Reasons
Under normal circumstances, we currently do not serve any pages from login.wikimedia.org. Browsers do not load any pages from this domain during the login process, and we do not link to or promote pages on this domain anywhere. Exposure to this domain name is currently limited to brief flashes in the address bar (during login redirect bounces) or status bar (for the invisible autologin image pixel, or ajax requests).
As part of T348388: SUL3: Use a dedicated domain for login and account creation, we're likely to serve the login form from this domain login.wikimedia.org, as well as the 2FA form and WebAuthn form, which are an optional second page after the login form depending on the account configuration.
This means users are exposed to the logo, sidebar, and footer of this wiki during the login process, from which they may follow links. Also, if they navigate backward, or for any other reason turn back here whilst logged-in, they will also see their personal tools which link to a User page, User talk, Preferences, Contributions, etc.
Things to polish up
- Logo. This is currently the (former) WMF logo, aka the Wikimedia community logo, with no text or branding, which to my knowledge is something a typical new user on specific wiki projects like Wikipedia or Wikidata will have no prior familiarity with, and also isn't self-explanatory.
- Perhaps the current WMF logo would make more sense here, matching https://foundation.wikimedia.org, https://vote.wikimedia.org, https://donate.wikimedia.org/, etc
- We may be able to, in the common case of just the login page, swap this out in some way, or e.g. hide entirely in favour of rendering the site logo of the wiki you're about to return to after redirect (e.g. the login form could read the returnto wiki ID and render that logo there). However, we still need a default for this wiki, for when you try to browse other pages here, or arrive here for other reasons.
- Sidebar. We can remove most of it probably? In the common case of the login page, or perhaps even for all logged out views / in the default skin, we could perhaps hide it entirely.
- Main Page. This absolutely needs some kind of content here. The wiki might also be a good candidate for $wgMainPageIsDomainRoot, or we could redirect / to Special:UserLogin, which is already capable of telling the user they are already logged-in.
- Note that without some changes to the "already logged in" message, it doesn't tell the user where to go. Perhaps CentralAuth could offer a special page that's a better landing page, i.e. something that can leverage your "homewiki" field and prompt you to "return" there.
- Editing. Would it make sense to restrict editing in the same way as for closed wikis? I.e. only for stewards and global sysops basically. That would ensure no user pages and talk pages get created here.
- Footer. Remove most of it probably.
- Personal tools. We probably want to hide most of these to discourage browsing of User, User talk, Contributions.
- Preferences. Unsure. Hide? Keep? Point to meta/GlobalPreferences?
- If keeping, consider what it would mean when someone goes there, the preceived meaning of those preferences, and the various other pages it links to. If keeping, we may want add most of its keys to $wgHiddenPrefs?
Other things to consider:
- For "global" type things, we usually refer to Meta-Wiki as the default. This also empowers the community to take ownership of what is shown there and how it ties in with practices. Whenever possible, we should avoid duplicating or competing with pages or workflows there.
- For example, instead of hiding the User link in the personal tools, we could perhaps make it point to your global user page on Meta-Wiki.
- Likewise, global preferences, whilst managable from anywhere, are I think conceptually often thought of as belonging to Meta-Wiki.