Wikipedia:Today's featured list proposal/Proposal 5
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A list of the day department is under development, but may take months before it is up and running smoothly with enough volunteers to make it happen. To volunteer, or to discuss the final design procedure of presenting excerpts of lists on the Main Page, please see that department.
This is a proposal to add a temporary "Today's featured list" section to the main page, until that department is ready, and would transclude the template {{lotd}}, which is completely self-contained, and displays a link.
Important: To display list content or pictures would require subpage transclusion, which is beyond the scope of this proposal. This is a proposal to present a link. The discussion should be focused upon whether or not this stop-gap measure should be implemented on the Main Page, and how the template can be improved without the creation of subpages for transclusion. The full-fledged department will handle subpage transclusion, and is not part of this proposal.
The template {{lotd}} was designed to simply display the link to the "list of the day", and on the Main Page it would be included in a box, like this (without the edit button):
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To see what this looks like in place, it's already set up, as an operational version of the main page. See Wikipedia:Main Page alternative (with list of the day). I've tested it on IE7, but there may be glitches in other browsers. If you discover any, please take a crack at fixing them, or leave feedback or comments on Wikipedia talk:Main Page alternative (with list of the day).
The link to the list of the day can be displayed on any page, such as on your user page, by typing {{lotd}} where you want it to appear. If you'd like formatting, create a box, and stick it in there. ;) The template displays a new list each day, and looks like this: Today's featured list is: November 7.
The template:lotd presents featured lists roughly in the order they were given featured list status; very similar lists appearing in-a-row were separated by a few days each in most cases. This is the same scheduling scheme used in the Picture of the day project.
This supplemental project is very low maintenance. All featured lists approved by 11-14-2007 have already been added to the schedule, which is part of template:lotd and runs through January 22, 2009.
The schedule can easily be modified, to add new featured lists, replace lists that have lost their featured status, etc.
If new featured lists don't keep up with the built-in quota of 365 lists per year (we're already 400+ days ahead), the lists can be rerun from the beginning just like images in the Picture of the Day project.
Prior proposals can be found at Original proposal, Revised proposal, third proposal, and fourth proposal.
This proposal is intended as a simpler version which can be implemented immediately, but which can also be replaced or expanded in the future when a more elaborate project has been established and is running smoothly.