Forum:Reformatting the main page
There are few things more annoying for an Uncyclopedia reader than to see the same article displayed under the "Today's Featured Article" section on the main page, which I can tell from personal experience. The main page is the primary way we communicate who we are and what we do to most of our readers and this only communicates them that we either can't feature an article every day or that on uncy the day lasts 96+ hours. As I recall, Xamralco's refeature queue proposal (which was voted on and successfully implemented back in the days, but stopped running with Xam's departure) was meant to fix just that. We decided to feature three new articles (each one receiving two days on the main page), followed by one refeatured one. That way we could balance out features and refeatures and still keep the main page occupied. However, right now, the feature interval is rarely less than four days.
So, what I propose.
- Restart the refeature queue and stick to the system (meaning we systematically refeature old articles, with a ratio of 1 to 3, without it being a thing some person might decide to do one day and another day some other person might not), making two days a regular interval between two features
- Don't talk about "today's" or "yesterday's" features, but rather display the five (or so) previously featured articles on the main page with a corresponding date. This will serve several goals: it will assure that 1) the main page is never empty, 2) readers will be able to read several excellent articles without having to look for them and 3) a feature does not disappear from the main page without going unnoticed by many readers.
- Instead of mentioning articls that have been "Featured today, a long time ago", actually give each of those pages a proper heading, an image and a passage that will display on the main page: this will make the main page a lot more interesting place to visit
- ...And instead of having the template about new articles that nobody reads or updates at the end of the main page, give each newly-created article proper credit, by actually giving it a few lines and an image to be put on the main page. In order to eliminate potential vandalism or low-quality pages making it there, we can protect this template from users not in a particular rights group (for instance, autopatrolled or rollback). Anton (talk) 11:06, 16 August 2015 (UTC)
My tuppence worth:
1) I like the idea of regular change - before I spoke of the idea of a <option> type thing so the featured article keeps refreshing every time someone visits the main page. 2) I think that's way too long a page, and it looks unattractive. However, I would like to know how you made the little blurbs pop up with each article. 3) Not sure about this, I think it will make the page too long too... and, like the refeature idea, would require quite a bit of copy and pasting. 4) I like this idea, to give new users a boost.
Leverage (talk) 15:37, 2 September 2015 (UTC)
As the site is supposed to be a parody of this ugly thing we should probably make some effort to try to mirror it a little more closely, though obviously with our own little slant on that... -- Sir Mhaille 
(talk to me)
- To be honest, I think there is a balance. I don't think many people even visit the hope page of Wikipedia! The wikia page deviates more from it with a "yesterday's featured article" bit. I don't see a problem with small deviations like that. I do think a page can be too long (even though that seems to be a fashion with newspaper websites) and I do think that most users' eyes will be caught with changes in the top half of the page - which is why I favour a more randomised featured article section. Leverage (talk) 08:16, 4 September 2015 (UTC)
Thank you for your comments, I'll try to answer as much as I can. Leverage, I dislike long pages as much as anyone. So my proposals consist in increasing the amount of quality articles on the main page, not making it longer. We could reduce the length of the FA passage displayed on the main page to a few hilarious phrases people will remember (not necessarily from the introduction). And then do the same with yesterday's featured article, last year's featured article and new articles (approved by experienced users). Like this, each one will be allowed just a few lines of text and an image (which, by the way, should be bigger than usual main page illustrations).
Mhaille, I think the "we should parody Wikipedia more" thing has rarely been justified and is just a way to tell people we should conserve the status quo and be what we have always been (even though this is what we are currently doing this and it doesn't work). Also,
- Wikipedia has a huge data and userbase and doesn't have to look appealing to attract readers and users. It has a sufficiently unique concept and format. We also have different needs. We have a lot of quality articles which nobody reads because they aren't easy to find. We have new writers to promote. And we have a unique style of comedy, which goes way beyond the "parody Wikipedia" thing.
- When people say "we should parody Wikipedia more", I think they are referring to making us similar to Wikipedia. I've heard many say this and it seems odd that nobody has yet spotted the paradox in the phrase. Parody doesn't imply copying someone or something you're parodying, otherwise you're just a copycat. An effective parody is first of all an exaggeration of your subject's characteristic traits. So, for instance, having five featured articles on the main page while Wikipedia only has one is parody.
- We had an interesting discussion on this topic with Nikau, Xamralco and others in 2014 (I'll try to find that forum). Nikau talked about how the successful sites like Cracked had mostly low-quality content, but a great way of presenting it. And Xamralco answered that what separated us from sites like collegehumor was our Wikipedia-like format. This seems to be the prevalent objection to any major format change here, even though it isn't really valid if you analyze it. Sites like collegehumor are extremely popular and if we had a way of gaining as much attention as they, well, I don't see why we should maintain the Wikipedia parody format, which is not only useless but also very superficial (once you stat browsing the site, you realize it resembles Wikipedia as much as the Sun resembles Sirius). Second, if we manage to become as popular as others, nothing would stop us from becoming a Wikipedia parody once again if contributors supported the idea. Anton (talk) 18:22, 4 September 2015 (UTC)
From Forum:Proposal of Changes
Change the front page, better archiving?
I'm aware we can't depart from the wikipedia template, but the front page has always been an unattractive load of shit. Cracked isn't funny, but check the infinite scroll on their front page... http://www.cracked.com/ ...article after article, just keep scrolling. Tumblr does it, Pintrest does it, Flickr does it, we honestly need a front page that doesn't look like it came from 2006. We suck because we're funny, but the site is too ugly to sell itself. --Nikau (talk) 11:33, 16 September 2014 (UTC)
- i think that by far the most important aspect of our appearance is that we look exactly like wikipedia. not just close, not just "what wikipedia looked like in 2008", but exactly. the essence of parody is believability (which is apparently a word I just made up), so if we change the front page to not look exactly like the front page of wikipedia, then...that would be bad. also, we have 17,000 likes on facebook??? when did that happen? who runs our social media? great job, high fives for everyone. 03:14, 17 September 2014 (UTC)
- I know. However wikipedia thrives as a database, and the vast majority of humor websites extant on the internet are 'front page' based. The Wikipedia front page is absolutely appalling at advertising the quality of articles we have available. 3000 features out there and only like 20 are ever advertised on the main page. --Nikau (talk) 03:49, 17 September 2014 (UTC)
I found this page --> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Tutorial <-- quite interesting. Theoretically similar formatting may allow more featured articles on the front page without being too obtrusive and breaking the formatting too much. --Nikau (talk) 10:19, 18 September 2014 (UTC)
This is a discussion we had a year ago. Anton (talk) 18:30, 4 September 2015 (UTC)