Talk:Main Page

Ideas for improvement

Note: for questions that are not about the Main Page, please use Discuss this wiki.

Better use of space

A lot of what people see on arrival to this page is white space/TOC. Consider disabling/pruning the TOC and using a table to fill top of page completely. Color's good too. See wikipedia's English Main page for an example.

Ok, trying this now... Ciaran 11:13, 17 May 2009 (EDT)

Harder than it looks. Right now I'm still messing around with reformatting those lists into blocks. Here's my draft: User:Ciaran/test new main page. Ciaran 17:58, 20 May 2009 (EDT)

See also User:Ciaran/alt test for main page with simplified markup. 83.104.46.71 07:28, 25 May 2009 (EDT)

Great. That's exactly what I was trying to do. Ciaran 10:39, 25 May 2009 (EDT)

Done. Well, I have left the original section levels for now. Steelpillow 17:02, 25 May 2009 (EDT)

Semantic MediaWiki

For certain types of resources, you might want to consider using Semantic MediaWiki and the Semantic Forms extension. You might want to check out http://textbookrevolution.org and http://wiki.creativecommons.org/Case_Studies as a couple ways it can be used. It makes it easy to enter (form-based) structured data and easy to query the data and display it in various ways. You can also export data (JSON, CSV, RDF, etc).

Thanks. Forms and tagging are two features I'd be interested in in the future. For now, I want to keep it as simple as possible and as familiar as possible for contributors to existing MediaWikis.

For anyone interested in this, here's page using Semantic MediaWiki: [1] (note the "edit" and the "edit source" buttons).

Ciaran 03:33, 6 May 2009 (EDT)

I've thought of something that would benefit from Semantic tagging: articles/info about specific patents. I'm currently reluctant to start doing pages about individual patents since I'm not sure the effort will actually produce anything searchable, but maybe it could be worthwhile with Semantic tagging. thinking... Ciaran 18:49, 24 May 2009 (EDT)

"Make it a story"

I mean now it's a giant collection of hyperlinked pages. I think it would be useful if there was a clear "start here" page which would linearly, logically and concisely present the entire subject and lead the reader thru all the key points. The main page would be an obvious candidate for this or perhaps just a prominently displayed link on the main page. Now it seems that the whole issue is so very complicated nobody really understands it. Of course, that's not too far from truth but in order to get people actually read what it is all about and think about the message we're trying to send, I think this is needed. I've used computers daily since I was 7, that's some 23 years now and I still find hyperlinked documents slightly confusing, I believe many people with less computing experience to suffer from it even more. Thanks for all the wonderful work towards this very important goal! 85.76.96.57 05:54, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

Hi. You're certainly right. The wiki pages are supposed to be a source of info, from which we can make letters and essays that are based on facts and well-developed reasoning. Only problem is that I still haven't gotten around to working on that second part.

What I'd like to have is a few concise explanations (based on the wiki info), which could be used as a starting point whenever people have to participate in consultations from patent offices, courts, or governments.

Maybe the 2009 Bilski brief could be a starting point: http://endsoftpatents.org/amicus-bilski-2009#toc9

If you find some time, any contributions on this would be welcome. Just start a page and scribble some thoughts - it will get developed eventually. Ciaran 12:11, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

Why software patent can be good

I know maybe you will be surprised by this title but can't we insert a section called "why software patent can be good" or seem to be good if you prefer. We can then see every arguments of the current company using software patent (like mine) and why it is not that obvious for them to quit on using it. It will the be easier to argue in front of software patent defendors.

Ok, I see the purpose. Let's give it a try at Why getting software patents seems good. Ciaran 10:32, 26 May 2010 (UTC)

section for External links

There was a good list of external links added to the Main Page. Having external links on the main page is a bad idea, but the list itself is good so I've added it to the Sources of software patent news page.

I've removed a list of links to blogs and the USPTO from the front page. The USPTO website can be found by looking at the USPTO article.

External links are a bad idea because the Main Page should be a portal to the content on swpat.org. Wikipedia also has a no-ext-links on Main Page policy. Ciaran 16:09, 2 June 2009 (EDT)

Dvorak article

John C. Dvorak has written an article titled "Software Patents Have Got to Go!" ThoughtYou'dLikeToKnow. --Anonymous Coward

Thanks. Giving it a read now. Ciaran 12:49, 30 December 2010 (EST)

Fred Wilson: someone to add to the People list

Techdirt covers a few VCs much against software patents, including a Fred Wilson who presumably is well known (I'm not in that circle, so I don't know).

>> The whole thing is nuts. I can't understand why our goverment allows this shit to go on. It's wrong and its bad for society to have this cancer growing inside our economy. Every time I get a meeting with a legislator or goverment employee working in and around the innovation sector, I bring up the patent system and in particular software patents. We need to change the laws. We need to eliminate software patents. This ridiculous Lodsys situation is the perfect example of why. We need to say "enough is enough."

Jose X 22:03, 11 June 2011 (EDT)

I've collected some links about Fred here: Statements from venture capitalists#Fred_Wilson. I've added the techdirt link now. Thanks. Ciaran 11:01, 14 June 2011 (EDT)

Debian & SFLC: Community Distribution Patent Policy FAQ

Are you aware of this? IANAL... http://www.debian.org/reports/patent-faq Keep up the wonderful work! Stay free!