Topic on Talk:MediaWiki/Homepage improvements 2018

• "Get extensions" links to which does not even explain how to get/download them?
• "Tech blog" - why is this so relevant that it is in the top box?
• "User help" - it is to read and not to ask, but that's not clear from the wording (manual? documentation?)
• "FAQ" - for who, but see bullet point above
• "Communication" - why is this relevant and for who?
• "Wikimedia technology" and "Wikimedia audiences" are some WMF departments, but that's not clear and why should people care?
• "Community portal" - what's that and why should I go there? It seems to link to Project:Help and that feels different than its wording
• "Current issues" - seems to be about the mediawiki.org website only but not clear from the name
• Why are "Recent Changes", "Translate content", "Random page", "Sandbox" not under "Tools" where "Related changes" or "Cite this page" is?

I agree with most of these a bit, but at least some of them are fundamental ways that MediaWiki works, e.g.:

Why are "Recent Changes", "Translate content", "Random page", "Sandbox" not under "Tools" where "Related changes" or "Cite this page" is?

The first set are page-invariant, the second set are related to the page you're seeing it from.

(Also, previous discussion about the sidebar took place at Project:Current issues; not sure where best to talk about changing this?)

In a lot of those cases better content does not exist and would have to be written first. (As an aside, our top pages could use a little more design. Compare the Drupal or WordPress download page with the Get MediaWiki link, for example - and that's one of our better looking landing pages.)

• "Get extensions" is a very basic topic to link to, but the page is not very useful. It is the entry point of a category system that's largely based on facets irrelevant to the reader (Extensions by hook usage? Extensions by visual element‎? etc), does not explain how to evaluate extensions, or how to install them, does not provide any search functionality, does not even mention skins. So that would have to be rewritten.
• IMO get rid of the blog link, it has little useful content. (Most of our blogging happens in Phabricator anyway.)
• The Support section lacks clear audience designations. IMO it should be split up and consolidated with the Development section so we have the three audience groups (wiki editors, wiki owners, developers).
  • Then again, does it sense to have user (wiki editor) help there? I don't imagine users of a random MediaWiki instance come here to find out how to use it...
  • Split "Technical manual" (AKA Manual:Contents) into a separate site admin manual and developer manual. Merge the FAQ (which is really a site admin FAQ) into the former, I don't think it needs a sidebar entry.
  • Support desk and Communication is for all audiences so maybe move it up to. the top.
• The "Code repository" link should probably go to a wiki page that explains code can be found at Gerit and/or Diffusion and/or Github.
• Instead of "Wikimedia technology" and "Wikimedia audiences" (extra confusing with the lowercase) there should be a link about organizations (with at least the a mention of other orgs like WMDE, and some generic info on movement structure). Also that site-hopping header those pages have is super confusing.
• The MediaWiki.org section is IMO largely OK - it is reasonably clear that those links are for contributors of this site, and those links are mostly the ones wiki editors would expect to see there (not sure how useful the translation stats are, but then I don't translate much). Maybe something like "This wiki" would be a clearer name?