Forum:Improving the "people-page start page"

Forums: Index > Watercooler > Improving the "people-page start page"

Most of us active talkers here agree that the "people-page start page" needs improving. At least three of us have said so, this month, on Help talk:Starting pages for people, places, or surnames. As it has several sub-subjects, a series of headings here may be useful.

Overall matters

We should be talking about Help:Model page for person rather than the page that was renamed more broadly to cover surnames and places and still has value for directing readers to whichever of those they really want. I still notice newbies using quite the wrong model for a surname page, for example. Robin Patterson 23:25, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

I agree on having fewer options; and I approve of the idea of having one or more contain infoboxes now that the infobox system is working well. Robin Patterson 23:25, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

The "blank sheet of paper" option

I agree that we don't need this. Robin Patterson 23:25, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

I agree too. Basically this creates a problem in which categories my not be added. -AMK152^{(Talk • Contributions} 23:42, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

Target Audience identification

It seems to me that one of our central goals is building the number of contributors here. The page linked to from the sidebar "Create a page", should have a target audience of folks that know little about genealogy but want to put some material up on the web having to do with their ancestors. We should adapt as we learn what is useful to these folks and what isn't.

It's fine to have other pages that target serious genealogists or other audiences, but we need to recognize we cannot a page that tries to be all things to all people.

Whether or not we all agree that we should be targetting potential new contributors with this page, I would think that we all agree that we need to have a crisp identification of the audience we intend to serve with this page. ~ Phlox 06:27, 21 October 2007 (UTC)

Color language

Of course users may do anything they like on their pages. However we are discussing what assistance we will give to help people produce good looking articles. If followed, our guidelines and templates should produce professional looking articles. The only template that comes anywhere close to doing that is currently AMK's "infobox" template.

There are visual design principles, and we should not feel that we have to reinvent the wheel. There is such a thing as using a consistent colour palette, and a reason behind the statements made in wikipedia:Wikipedia:WikiProject Usability/Color#Improper use of color.

The introductory page needs to employ a simple and consistent color palette. The current version uses a mixture of oversaturated browns, greens and purples for background colors. It lacks visual harmony, is jarring, and violates simple color design principles. The Wikipedia project article noted some of these fundamentals and I quote them here:

*Simplicity - some users advocate the abolition of color altogether. We disagree with this, but we do acknowledge their point: do not employ anything that does not serve a purpose. (There is, however, a clear need for color: the main page uses it to allow the user to focus onto one aspect of a relatively "busy" space, and notices use it to bring attention to themselves.) With regard to notices, tables, and similar elements: A very light background - many of the most popular websites on the internet use this, and with good reason. Dark backgrounds look inactive ("dead"), brightly-colored backgrounds cause eye-strain, and both are generally unpleasant. A thin and slightly darker border - One very good looking use of colors is a light colored background, with a 1px border that is a darker version of that same color.

Genealogy:Person Template violates all of these principles. 1. Use of fully saturated colors, 2. use of thick borders, 3. lack of simplicity.

How to fix? As one of Clint Eastwood's character's had a habit of observing, "A man has got to know his limitations". The simplest thing is to copy a visual style used by some professionally created web site and change the hue- instead of very light pastel green make it very light pastel brown- then copy everything about it, including the thinness of the lines around table. You want even simpler? Copy the visual style of WP main articles, WP help or one of the wiki projects. We are already doing this by default, we are using infobox templates that use the wikipedia very light blue bars.

The "branding" thing to do is to shift that- pick a shade that is genealogy's signature color. WP's is that powder blue you see everywhere. It doesn't really matter what shade we pick. It does matters that it be extremely "unsaturated"/ achromatic/ pastel/ "light". It also does matter that we use it consistently everywhere.

I refuse to engage in a debate on web page design. There is an art to visual design, and it isn't learned overnight or through acquisition of facts. Solicit opinions from design professionals whose opinion you value, and I am confident you will find universal agreement that the above mentioned pages have visual styles that drive users away from sites.

Let's do the right thing visually and not have a web site that looks unprofessional. ~ Phlox 06:27, 21 October 2007 (UTC)