Talk:Main Page

About Revision 11/6

The revision replace Latest with Hot Topics and rearranged a bit.

• Like but reservations Oldham 22:49, 7 November 2007 (GMT-5) In Local_Conventions it says (I wrote) to link new pages under Latest on Main_Page. Cannot do taht now. Questions:
  • Should we link new pages under Hot Topics on Main_Page or is Special:Newpages adequate? Should we add an Announce to the Main_Page?
  • Did I err in assuming Latest would persist? Did the Main_Page improver err in redsigning? If the latter was it an error in redseigning at all, or an error in how that was done?
  • How do we manage this kind of stuff in general?
• I am the culprit. I thought the Latest section was kind of getting messy. It was being used for new content as well as a section to house all the links to other pages with collections of information (the how tos page, for example). That's just messy. So I split up the sections. I have a handy solution. Under the News and Hot Topics, we can put a subsection for updates, where people post the pages they've recently added, as well as posting them in the appropriate content section. For example, if you added a new How To, you'd want to post it on the How Tos page as well as the Latest section on the Main Page.
  • Here's a question: how long do you leave new pages in the Latest list? I'm thinking a week. Any suggestions?
  • General statement: I've been scurrying about the site making sure things are clean and organized. Sorry for mucking up the Local Conventions in the process. We need to better maintain information. The movement of the How Tos request to the main article, for example, left a lot of sections open. Perhaps we should make a page for maintaining consistency as best as possible?
  • Drew.mckinney 01:40, 8 November 2007 (GMT-5)
• Like unreservedly Oldham OK, so Drew.mckinney has identified some issues. So for now here is a fix. I just put in a link to the new pages. Let's agree to leave that as the last item under Hot Topics. Time will cause the newness to fade automatically. I'll update Local_Conventions.
  • I think a page for maintaining consistency is Local_Conventions. Add to it.
• Let's add a convention here, under Hot Topics is you want an entry to stay in the list as a permanenty hot topic, mark it Permanent entry. So if you see a Permanent entry don't remove it unless you are a sysop or the poster.
  • There has to be a better place to put a link to Special:Newpages. Special:Recentchanges seems at least as important as it does. Luke 22:13, 12 November 2007 (GMT-5)
  • I can easily agree to moving it -- but it needs to be highlighted. We have a small population, some inexperienced users (me me me) and not a lot of pages yet. So weneed people to be able to see new stuff. I surely agree with Special:Recentchanges being equallyimportant -- just discovered it right before I saw this. Great stuff -- what's been added or changed. Where do we put it for ready access? Oldham 10:54, 14 November 2007 (GMT-5)
• Hyperbole I think the author's assertion that the internet could be the 'withering of the state' was an exaggeration. I don't understand how it could yield these resultsThomas.richards

Table of Contents

• I disabled the Table of Contents of the main page, as it served no purpose and only made the page ugly. Feel free to disagree. If you want to disable TOC on other pages, simply include __NOTOC__ in the text somewhere. Luke 01:58, 8 November 2007 (GMT-5)
  • Awesome! I agree with the ugliness of it. Yay! Drew.mckinney 04:09, 8 November 2007 (GMT-5)

Thomas.curry 23:37, 22 February 2008 (GMT-5) On Lab 8, Task 4, m is an "argument." How can this work with words? In the shell I type isMonth(<letters>) (or just one), and an error appears, but entering any random number lets the program run correctly. Here's the code:

def isMonth(m):

   m = raw_input("Enter a word:  ")
   m = m.upper()
   m = m[0:3]
   months = ["JAN", "FEB", "MAR", "APR", "MAY", "JUN", "JULY", "AUG", "SEP", "OCT", "NOV", "DEC"]
   if m in months:
       return True
   else:
       return False