New and improved! Wiki featured articles and did you know...
Posted: Sun Mar 31, 2013 11:00 pm
A quick heads-up for those of you who haven't checked out The Countdown Wiki for a while!
Two of the wiki's longest-standing features—the featured article and "Did you know..." boxes on the Main Page—have been refreshed with a year's worth of new and updated material. They'll tick over automatically at 1am.
For a long time, I have admired how Wikipedia's Main Page offers so many tidbits to engage the casual reader with topics they may not have considered of interest. I've tried to achieve a similar tone on our wiki, featuring tales from Countdown history that will hopefully grab the attention of new visitors whilst providing the occasional factoid that not even James Robinson knows. Much of the new DYK trivia is sourced (read, "shamelessly pinched") from the Ask Graeme thread on this very forum – many thanks to Mr Cole for providing such a cornucopia of material. Fingers crossed there is something for everyone.
Best of all, these areas of the Main Page are now automatically generated by two looping templates and require no user intervention beyond the actual writing of the article summaries. This can be done gradually throughout the year, or in a blitz when the current set of articles are showing their age. There should never again be broken links in these key areas of the Main Page (mea culpa).
I hope this makes delving into the wiki even more enjoyable. If you have any contributions for the Main Page, please let me know on the rebooted nomination pages for Featured articles and Did you know.
So what are you waiting for?
Two of the wiki's longest-standing features—the featured article and "Did you know..." boxes on the Main Page—have been refreshed with a year's worth of new and updated material. They'll tick over automatically at 1am.
For a long time, I have admired how Wikipedia's Main Page offers so many tidbits to engage the casual reader with topics they may not have considered of interest. I've tried to achieve a similar tone on our wiki, featuring tales from Countdown history that will hopefully grab the attention of new visitors whilst providing the occasional factoid that not even James Robinson knows. Much of the new DYK trivia is sourced (read, "shamelessly pinched") from the Ask Graeme thread on this very forum – many thanks to Mr Cole for providing such a cornucopia of material. Fingers crossed there is something for everyone.
Best of all, these areas of the Main Page are now automatically generated by two looping templates and require no user intervention beyond the actual writing of the article summaries. This can be done gradually throughout the year, or in a blitz when the current set of articles are showing their age. There should never again be broken links in these key areas of the Main Page (mea culpa).
I hope this makes delving into the wiki even more enjoyable. If you have any contributions for the Main Page, please let me know on the rebooted nomination pages for Featured articles and Did you know.
So what are you waiting for?
