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Proposal: Add to-do tasks on Main Page

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Add to-do tasks 29-0
On nookipedia's main page they have a to-do list. I love how it lists the exact number of to-do tasks, based on the number within select maintenance categories, and the exact specifics. It seems like a perfect way to motivate people to edit and see ways how they can help. Because I think a question many ask while doing wikis is, "What do I do? Where do I start?" And having a to-do tasklist on the front page would be perfect for that. It's a lot more accessible than "Wiki maintenance" on the sidebar.

I don't have a particular visual in mind, especially images representing the maintenance categories on the front page, but I do imagine it would go right above the "Featured article" and "Mario & Nintendo news" boxes.

But what is a definite is that if this proposal passes, a to-do list similar to Nookipedia's will appear on the front page.

Proposer: Super Mario RPG (talk)
Deadline: January 1, 2025, 23:59 GMT Closed early on December 25, 2024, 23:59 GMT

Support

1. Super Mario RPG (talk) Per.
2. Potato3003 (talk) Per.
3. Sparks (talk) If it's a way to provide more motivation and encouragement, yes!
4. Koopa con Carne (talk) this is a productive idea. Wikis are community-developed projects. One way the Mario Wiki can drive interest in potential new contributors is promoting its areas that need improvement. If there are concerns that this would make the wiki seem lacunar to visitors, think about it this way: if this site was the perfect resource of information on the Mario series, no one would bother to build it further, no? I think the site should embrace its current incompleteness and use it to achieve even better things than it already has.
5. Camwoodstock (talk) ...If the fact that seeing the "This page has an unresolved talk page proposal!" on the front page caught our attention as much as it did (seriously, we physically paused seeing that, wondering what the commotion was about!), we imagine that having a dedicated section on the main page for things that need help would be noticeably impactful as well. We could even take this a step further and integrate things like the Shroom Spotlight onto it as well, maybe show recent proposals that need help being implemented... Really, the sky's the limit when adding a "things to be done" module to the front page.
6. Pseudo (talk) Seems useful for keeping up wiki maintenance!
7. SONIC123CDMANIA+&K(B&ATSA) (talk) Per all. Needed.
8. Rykitu (talk) After I finish looking to see the new pages and checking my contributions, I often find myself scrolling through the wiki to find ways to improve. This will make the process much faster.
9. Altendo (talk) Per all.
10. EvieMaybe (talk) while i think this proposal is currently a bit too vague regarding the execution, i agree with the idea! we need to acknowledge that the wiki is never finished and encourage people to contribute
11. OmegaRuby (talk) A total no-brainer to get wiki editors to find things to do. Per all.
12. ThePowerPlayer (talk) At this point, whenever I visit the front page of the wiki, I almost always immediately go to MarioWiki:Proposals to see what's the latest thing on the wiki that could be discussed or worked on. This feels like simply cutting out the middleman, and would no doubt encourage that productive mindset.
13. Soshi The Yoshi (talk) Per all.
14. AlexBot2004 (talk) Per proposal.
15. Aomaf (talk) yes!.
16. Starluxe (talk) Yep.
17. Rering644 (talk) support this fully.
18. FanOfYoshi (talk) I don't need to say anything
19. RetroNintendo2008 (talk) Per all.
20. JbirdDaHedgehog (talk) per all
21. Wonder Time! (talk) Per all.
22. Ninja Squid (talk) Per all.
23. Harvstar (talk) I think this would be good for the newer users (such as myself), who want some experience contributing to pages; also per all
24. Dine2017 (talk) Per all.
25. Conradd (talk) Finally! Per all.
26. LittleLum (talk) Per all. This will be helpful for everyone who wants to contribute, not just new users.
27. Terrenebrick699 (talk) per all
28. Shokora (talk) – This will definitely attract new motivated users to the site if we can clearly post the wiki's needs on our main page
29. PanchamBro (talk) Sure.

Comments

So, what kind of tasks do you imagine will be on the front page? What's going to determine which to-do is on the page? Mario^-HOHO! (Talk / Stalk) 18:57, December 18, 2024 (EST)

That's a very good question. I definitely think some of the things would be articles marked with {{rewrite}}, images marked with {{image-quality}}, articles marked with {{unreferenced}}, or a majority of articles marked with some maintenance tag at the top. And then some special pages like Special:WantedPages and Special:UnusedFiles being incorporated in some form as well. Super Mario RPG (talk) 19:05, December 18, 2024 (EST)

I think doing as Nookipedia does is a good option - they pretty much put links to articles with nearly every maintenance tag on it, as well as linking to "active discussions" which would be their version of Proposals. We could have fun with it and choose image icons for them or even draft up our own to fit with the style of the main page! Just throwing ideas out there. OmegaRuby [ Talk / Contribs ] 20:19, December 18, 2024 (EST)

Maybe I am a little late to the discussion but I would appreciate a definitive layout instead of "maybe some of those, and some others like that". It doesn't need to be unchangeable, just something like "here's what I think it should have." — Lady Sophie ^(T|C) 10:41, December 23, 2024 (EST)

With over 20 supporters, we'll find out soon enough. Super Mario RPG (talk) 11:03, December 23, 2024 (EST)

At the very least, we think having what Nookipedia does is a no-brainer, though as mentioned in our vote, listing passed proposals that haven't been enacted yet (either newly passed or the oldest ones, whatever people decide is more conductive) and the current Shroom Spotlights couldn't hurt. ~Camwoodstock (talk) 20:22, December 18, 2024 (EST)

It's worth noting that in recent months, Bulbapedia has introduced a Bulletin Board that's very similar to Nookipedia's to-do list in its premise. That page is part of a broader Editor's Hub, accessed by clicking "Lend a Hand" on the wiki's main page. For what this proposal outlines, maybe the to-do list could link to its own page that lists specific tasks for different categories. (This might be unrelated, but Bulbapedia's "Community editing projects" remind me of the Mario Wiki's long-deprecated PipeProjects.) ThePowerPlayer 00:48, December 19, 2024 (EST)

After reading and talking in conversations yesterday in the Discord, I realized something: Isn't this just kind of an extended concept of what 'Shroom Spotlight wants to do? Perhaps we could work in tandem with it, having an element on the to-do list be a link to the Spotlight page/current Spotlight edition, and possibly having the Spotlight mention the to-do alongside unimplemented proposals. OmegaRuby [ Talk / Contribs ] 12:20, December 19, 2024 (EST)

@OmegaRuby A good paint raised. If anything, I think this will help Shroom Spotlight because it help them access articles more easily from each of the maintenance categories. Super Mario RPG (talk) 13:40, December 19, 2024 (EST)

Would there be a way to track red links too? I think this could be very useful --Conradd (talk) 14:50, December 23, 2024 (EST)

Other changes?

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Since the addition of to-do tasks is really popular, I'm prompted to bring up a few small things with the main page are visually irritating to me:

*The left and right floats are separate and not merged into a single float on the left and right each, excluding the topmost float, the Shroom notice, and NIWA banner. The small, unaligned white spaces between the floats doesn't look good.

• The heading colors could be worth considering, if they're too bright (especially the "MarioWiki newspaper" one, but that's for another discussion.
• The social links aren't close together on the uppermost float, and may work better with a float within the uppermost float. Super Mario RPG (talk) 11:00, December 23, 2024 (EST)

I honestly feel like we'd need a visualization of this as well as your proposed to-do list if we were to go any further with this. Having a proposal passed with no clear idea of what the changes will look like doesn't prompt the changes to be put in effect nearly as fast as it would with a true visualization or example. OmegaRuby [ Talk / Contribs ] 10:30, December 24, 2024 (EST)

Pretty much why I haven't voted, even if the outcome is obviously clear at this point. — Lady Sophie ^(T|C) 10:57, December 24, 2024 (EST)

Yeah, I think I jumped the gun a few days ahead of time with this discussion because I wasn't expecting this to become one of the most popular proposals in presumably the site's history. I'll try and set up a sandbox for what I'm considering in a few days. Super Mario RPG (talk) 11:35, December 24, 2024 (EST)

The separate floats allow the page's layout to rearrange dynamically depending on the amount of content in them and the size of your screen, I wouldn't mess with them. -- Too Bad! Waluigi Time! 11:58, December 24, 2024 (EST)

I get that. It's about the unevenness in that the end of a float on the left or right side doesn't match the same length of a float on the other side. Super Mario RPG (talk) 14:36, December 24, 2024 (EST)

Personally I like the unevenness. It is visually more interesting to me than a rigid grid.— Lady Sophie ^(T|C) 09:50, December 25, 2024 (EST)

@LadySophie17 Well looks like the unevenness is sort of resolved on my monitor with the implementation of the new to-do tasks. Super Mario RPG (talk) 20:17, December 25, 2024 (EST)

Another thing is that I think the navigation at the top right is limited. Though I'm aware it's only links to list pages, I think it would nice if there was a way to access all the pages for like Objects or Terms from the front page. Super Mario RPG (talk) 20:27, December 25, 2024 (EST)

An extra remark; in the current implementation, the counters are all on one row that breaks its line depending on screen width. We keep our browser window at 1280px (long story, tl;dr we have one monitor but have our windows organized accordingly) and it looks... Weird. Unused files, wanted categories, and wanted pages all take up a row all to itself, right below. Everything else. We think a more rigid, grid-like layout (like the Nookipedia one this proposal was inspired by) might help remedy this, though it will inevitably make things taller on displays that are already wide enough to display it... ~Camwoodstock (talk) 21:53, December 25, 2024 (EST)

@Camwoodstock To be honest, I like the Nookipedia main page more than this site's since there's more personality to it that's reflective of Animal Crossing, while there's a lack of Super Mario identity to the front page of this wiki. Nookipedia also has the social media links grouped together (a point I've brought up above), and I actually like how the heading floats are separate from the floats with the contents within them, since purple in a light blue float, red in a light blue float, so forth don't seem to mix well, at least from my perspective. Super Mario RPG (talk) 10:21, December 26, 2024 (EST)

MarioWiki definitely needs a kind of visual aid to accompany this to-do list just to make it easier to actually locate the category. Nookipedia at least has unified game assets from hundreds of furniture pieces to choose from. MarioWiki might actually need custom sprites or something to match this. Unless we have something??? Anyway I was hesitant to support the proposal since it lacked a solid groundwork, but it's not a big deal if we can manage. Mario^-HOHO! (Talk / Stalk) 15:14, December 26, 2024 (EST)

@Mario There should be more than enough Super Mario assets to consider to add into the to-do tasks, but I think they have to be PNG's. Super Mario RPG (talk) 15:23, December 26, 2024 (EST)

Yes, but my concern is if have enough assets with the same art style. Nookipedia can use all its assets from one game, New Horizons (Happy Home Designer years ago). MarioWiki doesn't really have much of an equivalent. However, maybe one can first propose a set of images we can decide at least? Mario^-HOHO! (Talk / Stalk) 15:52, December 26, 2024 (EST)

So you're saying the images have to all be from the same game? Super Mario RPG (talk) 15:54, December 26, 2024 (EST)

I recommend they have the same style, like should we use settle on a particular sprite style or a 3d render style? Or maybe a vector style? Something to fit the tone of the Super Mario franchise. I'd like to see a preview of this first. Mario^-HOHO! (Talk / Stalk) 15:57, December 26, 2024 (EST)

Yeah, I can try making it on my user sandbox. Super Mario RPG (talk) 16:22, December 26, 2024 (EST)

While I like the concept of the to-do list, at least in my opinion I think merging it with the announcement bar makes it feel... sidelined, in a way. The announcement gets a bit overshadowed due to being easy to overlook the pure text when it's sharing space with a bunch of boxes; I think it'd be better to split them into a separate announcement bar and to-do list bar. It wouldn't take up THAT much more vertical space and being in its own bar means the text draws notice again. Superchao (talk)

The To-do list has been updated now to separate each category into certain groups. These groups are "Community discussions", "Article maintenance", "Page maintenance" and "File maintenance". While I appreciate the changes (and thank whoever implemented it, as the layout is one I proposed), there's still a lot of room for improvement, so here are a few ideas.

• Group names: We could display the names above each group. These could be the ones I proposed above, or we could discuss and change them.
• Unique colors: Many of the categories here have associated colors to them, such as the {{construction}}'s orange or the {{Image-quality}}'s yellow. We could color each box with its corresponding color if it has one, and pick one if it hasnt. Additionally, we could change some existing colors to create better cohesion between them. This all requires further discussion but off the top of my head, I know {{Media-quality}} and {{Media-length}} use the {{Image-quality}}'s yellow, but the {{Media missing}} template uses purple, so perhaps that should be color for the other two media templates.
• Icons: I think the use of icons is a good idea for the front page, and I agree they should be unified in design and probably not just regular shrunk renders. The issue comes in the sheer number of categories (I don't even know how many there are, since they disappear if there are zero pages that qualify for it). So instead of picking a dozen or so icons, we could just pick four for the current groups.

Sorry if this is a lot, but we can tackle everything step by step.— Lady Sophie ^(T|C) 17:08, December 27, 2024 (EST)

Yeah I like your ideas to color the to-do buttons, @LadySophie17. Super Mario RPG (talk) 18:49, December 27, 2024 (EST)

On my sandbox page, you can see a rough idea I have about grouping the social media icons together, including text of each site name, though I currently haven't figured out how to add a white bubble around them like the List pages on the left. Does anyone think this works better than the icons disorganized on the left and right? Super Mario RPG (talk) 18:10, December 27, 2024 (EST)

Actually, since we're talking about adding icons to the maintenance bubbles, I was wondering if the same could be done for bubble in the upper right, like a representative image for list of games, characters, items, merchandise, and so forth. I don't think it would make sense to add images to the maintenance categories but not an illustration per each subject. The changes have also been added to my sandbox page (though it should definitely look better than this if we're to utilize it). However, the floats will probably either have to be divided or different representative images to choose for each subject if we're to go for this idea. Super Mario RPG (talk) 18:21, December 27, 2024 (EST)