Proposal for a new layout of the Wiki

[Arnulf Christl]

Hi,
to enhance readability of the Wiki main page I suggest to use boxes to 
organize content. I put together an example here:
http://wiki.osgeo.org/images/2/24/OSGeo_design_proposal_for_Main_Page.png

It is not really a design but a layout proposal. The text is all red 
because the links are dead (i copied the page into another Wiki just to 
test) the logo is a placeholder, etc. all this is not relevant.

At the top right we could add a News section which is included as a 
template. Something like this was proposed some time ago and i think it 
would fit in nicely, easy to edit, prominent enough, direct link to 
archives, etc.

To make it a little complicated the boxes are implemented as <div> tags 
that we currently disallow in OSGeo Wiki to discourage spambots. But we 
can trick around this by allowing <div> just for a short time, save the 
page and then again disable <div>ing. The SpamRegex only listens to 
edits not views, so the <div> tags will display fine. But then you can't 
edit the main page unless somebody with access to the server changes the 
settings. Sort of "protects" the front page in a slightly queer way too.

Which brings me to the last point. I suggest to migrate the Mediawiki 
software to the tellascience infrastructure whenever they are ready to 
go - if at all they would consent to hosting it. Then it would be easier 
to regulate access to these few essential settings files and i guess 
that the backup would also be somehow more centralized and not depending 
on a commercial enterprise like us. I mean it is not a problem at all 
for us to host the Wiki for evermore, we are more than ever happy to do 
this but from a governance perspective i believe it would rather belong 
on a public OSGeo d(ed)ictated server ...turning just slightly paranoid 
for the fun of it.

Best regards,
Arnulf.