Forum:UI Improvement Suggestions

On the heels of the category management UI, I feel that it would be helpful to have a few other simple changes to the Wikia/MediaWiki article editing flow. There are several small things that admins and high-level users do all the time that shouldn't require hitting Edit and then typing their changes and then hitting preview/save.

In my experience, marking articles as "stubs" of varying types would be VASTLY improved by having a one-click button to mark an article as such. I feel that a plugin or extension that accomplishes this task would accomplish two important goals: Improving the output of power users and administrators, and making it easier for average users to become power users, further understanding the lower-level, "gardening" aspects of the Wiki. Philnelson 19:33, 21 May 2009 (UTC)


 * That could be a good idea for most wikis but on fr.3d.wikia, the template used for software pages is the one that show the the stub "banner" based on a paremeter and, on fr.guildwars, the stub template must be placed after infobox templates. — TulipVorlax 19:46, 21 May 2009 (UTC)


 * We're certainly always on the lookout for new UI improvements, and thanks for bringing this up. However... encouraging the proliferation of stub notices at the top of articles is something we do not always feel is in the best interests of a wiki, especially from the perspective of a reader. They want to see the article, not stuff telling them there's a problem with it. An extreme example would be Luke Skywalker on Wookieepedia. The article has five boxes of preamble that 99% of readers do not care about, which would also be pushed down by an ad for anons. Even on my 22" monitor I barely get any article on the initial page. Now, I obviously don't advocate removing all such notices - we have them on WoWWiki too (but much less often), and they can serve a good purpose - but it's not something we'd necessarily want to encourage more of.
 * That being said, I like the idea of one click buttons to "mark" pages in some way, though I'm not sure of what marks could be appropriate. 14:51, 26 May 2009 (UTC)


 * Wikipedia with the great commodity of the ambox templates and its designate clones it has start a few months the use of small boxes so its informative to the editor but not annoying to the readers --


 * Aye, an example on WoWWiki is http://www.wowwiki.com/Pet - but we wouldn't like to see those splashed across every article, and stacked multiple times. 16:44, 27 May 2009 (UTC)


 * No those are the normal size ambox there is even a smaller version that its align to the right left, i dont have a link since ambox is use to much but see their instructions and the use of the "small" field --


 * I got a popup ad before login to that wiki... I tough IE7/8 was blocking them... — TulipVorlax 05:39, 28 May 2009 (UTC)


 * TulipVorlax, not sure what you mean? If you see it again, can you take a screenshot? Cizagna, I know the style you mean - generally used for specific sections as stub markers? Those we don't have a big issue with, since they don't interfere with reading the page :) 16:16, 1 June 2009 (UTC)


 * Im referring to the complain of the use of many normal size ambox that tell "hey this section is outdate" or "hey this needs translation" or something like that, so instead of using normal size ambox you(or some one) can use the small size ambox, the boxes are still there but less annoying. --


 * For the popup, it was a standard old style popup that opened in a new windows and then went hiding under the main. If it was not Wikia's doing, then it was the ad provider but i didn't think it wasn't the intended behavior so i didn't take screenies and i cant make it return, sorry. — TulipVorlax 10:43, 2 June 2009 (UTC)


 * I think such buttons could be useful if you did something such as making a general "this page has issues" template and making it collapsible. The actual notices would be the collapsed section. But this might be pretty hard for most wikis. I wonder why Wookieepedia has never thought of something like this... Wjxhuang,  the 888th Avatar  {Talk} 13:56, 3 June 2009 (UTC)


 * I agree, I would love to see something like that (a smaller notice telling people of the issues, expandable to explain more) - but I think the issue would be the balance of template complexity/ease-of-use versus utility. In all honesty, it sounds like something Wikia may be able to help out with, by designing some version of the ability into MediaWiki/Monaco. 05:03, 4 June 2009 (UTC)

This would be a great idea for Wikia to think about :) but I would certainly recommend that Wookieepedia do something like this as soon as they can... :P Wjxhuang,  the 888th Avatar  {Talk} 10:57, 4 June 2009 (UTC)