter of fact, it did already grow after the RC link). If we remove IRC, there's certainly a case to be made to remove "Welcome, newcomers" as well, since that's also a category 2 link. However, I would prefer having another line of links for pages that need exposure -- this is a small font and hardly takes any screen space. What is the argument against more links? "Clutter"? I can't see it. --Eloquence 01:40 Feb 18, 2003 (UTC)

I agree that this is a very effective place to give exposure. However, most people will come here want to see the recent changes. Seeing a large swathe of links, which on lower resolutions takes up most of the screen so you don't see much of the recent changes, can be annoying. It's intrusive in the same way, as, say, a banner advertisement.

So I think we should have a moderate number of links here - as we currently do - and think carefully about which the best ones to have are. Personally, I think giving some exposure to IRC might be a good idea. Space could be made by getting rid of links such as "New pages" (a bookmark style link to a page that is only two clicks away on the dropdown box), "Stub pages" (already linked from Pages that need work), etc.

Enchanter

Actually, "New pages" is both a bookmark-style and an exposure link, and in that respect, especially useful. I'm not sure how important "New pages" is as I have just started using it recently, but I feel that new pages are especially in need of review, because it needs to be determined early if a page can ever grow into something useful. So I'd want this link to stay, but "stub pages" may not be as important given its prominent link on the "attention" page (gah, I hate all those long titles in the Wikipedia: namespace). --Eloquence 06:12 Feb 18, 2003 (UTC)

I've removed the link to the stub page finder per the above talk and have added a link to Vandalism in progress for obvious reasons. We can do some more trimming by placing a prominent link to 'Votes for deletion' on the 'Pages that need work' page. We can also create a new Wikipedia:namespace page that is about the various ways that we contact each other. That page would have links to the 'Village Pump', 'Mailing lists', 'IRC Chat' and our page on how to use Talk pages. That should significantly reduce the clutter that several people have complained about. --mav

I think "Votes for deletion" should stay because it's so directly linked to RC. It's non-obvious that it can be found under any of the other links: "Sure, some pages need work, but this one needs to be deleted -- how can I do that?" And while there should be an overview contact/chat page, the Village Pump link is reasonably useful to have it directly available -- it's our "one stop page" for pretty much every question. --Eloquence 08:14 Feb 18, 2003 (UTC)

The upper part is 4 lines, in "larger" font of IE it is 5 lines:

Main Page | Recent changes |  Special pages 
Printable version
   
Other languages: Dansk | Deutsch | Español | Esperanto | Français ...
 Polski | Português | Svenska

This could be made more compact. It could fit in 3 lines in the same font size.

Also,

Recent changes

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

is one big line, one normal line and a blank line. This could be made

Recent changes From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

without blank line (1 big line and 1 normal line less). - Patrick 08:38 Feb 18, 2003 (UTC)

Nah, these are our standard page headers, these cannot be edited here, and should be consistent across all pages. You can of course use your own stylesheet to change the size of the headlines, but I for one am fairly happy with what we have now. It's actually more compact now than before the links table was there. --Eloquence 08:44 Feb 18, 2003 (UTC)

The "Help" link in the div section breaks CologneBlue layout in Opera 7. I didn't check other broweser. --Magnus Manske 12:26 Feb 18, 2003 (UTC)

After adding ru: (Russian) and la: (Latin) links here, I've thought about it a bit more, and think both of them having a link would be rather unjustified. But then, I started trying to figure out which one (if not both) should go, and I found a little dilemma. Should "popularity" for the purpose of which languages get links on major pages be based on how many people speak the language, or how active its Wikipedia is? Russia (obviously!) has more speakers, but the Latin Wikipedia (much to my surprise) is several times more active (mostly with German people, oddly enough). So, in a case like that, which one, if either, should stay? And even if it's the general consensus both ought to go, we should still work out which way to figure "popularity" anyway, for future clarity, if it hasn't already been worked out. -- John Owens 15:05 Apr 13, 2003 (UTC)

Why would having a link be unjustified?

Because we're trying to keep this page particularly lean and compact, and it's going to get a bit crowded if we list all the Wikipediae that have a "Recent Changes" page, since, as far as I can see, there's no way to have a Wikipedia without one. Thinking about it more, I'm more inclined to keep the Russian one, for the sake of exposure, like the discussions above mentions; that's favoured by both the facts that there are many more Russian speakers, and that it's not gotten a lot of activity (I think I've single-handedly tripled the number of changes there, even if it is mostly just adding en: and de: links ;) and could use some more attention. -- John Owens

I think 'popularity' in this context should be based on how active each wiki is, rather than, say, the number of speakers, so a link to, say, the Russian wiki is not appropriate. According to my reasoning, the link could be useful to three groups of people:

Users of the Russian wiki who are visiting the English Wiki. There won't be many of them, because there aren't many Russian Wikipedia users. And they will almost certainly have the Russian recent changes page bookmarked anyway.
Users of the English Wiki who speak a some Russian and like to monitor the Russian Wiki (I'm one of these people, by the way!). There are not many of us, and there isn't much to monitor at the Russian wiki anyway. It's not worth cluttering up the screens of all the other Wikipedia users for this small group of people.
Russian speakers who haven't discovered the Russian Wikipedia yet. This again is unlikely - the main page makes it crystal clear that this is a multilingual project, and most users will find the main page before the Recent changes page.

Clutter on the recent changes page is bad, and I don't see a convincing case for lots and lots of language links when these get in the way. Enchanter 21:05 May 8, 2003 (UTC)

Maybe we could add the rest of them to another page (even a subpage?). Obviously, there isn't much use to load on every access a link to a "Recent Changes" page that shows no changes in the last 7 (30) days. -- User:Docu

Now you tell us, Brion! ;) -- John Owens 06:38 May 8, 2003 (UTC)

Blame Lee, he's the one tossing the monkey wrench into the works to see what happens. :) --Brion 06:51 May 8, 2003 (UTC)

Pink? yuck! -- Tarquin 11:05 3 Jul 2003 (UTC)

I just took the colours from the front page selected artilces. I did it quickly and did not havetime to play around with colours. - fonzy

The main page is not the best source for good taste in colours :) [1] -- Tim Starling 12:20 3 Jul 2003 (UTC)

I'd put this on the village pump, but was told it should be moved here.

I've just been looking at the new layout for the top section of the Special:Recentchanges and was wondering if a link to the recent changes page of the Sep 11 wiki should be there. I'm not sure its relevant to the wikipedia and it looks like it was thrown in only to fill a bit more space in the box. (please dont take this to be an attack on the Sep 11 wiki, I just dont think its recentchages should be linked to from wikipedia recentchanges page) - Tobin Richard 16:13 3 Jul 2003 (UTC)

I like having the requested articles line here. The previous idea of having it on the Main Page wasn't a good one because Wikipedia editors relatively rarely view the Main Page. But most hit reload on RC dozens of times a day. --mav

I have taken out the list of 'wanted articles'. I don't like it for the same reason as I don't like banner ads - they take up space on the screen and are likely of no use to the majority of users. People create hundreds of articles a day on Wikipedia, and I don't think people need this sort of 'advertisement' to create more.

I've also removed the 'edit this page' link, because (1) it makes it more likely that the page will be disrupted by newbie experiments and inappropriate material and (2) I think the text should be brief, useful and unobtrusive, and shouldn't have to change very often.

Enchanter 20:52 9 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Well I put in the "edit this page" link so that it would be easier to maintain the requested articles section. So it is not needed if there is no line to maintain. I still think it was a cool idea to have the line here in the first place. --mav

I proposed to have such a list on the Main Page, as the German wiki does -- Mav did not like that, because he only wants complete content listed there. Aside from that, the Main Page is already fairly cluttered as it is. The reason for having the list in the first place is that there are some articles (e.g. carpet) which definitely need to be written, but which get little exposure as such because they do not exist. Special:Wantedpages is barely functional.

The experiment seemed to work fine, as after only a few hours, Bill Maher and tadpole were created, which might have taken several months otherwise. As for the screen estate problem, the line is in very small font. It is indeed one of the pages that is frequently checked by contributors. In my opinon, the line should be kept. What do others think? (see old version) I don't see where else this could be prominently placed. --Eloquence 23:35 9 Jul 2003 (UTC)

As I said I really liked it and it did prompt me to stub tadpole and I had planed to do the same to carpet but the line had already been deleted. I think it is a very good thing to have it here on RC where our editors live so as to encourage them to fill embarrassing holes in our coverage. An added bonus is that we can allow anybody to edit this page while access to the Main Page is restricted. --mav

I loved it there. I think we should emphasize that wikipedia is a work in progress--not only out of modesty, but also out of honesty. And, as has already been noticed, it got those articles started rather quickly. Koyaanis Qatsi 23:52 9 Jul 2003 (UTC)

I have removed a lot of crud from the page. The FIRST recent change was displaying in the BOTTOM THIRD of my screen, which isn't particularly small. -- Tarquin 17:24 10 Jul 2003 (UTC)

I put the Requested Articles line back in (its only one line and see above for reasons on why it is a Good Thing (tm) to have on RC). But the previous implementation was messy since it had the edit and help links floating off to the right. I know for a fact that at low res this led to a great deal of white (or in this case yellow) space below to the main lines of text. This should be gone now. --mav

Fair enough. But two problems remain: the TABLE is inside a P, which causes pointless white space above and below. There's also a BR after the table, which may be causing white space too. -- Tarquin 21:24 10 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Do you need a <br clear="all"> or something in there? The " Below are the last 100 changes in last.." bit seems to have moved up next to the table -- sannse 21:31 10 Jul 2003 (UTC)

How long after an announcement is made do you want to stay link bold? It's good the first time you see it, but distracting every time thereafter. The sooner removed the better, I say. -- Tim Starling 14:44 22 Jul 2003 (UTC)

I think it can go now. Looks like the wiki-world is not in favour... :( Martin

Proposal, suggestion, etc.: if you fill a "Requested article" link on Recentchanges, you get to choose what replaces it. Graft 18:01, 8 Aug 2003 (UTC)

I'd rather have a system where people can vote on the big list of Requested Articles. Chadloder 18:15, Aug 8, 2003 (UTC)

There is no reason to add bureaucracy like that here. Voting is only used as a last resort to resolve controversial issues - if we had to vote on what to list in the selected articles section of the Main Page, then that section would never get updated. --mav 22:12, 8 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Removed link to layout talk page. It's been publicised for ages, it's prominently linked on Main page talk - it doesn't need to carry on cluttering up this page. Martin

Can we agree on a deadline to remove this link? I'd say Aug 18. RC is mostly for short term announcements, otherwise it gets too cluttered.—Eloquence

Aug 18 would be fine for me - but I feel it should be advertised again for a few days prior to the end date of Jtdirl's vote, if that's let to run for a month or so. Martin 09:55, 15 Aug 2003 (UTC)