So, I think that our side and top bar are pretty lacking. The sidebar is generally… okay, it has most necessary information and does a decent job of presenting our content. The top bar is an outdated crummy set of lists that doesn't do a terribly good job of presenting our content in any meaningful way. Site content has evolved significantly since the side and top bar were arranged, and although they've been tweaked since then, we haven't had any major retooling of it.
So here's my proposal for a major retooling.
Changes proposed to the sidebar:
I think this would go a long way towards decluttering the sidebar and making the information there more presentable. I would also say that we could split up recently created into categories so that pages are there for longer and aren't immediately buried by other articles. Instead, they would be linked to top rated pages also steps towards accomplishing that so either or both would be a good move to make. For future regulation, perhaps we aim for around six items in a section. If things are getting too long, perhaps reorganize it, add a section, or move stuff to the top bar.
Now, you may have noticed that there are a few links missing from the sidebar now, that you might think are important. Fear not! They, among others, are being moved to a much-retooled top bar~
Taking stuff out of the sidebar and adding stuff to the top bar reduces clutter, since we have limited space in the former and lots of space in the latter.
NEW TALE HUB: The problem with the current tale hub is that it's an airlock. Unless you know what you want to look for, you can't really find anything and it's not easy to browse like you can with other types of articles. I'd replace the current airlock-style page with a set of eight sections, each showing a different set of tales so that you can easily find something you might be interested in.
- Genre stories - Tales which are obviously supposed to be horror, comedy, romance, etc. Those articles which easily fit into the conventions of a certain fiction genre. A lot of this would have to be done by hand, which would obviously make it the most tedious of the bunch. But it is something people could use to find articles that are to their liking.
- Short Stories - Using Wikidot's word count function, showing articles under around 5000~ words. I'm not sure if WikiDot can do words or just characters automatically but in any case we can get close to 5000 words even if that's not an exact cutoff.
- Long stories - same as above, but for stories between 5,000-15,000~ words.
- Epic Length - Any tale exceeding 15,000 words.
- Top Rated Tales - The highest rated tale articles on the site.
- Most Discussed Tales - The tale articles which have the most discussion. This could be achieved with a listpages module.
- Tales By Character - A list of all tagged characters and the stories they are featured in.
- Random Selection - A list of 30 or some number of tales randomly generated when the user loads the page.
So in summary, the things I am proposing to do are as follows
- Retool the side and top bars to improve content navigation and reduce clutter
- Revamp the tale page to not be an airlock and improve content navigation
- Make or edit several minor pages in order to serve the larger changes(i.e creating Orientation Hub and Tales by Author Hub, Editing Recently Created)
A note, I feel that it is necessary to link to all the canons as well as groups of interest and tale seperately because otherwise it can be very difficult for a new person wanting to learn more about the site to explore. We all complain about newbies only caring about the popular stuff, but we enable that by presenting the popular stuff up front and everything else you have to look for. I know that people come to the wiki for SCPs, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't make all effort to promote our content equally.
Whether you like it or not, history is on our side. We will bury you!
(account deleted)