Talk:Main Page

Please note: This page is not a bulletin board; it is for discussion of the Main Page specifically. For discussion about categories, see Esolang talk:Categorization. For general discussion about esolangs, try the resources listed in Esolang:Community portal. For discussion of the wiki in general, see Esolang talk:Community portal.

Archives: August 2005 – February 2012‎

Featured Category

A featured language is nice, but it doesn’t leave much to explore. A featured category would make for a great intro to esolangs! It could be changed periodically and encourage new members to check out parts of the site they kind not find otherwise. -User:PixelatedStarfish

I agree. Prehaps one language could be language of the month/year, and there could be a list of honourable mentions of the month/year, in addition to categories for languages that has been language of the month/year or a honourable mention. Peter (talk) 13:33, 27 May 2022 (UTC)

Thanks Peter! PixelatedStarfish (talk) 03:12, 28 May 2022 (UTC)

Editor's choices

This should have link to a page named something like: "editor's choices: a set of 10 esolang examples that is the most interesting possible". It may or may not be same as top 10 most interesting languages. The set of languages as a finite set should be the most interesting set of 10 languages that could be. From a group of top languages that are very similar, only 1 should be listed. There could be separate top10 list. And separate set of 10 interesting articles in this wiki.

I don't know if 10 is the right number, maybe 3, 5, 8, 16... It may grow from 3 to 20 over time as decisions get made and new languages come...

I have almost no idea what should be on the set ( or on the top n list ). That is why I am asking such page.

Tektur 00:52, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

Well, listing the most interesting possible languages would be difficult, as we don't actually know what they are; I find it rather unlikely that a single one of them has been invented yet. The 10 most interesting existing esoteric languages seems more viable. I'm not sure what you mean by "There could be separate top10 list"; wouldn't this be a list of the top esolangs by definition?

Anyway, "top 10 esolangs" seems difficult to assess, since there are so many and tastes vary so widely. However, I think a showcase page would be good as an introduction to esoteric languages, to show the diversity. Off the top of my head, brainfuck, INTERCAL, Unlambda, and Underload would be good candidates.

It would be nice to have a "language of the [time span] (month?)" featured on the main page. I've suggested as such a few times on IRC. The problem is figuring out how to choose them, and choosing a time span long enough that we won't run out of candidates before some new ones are invented... —ehird 18:51, 18 March 2012 (UTC)

The most obvious time span would be day, like Wikipedia's featured article. However, I see your point about running out of esolangs. A month still seems too long—maybe a week? For choosing featured esolangs, maybe some sort of voting page where languages could be nominated and votes of support given, with the esolang with the most votes at the end of the week featured and removed from the voting. What do you think? —Maharba 19:03, 18 March 2012 (UTC)

A month does seem quite long, but I'd prefer to feature excellent languages for an extended period of time over scraping the barrel for vaguely interesting ones to keep it fresh. Ideally, of course, we'd find a happy medium.

As far as wiki-based proposals and voting, I think the overhead and required effort of such a method would lead it to stagnation. The last time I brought it up on IRC, I suggested we assemble a small cabal (of about five to seven people, say) to informally decide (on IRC) which language to put up. Of course, that excludes people who don't use IRC, but I'd much rather err on the side of less bureaucracy. —ehird 19:24, 18 March 2012 (UTC)

That strikes me as opposed to the spirit of a wiki. I do, though, agree that excess bureaucracy is bad, so how about we just have a talk page on the wiki (I'd rather not use IRC as I could never get it to work for me) where people can informally discuss which language to feature, and we change it about every couple weeks when there is consensus on a new featured language? No formal voting, not even a precise time span, but also no cabal and no non-wiki communication needed. —Maharba 19:32, 18 March 2012 (UTC)

"Cabal" was in jest :) The intention would be to simply have a loosely-defined group of people just to build rough consensus on candidates. (Indeed, a formal group wouldn't even be required; anyone present would suffice, but the advantage of having people volunteer to help out would be that they can be pinged for their opinions, speeding the process up.)

Wikipedia's daily featured article is selected by a single person, so I don't think it's strongly against the spirit of a wiki to delegate the task to a small group. However, a talk page on the wiki should work just as well, but would probably demand a longer timescale than a week for sufficient consensus to be gathered. Still, I've had people provide feedback about things on IRC in the past but be too lazy to put it on a talk page... however, I suppose I could just as well gather opinions on IRC and copy them to the wiki, removing the barrier to entry but making the record more organised and allowing people who don't use IRC to participate.

By the way, I would be surprised if freenode's web-based IRC client doesn't work for you, even if desktop clients don't. It's always nice to see someone new on IRC. (Hmm. The community portal doesn't link to that client. I'll go fix that...) —ehird 19:52, 18 March 2012 (UTC)

That IRC client worked for me, thanks. I'd still rather the featured article selection was a wiki (talk) page, though, without a specific group associated (though I doubt more than a few people would actually contribute). My idea with the timespan was to wait approximately 2 weeks until there was consensus (or close) for a new featured language. --(this comment by Maharba at 20:13, 18 March 2012‎ UTC; please sign your comments with ~~~~)

That seems reasonable enough. The current main page design doesn't really adapt well to including such a feature, though, especially since we'd want to include a short blurb. Which just gives me an excuse to redesign it again :P —ehird 20:31, 18 March 2012 (UTC)

Once a day probably only fits for a huge wiki like Wikipedia. Even the Norwegian Wikipedia, which is still much larger than this wiki, only has a weekly one. (Although it shares a daily article with other Scandinavian ones.) --Ørjan 22:41, 18 March 2012 (UTC)

I seem to like the idea of having a featured language that is updated on a regular basis, as long as:

• each of us has a fair chance of one of our languages being picked
• it doesn't get all repetitive
• we can give languages that were nominated before and pipped to the post a fair chance of being featured in the future, without the bidding discussions getting too repetitive.

— Smjg (talk) 21:48, 18 March 2012 (UTC)

Well, it's hard to quantify a fair chance. In discussions on IRC, it's been trivial to come up with lists of, say, 10 to 20 esolangs we consider truly superb. It seems odd to mash the random page button in the hope that something great will come up if there's a wealth of great candidates already. That said, I wouldn't object to people proposing their own languages if there are few nominations for the next language, as long as they understand there's no guarantee it'll be picked. I think if we start phoning it in or have trouble deciding on languages to nominate, then that's a strong indicator we should move to a longer time span.

I think we're all basically in agreement that a periodically-updated featured language on the main page based on rough consensus is a good idea; the finer details of the process can be worked out if they're ever needed. And if it really doesn't work out, we can just remove it. —ehird 22:25, 18 March 2012 (UTC)

Well, after discussion on IRC with oerjan and Maharba, I wrote up a process and redesigned the main page. Let's see how it goes! —ehird 05:51, 19 March 2012 (UTC)

Community portal's talk page

Community portal's talk page should not be described in the front page this way:

"Discuss the wiki on the community portal's talk page"

but something like this way:

General discussion about something esolang related that is not related to any specific article, can happen here. Tektur (talk) 20:01, 7 July 2013 (UTC)

I think the current description is more accurate, per e.g. [1]. ehird (talk) 10:43, 8 July 2013 (UTC)

edit comment there:

"nobody else..."

Demonstrably false statement. And, even if no one else had not used it for general discussion, it probably would be so because it is not suggested. Self-fulfilling statement.

Is it not clear that we need something resembling a discussion forum? This wiki software is not ideal for that, but it works. Tektur (talk) 11:56, 8 July 2013 (UTC)

We used to have a discussion forum, but it was used so rarely that it was 99% spam, and so it got disabled when User:graue transfered the wiki to User:ehird. --Ørjan (talk) 05:59, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

New languages page

It strikes me that a link to Special:NewPages might be somthing nice to put just above the completely random page link. Agree ? Object ? Rdebath (talk) 10:39, 16 November 2014 (UTC)

I agree with that. Users can access the recent languages easier. ---- User:A 13:49, 12 July 2018

Someone should change the featured language.

It's been the same for almost 2.5 years now. --(this comment by 50.161.94.113 at 01:12, 19 January 2016 UTC; please sign your comments with ~~~~)

Who said that quote? I really agree with that. We should still have many esolangs to make the featured language.----User:A 13:50 12 July, 2018

Somebody should reallllllly make some kind of random picker to do this because srsly D16174L_HUN73R (talk) 14:18, 1 October 2018 (UTC)

You can do Special:Random to select something at random if wanted. --Zzo38 (talk) 16:46, 1 October 2018 (UTC)

i'll use befunge unless someone else really wants this to not happen Heavpoot (talk) 21:46, 8 March 2021 (UTC)

I have nothing against Befunge being featured, but there is a process for how languages get featured, and processes are of course important. We may or may not also have enforced who can edit the necessary pages that need to be edited to change the featured language. Befunge is not currently one of the candidates (the paragraph left there is a placeholder), but you could propose it if you like (by removing the placeholder comment and tacking your name on it), and then it would be eligible. Full disclosure: I'd really like to feature Befunge, but while the article isn't bad by any means, I think it's missing that little something a featured language deserves, and I can never seem to get around to working on it. --fizzie (talk) 22:07, 8 March 2021 (UTC)

It's been the same for 5.5 years now. --None1 09:09, 22 August 2024 (UTC)

The featured language can't be the same forever, but currently there's only one active admin, so I think the process should be simplified somehow. --None1 (Nope.) 11:56, 26 September 2024 (UTC)

okay what the heck can we change it to then?

User:Ractangle (Discord:belarusianflag)

16:27, 26 September 2024 (UTC)

maybe Execode will fit?

User:Ractangle (Discord:belarusianflag)

OMG this really caught me by surprise, but if you wish, you may propose it for featuring by copying the paragraph from User:iddi01/Execode_proposal to Esolang:Featured languages/Candidates and adding a signature. Iddi01 (talk) 07:55, 8 October 2024 (UTC)

It's not that there are too few languages to feature, but because there's only one active admin and he doesn't seem like changing the featured language. --None1 (Nope.) 10:31, 8 October 2024 (UTC)

Here's my proposal on how to fix it:

Add the rule that, when at least 2 people other than the language's creator (actually 3, the first being the one proposing the language) agree on that a language should be featured (which they may say at the talk page, on IRC, or anywhere else) and no one disagrees within a month since that happened, it becomes featured. This will ensure that the featured language is still changing in "admin scarcity times" like this. What do you think? Iddi01 (talk) 09:11, 14 October 2024 (UTC)

Featured Esolangs

The featured esolang has been Thue for quite some time. Is this ever updated? -Boinggg (talk) 23:00, 16 November 2023 (UTC)

Sounds like this is the last day Thue being the featured language. --None1 (talk) 11:07, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

Fix the name

The main page says `Esolang`, which makes it sound like it's about one singular esoteric language. Rdococ (talk) 22:30, 1 July 2024 (UTC)

the wiki is called Esolang, not Esolangs — this is made apparent by the Esolang: prefix on certain pages and the "About Esolang" button at the bottom
alongside that, the title also says "the esoteric programming languages wiki" (plural)
aadenboy (talk | my esolangs) 21:39, 16 September 2024 (UTC)