explain xkcd:Community portal/Proposals

Community Portal
Proposals (+post) Place for ideas and suggestions to improve the wiki's design and organization on general issues.	Technical (+post) Technical issues regarding the site, including bug reports or MediaWiki extensions requests.	Coordination (+post) Community-managed page for coordinating content editing and maintenance tasks.	Admin requests (+post) Problems requiring assistance from an admin. User problems, changes to protected pages, etc.	Miscellaneous (+post) Place for general chit-chat about virtually anything that doesn't fit anywhere else.
View all community portal sections at once here

Tagline

I haven't created MediaWiki:Tagline yet, but we need to think about what to put there. That's the familiar "From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia." over at Wikipedia - it appears right under the title of each page. --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 10:39, 1 August 2012 (EDT) Moved from Explain XKCD:Community portal --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 00:09, 4 August 2012 (EDT)

Initial discussion from the old Community portal

I think we should create a separate Discuss the wiki page, so that each discussion can go under its own header. I'd suggest setting up a todo list where people can help out. I'd start with a suggestion:

We should be using cleaner urls. Maybe this tool can help setting that up. --Waldir (talk) 05:46, 2 August 2012 (EDT)

Whatever we do decide, I've created {{xkcd}} and {{explain}} templates to create links to the xkcd site and other explanations here on this site; that should factor at least those sites (nice central administration) as well as helping us categorize pages that use them. Was thinking of also {{wiki}} for the same benefit, even if there's already a prefix built into mediawiki... the only drawback is the bias toward the en side... IronyChef (talk) 10:31, 2 August 2012 (EDT)

I'm liking the idea of creating a Discuss the wiki page - I'll start one if someone doesn't/hasn't beat me to it and add it to the sidebar. I'd asked for better URLs at User talk:Jeff#Robots.txt, though I didn't know what they were called. --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 17:17, 2 August 2012 (EDT)

I also like the idea of the {{xkcd}} tags. On a related note, I've imported {{tl}}.  :-) I also realize we don't have a secure server here, but I'd support the best practice of beginning URLs with protocol-relative links ( // instead of http:// or https:// ) anyway, especially since the xkcd website itself appears to be https-compatible.Nevermind, it doesn't seem to be. So I guess it doesn't matter. --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 22:40, 2 August 2012 (EDT)

Maybe we can create a subpage of the community portal for the wiki discussion. What do you think? --Waldir (talk) 04:32, 3 August 2012 (EDT)

Also one for editing coordination (see User:SurturZ/sandbox for instance), another for mediawiki assistance (requests to admins perhaps on the same page, or on a separate one). Any other ideas? --Waldir (talk) 04:41, 3 August 2012 (EDT)

Moved from Explain XKCD:Community portal, may need to be broken out into new headers or sub-headers. --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 00:12, 4 August 2012 (EDT)

Automatic Import

Hi

I created a draft for the comic pages. It's still work in progress, but I'd like to retrieve feedback.

Also, maybe we could autmatically import comics using the JSON data Randall gives us ([1]). This way, we could also include transcripts. --SlashMe (talk) 15:23, 1 August 2012 (EDT)

Hm, I should add a link to my draft: User:SlashMe/Testpage ;-) --SlashMe (talk) 06:54, 2 August 2012 (EDT)

I updated the page, including links to the next/previous comic similar to Template:ComicHeader. I used comic 472, because it has a lot of metadata (link, news, HTML title, etc.). --SlashMe (talk) 07:32, 2 August 2012 (EDT)

Just to remind everyone, I'd be ready to import the comics, but I don't want to until I got more feedback. Please have a look at User:SlashMe/Testpage and tell me your opinion. --SlashMe (talk) 06:02, 3 August 2012 (EDT)

I think your test page looks great. I'm a big fan of it. Any way to fit the text in the text box rather than having it run all the way to the right? --Jeff (talk) 18:19, 3 August 2012 (EDT)

I just made a change concerning line breaks, at least it works in Firefox and Chrome. Could somebody please test it in different versions of Internet Explorer?

If you agree, I would start uploading tomorrow. I'll send you a mail. --SlashMe (talk) 18:31, 3 August 2012 (EDT)

Moved from User talk:Jeff. --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 00:38, 4 August 2012 (EDT)

XKCD Store link

I think there should be a link to the XKCD store on the left-hand navigation bar, just under "Main page". We don't want to inadvertently cost Mr Munroe money and force him back to his day job instead of drawing more XKCD :-) --SurturZ (talk) 20:23, 2 August 2012 (EDT)

I don't see a prominent store link on the blog, so I'll wait for Jeff's input before adding that one. If we do add it, should we phrase the link "XKCD store"? --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 20:27, 2 August 2012 (EDT)

[2] - I'm cool with it, but maybe we put links to both xkcd and the xkcd store on the left, would be weird just to have the store link right? --Jeff (talk) 20:01, 3 August 2012 (EDT)

Heh, yeah. --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 20:12, 3 August 2012 (EDT)

Moved from Talk:Main Page. --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 00:42, 4 August 2012 (EDT)

I added both. I'm not quite sure about their placement, though - having them beneath the "Community portal" makes logical sense but doesn't look that great. --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 01:42, 4 August 2012 (EDT)

Centralize discussion?

There seem to be three main places for discussion about the wiki, and we need to centralize these so people can all be in sync and prevent having a mess nobody can navigate. I suggesting redirecting this page (talk:Main Page) to the Community portal, and add a large notice to Jeff's talk page also suggesting using the Community portal instead. Current discussions can be moved there. What do you think? --Waldir (talk) 16:07, 3 August 2012 (EDT)

Seems a good idea to me. --SlashMe (talk) 17:00, 3 August 2012 (EDT)

There are some suggestions on how to organize the community portal here (basically using subpages for different purposes, similar to Wikipedia's various Village pumps). Please comment :) --Waldir (talk) 17:04, 3 August 2012 (EDT)

I agree - my talk page is probably not the best place for general wiki discussion, this is better, but best to keep everything together! --Jeff (talk) 20:10, 3 August 2012 (EDT)

I'm importing wikipedia:Template:Village pump to set something like that up. I'll put a working draft in place, feel free to modify as needed, ofc. --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 21:24, 3 August 2012 (EDT)

Moved from Talk:Main Page. --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 00:46, 4 August 2012 (EDT)

"Random comic?"

Not to clutter the sidebar, but what would you say to adding a "Random comic" right under "Random page", linking to //dynamic.xkcd.com/random/comic/ ? --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 01:46, 4 August 2012 (EDT)

Naw, xkcd already has a random comic. I think we should have a random explanation. ;-) All kidding aside, I was wondering: generating a random member of a category...? Has that improved since the early days when I tried to do something like that. -- IronyChef (talk) 03:19, 4 August 2012 (EDT)