=== Description
With T298900 we resolved the situation where the Main menu and the Table of contents occupied the same space, by allowing the Main menu to be positioned above the table of contents. With that solution both elements are able to be accessed without opening any kind of menu (though one does need to scroll to get to the ToC if the main menu is open). The purpose of this task is to consider further changes to the main menu.
=== One menu or two?
The main menu on Wikipedia is currently half **global navigation items**, and half **page-specific navigation items** (i.e. Article tools):
{F34939967 width=400}
The main reason why I think this is worth calling out is: sometimespeople possibly have different needs for global navigation andthan they do for page-specific navigation have different needsn. OneI assumption is thate that people might need page-specific navigation might need to be accessed onceonce (or more) per page view, whereas people would not need global navigation would notas frequently. For example: it is difficult to imagine why someone would click "About Wikipedia" or "Contact us" (global navigation items) multiple times within a given session, whereas it's easy to imagine why someone would click "Page information" or "Wikidata item" multiple times within a given session (as they change from page to page).
Secondly I think it's worth considering this distinction because there it is arguably more appropriate the page-specific navigation mentioned above to to live with the other page specific navigation, to clarify and simplify the interface:
{F34939974 width=550}
=== What do we have to gain?
Before making any changes we should probablytry to articulate what we possibly stand to gainstand to gain (if anything). On one hand the solution presented in T298900 is acceptable and provides editors with the ability to have instant access to the main menu and (nearly) instant access to the table of contents. However I believe there is a downside to that solution — to say the same thing two different ways:
1. the global navigational items within the main menu, which we know from data are the least clicked on items in the entire interface [add link to data], are taking up some of the most valuable space within the interface, causing people to need to look past them if ever they want to access the page-specific navigational items or the table of contents.
2.However I believe the main downside to that solution is that it pushes the table of contents down the page, the table of contents is pushed down the page, making it appear out of the initial view of the page (which is specifically what we were trying to change with the updated to the ToC)instead prioritizing global navigation links which we know from data are not used very often ([[ https://nbviewer.org/github/wikimedia-research/Desktop-behavior-analysis-Aug-2019/blob/master/Desktop_usage_behavior_analysis.ipynb#Sidebar-links | link to data ]]).
To illustrate this downside compare these two options:
| option 1 | option 2
| -- | --
| {F34939985 width=400} | {F34939991 width=400}
In option 1:, upon loading the page:
- all of the global navigation is visible
- some of the page-specific navigation is available upon loading a page
- none of the ToC is available
In option 2, andupon loading the page:
- none of the ToCglobal navigation is available upon loading a page.visible
- all of the page-specific navigation available
In option 2: all of the page-specific navigation is available upon loading a page, and- all of the ToC is available upon loading a page.
=== My best guess
My best guess is that once editors get used to the new interface they will want both the ToC and the page-specific navigation available upon page load, and they will care the least about the global navigation (relative to those other two). This may differ for other projects where some of the global navigation items might be accessed more frequently (see T298900#7655145 re: Wikidata). For those projects a) a table of contents might not be relevant, so we can show global navigation there instead, b) if a table of contents is relevant we could show global navigation above it (but aim to keep it to a short list of links so that it doesn't push the table of contents too far down the page).
In T298900 both @Quiddity and @RHo mentioned that perhaps there is information that would be more valuable to people than the article tools, and that maybe we should save that space for such information (e.g. related articles, citations, growth tools, languages, categories, etc.). I agree that better options may be available to us in the future, but I don't think that means we shouldn't put the article tools there for now. I think that by placing the Article tools there we a) establish that space as a space where things can go, and b) make use of that space until better options become available.
Another best guess here is that logged-out people will continue to very rarely access either the global navigation or the article tools. Therefore the article tools could be collapsed into a menu for them and we will be free to use that space as soon as we have the time to build something to go there:
| what logged-out people would see
| --
| {F34940001 width=400}