Forum:Links on the home page

I'm thinking of developing a policy on what ought to be on the home page. At the moment, it's quite an odd mixture of wikis since staff and users are all adding different links for various reasons. I'd like your feedback on a few points:
 * Should the home page be "family friendly" and not have adult topics there (I've just removed the Spanking Art wiki after someone suggested this ought to be the case).
 * Should the same wikis be linked all the time, or should be use rotation?
 * Should we be directing people to more than one home page? For example, having a sci-fi home page which highlights the sci-fi wikis instead of trying to highlight everything on the one home page.
 * Which wikis (think broad categories, not particular sites) do you think should be on the home page? eg - any that have been featured / any with 1000 pages / any with 50 users... etc. What criteria would you use?

Angela talk 02:37, 25 January 2007 (UTC)


 * I think we should make it a point that Wikia does not allow any discrimination of wikis (such as sexuality related wikis) in the name of "family friendliness". Wikia hosts wikis on all kinds of topics, including adult topics. If we censor sexuality wikis today, we may find ourselves censor Category:Politics tomorrow and Category:Religion the day after. The purpose of the "Wikia Highlights" section on the Template:Home, as I see it, is to provide a brief overview of Wikia's biggest, most popular and best-known wikis. A selection is necessary because Wikia hosts thousands of wikis. For reasons of fairness and transparency, this selection should be based on objective measurable criteria such as:
 * wiki size (# of articles, database size, or similar)
 * wiki popularity (page visits per day/week/month. These statistics are currently disabled but I have been told we may get them back sometime in future by evaluating the Squid logs)
 * I'd like to emphasize the importance of the popularity factor because my wiki (Spanking Art) is a typical example of a wiki that is only medium sized (just over 1,000 articles) but seems to be very high in daily page requests. The figures that show this are here (#6 as of August 12 2005) and here (#23, evaluation period unknown).
 * I personally think the number of active users should not be a factor because it says nothing about the size or popularity of a wiki. A rotation system is not a bad idea, but we can discuss this after we've established criteria for the selection. We might come up with something like: the top 20 wikis are always listed, the wikis on place 21 to, say, 200 are rotated monthly. --Spankart 12:46, 26 January 2007 (UTC)


 * I have to say that I'm never convinced by the "thin end of the wedge" argument, a decision on one criteria doesn't automatically mean that the criteria will be expanded. But that said, I personally think we should allow our more adult wikis on the main page.  I would prefer that they were labelled in some way though - perhaps with a heading, or with an intermediary page.  This is what I want in my general surfing: I don't mind adult sites at all, but I do like to know that I'm going to one before I click it.


 * On the general question of how we should decide... I think activity is the key. I would like all active wikis (say more than 100 edits a day for the last month) to go into a pool, and some to be automatically rotated onto the front page.  This would take some technical changes of course, but would mean less maintenace than them being changed manually.  I agree that the largest/most active, should always be there.


 * I also think we need some space for a "Wikia's choice" for wikis that Wikia wants to promote for some reason. This might be because of outside events relevant to the wiki, or because we think a wiki has potential to be a lot more active than it is, or whatever.  These could go in a separate section, but I think it would be better just to have them listed with everything else.  -- sannse (talk) 14:13, 30 January 2007 (UTC)


 * It would be fine for me if my wiki was listed under a section labeled "Adult" or "Sexuality". --Spankart 16:37, 2 February 2007 (UTC)


 * No more comments? So can I go ahead and re-add my wiki under the label "Adult" to the Wikia Highlights on Template:Home, as suggested, Angela? --Spankart 11:34, 17 February 2007 (UTC)


 * I just tried to put it back on, but I can't see a way of doing so without mucking up the layout or dropping one of the current ones. Maybe we need to work on a layout (and choose some changes generally to the ones listed) on a separate page.  Then we can be sure that the columns look right before making it live.  I've revived Template:Home/temp as a place to work on this -- Sannse 16:43, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

It's fine to rank leisure time wikia based on size or popularity, but let's also make space on the homepage for smaller wikia that are addressing serious problems in the world today. For example, the Solar Cooking wikia exists to improve quality of life and reduce the contribution of wood fuel cooking to deforestation and global warming. The wiki is a wonderful vehicle for this, as it enables people all around the world to share ideas and project plans and results. We hope it will grow into a virtual global village.

I realize that asking for more visibility for wikia that seek to change the world might open Pandora's box to some unsavory possibilities, to people who think the world can be improved through violence or legal discrimation, but I trust the Wikia staff to keep violent or hateful work off the table. --Beth Ogilvie 17:10, 26 February 2007 (UTC)


 * With all due respect, I think that the community of users expecting the Wikia staff to keep that which the community of users dislikes off the home page is an impossible task and one which the Wikia staff (I expect) does not wish to do - which is why Angela posed the question in the first place.


 * Before this reading this forum topic, I didn't think much about the home page as a resource starting point. I thought it was good for some people but didn't suit my needs.  Perhaps this is part of the problem or rather part of the question which is asked.


 * What I seek on the Wikia home site most often is the Community Team and having a link from the home page to them would be most helpful. Having a "who to contact" list on the Community Team's page might be helpful to new comers as well.


 * Respectfully, Zephyrinus 22:51, 15 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Oh, and a link to the Sandbox would also be helpful. Zephyrinus 23:49, 15 March 2007 (UTC)