User blog comment:Sannse/Your First Look at the New Wikia/@comment-473563-20100826023859

What bad thing happens if the "new Wikia experience" is made optional rather than mandatory
As described within this blog, the comments and the ensuing responses, beta participants are able to view all current wikis using the new look. So the capability clearly exists for either the new-skin or the old-skin to be used to view the existing wikis.


 * What bad thing will happen if the "new Wikia experience" is made an option rather than mandatory?
 * Why is the "new Wikia experience" mandatory?

Is it some new feature set
Perhaps there are features planned for the new look that cannot be made compatible with Monaco and Monobook ''... in much the same way that there are many features available for the Monaco skin that are not compatible with (or not supported for) the Monobook skin.''


 * If such features are superficial then it's no big deal. If those features have to do with generating revenue to pay for the cost of hosting wikia then I can understand why this might be a big deal.

I simply find it hard to believe that the core-function of the underlying MediaWiki engine - serving up pages of user provided text and images for browsing and editing - might be negatively impacted by the choice of skin.


 * If such new features are so wonderful or so dramatic an improvement over the "current Wikia experience" then surely  the user-base will willingly flock to it once they are given a chance to sample it ... don't you think?

Is it something else
What exactly is the reason for this new Wikia experience to become mandatory?
 * Is it a shift away from the MediaWiki engine?
 * In Sannse's update she writes in response to “Why is the new look mandatory?”: ''"-- it’s always nice to be able to choose. But the new look is not simply a new skin option, it’s the upgraded version of Wikia. We’ve designed it for a number of reasons, ..."
 * sadly, the link provided is just a link to the Why are you changing Wikia? FAQ and that falls short of explaining why the goal of expanding the Wikia audience should require a mandatory change to the experience of Wikia's existing audience.
 * So Sannse - please add the actual question “Why is the new look mandatory?” to the FAQ page and answer that question rather than deflect us to a different question.
 * Is it to lessen the burden placed on support staff?
 * An existing FAQ "Why are you allowing us to use Monobook and not Monaco? partially addresses this but sadly, it uses exaggeration to unnecessarily over-inflate the scope of the original question and thereby loses credibility.
 * Is it that the Monaco-come-NewMonaco skin experiment was a mistake?
 * Was Monaco proving to be the proverbial "rod for your back" ... a force fit of social networking features via an incarnation of a skin compatible with an underlying MediaWiki engine that was simply causing the page loads to become too slow or the load on the back-end servers and/or support staff to become just too much to sustain?
 * What exactly is it?
 * In the absence of a direct answer to this question our collective speculation can only run wild and that cannot be very helpful to your cause.