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)


 * 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)


 * 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)


 * 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.


 * 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)

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)

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) Protecting pages from recreation without having to redirect them to a Constantly Recreated Pages section.
 * 2) 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)
 * 3) 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.


 * 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)

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)


 * 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)

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)


 * 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'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)

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)

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)