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Forums: Index > Watercooler > Major Changes! Please Read!



NOTICE: This is a notification to all users of the Wizard101 Wiki of major changes being implemented by Wikia within the next month. The admins only received official notification of these changes on October 3.

Overview of Changes:

The changes detailed below will have extreme effects upon our Wiki's function and appearance. We will basically lose our site's appearance without the option of restoring it, have very tiny article pages, lose a great deal of functionality on the site, be forced to allow unwanted external links, have more advertisements and ads on every page, have no more customization of the site, and some users will no longer be able to view or edit the site.

Post Purpose:

This post's purpose is to inform users and start discussion, among the Wizard101 Wiki Community, about what you think of the changes and ideas over what to do about it. The admin are seriously considering options at this time to deal with the changes. We would like to hear from you first before we present some of the things we were thinking.

Please post your thoughts on this Forum! We want you to give your thoughts!

More details are listed below, scroll to the bottom to read comments

Wikia Summary

Wikia (our domain host) is implementing a new Skin to all pages on its sites. They are also changing their user agreement and policies regarding what a site is allowed to change and customize. These changes and their effects are mandatory for all sites regardless of whether the site users want them or not.

Wikia's Schedule:

October 6: Users can view what the new skin will look like from their preferences.
October 20: All Wikis will by default have the new skin, logged-in users can temporarily turn it off.
November 3: All sites will be on the new skin, options to work on previous skins will be removed.

How will this affect us?

Our Site's Appearance

Currently, our skin is customized specifically for our site, many of the settings are not default settings.

  • All of the current colors, fonts, Wizard101-style graphics, and button style will be gone.
  • We will be required to use one of several default appearances for the site. Basic colors and a background graphic can be used, but that is all the sites will be allowed to change about their appearance.
  • Wikia has said that at some point in future (no dates given) a theme editor may/will be created to allow people minor control over their site's appearance.
  • Basically, we will no longer have, nor will we be able to have in the future, our Wizard101-themed appearance.

Page Size

  • Page size will be dramatically reduced in width.
  • While the main page will allow a width of 980 pixels, the article pages will be restricted to 660 pixels wide.
  • Creature pages, for example, will be restricted to four spell cards wide, requiring you to scroll the page to even see all the spells a creature can cast.
  • Location map images will not fit on the page, at 660 pixels, they are not very readable.
  • Smaller pages, like pet snacks, will not be adversely affected.
  • On the standard wider monitors you buy these days (running in 1440x900 pixels), you will have about 9 inches of space external to the articles, 3 inches of content we can't control, including advertisements, and 6 inches of blank space.

No Sidebar and Reduced Site Navigation

  • The current sidebar for site navigation will be removed completely.
  • The only method of site navigation will be a top bar with total room for 28 links (4 tabs, 7 links each)
  • We currently have over 100 first and second order links on the sidebar with over 1400 links total, and even if you don't think they are all needed, that is a huge reduction in navigation.
  • As well, we have been asked not to use all of those links for our own site, but to use some for links to Wikia instead.
  • Links like "Random Page", "Wiki Activity", "New Pictures", and Forums, and Blog pages are being given precedence over Recent Changes in the Activity Feed, "Wanted Pages" and overall site Content.
  • You will need to click to see the Activity Feed, and most people have pointed out they have to type in page names now to find them on converted sites.
  • Accessing a page's history is now hidden and requires multiple clicks and going through an extra drop-down menu
  • Seemingly random categories are added to a "read more" link which is not controllable.
  • You can no longer access many features while editing (such as the search bar)

No More Customization

Nearly all of the options for customizing pages within the SourceWiki code will be removed for users and administrators. Some select options will be allowed but only at Wikia's discretion.

  • We will lose a lot of our customization of the site that has been developed over the years.
  • (Edits from the Rich Text Editor that we turned off were responsible for at least 200-400 weekly instances of page content deletion and really bad formatting of pages)
  • Basically, we will not be allowed to implement any site-wide changes that Wikia doesn't like.
  • For example, some sites have banned blogs because they don't want them (they took votes), Wikia will be disallowing that in the future.

Reduced Access to Users

  • The new page will require HTML5 which is not supported by all browsers
  • The new page will require JavaScript in many places to function, which will prevent many users from properly accesses pages.

Advertisements

Sadly, this seems to be the major motivation on Wikia's part for the changes. They want to replace our page content with ads and their content.

  • There will be larger advertisements on the site's pages than before taking advantage of the extra space.
  • There are advertisements on every page, which is far more than we currently have (2 on the main page).

Image Attribution

Every Image will have a large label with the name of the last person who edited it, creating a large degree of clutter on the pages, but also giving credit to people who may not deserve it. (Imagine seeing names under every spell card and every Damage symbol)

How is it affecting other sites?

  • Overall, after a secret, private beta test, a poorly advertised public beta test, and thousands upon thousands of comments, the overall option was overwhelmingly negative in every case.
  • Wikia has not responded to ANY of the negative criticisms regarding this change.
  • MANY Wiki's are considering leaving Wikia and a number of them have left

Here are some links where you can see for yourself:

The Anti-Wikia Alliance Page
A Wikia Staff Blog on the Change, look through the nearly 4000 posted comments which are over 99% negative
WoW Wiki, the largest (or close with nearly 90,000 pages) gaming Wiki on Wikia is considering leaving, they have a great list of problems with the new "look"

How do I see the new look for myself?

  • Go to the MORE button in the upper right corner of your screen, select Preferences
  • Select "Skin" from the Tab Menu
  • Choose "New Wikia Look" and hit Save
  • Choose "Monoco Preview" and hit Save to change it back!
  • IMPORTANT, don't get lost, you will want to change it back

Comments

Reply

Ugh. I viewed maybe half a dozen pages to see how different things would be affected. I was SO getting claustrophobic. Half my screen will be wasted, the rest will be crammed together for what? So every screen will show the same standard? If we all wanted to see the same standard view, we would all buy the same computer. :P And the colors? Dark, horrid, muddy choices. The whole experience rather reminded me of sardines and poo.

If Wikia wants to add advertisements to a free-hosted page, it's their site, they have every right in the world. But the other changes make no sense at all, I can't imagine any of them were requested by anyone. They do not improve readability, functionality, appearance, anything. It's not broken, what are they fixing? Implementing negative changes with no clear purpose is business suicide. They're attracting so many users right now. If they alienate the majority of them just to put more ads on each page, they can't really believe more ad views will result when most of those users leave or lose interest.

I've learned a ton here (and tried to contribute just as much) but I was getting along well enough before I discovered the Wiki, I'd live without it. I'm cool with jumping ship if it comes to that. My two cents.

PunkyMax 07:05, October 8, 2010 (UTC)Max Daydreamer

Reply

The colors are so ugly! Is this some kind of joke? Ew! I agree with what PunkyMax said. Katherine Deathpants 15:17, October 8, 2010 (UTC)

Reply

These are awful changes and I cannot imagine what Wikia is thinking. The skin is almost outright offensive, and the crunched content area is horrible. Not to mention, with a lot of the adverts lately, I've noticed there's likely to be a lot of overlapping. I checked out the conversations over on WoWWiki and it's looking like they are really going to find an alternative. (And that they make up about 10% of Wikia's global page views, wow!) What would be the alternatives available for hosting a wiki style site like this? Jenna.elf 07:14, October 8, 2010 (UTC)

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I found a place called ShoutWiki. http://www.shoutwiki.com/wiki/Main_Page I don't know how good it is, but that's an option. I would probably go wherever WoWWiki is going, since that's the best and biggest gaming wiki. Katherine Deathpants 16:02, October 8, 2010 (UTC)

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I just took a look at what this will soon be looking like, and all I could say was wow. It's terrible! The dull black look is not a pleasure to look at, rather it was irritating and I had to switch it back right away. Please tell me there's SOMEthing we can do to keep it the way it is! -Yunggrillz

Reply

Its boring and it has nothing to do with wizard101. It's more like night time with red and colors like that --Tyler225544 20:19, October 8, 2010 (UTC)

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Omg, i seriously hope something changes. And just when I was getting used to this wikia format! But actually, I dont think it's all that bad, I 100% would hope that it stays the way it is right now BUT if it were to change into the new format, I'm sure i'd be able to learn it. The rich text formatting problem is sort of more of a problem for me but now, thanks to EnlightendShadow, I've learnt a little bit more about the normal code formatting. Like with templates and stuff like that. Just writing normal text in the code formatting, i learnt many years ago due to updating Wikipedia, lol. Anyway, i hope it doesn't get changed though and that Wikia will somehow listen to our pleads.

Joshweiser22 (Joshua - LVL. 48 Ice Wizard) 20:59, October 8, 2010 (UTC)

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