Forum:What new features would you like to see on Wikia?

As the title says, I'm asking every single member of the Wikia community what new features you'd like to see on Wikia. So, feel free to add in your own ideas, as they're very valuable. :)

I personally would like to see a list of people whom are online, like on internet forums, such as Invision PowerBoard/PHPBB forums and so on. It'd be great in order to find out such things as which staffers are online - whom can I ask for help and such. :)

Another thing I'd like to see is the cascading protection, but that's coming on MediaWiki 1.10 (=in April).

So, what new features would you like to see on Wikia? --Jack Phoenix (Contact) 17:28, 18 April 2007 (UTC)


 * Thanks for starting this Jack :) We are actually building out a whole portal where we start to talk about all the things that Wikia has enabled, things that are coming up, an area for exactly this sort of discussion where each idea can be voted on, etc. We'll have a url for everyone shortly. I hope it engenders more of these exact sorts of discussions. To address your points:
 * We're currently working on a "presence" widget based on jabber for exactly the sort of thing you discuss above. Our idea is to "surface" the community behind a wiki a bit better so it's more obvious there are real people here.
 * We're in the process of rolling out 1.10 across the site... 500 wikis per week starting with the smallest. That way issues don't hit everyone at once and we have more of a buffer time-wise to fix things.
 * Johnq 22:26, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

De-Admins issues

 * I would like to see an admins only area, but that's not "wiki like". Or something like where the Bureaucrats can de-sysop anyone. But not de-Bureaucrat.--H*bad (talk) 17:35, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
 * This might be possible on the portal site we're creating. We'll be attaching a phpBB forum to that site ... we've already done the integration so that the phpBB forum supports wikitext. Johnq 22:26, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
 * *Twitches* What... phpBB forums with working WikiText. Now if only other forums supported that I'd like posting much more. That'll definately make communicating via forum more comfortable than just using a plain phpBB forum. But thanks for notifying that MW 1.10 is being put out. I was asking Angela a question like that because I am developing some extensions for use on the WGEP and while they are mostly extensions there are a few minor hacks, and unfortunately in one of those hacks the code being modified is different between MW 1.9.3 and MW 1.10 so I needed to know which version I should do my development with. Although, I did look over trying to get 1.10 working, but I had issues figuring out how to get the stuff from Subversion working properly. ~Dantman(talk) tricks Apr 24, 2007 @ 00:23 (UTC)


 * Well, I've thought of coding an extension that adds Special:Cabal, lol. :P


 * Anyway, the desyop extension exists, but it is not installed on Wikia and probably for a good reason, as here admins and bureaucrats might not exactly be trusted users - who knows how they would use desysop extension. That's why the staff does desysoppings. --Jack Phoenix (Contact) 17:41, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
 * This type of thing would be at the discretion of our community team. Johnq 22:26, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Then only grant specific wikis that ability.--H*bad (talk) 17:45, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

Category Tree Extension
Maybe the Category Tree extension (see an example) or the ExpandTemplates. And, why not, the Semantic wiki --Ciencia Al Poder (talk) -@WikiDex 18:59, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Ok, we'll take a look. Johnq 22:26, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
 * I would really appreciate Cattree extention at wikia. It could help new users a lot. Forrester 21:40, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

block pages from creation
The ability to block pages from creation.--Rataube 19:05, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Cascading protection - introduced in MediaWiki 1.10, that should be installed soon to Wikia. :) --Jack Phoenix (Contact) 20:04, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
 * We're rolling out 1.10 across the site right now ... 500 wikis at a time.

DynamicPageList Upgrade etc.

 * It's been mentioned elsewhere by other people, but DynamicPageList would become very useful if it was upgraded. It's got a few new functions which make things work better, and look better. It's even got some new things which are required for the core functionality on the WAP, so the top-level will be getting it anyways when the project diverges from some of the normal Wikia code. And a few Wikia could make some interesting use of the TemplateTable extension (Many Wikia use templates for things such as items in RPG's, character infoboxes, etc... That extension could be used to generate item lists, character lists, etc... Just from those dynamic template calls). Though I'm still curious on the reasoning of why the current interwiki map is used to write to all the interwiki tables when Wikia only has one DB Server and already has a shared database for the user table. When I experimented in building modifications which shared users, partial permissions, and interwiki data across multiple wiki I found that I only had to alter a single line of code to make the software access a shared interwiki table instead of using local ones. After that it's a simple case of installing Special:Interwiki onto the top-level wiki (Central Wikia in this case) and giving the interwiki ability to the staff group. And then interwiki stuff is handled instantaniously, and you even get a log of changes to the table. As for de-sysoping, that probably is something that can only be introduced when you add a 3rd layer of administration. (Normaly we have a 2 layer set where the Community Staff are at the top, and then below being helped are the Local Heads and then Admins for the individual wikia; A 3 level system would be similar to the WAP's where you have the Community Staff over top of Heads and Admins of the project who are admins on all the Wiki in the project, and then you have the Heads and Admins of the individual Wikia.) But when you mention de-sysoping, if someone's trusted enough for desysoping then makebot could also fit in as something their trusted with. Though to do that of course we'll need a whole new group class of trusted Bureaucrats. Though considering that Special:Userrights is extremely security riddled (absolutely any class can be altered through it (A bureaucrat could make someone Staff if that specialpage haden't been restricted to staff only), and Special:GroupsAdministration is even more dangerous, I'm thinking up a new Specialpage while I'm designing the WAP's extensions, it's a cross between Userrights and the Makesysop, Desysop, and Makebot extensions. It works similarly to Userrights, but unlike with userrights, it works on a defined list of what classes can edit what classes. In other words, if setup, bureaucrat could alter Sysop, Bureaucrat, and Rollback. While another group could be created which could alter Sysop, Bureaucrat, Rollback, Bot, and itself. Though I'm contemplating if I should or can go to the extra effort to create one-way changes like how you a group can sysop someone but not desysop them. A MediaWiki:Sitenotice undismissable or something would be nice to cancel out the dismissable sitenotice when a wiki really needs it would be nice. (Some wikia use the sitenotice to add things such as page creation forms, and possibly even global title modification). Actually, perhaps users might find UserPageStyles to be an interesting one. Technically it would allow more userpage customization, even things such as removing the title bar and contentsub on your userpage and removing the margins as an alternative to the not so standard uses of negative margins, positioning, and z-index alterations inside the content to create a userpage which has it's own title, or is styled by the userspace instead of the global style (My Userpage for example. Actually, it could also be used on pages such as the TalkTop on my talkpage where I use classes which are only on other wiki to be able to remove the coloring from the TOC to make the archive list coloring fit in correctly. And yes, a regex page Title block would be helpfull. I get a few repeat pages on The Gaiapedia which should never be re-created. And sometimes you don't even want to create a page which says that the page has been repeatedly deleted (Random page would sometimes end up going there) ~Dantman(talk) tricks Apr 18, 2007 @ 19:12 (UTC)
 * There's a lot here... let me digest. Newer DPL should be something we do soon. Johnq 22:26, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Sorry about getting carried away by typing, it happens commonly. I try typing something small and end up with tones. I can break that up into lists if you want me to. Though I won't do it now unless you request it cause someone asked me for some help getting my Searchswitch system on their wiki. ~Dantman(talk) tricks Apr 24, 2007 @ 00:23 (UTC)

The ability to create postings on regular wikia that magazine wikias can, i.e. news-style postings people can comment or vote on, etc. Maybe something like Special:SiteScout on regular Wikias too? I guess just having available the options the magazines do on regular Wikias. --LordTBT Talk! 16:09, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
 * We're looking at ways to bring more of those features to regular wikis ... including new skins. We'll have something to show you very shortly. Johnq 22:26, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Well, as promised, we had something to show you very shortly after that last post. Today I sent out an email to the wikia-l mailing list ... as a result of what everyone was asking us to do, we've come up with some new skins that we'll be showing to visitor to draw them deeper into the site. We've also had some wiki admins to switch them over immediately to using this new skin ... so we'll do that as soon as we can. Here's the page describing it: http://www.wikia.com/wiki/Newskin Johnq 05:47, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

watching a whole namespace
What about the ability to watch a whole namespace? This could be useful for admins on MediaWiki talk for users' suggestions and stuff. Gee, there probably isn't any such feature coded anyway... – Smiddle 18:58, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
 * That's a good idea for user talk pages. Johnq 22:26, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Forum pages to. Though like I said (Sorry that I type to much) combining the previously existing cross-wiki Message notification with a modified watchlist would be very nice for notifications so that people can selectively ask the software to notify them of very important discussions, such as watching another user's usertalk page after they have asked a question there, or watching a very key forum topic to them. Possibly even watching the Main Page for vandalism. ~Dantman(talk) tricks Apr 24, 2007 @ 00:23 (UTC)

MIDI/page recreation/enhance recentchanges
In order of importance: What I find very important is MIDI files, as I see that Wikipedia does somehow store musical scores in the MIDI format. C3PO the Dragon Slayer
 * 1) MIDI files! I want to share some of the music I compose!
 * Ok, we'll take a look. Johnq 22:26, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
 * 1) This is now enabled. Please make sure it works for you and let me know if not. Johnq 18:06, 24 April 2007 (UTC)
 * 2) Protecting pages from recreation without having to redirect them to a Constantly Recreated Pages section.
 * 3) We've developed a new "create page" that uses a "suggest" list based on existing article names. If you select one from that list, it takes you to that existing page instead of creating a new one. Same for images. It's coming ... and for exactly the reasons you said. Johnq 22:26, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
 * 4) From my understanding, all edits are recorded in the system, and when they were made. Could a Special:Recentchanges-like feature be made to show edits more than 500 edits ago and more than 30 days ago? I can see this being useful in some ways.
 * 1) This is now enabled. Please make sure it works for you and let me know if not. Johnq 18:06, 24 April 2007 (UTC)


 * Actually, all edits are stored when made. After around 1000 have been made MediaWiki starts deleting the old rows from the rc table and they disappear. Either that or they may even have expiry dates. The rc is for watching current edits for vandalism and what's going on, it's not really meant for browsing old histories. Actually, as for being able to watch something, there's something a little different I'd like. Currently the cross-wikia message notification which checks if you have messages on any other Wikia is disabled. But when it's re-enabled I'd actually like to see and extension of that system into the watch system. Basically I mean it would be nice to be able to set a tag on certain pages so that when they are edited you get a notification even if you are on another Wikia. I'd like to tag my userpages, on The Gaiapedia I use subpages of my talkpage for actual discussions, forum topics and some important talkpages would be nice to be able to do that to. ~Dantman(talk) tricks Apr 19, 2007 @ 23:21 (UTC)

YetAnotherTagCloud + ProtectSection Extensions
I ran into a few more interesting extensions when I browsed the list again: ~Dantman(talk) tricks Apr 20, 2007 @ 05:13 (UTC)
 * YetAnotherTagCloud: It might be interesting in some of the larger, or even medium sized wiki. I always see Main Pages with issues on organizing a flow of how to get from somewhere to somewhere else. So I usually just end up using Special:Allpages or Special:Categories to get around. But something like this might make it interesting for new viewers to jump into a new wiki.
 * We're doing something very similar during page creation so you can tag an article with existing categories (or put in your own categories). We're looking to expand that tool so that people can use tag clouds to tag articles after they're created. Images, too. Johnq 22:26, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
 * I remember all the talk on not protecting Main Pages, and issues with certain things being done to certain pages, etc... But just a thought, Extension:ProtectSection creates a special type of protection using tags within articles. If some area of an article is being heavily vandalized on some wiki, then possibly that could be used to protect the page while still allowing normal users to contribute. Kinda a nice alternative to asking an admin to make an edit.
 * Interesting. Johnq 22:26, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

Wikia magazines skin(s)

 * I would like to see the Wikia magazines skin, as well as other elements that can provide the magazines look and feel (e.g. the rating extension) become available to all wikia. --Oshani 18:17, 20 April 2007 (UTC)
 * We'll have something new on this front very shortly. Johnq 22:26, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
 * As mentioned above, we rolled up all the things we were being asked to do and put them in a new skin. You can see the results here: http://www.wikia.com/wiki/Newskin and we'll be rolling that out to visitors shortly. Johnq 05:47, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

UserPageStyles Extension
Thinking it over again, I think UserPageStyles would actually be extremely useful for userpages. Not only would I use .firstHeading { display: none; } and #content { padding: 0px; } to give the userarea a proper fitting, instead of using negative margins which overlap on things, and #toolbar, #editform { margin: 0px 10px; } to keep the edit window looking right. I'd also probably do a few modifications to make it so that the New Messages box which currently gets hidden by my userpage would actually show up correctly. Pages like User:Rieke Hain/junk room could even make use of that extension. And I could cut down on the larger codes like the ones I use to color the links. And I could probably fix the underflow that shows on my talkpage when there are no messages. ~Dantman(talk) tricks Apr 21, 2007 @ 06:19 (UTC)

Labeled Section Transclusion
Here's another which could prove to be extremely helpful. Labeled Section Transclusion allows for sections of a page to be tagged and transcluded into another page. It's almost like the includeonly/noinclude tags, except the sections are named so different parts of the same page can be transcluded instead of all transcludable parts of a page. Currently on the Narutopedia portions of pages such as w:c:Naruto:Ninjtsu are transcluded into pages such as w:c:Naruto:Jutsu to give the general information, while not causing a lot of pain to the editors trying to make changes in two places leaving one to be out of date. To do this I half to use noinclude tags at the start of the page to the start of that section, then I half to do the same for the end of that section all the way to the bottom of the page. This isn't too pretty since that nowiki tag needs to be directly at the end of the text or else the newline will cause trouble. But if this extension was installed I could use at the start of that section, and at the end. And then there would be no need for the noinclude tags at the start or end of the document which cause a little more annoyance than what you might think. After that all I'd need to use would be something like. In fact, because all the created sections are named, I could actually not only transclude the general info, but I could also selectively include a list of something into another page, using the noinclude tags you are limited to what you can do because you can't customize it for each page you include into. ~Dantman(talk) tricks Apr 21, 2007 @ 11:15 (UTC)
 * Scratch that, apparently the new DPL has that functionality built in. I can use:

 title  = Jutsu include = info 
 * And use the same section tags with the new DPL (This makes me want that even more). ~Dantman(talk) tricks Apr 21, 2007 @ 11:57 (UTC)


 * I take that back, DPL2 is missing some of the things which can be done with LabeledSectionTransclusion. Mainly the facts that DPL2 cannot include from the same page (Be used to SUBST the page making the page only contain certain sections), and DPL2 is also missing the exclude ability. DPL can do what #lst and #lsth can do, but it can't do what #lstx and #lsthx can do. If you're wondering what this means the ability to use LST to archive things can't be done with DPL2. So considering the fact that the two extensions are fully compatible with each other and that's probably the best and most intuitive way of archiving something (The only thing which would make me move away from move type archiving) I'd say it would be best to install both at the same time. ~Dantman(talk) tricks May 4, 2007 @ 06:06 (UTC)

who's online
I'd just like to see who's online on a Wikia when I visit it. Like it would say "There are currently 100 people viewing this wiki" or something.--Richard ( Talk - Contribs) 19:23, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Coming. Johnq 22:26, 23 April 2007 (UTC)


 * This is an oft-requested one, but how would one determine the state of being online? Many people do not log out, and their session doesn't expire until they close their browser (or for several months if they use 'remember me'). It would have to be based on their last access to a page on that wiki, but that would have to break caching and possibly violate the privacy of some people (as wiki viewing is often seen as passive). So, therefor it would probably be based on last POST request, but most of these (except for some special page queries) can be seen on Special:Recentchanges. --Splarka (talk) 22:33, 22 April 2007 (UTC)


 * Ya, there are probably to many issues with that one. It would probably be better to convince certain people to attempt to use the status changer I modified from the one Essjay used to use. Well, if you're looking for a set of features, something handy would be a way to use a system like that without making a mark in the rc. ~Dantman(talk) tricks Apr 23, 2007 @ 01:04 (UTC)


 * Maybe we could do it with some kind of opt-in -- a "change status" dropdown like IM clients do, or "click here to let people know you're online"? — Catherine o' the ComTeam 04:01, 3 May 2007 (UTC)


 * That can already be done. Anime:User:Dantman, Essjay brought the script in, probably from someone at Wikipedia, and I've adapted it. User:Dantman/tricks has info on setting it up with a bunch of other things. But yes, it would be nice to combine it directly into the system. Perhaps make it so that it worked globally by saving the value to a global database table, and also since the new skin uses a lot of javascript, do something similar to make changing the value instant. ~Dantman(talk) tricks May 3, 2007 @ 08:10 (UTC)

Spell checker
A built-in spell checker would be nice! Especially when one logs on elsewhere
 * That's agreeable, even though the Firefox built in spellchecker is nice, I don't see anyone else on wiki I administrate finding any way to spellcheck things. The two I noticed were Spellchecking extensions and ms:Extension:Spellcheck thought it's possible they're the same. ~Dantman(talk) tricks Apr 23, 2007 @ 03:14 (UTC)
 * Interesting. One thing that comes up in discussing how newbies get started is that they start with spelling mistakes. So in an an odd way... a few spelling mistakes might be a good thing. Not a concrete product yet... but I was thinking about something that would scan for spelling mistakes in existing articles, then prompt new users to the site to take a look ... potentially even prompting them with the suggested correct spelling... I see this as potentially an easy way to get people to realize they can very easily jump in and help... even if just a little bit. Johnq 22:26, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Why not a miniature system a little on the advanced side which allows the system to search for repetitive things other than just spelling mistakes. It's almost like treating newbies like bots (o_0 kinda oddly laughable), normally I'd consider that a bit rude and I'd prefer making a bot do that so that normal editors don't. But if simple things can be edited in a easy way to get new users it might be worth it. Maybe kinda like a guided edit system; Other than spellchecking new wiki could even set it up for copying the existing content from Wikipedia onto the encyclopedia, normal editors throw in a large list of pages which need that done, then the newbies go through a page following the instructions, and tag it saying it's been done, then a normal editor who is very knowledgeable about what's being done can go over and verify that it was done correctly, fix anything which was done wrong and then check it off telling the system that that page was done correctly.


 * Two of my wiki have something similar to that actually. Each of them have a Forum: Collaboration forum. In which each topic is supposed to be a project that the community is working on.


 * On the Narutopedia we have w:c:Naruto:Forum:Village in Distress: A new E-Ranked Mission! (Came up with the name by modifying one of the episode titles; That community seams to be enthusiastic to making things in the software fit the series (We use Kage instead of Bureaucrat there, and Jonin instead of Sysop, etc...)) in which an editor picks one of the character articles from the list (Which can be expanded by editors with the other names that are on Wikipedia but are missing), they tag the list saying that they are going to do it. Then they go to the proper article name, copy the Wikipedia article following the guide How to copy from Wikipedia? and then they create the requested redirect pages listed there, and mark it off as done. After it's finished, I go through the page to make sure It was done correctly (I wrote up the guide on how to correctly copy a page, and some people are still misunderstanding a bit of it (This also helps me figure out other things to add to the guide)) I tag it off as verified.
 * On the Animepedia we have a huge number of articles which were created from before the wiki changed from the old Anime Wiki, to the new Animepedia inside of the Wikia Graphical Entertainment Project. The issue with these pages is not that they were copied directly from Wikipedia, but the fact that that was done without adding the proper attribution. So basically there are a bunch of pages which are; Illegal (GFDL Violation of not being attributed to Wikipedia), Out of date (Because Wikipedians have made the Wikipedia articles better), at the wrong name (Because the Animepedia uses a Subpage structure to create a Mini Wiki like system, this means that all those pages are in the wrong location), and Not formated to work on the wiki (they were never properly fixed, Nihongo is used instead of the Translation template which takes more into account, they use Wikipedia's infobox system which doesn't render correctly (Old templates were poorly copied) instead of using the better infobox system being built, extra templates and templates with incorrect names are used, and nonexistant categories are used). Basically this makes these pages useless, so Project Clean Slate is aimed at tagging those bad pages for deletion so that we can later start adding correct content to the wiki. (Examples of correct content would be Anime:Nanoha/Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha, Anime:Okusama wa Joshikousei/Okusama wa Joshikousei, Anime:Saikano/Saikano, and Anime:Saikano/Chise (Though these last two aren't as good of examples) ) ~Dantman(talk) tricks Apr 24, 2007 @ 00:23 (UTC)
 * I posed the spelling question. My solution is a google bar, and it turns out that there is a spell checker called ieSpell that can be installed for free in Internet ExplorerDeclan 02:53, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Firefox has it built-in and Opera uses ASpell if it's installed, so that makes 3 browsers which can do that. But Opera's is a spell-checker which doesn't highlight the mistakes like firefox, and I don't know about the IE one. But you also half to think about those who are using public or shared computers where people don't want them installing extra things onto the computer. ~Dantman(talk) tricks Apr 30, 2007 @ 03:32 (UTC)
 * Exactly right!!Declan 18:09, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

Maybe it is time to rethink the WYSIWYG thang?ֵֵֵ
I know this was discussed before in respect to the MediaWiki software itself and that the bottom line was that a WYSIWYG interface cannot really replace the power and flexibility of the MediaWiki markup language, but I still would like to see some WYSIWYG capability presented in Wikia. I think there are many potential writers who are still "afraid" of markup languages, and a WYSIWYG interface will help them join in. --Oshani 15:04, 23 April 2007 (UTC)


 * I would love this but in a class style way, what i mean i want to modify the monobook, and i would like to be able to see ALL the elements that i would have to change rather than a copy paste from other wikis, or have to discover whats the tag for things that are sort of default but then are hidding in an array of stuff (so far the best thing i discover is the Web Development Bookmarklets). Now the issue of my idea and Oshani's idea is that will only apply to a specific MediaWiki software with a certain version with the default values as a start, for example if you want to create stuff like dynamic play list, some one that was the DynamicPageList-Old (wikia) have certain commands, some one that has DynamicPageList2 or DPL2 have other commands, and some one that has DinamicPageList or DPL (new version) have other commands, then as people can develop their own extensions well they have certain things that are exclusive for them and even if its use in a farm wiki (like wikia) does not mean its a standard for the rest of the Wikis in the world. As i see the MediaWiki software its at a mid point where not so expert people can do things and expert people can do things, so its sort of easy to learn eg user:Dartman templates there complex to me, and as i go i get to understand them but for me creating those templates is sort of hard. Thinking in that a WYSIWYG would require you (if its software program that you want to install to your computer to later upload it be copy paste or automatic thing) to have all the templates that you are going to use as it could be server stress (i guess) as so far we get that with the show preview button --Cizagna (Talk) 17:26, 23 April 2007 (UTC)


 * We're doing some work in this area. We have a wysiwyg editor that does basic wikitext and reverts to an in-page editor (by section or by page) when it encounters something it doesn't understand. It uses the SocialText wysiwyg extension as a basis... it's being tested now. We have some ideas on how to add very basic template support to that, etc. It will continue to be a work in progress ... but we should have the first version rolled out to the site within a week or two. We do understand that most core users won't be interested in the wysiwyg part... but the in-page editor seems to be desirable. There are preference options to control it or turn it off entirely. We also know that making the editing experience a bit more pleasant for newbies should help bring in a few more people. Johnq 22:26, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

Two things: Volunteer portal/Close wikis
First off, the Volunteer portal needs to be shaved. Or removed. Or something, because right now it doesn't as if it's to much use. Secondly, it would be nice with the ability to actually close a Wikia - a candidate would be the 50 Cent wiki which has 0 articles and is as dead as possible, furthermore 50 Cent could be merged into a rapwiki, or a gangsterwiki, or a musicianwiki - hell, most things would do. Sometimes methinks you may be a bit too happy to create new wikis (also I find it hard to believe that 50 Cent has enough potential for a whole, useful wiki?). --Lhademmor (/M.P./) 10:51, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Here is how I solved it: use Special:Export on an inactive wiki to create XML files with author and version history of the few remaining articles and then post it with Special:Import (needs sysop rights) to an active wiki with a more general topic. Then set a softlink redirect to the Wiki and you are done - I did it with WhyFree. This is not an official Wikia policy, but I thought it was a reasonable decision. Merging wikis manually can be done quite quickly if they have really few articles and no user edits for months. --Matthias 15:08, 20 May 2007 (UTC)
 * See also Adoption, Merging and Closed Wikia. --Matthias 15:53, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

Cross Wikia Images
I'm sure that it is not the intention of Wikia to encourage duplicate files to be uploaded into multiple wikia, but it's not completely obvious how to link to an image on another site. One way to fix that would be to add a form element to the Upload Image page where we can identify which of the other wikia the image we want is on, and then have the script build the link. Chadlupkes 14:08, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
 * If you link from one Wikia to another without any sort of tracking, then people don't know if someone is using that image and the begin to doubt if something should be deleted. I don't think an exact, shared images between all Wikia would be fitting. But groups of wiki, such as all the Memory-Alpha wiki, all the wiki in the WGEP, the Uncyclopedia Wiki, and other Wikia which work together would benefit from having images shares. Though, I don't think it should be form driven like that, more like interwiki. Possibly an interimage and intermedia namespace set which would parallel Image and Media. Taking a WGEP example, a table would be defined with aliases for certain wiki in the project (Anime for animepedia, Naruto for Narutopedia, etc...) and Interimage:Anime:Wiki.png would include Anime:Image:Wiki.png into a page just like how it normally would be. Similar workings for Intermedia (Although, technically that would do the same thing as Anime:Media:Wiki.png. The difference between the other ideas, is that this would probably be done in a manor which actually lets the wiki consider the other wiki. In other words, finds a way to tell the other wiki that an image is being borrowed. I was considering doing some experimenting with that at some point. Though I have other heavy things which need work first. I half to do my 2nd rewrite of the GENetwork extension. This time I'm extending Title into WorldTitle, and adding a World class. ~Dantman(talk) tricks May 3, 2007 @ 08:10 (UTC)
 * It can be solved having some tool like CheckUsage in Commons, but it needs a database replication, which I dont't know if Wikia has. --Ciencia Al Poder (talk) -@WikiDex 13:36, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

&lt;option&gt;
This tag is very buggy. I'd like to see an option tag which is not. – Smiddle / talk 22:37, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

Special page grouping
I would like to see the special page to have the things group or at least the option to be able to group in our user preferences rather than to see it alphabetically some thing like the crude example below.

because its very anoying that im working on checking the redirects and i have to jump up and down looking for the the redirect... well just an idea (also like i have request many update on DPL but i guess i will have to keep waiting for Ver .10) --Cizagna (Talk) 04:48, 1 May 2007 (UTC)


 * I'd agree with this! Section headers and a simple table of contents would make Special:Specialpages a whole lot easier to use and navigate!  — Catherine o' the ComTeam 04:07, 3 May 2007 (UTC)


 * The issue I'd find with that is how to define that. Special:Specialpages grabs the 2 lists of pages from SpecialPage::get___Pages and then just outputs them. There are no actual tags which would properly group those pages in that way. Especially not placing Allpages and Prefixindex together like that. p.s: A lot of those links are broken, it would have been best to regex the Page source. Also Special:Userlogout is missing. ~Dantman(talk) tricks May 3, 2007 @ 08:10 (UTC)
 * The Userlogout does not appear on the special list, thats why i did not add it maybe in a wiki with version .10 apears, the in between braces was just and add on for the idea, i do agree that there is not tagging for those things that will make grouping a little bit harder as Dantman comments, the other thing would be renaming all those so it can be group by alphabetical order but i guess i has the same problem as the previous proposal and a extra one that will be that the name of what you look will not match with the actual name of the special page, creating confusion. Another idea, is to create like permits levels for common users that will be there by default and aid from those permits in order to group the things but i guess that will be a little messy --Cizagna (Talk) 17:37, 6 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Actually, since the title is taken from a mediawiki message (That's what things are sorted by), perhaps we could append -group to that, so MediaWiki:Allpages defines what is displayed as the name in that list, and that's what it's sorted by. Perhaps MediaWiki:Allpages-group could be defined as page and all the specialpages with that group would be grouped into a section who's title is defined in MediaWiki:Specialpages-section-page. That would work for grouping. To get the off end sorting (It's not exactly alphabetical) we could setup MediaWiki:Allpages-sort which would define the sort key, if it's not defined then of course the fallback would be the normal MediaWiki:Allpages. And for that part of grouping things into the same line I suppose MediaWiki:Allpages-uid and whenever you give matching uids to pages they'll end up on the same line. And if that uid was set to pagelisting then MediaWiki:Specialpages-uid-pagelisting-dominant could be set to Allpages to make sure that Allpages was the dominant item (The one outside). ~Dantman(talk) tricks May 6, 2007 @ 19:11 (UTC)

RecentChanges alternate Form
It doesn't use a very good method of doing it, and it's not compatible with the AdvancedRc, but mw:Extension:TransformChanges does have a valid idea. The Special:Recentchanges page, as a table instead of a list. I've been dieing for something like this for a long time, it can become very hard to find edits in the recentchanges because of how scattered the usernames and pages appear. But if it were converted into a table, then the users would appear in the same column, the comments wouldn't be scattered, and you could see a clear definition between edits. Even better would be if it could support the AdvancedRc in that form. Because not everyone would want this, it would probably be best to set it up so that the RC had 2 toggle buttons instead of 1. Toggle Advanced Recentchanges and Toggle Display Format and those two would switch the rc between list and table forms, with advanced rc on or off.
 * PS: Perhaps RC Custom could be interesting to. MediaWiki:Rcline and maybe a few others would define the code that a line was outputted with and use the normal $1, $2, etc... to output the information such as Username, Pagetitle, oldid, rollback, etc... And then individual wiki could customize that line with extra things such as changing what links to contributions, etc... This would make a normal line:
 * 1 = Title, 2 = User, 3 = Comment, 4 = Time, 5 = Curid, 6 = Oldid, 7 = Lastid(diff), 8 = Byte Change, 9 = Byte change class.

* ([ diff], [ history]) $1; $4. . ($8). . $2 (Talk | Contribs) $3 * ([ diff], [ history]) $1; $4. . ($8). . $2 (Talk | Contribs) ($3) But this line, would add the editcount, and a link to their userspace. * ([ diff], [ history]) $1; $4. . ($8). . $2 (Talk | Contribs | Editcount | [ Userspace] ) ($3) * ([ diff], [ history]) $1; $4. . ($8). . $2 (Talk | Contribs | Editcount | [ Userspace] ) ($3)
 * If you used CSS to make the p inline you could also include the actual editcount as a way of finding out how new the user is.
 * Obviously this idea is just a simple example. Other parameters would half to be added to determine if other things like block would be added, and there would be another message for other lines such as anons, or logs. ~Dantman(talk) tricks May 2, 2007 @ 23:00 (UTC)

Better tables inside of ParserFunctions than using |
I wouldn't go and ask someone to build it for me, but the DynamicPageList2 extension introduced the idea of using ¦ as an alias of | for WikiTables. So instead of using

Or using the template | which would contain the | character: We could use

Like I said, I would never go an ask someone else to just do something like that for me. So I went to the trouble of making it work and then creating a patch for it. I don't know if Wikimedia will accept it, but perhaps Wikia would like (bug 9700)'s patch.

Actually, technically it's the most readable and most efficient method of doing this. Because it doesn't use piles of extra characters like using HTML Tables. And because unlike using | there is no transclusions. ~Dantman(talk) tricks May 3, 2007 @ 01:52 (UTC)

Section number
What about a magic word or something, that outputs the ID of a section? I.e., if I used it in this section it would give 20, and if I used it in the start of a page it would generate 0. Is there anything like that? – Smiddle / talk 15:57, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

Upgrade of Extension:ImageMap
The ImageMap extension's bug which causes sections to not work has been fixed. This is one of the biggest problems with the extension. if this were fixed, users like me who are still using a ClickThrough because we can't link to sections could convert to the ImageMap extension. ~Dantman(talk) tricks May 5, 2007 @ 06:25 (UTC)

synchronous ("live") editing
Here's a blasphemous (though not exactly original) idea:

While wikis are originally an asynchronous tool, in some cases collaboration might be improved by allowing for synchronous editing (that is, "live" transmission of changes).

Think reviewing a document with another person over the phone and correcting minor mistakes and doing some rephrasing. The asynchronous way would be quite inefficient here.

I know very little about AJAX, but would it be very hard to implement something like this? After all, there's basically just a single plain-text field that needs to be sync'd here (so no complicated dependencies like with Web-based mail, for example).

UPDATE: I just found out about SynchroEdit - I haven't looked into it yet, but its existence proves the concept would be possible. Also, it seems that it can be tied in with MediaWiki... !?

-- FND 08:25, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

Page view counts
I'd like to see page view counts turned on again (via evaluating the Squid logs or any other means). I know there are many issues with view counts, but the counts don't have to be perfect; it's also okay if they were updated, say, with a one week delay. Anything would be better than the current situation of having no counts at all. I can't think of any information that's more interesting to editors than which pages of their wiki are visited the most, and which pages get too little attention. --Spankart 08:32, 5 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Don't worry, a new way of making publicly available wikistats is being worked on. ~Dantman(talk) tricks May 5, 2007 @ 09:32 (UTC)

shoutbox
Maybe a simple shoutbox in the sidebar would be nice; it could be used to coordinate tasks on (mainly smaller?) wikis. For example, User A could let it be known that he is "refactoring some article - please don't interfere for the next 15 minutes", while User B might announce "created new page: another article - need help completing it". PS: Come to think of it, this example kinda makes it sound like a Twitter clone... ;-) -- FND 08:38, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

New New pages
Now if you want to show new pages you write, what gives you 5 newest pages, with datt, author, summary and other useless things. Would be great if it would be possible to make simple list like: No more info is required, and it would be great to have autolist of newest articles on mainpage. SkywalkerPL 11:19, 5 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Article 1
 * Article 2
 * Article 3
 * Article 4
 * Article 5


 * DPL2 is coming to Wikia very soon. Using this code you could output a list of the 5 newest articles in the (Main) namespace:

 namespace  = count      = 6 ordermethod = firstedit order      = descending 
 * They would be listed with the absolute newest at the top. That would handle just about everything you could possibly think of. ~Dantman(talk) tricks May 5, 2007 @ 11:58 (UTC)
 * Yea... just noticed that it shows 'too few categories'... so waiting for DPL2, maybe it will work. SkywalkerPL 09:46, 6 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Also, a little note. But while that is restricted to the main namespace if you really need to have a full list if you use titleregexp=.* it'll basically override all that and just list every page in existance. Which is of course why we have the count. ~Dantman(talk) tricks May 6, 2007 @ 09:56 (UTC)

Search engine
The search engine could have several different things all included together:


 * Go;
 * 1) Search; AND
 * 2) Edit; (also including create)

If there's not enough room (which there is if we shrink the white space in the buttons), maybe convert them to icons, such as a magnifier for search, arrow for go, pencil for edit.


 * Special:Createpage gives a better method of page creation than normal. Though perhaps it should be moved out more into the open so that newbies notice it more because they're the ones it's targeted at. ~Dantman(talk) tricks May 7, 2007 @ 00:30 (UTC)

Unblock
Why not let admins unblock from the block log, rather than from the blocked-ip list? The only reason is because many of the items on the block log will be already out of date, but I'm expecting you tech people to be able to solve that.

Automatic categorization refresher
If I make a template that holds a category call inside it, and insert that template into 100 articles, then all 100 articles will be categorized as such. But if I change the category of that template, none of those articles have category changes (they do on the article pages, but they aren't shown on the category page listing).


 * Performance issues, that's the reason that's not done. Technically they actually are, it's just that because of how much work that is, you'd end up waiting a long time for a page load of you decided to have the server do it all in one go. That's what the job que is for. Basically when you do something like that a bunch of jobs are added to the que for refreshing the categories on those pages and doing other things, and each time someone browses a page a job is taken from that que and executed. So if you change that template, then hundreds of people visit the site, the job que runs through and does all that work slowly trying to avoid looking like the Wiki has been slowed down. ~Dantman(talk) tricks May 7, 2007 @ 00:30 (UTC)

Specific Uncategorized pages
Let's say there's categories A, B, C, and B. You want to clean up a wiki that's had a bad-organization start, but all of the articles are categorized as A or B, and some (not all) of the articles are also categorized as C or D, while all the articles should also be categorized as C or D. However, Special:Uncategorizedpages would show up empty so we can't ever find the articles that aren't categorized as either C or D.
 * For something like this, a specialpage wouldn't help as much; I'd say the best thing to do in these cases would be to write up some DPL2 stuff, then work with what it lists. ~Dantman(talk) tricks May 7, 2007 @ 00:30 (UTC)

Movable components
With Microsoft Word, all the toolbars are movable. Could we make it so that the sidebar can be movable? How about the sitenotice, the personals links, the individual parts of the sidebar, etc?

And if these preferences as determined by the user can remain in place across sessions and definitely across page shifts, that would be excellent.


 * That is being worked on for the new Slate and Smoke skins. From the info I got from Johnq we'll be able to setup various boxes and widgets, including one which lists the last few Wikia you've been to, and you can move them around, remove some, add new ones, and even create dashboard like pages which have nothing but widgets which could be use to give yourself an overview of the entire wiki, or perhaps for more social stuff in the community. ~Dantman(talk) tricks May 7, 2007 @ 00:30 (UTC)

More flexible messages
Some messages, such as sidebar and tagline, don't allow for special features such as colors, images and navigation bars (the latter doesn't even allow links). The end result is reduced flexibility.


 * The sidebar already has links obviously, but as for adding images and colors, that is done using CSS. If you look at the Narutopedia you'll see that the SearchSwitch has a big green *New* on it, and the Rules has a huge *READ* on it to try to get more people to abide by simple rules such as Fair use and copying from Wikipedia with proper attribution. As for the tagline, perhaps a little linking could be nice. ~Dantman(talk) tricks May 7, 2007 @ 00:30 (UTC)

Double messages
The sidebar and sitenotices could each have 2 types: one for newbies/newcomers, which can be dismissed and will probably be simpler / have graphics, and one with lots of links to a variety of pages, for more experienced users. The former will be to make the transition easier, and the latter will preclude going through several pages to get to a common destination.

This applies to a lot of other issues as well, such as edit warnings (which is, well, obvious for experienced users and just annoying, as well as takes up space).


 * We already have a MediaWiki:Anonnotice and MediaWiki:Sitenotice which separates the sitenotice for users who are and aren't logged in. Also, what defines a newbie is autoconfirmed which is set 4 days after a useraccount is created, this is why semi-protection stops new accounts as well as anons. If we added a third sitenotice it would only be visible by the extreme minority of people who just registered. This also doesn't work if someone registered on another wiki, stayed there for a long time, and then came to your wiki not knowing what you do for your rules, etc... And as for the edit warnings, if a user does not want them then they can use CSS to hide them. If they are advanced enough to not need the warnings, then they should be alright with customizing their own style. ~Dantman(talk) tricks May 7, 2007 @ 00:30 (UTC)

Footer
Like a sidebar. How about a footer that shows up on groups of pages (such as all in a namespace, or all in a category) that can be edited from a different location, such as a Mediawiki message for the namespace variant and the category page for the category variant?

Diff pages
1. Can we get diff pages, from the history page, that show the changes done by user A if the changes to the article are as following: D, A, A, B, A, C? Ie. going from the first to last A revisions, skipping changes made by user B?
 * A diff engine takes 2 sets of text, and tells you what is different between them. The same thing would work if you threw it a large sum of text and told it to tell you what is different in it then some edit revision. Which is basically how the Show changes function works when you're editing something. It doesn't take any of the revisions in between into account and therefore cannot exclude or show anything to do with what user did what. ~Dantman(talk) tricks May 7, 2007 @ 00:30 (UTC)

2. There's something wrong with how the diff pages pick up diffs. Sometimes, when we insert paragraph B before paragraph A and have B include a few words also present in A, the diff shows that we changed the first A into B (even though that's around a 90% change) and created a new paragraph A. This can be misleading.
 * This is something inherit to diff engines. They are not perfect, and cannot properly understand what was actually changed. How they work now is something I'm amazed at, it's hard enough to get a computer to output that kind of stuff already, it's near impossible for it to know if a paragraph was moved without adding a few thousand other possible checks which would probably take a hugely powerful computer just to handle checking the differences. ~Dantman(talk) tricks May 7, 2007 @ 00:30 (UTC)

3. Diff pages showing edit size. Because we have recentchanges showing edit size, and diff pages showing actual changes, so there should be little difficulty in accomplishing this. Especially given the problem in (2).

4. It would be useful (and perhaps more user friendly) to have a diff that shows the inserted and deleted words inline with the full document. This is the strategy employed by less technically oriented wikis like Wikispaces, Webpaint, and Writeboard. Any plans to include this on Wikia or mediawiki?

Another size
Anyone finding the small tag creating too small a text, and a normal text being just a bit too large, for a purpose? But we can't go at an in-between size. Why not, is it because of the browser limitations?

Merging and splitting
One of the greatest issues of all. Let's say article A has content that belongs in A and B. But in copy-pasting, we end up with a new B with the sole contributor being the person who moved the page, rather than those who actually wrote the content for B. And on A that could very well look like vandalism.

Or the other way around. We have to delete page A and copy its contents to B, and then the new content on B shows up as the contributor being another person rather than the person who wrote A. And for A, page deletion looks much like vandalism.

Even further: what if content on A and B should be merged to C, while another part of B belongs in A?

Also, another history page could be made to keep track of all splits, mergers, redirects, deletions, undeletions, and page creations made on a certain page, and of all pages thusly connected to said page.


 * Merging and splitting is possible. It is done by someone with sysop privileges, and is kinda tricky, near dangerous to say the least, and thus is only used by people who know what they are doing. To merge a page you delete the page to be merged to, you then move the other page overtop of it, and then undelete that page. Now the 2 pagehistorys are merged together. As for splitting, you delete one set of revisions, then you move the page, the deleted revisions are then undeleted and they have stayed at the old title and now the 2 sets of revisions have 2 different titles.
 * As for the though of splitting a single revision, that would require editing a revision. And if we gave a user the ability to do that, then a whole realm of malicious actions could be taken, such as removing trace of one's own vandalism, vandalizing a page history, altering a user's revision to make it look like they vandalized or that they never made a contribution in one of their edits. Not to mention that giving the ability to alter a revision totally destroys the reason we have a page history, to keep track of changes in an unalterable archive format which tells us who did what and gives us concrete proof of everything. ~Dantman(talk) tricks May 7, 2007 @ 00:30 (UTC)

Magic words
Magic words saying things such as:


 * 1) Number of edits on this or another page
 * 2) Number of views on this or another page
 * 3) * This can't properly be done with a magicword because of the Squid cache. ~Dantman(talk) tricks May 7, 2007 @ 00:30 (UTC)
 * 4) Number of contributors on this or another page
 * 5) Their names
 * 6) * An Attribution feature was added some time ago which listed all the editors who edited a page. However it was removed, aside from whatever issues they had with it, their is also the issue that when you list the contributors, you also list the vandals and give them credit for editing an article when all they did was try to ruin it and was then reverted. ~Dantman(talk) tricks May 7, 2007 @ 00:30 (UTC)
 * 7) Number of contributions made by a user
 * 8) *This can be done by including Special:Editcount. ~Dantman(talk) tricks May 7, 2007 @ 00:30 (UTC)
 * 9) Size of this or another page
 * 10) * This can be done with DPL2. ~Dantman(talk) tricks May 7, 2007 @ 00:30 (UTC)
 * 11) Name of another page (alters on its own whenever other page is moved)
 * 12) * There are no publicly viewable identifiers which could be used to return such a title, the title of a page itself is currently used as an identifier. And if you were to say that it should be done by altering that variable every time that the page was moved, it would require MediaWiki to scan every single page in the database each time a page was moved. ~Dantman(talk) tricks May 7, 2007 @ 00:30 (UTC)
 * 13) ** This hypothetically (hackishly) could be done with &lt;dynamicpagelist&gt; with a unique (single) category, but that'd be lame. Also, the article id can be used to refer to an article, but only for actions, not transclusions (for example, this page). --Splarka (talk) 06:49, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

Merging serial edits
Why not allow two edits made in quick succession from a user be automatically merged (or prompt the user) into a single edit? Makes analysis easier and clearer, and brings little harm since there's no other edit in between.

Then, why not allow users to split their edits depending on what aspects of the articles their edits focused on?


 * This would pretty much be the same as deleting the previous edits coupled with editing edit sumamries.
 * The problem is, every edit is given a revision number, and that revision is really a copy of the full text of the page. This sort of feature would probably cause more problems than it would solve. All we'd need is the revision deletion tool that will exist later. --Splarka (talk) 06:53, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

Specific recent changes
Recent changes lists separately for (main), (all), talk, Mediawiki:, Forum:, Category:, etc. --Yunzhong Hou 23:30, 6 May 2007 (UTC)
 * This is what the namespace selector on the recentchanges is for, it's existed for a long time. ~Dantman(talk) tricks May 7, 2007 @ 00:30 (UTC)

Preferences
(Sorry for my bad English) If you change your preferences, it is the same for all the wikias. It would be better if you can choose if it is the same in all the wikias. 18:46, 20 May 2007 (UTC)


 * Well, your preferences are the same on all Wikia, it's just that Wikia uses Memcached, meaning that things are cached and not updated as soon as possible. Wait for some time and the changes will start appearing. For example, I changed my interface language from English to Finnish some time ago and it didn't change the language right away on all Wikia, but soon the changes started to appear (meh, I then changed back to English as I feel it's better to use English with Wikia). --Jack Phoenix (Contact) 19:01, 20 May 2007 (UTC)