I think it is worth discussing this task in the context of T153007: Technical Collaboration annual plan FY2017-18. Should the Technical Collaboration team prioritize the mediawiki.org homepage refresh (and other MW.o related goals)? Should we assign/request resources to do so?

Hi Quim. What are the next steps? Do we need ressources for that? Or is any approval necessary?

Do you have any specific proposals or plans forward in mind? "approval": https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Project:Current_issues seems like the best place for community discussion?

Thank you André. I don't have specific proposals. This task is now three years old. Quim put it on the recent annual plan and my question is, if there is any help for the realization needed or some feedback. Maybe we can contribute.

@RHeigl please give us a bit of time to bootstrap the Onboarding New Developers program and share some initial suggestions with the community to start a discussion. I learned a thing or two in previous attempts, and I think it is important to have a basic agreement on the process before we start it, including a commitment to allow and pursue changes.

Sorry, the paragraph above might sound a bit bureaucratic. I think the actual process will be more interesting and funny than it sounds. :)

@Qgil that sounds great. I didn't mean to set somebody under pressure, but we would support you, whenever necessary. :-)

(Regarding the side bar, also see https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User:Qgil-WMF/mediawiki.org_sidebar )

Reading this task there seem to be only process discussions, but no audience or content discussions.
Use cases that need to be solved and in which order, basically. That might be the first part of the problem to solve.
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki/Homepage_redesign/Design_Document seems to be most relevant document for this.

The mainpage designs created for the old RfC (in 2012!) are pretty nice, what would it take to actually start using them?

In T653#3941576, @Tgr wrote:

The mainpage designs created for the old RfC (in 2012!) are pretty nice, what would it take to actually start using them?

I agree and I did not understand back then why it was not adopted. Ok, I do not really like the pic a the top and one or two formatting tweaks could be done to the bottom section, however these do not appear to be blockers imho. Just move the stuff over to the current main page as far as I am concerned. :) Understand this comment as a cheerup!

In T653#3941576, @Tgr wrote:

The mainpage designs created for the old RfC (in 2012!) are pretty nice, what would it take to actually start using them?

Nice design, support. (Maybe the big red "Add your wiki to the list" may be a spam target)

In T653#3941576, @Tgr wrote:

The mainpage designs created for the old RfC (in 2012!) are pretty nice

I've reworked them a bit in https://www.mediawiki.org/w/index.php?title=User:AKlapper_(WMF)/Homepage a while ago to be small screen friendly etc.

what would it take to actually start using them?

Discussions and basic agreement on design, scope (concentrate on page content only? or also discuss the sidebar items?), structure (how to organize content? by audience scope? that would not always be clear, e.g. sysadmins and devs could both be interested in Professional development and consulting), content (popularity - which pages do we consider important but are obviously not found by users; which pages are popular but not linked from the frontpage), defining where to have all these discussions in a single place and where to announce them (mediawiki-l@, wikitech-l@, mw:Project:Current_issues, more?), a time plan / schedule for all these items.
I think. If I overcomplicate, feel very free to tell me. :)

What about starting with this:

Agree on the first, the second and the third messages that this homepage needs to communicate clearly. Just the concepts, no need to discuss final copy at this point. For instance:

1. MediaWiki is amazing, it powers Wikipedia, and you can use it for free in combination with all these extensions, gadgets, and more.
2. Questions using, administering or developing for MediaWiki and related technologies? Check the docs and ask here.
3. This is the community developing all this free software. Join us!

Once we agree on the three messages, we give them three regions of the homepage. We get rid of the rest, which could be accessed from these three regions or the sidebar. Then we work on each region through iterations.

Both the previous design proposal and the HTML work Andre has been done can be recyled. However, without agreeing on these main messages we will not go far (just like in previous attempts).

Draft: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki/Homepage_improvements_2018
Announcements:

• https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2018-September/090886.html
• https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/mediawiki-l/2018-September/047631.html
• https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Topic:Ulqmczfellxvgrul

Phase 2 (content) summarized. Phase 3 (layout) started in https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki/Homepage_improvements_2018#Layout_and_layout_implementation

Looks great everyone :)

Today I was looking for screenshots in this task, just to realize I never attached any. So here we go:

Before: