Nice one Grant, I agree with you. As a new comer I found it difficult to navigate. What's more I've been actively reading the wiki almost on a daily basis, and I still seem to be finding things I'd missed before.

Elifarley,

Hello,

I am very happy to see people taking initiative to redesign the main page of the website, I think that it is a very important step.  I have no web design or development experience, but I can offer my opinion of the example Main page designs you all have linked above, in hopes that my opinion might be helpful.

I like the aesthetic of the new Main page (designed by Marie), it looks clean, symmetrical and balanced, and it feels like an easy/functional platform from which to navigate the rest of the site.  However, I really like how Grant, in his sample Main page, included a section of Recent News which displayed the most recent blog post - I think that this would be interesting attention-grabbing information to anybody visiting the site, and makes for a convenient one-stop check-in for people who want to see if there are any new blog posts as they are on their way to a different part of the site.  So far I think ya'll have done a good job of balancing the functions of: 1.) introducing newcomers to OSE's work; 2.) directing interested contributors to instructions for getting involved; and 3.) providing a useful platform from which project developers and those already involved can navigate to the various parts of the wiki.  However, in regards to the Introduction link on the main page, as much as I like Nikolay's Overview, I feel that the couple of paragraphs on Grant's Main page make for a more clear, concise, and inspiring introduction to the work.  Perhaps a new overview could be drafted that starts with these paragraphs and then includes a more comprehensive overview like Nikolay's. 

Thank you to all of you who are donating your time and energy to this work!  I am continually impressed and deeply inspired by the scope of the work and by the enthusiasm and dedication that so many people are bringing to the project.  I hope to be able to contribute something useful as well. 

All the best,
Lloyd

Let's set the short Introduction text on the Main Page (below or above the Video):

First proposal:

We are a network of farmers, engineers, and supporters that for the last
two years has been creating the Global Village Construction Set, an
open source, low-cost, high performance technological platform that
allows for the easy, DIY fabrication of the 50 different Industrial
Machines that it takes to build a sustainable civilization with modern
comforts. The GVCS lowers the barriers to entry into farming, building,
and manufacturing and can be seen as a life-size lego-like set of
modular tools that can create entire economies.

Message from Trenton:

I've installed the RSSReader extension from http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:RSS_Reader

I'm with Conor that a complex header appearing widely across the wiki is
wholly  unnecessary. I do think the table Trenton put together is a
step in a good direction for the main page, though. I have some thoughts
about what it could become (a very rough
sketch). Is anyone interested in imagining, planning and building this
with me?



Given the highly collaborative nature of the project, it may be a better
option to build a structure that is designed to accommodate changes in
the GVCS rather than assuming a fixed list and updating it periodically.
(Easier said than done! A direction to trend in, at least.) Not that
one would want to let people to change the scope or goals of the project
willy-nilly, but it is very likely that the list of technologies will
grow/change over time. This is especially true as more independent
people and groups with similar aims to OSE who have been working in
parallel emerge, and also if people begin to customize the set for
different people, places, etc. Anyway, it is usually easier to arrest a
structure designed to be fluid than to try to create fluidity in a fixed
structure.

One of the interesting elements of the Open Source Movement and wiki technology is its ability to change, mature and adapt to both people's needs and contributions. I think that if we have a clearly presented vision, people will sort the rest out on their own. If someone is the altruistic type and they recognize an opportunity, then they will give. I think your average techie will contribute what they will, I see the GVCS like a shopping list for a complicated meal: if at the end of shopping, you find you have something different than you had planed, then you roll with it.

@Nikolayhg (2/22/11) Concerning out evolving summary of what we can do, maybe include the concept of the organic and evolving nature of the project.

I think that one of the interesting observations of things developed through social media is the fact that the product is the sum of contributers, whereas in your average corporation, everything is dictated from the top.