Time to overhaul the wiki front page

[ka3jjz]

Clearly with the growth of the wiki, the current front page is just plain overwhelmed. It just can't handle much more stuff, particularly with the explosion of the collaboration and coming live audio stuff. It's served its purpose quite well for the last year or two, but it's time it was overhauled.

I really don't have time to consider this right now (holidays and mother in nursing home...), but now is the time to start collecting ideas on the subject. I was considering redoing it in the manner of several 'gateways', and each 'gateway' would cover it's own set of articles, much in the same manner the Collaboration Gateway does now.

To start, here are a few topics for gateways - and note that it's possible that an article can belong to more than one gateway (for example, loops can belong to both a MW and HF gateway)...

- MW
- HF
- RadioReference FAQ (includes the web and audio services)
- RR Forum back links (probably no longer really needed - the Collaboration Gateway and the various topics make this a bit redundant I think)
- Scanners (including accessories)
- Software
- Collaboration (we have this already)
- Satellites
- TV/FM DX

In some cases, the existing article(s) would become the 'gateway' until they grew enough that multiple topics would force separate articles within it.

There would be a single article with links to each 'gateway', much in the manner of a wheel with lots of spokes on it.

Several folks have told me the wiki is a bit tough to navigate - now is the time to consider what and how it can be simplified. It isn't going to be easy with almost 4000 (yes you read that right) articles, so put on your thinking caps.

I'll be waiting to hear from the membership 73 Mike

[texasemt13]

Maybe an:
Antenna Gateway?
Live Audio Gateway?
Trunking Systems Gateway (to explain any type of TRS)?

I don't envy you a bit on this update... this looks like quite a daunting task trying to sort where each article could possibly go.

[ka3jjz]

Those topics will definitely be included, but I think due to the volume of articles, the topics must be much broader.

It's not quite as bad as it seems. My insistence on using wiki Categories is paying off - instead of moving 1500 or so non-Collaboration related articles, I only have to manipulate about 60 or so categories. That's not as bad as it sounds, believe me.

73 Mike