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Sarracenia ([info]sarracenia) wrote in [info]otf_wank,
@ 2010-11-03 17:45:00


Previous Entry  Add to memories!  Tell a Friend!  Next Entry
Wikia changes layout; becomes the next LJ in userbase trust
Wikia, for those of you who don't know, is a wiki site that lets you start a wiki on any subject. It's used a lot for things like Wookieepedia, the biggest Star Wars wiki or WoWWiki, which'll play a starring role in the wank, down to wikis for individual RPs.

Recently, they've been working on a new skin, that will be used by all the wikis on their site. Since before, Wikia let people modify the format extensively, they weren't real happy about this. Especially since it apparently looked terrible for the most complicated pages, used, of course, mostly by the most popular wikis with boatloads of information to organize. People really don't like it.

In fact, they don't like it enough that some of them, especially the big ones who'll have their formatting jerked to hell, start moving their content to a new site. After all, it's their content to do with as they please, right? Wikia views this as vandalism, and stops people from deleting their content, and a whole bunch of people suddenly realize that Creative Commons licenses mean that the hosting site can continue to use your material even after you hate them. Whoops! Note: WoWWiki hates the new layout so much that they abandoned their old domain name as well as everything Wikia-specific. Now that's hating a layout. Wikia also stops wikis from sending messages to people about where all the editors went.

Today was the day they ceased to support the old layout. Unsurprisingly, people continue to wank.


(Post a new comment)


[info]anarchicq
2010-11-04 02:56 am UTC (link)
My OCRP wiki is hosted on Wikia and I HATE the new layout. So much. SO MUCH!!

(Reply to this)


[info]galateus
2010-11-04 03:01 am UTC (link)
See, this is the kind of thing that made TFwiki.net pull out ages ago.

(Reply to this)(Thread)


[info]sarracenia
2010-11-04 03:03 am UTC (link)
What happened with that, anyway? I saw a few things about that but I don't really know Wikia well enough to dig up the dirt if it's not recent.

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

(no subject) - [info]galateus, 2010-11-04 03:19 am UTC
(no subject) - [info]sarracenia, 2010-11-04 04:15 am UTC
(no subject) - [info]agent_hyatt, 2010-11-04 05:10 am UTC
(no subject) - [info]kookaburra, 2010-11-05 09:49 pm UTC
Links! - [info]galateus, 2010-11-06 04:01 am UTC

[info]lil_miss_stfu
2010-11-04 03:04 am UTC (link)
Thank you for the info about Wowwiki - must update my Firefox search engine box.

(Reply to this)


[info]the__ivorytower
2010-11-04 03:04 am UTC (link)
the new layout that they

I think you're missing a 'so much' in there.

I needed to change my URL for WoWWiki because of that. I didn't know why. I do know when browsing the WH40K wiki (which I do on a frighteningly regular basis nowadays), the new bar at the bottom is rather disconcerting and the format isn't great.

It still beats the Lexicanum's black text on dark gray background which makes me want to shake someone repeatedly.

(Reply to this)(Thread)


[info]sarracenia
2010-11-04 03:08 am UTC (link)
Whoops, thank you! Fixed.

(Reply to this)(Parent)


[info]bride_of_lister
2010-11-04 11:37 am UTC (link)
Are you asking a 40k wiki to not be grimdark? XD

The Lexicanium has a well done layout it's just lost under shades of black, maybe they need a "slightly lighter" skin.

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

(no subject) - [info]cmdr_zoom, 2010-11-04 08:54 pm UTC

[info]rogue
2010-11-04 03:14 am UTC (link)
My group of miscreants moved our rpg wiki from Wiki-Site to Wikia. Let me tell you, we are thrilled. And by thrilled, I mean furious. Because GOD, THE NEW LAYOUT IS AWFUL. It screws up THEIR OWN CODE, I don't understaaand.

(Reply to this)(Thread)


[info]the__ivorytower
2010-11-04 03:17 am UTC (link)
Have you considered Obsidian Portal? Wiki format, very nice. I find their HTML a bit annoying, but it's got lovely formatting.

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

(no subject) - [info]rogue, 2010-11-04 03:20 am UTC
(no subject) - [info]sepiamagpie, 2010-11-04 04:18 am UTC
(no subject) - [info]cie_anthy, 2010-11-04 02:49 pm UTC
(no subject) - [info]deliciouschaos, 2010-11-04 04:36 pm UTC

[info]quinctia
2010-11-04 03:52 am UTC (link)
I've been wondering why this one little wiki I've been trying to read looks like a pile of illegible shit. Who knew it was wikia!

I don't even see any content on the screen without scrolling one whole screen-length. I'm on a widescreen resolution, WTF.

(Reply to this)


[info]cmdr_zoom
2010-11-04 04:09 am UTC (link)
"Hey, you know what'll make us even more money? Pissing off our entire userbase!"

(Reply to this)(Thread)


[info]agent_hyatt
2010-11-04 05:04 am UTC (link)
"And after we've pissed them off enough to want to take their toys and go home, we'll tell them that they can't! I see no downside!"

(Reply to this)(Parent)


[info]sandglass
2010-11-04 04:56 am UTC (link)
Haha! Wikia can try to keep WoWWiki there, but all the info is going to be horrifically out of date in a little more than a month. Nicely done, guys.

(Reply to this)(Thread)


[info]the__ivorytower
2010-11-04 05:46 am UTC (link)
33 sleeps until Cataclysm.

Which means more to me than Christmas.

*nerd*

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

(no subject) - [info]cmdr_zoom, 2010-11-04 06:03 am UTC
(no subject) - [info]rhosyn_du, 2010-11-04 07:34 pm UTC
(no subject) - [info]kylenne, 2010-11-05 06:19 am UTC
(no subject) - [info]ereshkigal, 2010-11-05 05:48 pm UTC

[info]seiberwing
2010-11-04 05:05 am UTC (link)
So that's why the Ace Attorney wiki's been so unusable these days.

(Reply to this)


[info]ruaki
2010-11-04 06:38 am UTC (link)
Explains why I was wondering what the fuck was wrong with the BlazBlue wiki the other night. geez

(Reply to this)


[info]maegwin_of_hern
2010-11-04 11:23 am UTC (link)
Oh, I thought the Dragon Age Wikia had done this change on their own. I'm not exactly happy about the change, but neither am I furious; I'm rather "meh" about it.

(Reply to this)(Thread)


[info]spawn_of_kong
2010-11-04 11:48 am UTC (link)
This is pretty much my reaction to the Doctor Who Wikia.

(Reply to this)(Parent)


[info]greenling
2010-11-04 12:14 pm UTC (link)
Ewww. Someone has no idea what reasonable business practices are. Even if you can hijack content, that's a really horrible idea; the sites affected always have more options than you do.

Most of the people I know use Wiki-Site (because it's really pretty and easy to use) or Wikidot (because it doesn't randomly shit itself and die).

(Reply to this)(Thread)

(no subject) - [info]sarracenia, 2010-11-04 10:19 pm UTC

tetradecimal
2010-11-04 12:58 pm UTC (link)
Why did they even change the skin? Like, was the custom formatting screwing up server performance or something, or was it just "we feel like doing it and we can"?

(Reply to this)(Thread)

(no subject) - [info]cmdr_zoom, 2010-11-04 02:53 pm UTC
(no subject) - tetradecimal, 2010-11-04 02:58 pm UTC
(no subject) - [info]cmdr_zoom, 2010-11-04 08:57 pm UTC
(no subject) - [info]kylenne, 2010-11-05 06:12 am UTC

[info]alexa
2010-11-04 01:38 pm UTC (link)
The ads seem really out of control on the new version. I mean, I know Wikia did have ads before, so maybe I just hadn't noticed it much, but now there are two huge banners at the top of the page. And I've got, like, cellphones flying around and blinking at me. Super distracting.

(Reply to this)(Thread)

(no subject) - [info]deliciouschaos, 2010-11-04 04:16 pm UTC

[info]xero_sky
2010-11-04 03:54 pm UTC (link)
This is what irritates me:
You are now leaving WoWWiki. Register or login to skip this ad.

It's a Wikia ad, which never actually comes up for me because I'm using NoScript. Still, the intent is to make me watch an ad for Wikia before I can browse away from their site. (Specifically from WowWiki to Wowpedia.)

Seriously, fuck that. I'm not going to register to skip an ad that they throw up as criteria for leaving their damned site. It's easy enough to get around, but the whole idea is obnoxious.

(Reply to this)(Thread)

(no subject) - [info]alexa, 2010-11-04 05:12 pm UTC
(no subject) - [info]cmdr_zoom, 2010-11-04 07:15 pm UTC
(no subject) - [info]mcity, 2010-11-06 12:16 am UTC

[info]deliciouschaos
2010-11-04 04:14 pm UTC (link)
Because of an injoke on a talk page on the (relatively small and quiet) wiki that I hang out on, their formatting now means that we have a picture of Pedobear peeking at every page, because they auto-display the most recently uploaded images.

I think it adds a certain je ne sais quoi.

On a bitter wikia user front: I was so hoping they would give up and keep supporting the old skin. There is no way that all four of us are going to work up the impetus to move this damn thing, so it looks like we have to reformat instead...

(Reply to this)


[info]silrana
2010-11-04 10:50 pm UTC (link)
The people who ran the City of Heroes wiki broadcast the 'can't remove your stuff' business to the CoH community a while back when they moved it off Wikia. The Wikia pages were full of ads for gold farmers, and the CoH people didn't want to be associated with that. So now the Wikia version sits there, full of crap ads and outdated information, since nobody maintains it anymore.

(Reply to this)(Thread)

(no subject) - [info]cmdr_zoom, 2010-11-05 01:11 am UTC

[info]kylenne
2010-11-05 06:17 am UTC (link)
WoW Wiki has completely moved over to wowpedia.org, (all the articles are intact) and is being hosted by Curse now, with all of the major contributors already back at updating it. Note that it's .org, though, since apparently there is a gold selling site squatting on the .com domain. I've seen a few people grumbling here and there being wanky about Curse, but to be honest, the site is running way faster than it did on Wikia,

Wikia refused to sell them back the old domain name, which is the only reason it's changed.

(Reply to this)(Thread)

(no subject) - tetradecimal, 2010-11-05 07:30 pm UTC
(no subject) - [info]mad_teacup, 2010-11-06 05:45 pm UTC

 
   
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