Statistics and the main page
The links to statistics on the current main page are all to statistics for MediaWiki and its extensions, I think. So is it your idea that all these links are moved to the MediaWiki project page? That would be good I think.
We already have a Translating:Statistics page but at present this page holds statistics for MediaWiki only. Is it possible to have this page show links to statistics for any and all projects? Could you include a section at the top of the page of statistics for translatewiki.net as a whole? This would include links to each of the statistics special pages, and a short description of each page. Then statistics for MediaWiki would have their own section, and any other project which might have translation statistics would have their own section on the page.
Perhaps the very first link on the Translating:statistics page could be to the 'language statistics' special page, as this is also a very useful translation tool, as well as providing statistics. In addition, is it possible to have a link to the 'language statistics' special page on the sidebar? If so, is that an efficient use of computer resources?
Then on the main page, if you want it as uncluttered as possible, you could just have a link to the Translating:Statistics page. Or if the main page gets too cluttered, you could just do with a link to Translating:Statistics from the Project:About page. Or it might be an idea to whet the appetite of potential translators with something like: "Want to see what messages are waiting to be translated into your language? Find the language code for your language and then browse a list of message groups to be translated for your language." Come to think of it, is it possible and efficient to include a link to the 'Maintained languages' special page on the 'LanguageStats' special page, for the benefit of visitors who don't know the language code of a particular language they are interested in? Or a message saying "Click on 'Maintained languages' in the sidebar to see a list of languages and their codes."
I would also be tempted to put a link on the main page to the Translating:Group_statistics page, for the benefit of visitors in general and potential new projects in particular. But the group statistics cover MediaWiki only at present, so that's not such a good idea. Is it possible to produce a group statistics page which covers all the projects, not just MediaWiki?
See sitenotice for a redesign of the main page. We should't discuss the current main page. The links to the statistics for individual projects should be on the project pages, and there are some sections that could use a link to Special:LanguageStats, Web_interface specifically.
All the above suggestions are supposed to be to do with the development of the new main page; sorry that that wasn't written clearly. I was only referring to the old page to consider the impact of losing the information that is currently on the old main page. I like the layout of the new main page, by the way, but won't have time to write more until the weekend, perhaps.