User blog comment:BertH/Layout and navigation updates coming October 3/@comment-1724320-20120920204249

I think people would be more amenable to an increase in the sidebar width if they could have a little bit more say in what was put there. Right now it's just the search bar, recent activity, new files, and optionally the chat module. It's all kind of filler that's used as a ready-made space to serve ads to users who aren't logged in.

While that's definitely better than having the ads inside the content area, why not give individual wikis the opportunity to customize that area to their needs? Whether it's a noticeboard for important community messages, or a poll, or something to entice people to edit, I don't really see the downside to letting them replace specific modules on the sidebar with ones of their own choosing. It would make it more of a content space than the dead area it is now.