Talk: Toastmasters Wiki

Revision as of 06:12, 8 January 2011

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--Erich Viedge 12:05, 30 Jul 2005 (UTC)

redesign

I read an article about Google that partly ascribes its success to the fact that it only has 7 things on the home page.

I wanted to apply the same principles to this site. That's why the front page only has six items plus a picture.

SEO purpose

The current code could be improved with some keywords in title and alt attribute, by example

<table width="270" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"> <tr><td><a href="http://toastmasters.wikia.com/ title="Toastmasters International Wikia"> <img src="http://toastmasters.wikia.com/images/9/95/TM-Wikia.gif" alt="Toastmasters International Wikia Badge" width="270" height="80" border="0" /></a> </td></tr> <tr><td align="center"> <strong>Visit <a href="http://toastmasters.wikia.com/" title="Toastmasters International Wikia">toastmasters.wikia.com</a></strong> </td></tr></table>

Let us make the landing page cleaner

I think the Main Page has become something of a hodge-podge, so it has less utility to the user who is not already familiar with the wiki. Someone with experience in wikiwork knows to go to Special:SpecialPages to start familiarizing herself with the wiki. Others need a well-organized Main Page.

An improvement to the status quo would involve:

Editing the information preceding the table of contents (that is, preceding the first Heading 2) to tightened up, eliminating duplication, gratuitous graphics, broken links, etc.
Have further sections (heading 2) as follows:
- News—this section would have information about future events and news of the last 12 months. Older items would be migrated to a Toastmasters Past Events page.
- Getting started—for prospective members and new Toastmasters. It would include references to All About Toastmasters, Handy Hints, Club Meeting, and would add a reference to For the new member, a page with information to help the new Toastmaster get oriented to the Toastmasters Club, Toastmasters Educational Program, Contests, Convention, District, and Toastmasters International official website.
- Path to Distinction—for somewhat more experienced Toastmasters who are more familiar with this wiki. It would point to Speaking, Leading, Contests, District, Category:Conferences, etc. The current section on Leading, would be heavily abbreviated, moved elsewhere—something.
- About this site—for those wishing to work actively with (i.e., edit) the wiki. Point to a page that has the information now under Background to this Site, Site Map, New: Club Sites, and Promote Wikia.

Let me know if you disagree with this direction. Because the changes are so great, I probably would proceed by creating a new Main Page for us to vet, instead of editing the existing Main Page.

ArthurOgawa 18:44, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

I altered the landing page, roughly as I described above.

ArthurOgawa 04:51, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

Copyright issues

Hi All. We have had a complaint about pages on this wiki containing copyrighted text. Looking around, it seems clear that several pages do have text that is exactly the same as that on other sites - suggesting it was directly copied. I am going to delete several pages that were specifically listed as problems, but it's also important that you as a community check for issues and remove any text that is not completely original. Even summaries of larger texts can be copyrighted, and must not be copied to Wikia. Only original content is acceptable. I hope you will be able to work together to fix this problem. Thanks -- sannse (talk) 19:03, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

Hi All,

I've created a page: Worldwide_list_of_Toastmasters_websites and want to make it a 1-stop resource that would have links to each and every toastmasters club website, as well as any blog, social media page etc that is dedicated to Toastmasters. This sort of thing is currently missing and there have been some efforts to gather such a list. I feel only a wiki page can do it justice, rather than having any "official" or privately controlled list. So would it be possible to include this link on the Main page?

@@ Line 52: / Line 52: @@
 Hi All.  We have had a complaint about pages on this wiki containing copyrighted text.  Looking around, it seems clear that several pages do have text that is exactly the same as that on other sites - suggesting it was directly copied.  I am going to delete several pages that were specifically listed as problems, but it's also important that you as a community check for issues and remove any text that is not completely original.  Even summaries of larger texts can be copyrighted, and must not be copied to Wikia.  Only original content is acceptable.  I hope you will be able to work together to fix this problem.  Thanks -- [[User:Sannse|sannse]]<staff /> ([[User talk:sannse|talk]]) 19:03, 28 May 2009 (UTC)
+Hi All,
+I've created a page: [[Worldwide_list_of_Toastmasters_websites]] and want to make it a 1-stop resource that would have links to each and every toastmasters club website, as well as any blog, social media page etc that is dedicated to Toastmasters. This sort of thing is currently missing and there have been some efforts to gather such a list. I feel only a wiki page can do it justice, rather than having any "official" or privately controlled list. So would it be possible to include this link on the Main page?