Feature summary (what you would like to be able to do and where):
I am not saying that translatewiki.net should retire custom https://translatewiki.net/ main page entirely (though I think most of it other than the signup form could be implemented with wikitext these days). But I do think that currently, it provides a very degraded main page experience that is impossible to opt-out from.
I think it would be better if the main page used and adjusted the display in the current skin of the user to display its contents instead of just overwriting entire HTML.
Benefits (why should this be implemented?):
Mostly for registered users but this is more or less for everyone:
- It would be a more unified experience across the website, as many people are accustomed to clicking on the main page and expecting the skin to still be there.
- Users (especially registered users) could use default MediaWiki search as well as ‘Find and fix translations’ search (which are two different things).
- Users could use sidebar actions from the main page.
- Some code duplication, like footer links for hosting/MediaWiki, could be removed.
- Stuff that is irrelevant for Special:MainPage would/could still be not shown, like tabs, main page heading, etc.
With the current default skin (Vector 2022) it could look something like this:
