User talk:Johnq

Welcome to Central Johnq - good to have you here (you just wait 'till you see my feature request list ;) Talk soon -- sannse (talk) 08:50, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

MediaWiki:Newmessagesdifflink
Any way you can make 'show most recent' (or 'last change' as en.wp uses) as the default MediaWiki:Newmessagesdifflink on all wikia? Those that haven't changed it yet, anyway... Splarka 09:07, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

Definitely want to make it the default. When I changed it for www.wikia.com I though that change would propagate throughout all of our wikia... but I learned later that each wikia has its own MediaWiki template pages. This is not a good thing in general, so we will be fixing that later. For now what is needed is to change this everywhere in the database. I am looking into doing that as soon as I get done creating the Product portal page and templates for use in posting product requirements and requests. :)


 * Found another that might need universal change, or might be fixed on the next upgrade: MediaWiki:Tooltip-diff, claims the shortcut key is alt-d, but it is actually alt-v. Splarka 10:34, 27 May 2006 (UTC)

Credits
Have had several complaints in #wikia about this already ^_^. The two most common concerns are: -Splarka 09:54, 27 May 2006 (UTC)
 * 1) Vandals are listed prominently for popular pages (is there a way to have credits disableable in a MediaWiki: message? I don't see one (MediaWiki:Lastmodifiedby doesn't seem to be able to remove the whole list).  ,  .
 * 2) The line is too long, even on very high resolutions it still often takes up too much width. This can be fixed with css sloppily, eg: . Could you possibly add this (or a better variant) to the wikia monobook skin to prevent horizontal scrollbars on any popular pages?


 * Additionally, there will be bots in the list which will be hidden in other lists. 80.139.31.80 10:52, 27 May 2006 (UTC)


 * Testing

Emailing you
Hi,

Matthew Somerville of mySociety here. My emails to you and Gil (both @wikia.com) are bouncing as undeliverable - do you have an alternative address I could contact you on? Thanks.

test test

Developer Program
You mentioned the developer program at WikiMania - Any idea when this might start? I figure it needs a dummy of each of the sites that are not using the same .wikia.com configuration (like shared logins) and at least a few .wikia.com type wikis, since that should provide a good understanding of how the system works behind the scenes for developing code. Thanks! --Dawg 17:00, 9 August 2006 (UTC) (wolf / Eric)

Project name change
Hi, I am the admin from zh.campaigns. I would like to change the project name from 維基行動 to 維政行動. This is to eliminate possible confusion with other projects. Thanks. (sorry... I forgot to login the first time I left the message) --Y2Keynes 20:12, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

Feature requests from Wookieepedia
Hey John, I went ahead and posted a topic requesting wishes for wiki features or tools on Wookieepedia's "Senate Hall" forum. There's already been good number of replies, you can view the current wishlist here. --Imp 17:57, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

Chocolate
You do eat too many M&Ms!--Chiaroscuro123 01:30, 15 March 2007 (UTC)Chiaroscuro123

Wikia's Product Advisory Group
Hi John, I have received your email regarding Wikia's Product Advisory Group. I would be very glad to help if my knowledge is considered enough to join this group. I understand a little bit about how to create simple templates, CSS and Wiki customization (thanks to Splarka), but I have no knowledge about Javascript. If these knowledge are considered enough, I am glad to join up this group. Thank you. [ ♠  A g u s   Talk &bull;  Guestbook  &bull;  FoodopediA ♠  ] 14:25, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

Features on Wikia
Hi John, great to see Wikia's getting updated to 1.10 so quickly. :) I think it could be great to have Special:Namespaces extension on Wikia just to reduce staffers' work in general, as now techs have to create new namespaces. It could be configured that $wgGroupPermissions['staff']['interwiki'] = true;  and false for all other users. What do you think? (I know that there's nothing Wikia techs couldn't create though, and this extension might have security problems, I don't know much about those things.) --Jack Phoenix (Contact) 19:28, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

Image tagging
John, I was wondering of you could pass on a request for the "Tag this image" feature. I'm from Wookieepedia and on the Recent Changes page, it has a link to the image file when the image gets tagged. Can we also get it so that in Recent Changes, it shows a link to the image file when a tag gets removed? I'm seeing a lot of tags get removed by anon users and no way to know what image they removed the tag from to check if it's vandalism. Thanks. - JMAS 01:39, 18 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Hi... sure thing. I'll add to the feature changes I'm putting together. Anything else that would make this feature more useful for you guys? Johnq (talk) 07:45, 18 July 2007 (UTC)
 * The ones that come to mind are: 1) the one listed above 2) making the tag display box on the image a little less obtrusive, like maybe just a 2px wide light gray box, and 3) also noting that the galleries generated when an image gets tagged still are not functional. Any suggestions others might have had should be listed in our Senate Hall topic about this feature. Thanks. - JMAS 17:18, 18 July 2007 (UTC)
 * It seems impossible to restore a tag quickly and easily when it's erroneously removed. An Undo function might be nice.  Gonk  ( Gonk! ) 17:30, 18 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Another thing, not related to image tagging, that would be cool if you could pass it along to the technical team to look into. Is there any way to write the wiki code so that a full image can be used in an infobox, but only part of the image gets displayed, like the "headshot"? For example: Zaynescoundrel.jpg (headshot) and Zaynescoundrelfull.jpg (full image). And if the person clicks on the displayed headshot, it will take them to the image file showing the full image. I hope I'm making myself clear and just wondering if this is possible. - JMAS 02:22, 19 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Hi... yes, that's clear... you want an image subsection that will fit within a certain size... but without resizing the entire image smaller to fit that space. Ok... interesting... there are server cpu considerations to this, so let me look into it. Thanks, Johnq (talk) 02:29, 19 July 2007 (UTC)


 * Sidenote: This is a perennial request at Wikimedia: 7757. --Splarka (talk) 09:13, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

I was just wondering if there was any news of the Image tagging issues. I just saw several image tags removed by an anon user and it reminded me to ask if there was any new updates coming. Again, thanks for your attention on this, Johnq. - JMAS 02:20, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

I realize I'm late to the party here, but I thought I'd point out that this still doesn't seem to work properly. On the Doom Wiki, our tag log looks like this:

The most recent entry is certainly wrong, as shown by Special:Recentchanges:

I believe the other five cases are similar, being admins reverting nonsense. Also, the alphabetical order and " <> " problems noted here have not been fixed.

I don't think words less than four letters long (like "tag" and "log") are indexed by the search function, so I am forced to post here immediately instead of checking for an existing bug report in the usual places. Sorry about that.

Ryan W 04:36, 14 September 2007 (UTC)


 * Hi Ryan, let me forward to the engineers and see what we can do in the short-term. In the long-term we need to re-write this. Johnq (talk) 18:25, 14 September 2007 (UTC)


 * Thank you. As an aside, our wiki doesn't actually have any plans to use tagging at this point; therefore, if we had to keep reverting these people once a week for six months, we wouldn't really care.  I know it is a big deal on other wikis which have a slightly more diverse content base, however.  :D    Ryan W 01:37, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

Any news on clearing the bug list for the tags? --Steinninn 02:58, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

Uploading
Hey there John. I was wondering if you knew if Wikia is changing servers, or upgrading anything that would cause a problem with image uploading. At Wookieepedia, all day so far, no one has been able to upload anything, it just uploads a blank file. Any ideas? Thanks. - JMAS 15:44, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

My Wikia Wishlist
Hi - Apologies if others have already made these requests:

1) With the new template, the 'top content' box appears below the ad box for users who are not logged-in, and this means that the navigation box is quite far down the screen - indeed, when I'm using my laptop, and the ad box is at its largest, the navigation box is completely off my normal-sized screen. While I appreciate that the 'top content' box may be useful, it is surely less important than the navigation box, and even the toolbox, so could it not be placed below them?


 * There are 8 links (2 columns of 4 links each) at the top to the right of the wiki logo ... you can change all of them to have the most important ones up top. Perhaps that will help the issue of with some links being lower on the right column? You can read about changing them here: Change Top Nav Links

2) Could the four links at the top not be customisable? I appreciate that it is possible to add a further four links, but, given the number of links down the right side, I'd prefer to keep to just the four most important links at the top. For example, while I appreciate that the 'random page' tool is useful, I don't personally think it should be in such a prominent position - I'd prefer to just have it in the navigation box.


 * They are now. :)

3) My customised statement in the edit box that appears for logged-in users does not appear in the different edit box that appears for logged-out users. (chainsofreason.wikia.com)

4) I think users should be able to edit the default message in the 'email to a friend' window. For example, I personally would never say 'Come check it out!', and my friends know that I wouldn't.


 * The issue is spammers. Having email at all that we send out caused great debates about mechanisms to prevent spammers from taking advantage of it. One solution for us was that if the text was fixed, then spammers wouldn't be able to change the message and take advantage of this.

Other than the above, I think the new template is a great improvement over monobook! Derrick Farnell ( talk ) 06:52, 4 October 2007 (UTC)


 * Thanks Derrick, I appreciate hearing that.


 * Wrt point 1, I've just noticed that the navigation box is off the screen even on a 19" desktop monitor when not logged-in. I assumed that it would be showing on a desktop. Derrick Farnell ( talk ) 09:49, 4 October 2007 (UTC)


 * We're working on some design refinements that I think people will feel more comfortable with but it will be several months before they're ready. Johnq (talk) 23:00, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

Midi files
Hello, I requested this feature several months ago and you very kindly opened the possibility of uploading .mid files into Wikia. I had tested this feature on the Star Wars Fanon Wiki, and all seemed to be well. The test file I used is still working fine, but after I tried to upload a piece of my own composition, the system rejected me with a message saying that ".mid" is an unwanted file type.

What might be going on? You asked me to tell you if anything went wrong, so I'm telling you now. If you can tell me what I might be able to do to fix this problem, I would be as appreciative as I was when the midi compatibility was first opened. C3PO the Dragon Slayer


 * Hmmm... swfanon is on 1.12 now... but I just checked the config files and see "mid" in there. Can you please send me the file... johnq ..... wikia.com ?  I'll ask the guys to look into it. Johnq (talk) 23:33, 3 January 2008 (UTC)
 * Sent it. C3PO the Dragon Slayer 23:57, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

Music Wiki Forum
Hello Johnq I am one of the admin's over at Music and i was wondering whether you would be able to put a forum on the wiki as it doesn't seem to have one. I guess this may be because it is an old wiki.

Thank you in advance,

Also, i am very interested in the PHPBB forum being tested on Inside and when it is bugfree in the future we would be very interested in having this.

--Anarchyuk(talk) 18:58, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

Hi Anarchyuk,

I've let the comm team know about the request for the forum:index ... I wouldn't expect that to be any trouble at all. For the phpbb forums, yep, there are a few bugs still. We'll let you know when that's working a bit better. In the meantime, sorry for my late reply... you might be able to get a quicker response to most questions if you post on wikia-l@wikia.com ... the comm team monitors that one closely and you might also get an answer from another admin. :) Thanks. Johnq (talk) 11:10, 24 January 2008 (UTC)