Development/June2012

Add development items using a section [edit] link and they will be actively organized.

Design

The "event box" template may not be as necessary as an "infobox" style (see attached). How can we make the formatting similar to the typical wikipedia articles?
Could we add an About section? In my opinion (only mine-anyone else can feel free to jump in), I think people would respond to categories as follows:
Main page
About (this could include that first paragraph on the main page, plus some history of the people who first started it (yourself, Janet, Rob, etc) and a few pictures of the team. I could draft the text for this)
Contribute!
Community portal (I think to us, the purpose of this section is clear, however to others, it may not be so clear. Should we add some more examples, or perhaps add an explanatory paragraph?)
Facet map (I personally love the facet map-I think this is pretty accessible. I'll have to think about how to showcase it more)
Recent changes
Français

Usability

J: Contributing using the "edit with form" box easier than with no template.
R: In terms of website infrastructure, I find the way to create new wikis (via the template) is too burdensome for the general user. Currently, they need to do a search on the wiki to see if there is an entry already created. If not, they have to navigate back to the front page, click on Contribute on the side navigation bar, then scroll down to the area to enter the name of the wiki they want to enter, and then gain access to the wiki template.

By far this has been the hardest part for people when I’ve encouraged them to use the wiki, and often times I have to give them a tutorial on how to contribute to the wiki, with them rapidly losing interest.

As a suggestion, would it be possible to retain the template but cut out a few of the middle steps? In my mind, when a users visits the page and does a search for a wiki that doesn’t exist on ACW (e.g. Han Solo) the page automatically brings them to a page that reads:

There were no results matching the query.

Create the page "Han Solo" on this wiki!

When a user clicks on the link for Han Solo, it brings them to a blank wiki page (not the template) where the user would have to have a basic knowledge of wiki coding to create the new Han Solo wiki page. Would it be possible to have the above link to the template instead? Its very user friendly. I think if we can do this, a user with no wiki experience can search a topic, see that the page is missing, and quickly create it using the template that is readily presented to them.