So, during the vote on Young and Under 30, several people brought up the point that the sidebar is currently crowded and needs to be adjusted. I'm sympathetic to those points, as I feel the fewer links people have to be overwhelmed by the more likely they are to view content. It also got me thinking on how we currently present the most recently created pages, since both the new Young and Under 30 page(whatever it ends up being called) and the Top Rated Pages This Month page both have breakdowns of SCPs, Tales, GoI formats and others instead of lumping them all together.
My guiding principle in amending the sidebar are removing any pages that I don't think people would need to have immediate access from on every page. Moving some of these links to the Topdown menu helps in this, as that menu is only visible if you wish to see it, whereas the sidebar is visible no matter what.
So my proposal is as such:
SCP Wiki Sidebar:
1. Move the list of guides not already included there to the Info Pages tab on the Top bar, links like the Guide Hub, licensing, etc. are redundant on the sidebar because they're already present on the Top bar. The upper drop-down menus are less clogging visually to the site, as they are only visible when you want them to be and are divided into sections that aren't all visible at once. These links are also present in the guide to newbies(I think the latest iteration in the works also has them there) so those joining the site would have every opportunity to see them.
Some links, like the Site Rules and Contact Staff pages, I think we should keep due to their importance to day-to-day users. Things like the Licensing Guide and Image Use Policy are only really relevant to writers, so inclusion in the top bar would still mean writers who are at least somewhat familiar with the site would know where to find them. Authors' Pages I think could go under the Library heading of the top bar since things like contests and audio adaptations are there, but that's just me.
2. Combining the Top Rated Pages This Month and Lowest Rated Pages, as well as Recently Created and Contribute. I think the top rated and lowest rated pages make sense to put together, as both are pages we want people to go and look at. Top Rated because we want folks to see our newest and best content, and lowest rated because the pages there are under-appreciated, in need of feedback to fulfill their potential, or are bad articles that need eyes in order to get them into deletion range.
Recently Created are newly created pages, and the Contribute page is the easiest way to contribute new content to the site. I also think we should add GoI formats to the Contribute page in some way but that's a discussion for another day(unless people want to discuss it here, idk not here to dictate your thoughts on where this should go).
3. In the SCP Library Section, adding a page for Tale Series. But wait, I hear you say, I thought this proposal was about consolidation and removing links? Yes, but also about balancing out the number of links in each section. The SCP Series section is soon to have five links, and I think that having however many links are in the SCP Series section is a good place to guide our actions in the rest of the sidebar. (Thought for the future, if it ever gets too unwieldy we can always collapse the scp series links if we get to like, Series 8 or something and they start taking up a lot of real estate.) This would look something like THIS.
I feel like it would ensure the visibility of more long-form tales that don't fall into canons while also making it so the SCP Library section isn't undersized compared to everything else on the page. The rule for contributing could be something like active serials go at the top, with any finished series going in another section beneath. Authors add their own hubs when they have enough of a series to make a hub for it, Canons not included(I know there are some canons included in this page, it's a mock-up). If you update your serial, you can put it back at the top of the page.
Could also have some links to the most recent stories in the little boxes instead of the blurbs, if people wanted to.
SCP Wiki Top Bar:
- Combining the SCP Library and Tales sections, as both are somewhat stunted on their own but make sense to put together, in my opinion. We could also go a step further and combine the "Background" pages with that, so that it would stand on par with the really long sections like the SCP series and the GoI/Canon drop-downs. This would leave the info pages looking relatively short by comparison, which is good, as we'd prefer people to have a wide breadth of content to choose from while not being overwhelmed by things like important guides.
- Creating an Essay drop-down menu - I think having a list of the numerous essays written by site members accessible from every page while also not making them mandatory to look at would give them more visibility and allow users to find help they need without needing to dig through hubs and sub-hubs to find what they're looking for. Would also ensure that good essays get attention while being easier to spot those which are outdated or no longer provide good and useful information. I use This test log yoric turned into a -J lecture as an example of a guide which has not really stood the test of time and still exists due to no attention really being paid to it.
- Adding a tale Serials drop-down, with all the complete series from the page I propose for the sidebar and a link to that page with an "Ongoing stories" link.
Recently Created Pages:
I think we should break down Recently Created into four boxes like we've done with the Top Rated Pages By Month, with Tales, SCPs, GoI Formats and Other pages(Essays, Author Pages, Etc.) to increase their visibility and make sure that everything gets a fair shake at attention. Right now there's such a glut of content coming from Recently Created, so organizing that somewhat would help with allowing people to find content they want. Things like Tales, GoI Formats, and everything else that isn't an SCP gets forced off Recently Created pretty quickly due to how many SCPs get posted, so allowing them to stay up for longer would ensure that they get more eyeballs on them.
Wow, that's a lot of proposals at one time, how the heck do I ever respond to your nonsense, Rogay?
Well, here's how I think you can respond quick n easy to this. My questions are:
How can we make the Sidebar more organized and compact? Do we go with Sidebar Proposal #1, #2, and/or #3, some of those, or something else?
How can we make the Top bar more organized? Do we go with Top Bar Proposal #1, #2, and/or #3, some of those, or something else?
How can we make Recently Created more organized? Do we go with the suggested categorization breakdown, or something else?
After this discussion, I will put whatever form of the top/side/recentcreated proposals people think are best and any further good suggestions that come up in this page discussion up for a vote. I think all of this put together will result in a good amount of consolidation and give us room to add more things in the future as we continue to grow. Looking forward to hearing what you guys think of all this.
Whether you like it or not, history is on our side. We will bury you!
(account deleted)