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Errors with "In the news"

• A series of attacks by the National Liberation Army in the Catatumbo region of Colombia leaves more than a hundred people dead.

The number killed in Catatumbo is erroneous. The figure of 100 comes from France 24 but that is reporting "across three Colombian departments -- from the remote Amazon jungle in the south to the mountainous northeastern border with Venezuela". The breakdown seems to be 80 in the north and 20 in the south so 80+20=100. But these numbers seem to be rough estimates because these regions are quite wild. Andrew🐉(talk) 10:40, 22 January 2025 (UTC)

Our article doesn't mention attacks outside of the Catatumbo region. Secretlondon (talk) 13:36, 22 January 2025 (UTC)

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Amakuru removed View from the Window at Le Gras (File:Untitled (point de vue), Niépce 1827 — HRC 2020 (cropped).jpg) from Template:POTD/2025-01-23, and I replaced it with File:Garlic bulbs and cloves.jpg; however, both of us missed that the protected version had already been manually created for some reason. Can someone replace the protected version with the new garlic POTD? Jay8g 00:50, 22 January 2025 (UTC)

@Jay8g: ooh, good spot, thank you.  Fixed.  — Amakuru (talk) 09:04, 22 January 2025 (UTC)

General discussion

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Usability and discoverability

I would expect the main page of the encyclopedia to prominently feature both a table of contents and a search feature. This page has a lot of trivia, which is a nice secondary function, but no longer seems to serve its primary functions very well. It does have a search feature, but it's a small icon up at the top in a bar of icons, rather than being front and center and already open with a box to type in words (in the style of a search engine, like ).

It's a bit weird we visibly link to Misplaced Pages:Contents/Portals, but the only link to Misplaced Pages:Contents (which is important enough it's linked to from every page on the site) is hidden behind the pancake menu icon in the upper left. We do have templates like Misplaced Pages:Contents/TOC navbar that could be used directly on this page as a better gateway to actual articles, for those that are curious but don't have any particular query in mind or are looking for inspiration. Beland (talk) 20:26, 13 January 2025 (UTC)

Agree about the trivia, but remember opinions here come from the trivia writers. Last time I looked at portal usage statistics, it looks like a few people click to see what they are, and most of them don't click anything further. Art LaPella (talk) 03:55, 14 January 2025 (UTC)

This appears to be an objection to the WP:SKIN, not the contents of Main Page itself. The default skins on desktop and mobile both have a large search box or icon right at the top of every page. The desktop skin also has a link to Misplaced Pages:Contents in the menu shown on every single page. If you don't like the way that requires opening the menu before that link is visible, I suggest you bring it up on an appropriate talk page for the skin (perhaps Misplaced Pages talk:Vector 2022) or at the village pump. Modest Genius 14:09, 14 January 2025 (UTC)

Yes, I'm objecting to the fact that the primary functions of the main page are hidden in a menu and in an icon rather than being directly on - if not the most prominent things on - the page.

Wouldn't changing the skin change all pages? That seems like the wrong answer, since it wouldn't make sense to put the Contents listing on every page, nor would it make sense to have an open search bar on every page. Unlike the main page, I would expect the primary means of navigation to be clicking on links to related articles, as opposed to browsing through topics. (Search is sort of intermediate on those pages, so an icon seems like a good compromise.) -- Beland (talk) 21:52, 14 January 2025 (UTC)

I see no reason why we can't have in the top box "Welcome to Misplaced Pages" a visually predominant search bar. Doesn't touch the skin. Masem (t) 22:31, 14 January 2025 (UTC)

I have whipped up a search box at Misplaced Pages:Main Page/sandbox. How does that look? -- Beland (talk) 01:58, 15 January 2025 (UTC)

I like your idea but your design makes the page header (including the recently added editor count) take up 30% of content height on my display, with about 50% of that header wasted grey emptiness. Some smarter (responsive) design will be needed. Bazza 7 (talk) 10:07, 15 January 2025 (UTC)

How about moving the "Other areas of Misplaced Pages" into that box to fill some of that space?--User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 14:32, 15 January 2025 (UTC)

Is that list considered more or less important than the featured content and news sections? -- Beland (talk) 16:19, 15 January 2025 (UTC)

What is the size of your display? Desktop or mobile? -- Beland (talk) 16:18, 15 January 2025 (UTC)

@Beland: large tablet, laptop and phone; it's the first which was problematic, but that's not the point. Good design will accommodate varying display sizes and orientation so as to maximise usage of space and readability. Bazza 7 (talk) 19:28, 15 January 2025 (UTC)

I'm familiar with responsive design; I just wasn't seeing what you were describing and needed to know how to replicate it. I do see what you are saying when I view the site in landscape orientation; my desktop monitor and phone are both portrait. I will try a flex container layout which will make better use of the space. -- Beland (talk) 01:00, 16 January 2025 (UTC)

I have finished with the flex upgrade; the contents of the welcome banner should now adjust to screen size. The text input box will overflow its container at higher zoom levels, but I think this is a problem in the skin CSS or the implementation of the extension, which could affect other pages. (If so, it would be worth fixing site-wide rather than just for this page.) How does that look to y'all? -- Beland (talk) 03:45, 17 January 2025 (UTC)

Much better, thanks. Bazza 7 (talk) 09:37, 17 January 2025 (UTC)

Can you describe what you would expect in a table of contents for the site? I'm struggling to see how it would work. --User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 14:34, 15 January 2025 (UTC)

Above, I suggested using Misplaced Pages:Contents/TOC navbar. -- Beland (talk) 16:16, 15 January 2025 (UTC)

Probably similar to the old layout that had the list of major portals at the top? That's kind of a table of contents. I think as close as you could get, anyway. ApLundell (talk) 20:00, 15 January 2025 (UTC)

That raises an interesting question: the old layout links to portals like Portal:Mathematics, but the modern navbar links to contents pages like Misplaced Pages:Contents/Mathematics and logic. I'm assuming the contents pages are more appropriate than the portal pages? IIRC there was an attempt to drop portals from the project entirely (partly because they weren't being maintained?), and perhaps they were removed from the main page for some reason related to that? -- Beland (talk) 01:04, 16 January 2025 (UTC)

I'm quite surprised this functionality hasn't already been implemented. Before I started editing, I never used the main page for exactly this reason. Now I check it every day because of the trivia. I feel like a sort of MSN-style layout would be the best of both worlds (and I recognize this is exactly what is proposed, just wanted to say I support it wholeheartedly). /home/gracen/ (they/them) 22:40, 17 January 2025 (UTC)

I have added a list of topics and link to Misplaced Pages:Contents under the prominent search bar. I decided to go with only a single line, because having two lines word-wrap makes things a bit confusing. I did discover "text-wrap: balance;" can actually make wrapped lines the same length, which looks nicer, so if people are missing the links to outlines, portals, etc. I can put that in, too. How does it look now to everyone? -- Beland (talk) 03:17, 19 January 2025 (UTC)

• The OP makes a good point. See Britannica to compare. What I notice is:

• Top left is an Explore button which leads to a menu of topics
• There's a big search bar top and centre
• There's then an Ask the Chatbot option followed by
• A series of portal headings: Games & Quizzes; History & Society; Science & Tech; Biographies; Animals & Nature; Geography & Travel; Arts & Culture; ...

It then gets into specific sample topics which have a respectable OTD tone -- Martin Luther King and past Presidential inaugurations.

Andrew🐉(talk) 11:02, 19 January 2025 (UTC)

@Beland Looks good, and brings back some useful features which I recall being removed in the past. Don't assume you have only one line: narrowing the window produces two (or more). They align themselves fine, but the initial Contents: jars; dump the colon. Also, for accessibility, the list (including Contents) should be a proper list (custom-styled if need be), not a set of words separated by interpuncts. Bazza 7 (talk) 13:33, 19 January 2025 (UTC)

Sorry I wasn't clear; by "two lines" I really meant two lists - the "Overviews, Outlines..." list and the "Reference, Culture..." list - which are one line each (only) when the screen is wide. I dropped the former because having both of those line-wrapping into multiple lines seemed weird. I made the line-wrapping for "Reference, Culture..." look nice by adding "text-wrap: balance;" to the CSS.

I initially didn't use {{hlist}} because I wanted the colon in "Contents:", because it's not a member of that list; it's essentially a title for that list. Or at least that's the logic I see in it. But I've dropped the colon and converted to an hlist with custom styling as you suggested anyway. How does that look now? Do you miss the "Overviews, Outlines..." list? -- Beland (talk) 00:26, 20 January 2025 (UTC)

@Beland: This is good stuff. I try (not always successfully) and consider stuff from a naïve reader's point of view. If I know what I want to read about, then I can use the search box(es); if I'm not too sure but know roughly what discipline is involved I can use the headline topics; if I've no real idea or just want to have a browse I can click Contents. Bazza 7 (talk) 10:36, 20 January 2025 (UTC)

@Beland: I forgot to answer your question: no, I don't miss Outlines etc. Too mechanical for the main page, and is just a click away anyway. Bazza 7 (talk) 10:40, 20 January 2025 (UTC)

The contents menu looks good. The search bar looks ok by itself but it might look odd in the final display as you'd have two similar search bars quite close to each other at the top of the page -- the one that you've added and the standard one in the header which always appears. Andrew🐉(talk) 09:57, 20 January 2025 (UTC)

• I'm not really sure what problem the proposed changes here are addressing... when I load the main page I see a prominent search bar right at the top, this is what I usually use to find topics and seems adequate for the purpose... unless I've adjusted my skin somewhere and this isn't the default view? As for "Contents", absolutely not. We've spent years painstakingly eliminating the clutter of having "Portals" on the main page, which nobody ever clicks, and now we want to bring back something similar just rebranded as "Contents"? As Art LaPella says above, nobody uses that feature anyway and it's sort of reminiscent of the long-gone days of Yahoo Directory when people navigated the web by looking things up in an index. Those days are long long gone, and the vast majority of navigation to our pages takes places through search (mostly Google and some internal searching) and possibly direct wikilinks these days.  — Amakuru (talk) 10:41, 20 January 2025 (UTC)

  Turns out most people don't see the skin's search bar at the top, but you do see it if you are on a desktop device with a wide screen. Having a narrower screen (like my desktop, and any mobile device, which is the majority of readers) causes it to hide behind an icon. You can see this happen if you narrow your browser window.

  I don't think any of the trivia below the welcome bar actually helps anyone find something they were looking for, either; it's there for people who aren't looking for anything in particular, or distracts them if they were in fact looking for something specific. If the only thing the vast majority of people actually need is a search bar, that leaves plenty of other real estate we might as well fill with things only a small minority use? I don't think of the Contents pages as actually being a comprehensive directory that will get you somewhere, but more as a sampling to show what sort of stuff Misplaced Pages knows about, for people who aren't yet familiar with the site. -- Beland (talk) 16:16, 20 January 2025 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages Birthday

Since it is Misplaced Pages's birthday, shouldn't we add that to the "On this day" page? SuperJames888 (talk) 19:45, 15 January 2025 (UTC)

It's a bit late to suggest that, don't you think? It's now the 16th of January in some countries. MadGuy7023 (talk) 19:47, 15 January 2025 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages:Selected anniversaries/January 15 lists Misplaced Pages's anniversary as ineligible (in the collapsed staging area) because the Misplaced Pages article is outdated and its inclusion would be navel-gazing. jlwoodwa (talk) 23:33, 15 January 2025 (UTC)

I agree but it's too late for this year. Let's set it up for next year. Andrew🐉(talk) 19:19, 19 January 2025 (UTC)

If we don't celebrate Misplaced Pages's 25th birthday in a different way on the Main Page next year, a mention in OTD would make sense. —Kusma (talk) 20:24, 19 January 2025 (UTC)

I think we should reserve Jan. 15 every year for either a Misplaced Pages-themed Main Page, or some custom message like stats on what we've accomplished in the last ${\displaystyle n}$ years. The Main Page is not an article, and we're allowed to be self-referential, and I think once a year we've earned that. -- Tamzin (they|xe|🤷) 20:33, 19 January 2025 (UTC)

Put a hat on the globe? CMD (talk) 23:52, 19 January 2025 (UTC)

Maybe a banner listing 25 years of accomplishments—next birthday ? The AP (talk) 10:47, 21 January 2025 (UTC)

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