Forum:Blog article feature feedback

For older comments (before the global release) please see the /archive page.

Lots of feedback
I've posted this as a comment on w:User_blog:KyleH/Announcing:_Blog_articles.


 * Threaded comments would be really nice.
 * Comments that you can't preview and that you can't edit are also very un-wiki-like.
 * When I edit a blog page or blog listing page, the headline says "Create a new ..." instead of "Edit".
 * WhatLinksHere is broken for blog pages, it should list the user blog pages and blog listings it is linked from.
 * Adding a category to a comment doesn't place the comment in the category.
 * I can write/edit an introduction to a User Blog: page, but not to a Blog: page.
 * The comment edit box only has 3 lines, which makes reviewing this rather lengthy comment for coherence and style rather difficult. (3 lines in Monobook, slightly larger in Monaco.)
 * It is possible to add comments to a blog post although the author has disallowed this.
 * Level 2 headlines in a blog post do not display in the aggregate page.
 * The Special:CreateBlogListingPage doesn't allow to filter by author.
 * If somebody adds a category to their blog post that adds it to my blog listing, I won't know; and if they initially created their blog post some days ago, I might not even notice as it gets sorted into the listing lower down.
 * There is no way to #link to a comment.
 * The "Email this user" link on the masthead is displayed even if the user has turned email off in their preferences.
 * The Newest first / Newest last choice is not persistent.
 * If I choose "Newest first", the comment I post is inserted at the bottom (should be inserted at the top).

I would really love for the new masthead links to show up in the sidebar toolbox (a blog link on User: and User talk:, a User: and User talk: on User blog pages). That would allow us to unclutter the top of our page by hiding the masthead altogether without losing the links (because they'd still be in the sidebar).

-- ◄mendel► 14:24, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

-- ◄mendel► 20:02, 30 June 2009 & 20:06 & 20:20 & 20:26, 30 June 2009 (UTC)
 * The blog listing page hadn't noticed a new blog post 7 hours after it was created, a manual refresh was necessary.
 * The User blog and the blog listing page do not display the number of comments if the blogger has turned comments off for that post, even if there are some (that were made before commenting was turned off).
 * I have 3 blog posts on w:c:communitytest:User_blog:M.mendel, and I get an 1 Older posts » links at the bottom that leads to an empty page.
 * Blog entries can only use a subset of Wikicode if you want the text to show up in the blog listing. Compare w:c:communitytest:User blog:M.mendel/Transclusion to its entry in the actual blog.
 * There appears to be no way to set the "cut".
 * The fact that the page title is shortened makes it possible to spoof mainspace articles.
 * Avatar images are not shared with other Wikia modules that use them, e.g. on WikiAnswers.

-- ◄mendel► 20:48, 30 June 2009 (UTC)
 * I can't image how inappropriate blog posts can be flagged by users the way regular pages can be delete tagged now: editing them is prohibited, and categories on comments don't take effect.

-- ◄mendel► 21:08 & 22:04, 30 June 2009 (UTC)
 * There is no way to systematically review recently uploaded avatar images other than to visit teh user page of everyone who appears in Special:Log/useravatar.
 * There is no way to attach licensing information to avatar images, prohibiting reuse (or even use of most open source images).
 * There is no edit summary for blog post edits, making the history much less useful.
 * Enhanced/grouped RecentChanges should fold comments for the same blog post.
 * There is no notification system for new comments, not even the watchlist.


 * Thanks for all this Mendel, we'll be checking it all out :) -- sannse (talk) 14:09, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

-- ◄mendel► 16:28, 1 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Avatars can be deleted from any wiki without notification to the user; there should be an automatic talkpage notice on the wiki where the deletion occurred, signed by that admin.


 * I agree comments are unwiki-like. I wish I could edit my comments instead of typing a new one to correct the latter, in case of errors or changing the meaning a bit. --Davinci - talk 16:44, 1 July 2009 (UTC)
 * If you're changing the meaning you should make a new comment. Also, please consider having your name redirect to your user page Yes, I'm aware of the "talk" link. A_F_K_sig_2.jpg A F K When Needed 12:00, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

Masthead colour
I'm guessing that one of the first questions people are going to have is how to adjust the colour of the masthead. The css you need in MediaWiki:Monaco.css is: #user_masthead { background: #xxx !important; }

-- sannse (talk) 14:09, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

Following some suggestions, which could be done to the default skins. Marc-Philipp (MtaÄ) Helper  (Talk) 14:30, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

Sapphire
background:#3366CC; color:white; } color:white; } background-color: #5588FF !important; }
 * 1) user_masthead {
 * 1) user_masthead li a {
 * 1) user_masthead li.selected {

Jade
background:#228B22; color:white; } color:white; } background-color: #77AD77 !important; }
 * 1) user_masthead {
 * 1) user_masthead li a {
 * 1) user_masthead li.selected {

Smoke/Slate
background:#FEC423; color:black; } color:black; } background-color: #DEA423 !important; }
 * 1) user_masthead {
 * 1) user_masthead li a {
 * 1) user_masthead li.selected {

Beach
background:#B0D9F3; color:black; } color:black; } background-color: #ECD995 !important; }
 * 1) user_masthead {
 * 1) user_masthead li a {
 * 1) user_masthead li.selected {

Brick
background:#5D1B01; color:#FEC423; } color:#FEC423; } background-color: #F9EAC1 !important; color: black !important; }
 * 1) user_masthead {
 * 1) user_masthead li a {
 * 1) user_masthead li.selected {

Gaming
background:#09101D; color:white; } color:white; } background-color: #FFCB3B !important; color: black !important; }
 * 1) user_masthead {
 * 1) user_masthead li a {
 * 1) user_masthead li.selected {

Some sugesstions ;) Marc-Philipp (MtaÄ)  Helper  (Talk) 14:48, 1 July 2009 (UTC)


 * You forgot to style div.blog-comm-input . -- ◄mendel► 06:34, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

"Monacobook"
http://images2.wikia.nocookie.net/gw/images/6/6e/Monacobook_Masthead_small_grey.png /* Masthead size reduction and color adjustment */ div#user_masthead h2 {display:none; } div#user_masthead img { height:20px !important; width:20px !important;} div.blog-comm-input { background: #F5F5F5 !important; border: thin solid silver; } -- ◄mendel► 06:34, 2 July 2009 (UTC)
 * 1) user_masthead { background: #F5F5F5 !important; }
 * 2) user_masthead li.selected { background: white !important; }


 * Not bad. ;-) — TulipVorlax 06:56, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

Blog listing
I made a small blog list for inclusion in main page but i think it show too much text. Is there a way to tell it to show less ? — TulipVorlax 17:26, 1 July 2009 (UTC)


 * Got answered on the help wiki ; add "summarylength=xx" in the bloglist tag. — TulipVorlax 12:37, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

rtl problem
Masthead doesn't go by the direction of the wiki. It's always ltr, even in rtl wikis.-- BlueDevil Talk 22:14, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

Monobook
Once again, I'm guessing monobook was left out. &mdash; 22:05, 1 July 2009 (UTC)


 * When the first change of skin occured, they said they'll leave Monobook as is. If they would add things to it would soon become as "bloated" as Monaco. (I use bloated because that's what people who prefer Monobook seems to think of Monaco.) — TulipVorlax 00:34, 2 July 2009 (UTC)


 * Monobook needs to be made to load Blogs.css and maybe star_rating.css; I copied Blogs.css to our MediaWiki:Monobook.css but the cache is not updating :-( . -- ◄mendel► 06:41, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

From a comment on my talk page at The Vault by Porter21: "everything looks screwed up if you use the Monobook skin since blogs & user masthead weren't added for that skin. The "submit" button is missing from the comments page, i.e. you can't post any. You can create blogs but only if you find your way to the page manually (due to the masthead not being there). Basically excludes Monobook users from posting comments and partially from posting news." Ausir 19:09, 2 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Well, my comment was a bit premature. There is a way to submit the comment, it's just not a button but a plain link (which is why I missed it initially). However, the bloglist view (have only checked with plain, but issue probably also exists with the other one) still looks screwed up due to the missing CSS for the comments/rating "list". -- Porter21 (talk) 19:31, 2 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Add the following to your MediaWiki:Sidebar to make up for the missing Blog link in the masthead:


 * -- ◄mendel► 21:02, 2 July 2009 (UTC)


 * I corrected the above code because it did not work on sub/subpages. -- ◄mendel► 00:15, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

As mentioned, we intentionally do not make many of the changes to the monobook skin. However, we will fix the CSS issues as they can directly impact usability. 14:05, 7 July 2009 (UTC)
 * That's good to hear. -- ◄mendel► 00:15, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

Addinf links ?
I was wondering if there was anyway to add more links to the masthead. An example would link to the prefix index so you could see user sub-pages. -- Gamer 2127 00:23, 2 July 2009 (UTC)
 * On my part, i would remove some that a duplicating arealy presents links... — TulipVorlax 00:34, 2 July 2009 (UTC)
 * I would like a way to add these links to the toolbox. But a MediaWiki:Masthead that works teh same as MediaWiki:Sidebar would not come amiss. -- ◄mendel► 06:43, 2 July 2009 (UTC)


 * That would solve both cases. — TulipVorlax 06:55, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

Wikicode mutates to HTML
The monobook edit box gets text that is formatted for the rich text editor on blog pages. -- ◄mendel► 07:46, 2 July 2009 (UTC)


 * Confirmed - we're looking into it. 19:05, 6 July 2009 (UTC)

Category Tagging
Just noticed Category Tagging does not seem to be functional with blog posts either. -- LordTBT Talk! 08:54, 26 March 2009 (UTC)


 * This is true, and is actually part of the reason we developed CategorySelect. We'll being working on it. 12:59, 26 March 2009 (UTC)


 * Given that category tagging is now the main way of categorizing, should it be functional with blog posts? Also, whatever happened to being able to choose what categories appear in CategorySelect? -- LordTBT Talk! 03:46, 30 June 2009 (UTC)


 * That ability is something we still want to work on, but we're fairly happy with the "link suggest" style that CategorySelect currently uses. 13:59, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

News functionality?
I'm not that keen on blogs as such, but I think they're pretty good as a newsposting functionality. Thanks to this, e.g. fan wikis could rival other fansites also as news sources. I'm currently testing news through the blog listing function at The Vault (Fallout wiki): w:c:fallout:The Vault:News. It's working fine, but I think it could use some improvements.

For one, I think that there should be a separate News: namespace set up for news articles, using mostly the same code as the blogs already do, but with the following differences:


 * News articles could be set to be editable by anyone
 * Instead of pages like User_blog:Ausir/Point Lookout released, we'd have cleaner looking "News:Point Lookout released"
 * Instead of linking back to the user blog as a subpage, all news articles would link back to the main news page. Currently all news are still treated as part of a user's blog
 * An option to show an image thumbnail in the news summary would also be neat, and add some color to the main news/blog pages
 * The ability to move and/or copy blog posts to the news namespace (unlike manual copypaste, this would retain the original posting date and history, copy and not just move so that the user could keep it on his blog while the same post is also copied to news) - this would also allow us to transfer older news from the blog namespace to the new news namespace.
 * Separate RSS feed

I also think simply "submitting news" would be easier and more intuitive to most users than making a blog post and adding it to the news category. Ausir 00:39, 2 July 2009 (UTC)


 * It is probably possible to set something like this up using DPL with section transclusion, much like the DPLforum works, with clever use of the Inputbox to preload stuff. -- ◄mendel► 06:54, 2 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Sounds rather complicated to me, but I'm not into technical stuff that much. As long as it means "yes, it's possible", it's good enough for me, though. :) Ausir 10:42, 2 July 2009 (UTC)


 * User blogs are not just "pretty good" as a news posting tool; in my opinion, it is one of the best. I adapted user blogs to do exactly that on Avatar Wiki, and we've become rather attached to that form of handing out news. I think Ausir's ideas are definitely deserving of consideration too. Wjxhuang,  the 888th Avatar  {Talk} 14:25, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

No comment
-- ◄mendel► 11:46, 2 July 2009 (UTC)


 * The following seen with IE8 is not bad either. It get okay if i click the compatibility button.
 * [[File:French Post comment with IE8.jpg]] — TulipVorlax 19:16, 2 July 2009 (UTC)


 * I've seen the same thing on WoWWiki's buttons - okay in IE7 mode, looks odd in IE8 mode. We'll check it out. 16:17, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

Give blogs a chance before opt-out
I've copied this comment from Kyle's blog.

This is an excerpt of a comment I wrote on my talk page on Avatar Wiki regarding how blogs have helped the community.

''"Blogs are a feature that the community wasn't too confident about when I pushed for its introduction, but now I can tell that the community is finding it quite useful. The best way to go about with the blogs is to allow a lot of flexibility - allow users to write about whatever they want, to a reasonable limit. (To that end, I don't advise deleting blogs unless they are totally off-topic, or are spam/vandalism.) So here, we have a wide variety of uses for blogs - fanon advertisement, opinions on the wiki and the topic, a way for asking for feedback etc. I've also found the embedding feature to be particularly useful on main pages, because I think it is an efficient (the best) way for well-developed wikis to deliver their main site news, because you can get the announcements out, but also provide more detail very easily. This is in contrast to a lot of wikis that have to make the decision between having a cumbersome site news section or keeping a site news system that doesn't really inform users well. However, in general, I consider community blogging to be a great success and I'm very happy that it is now Wikia-wide."''

There, I described quite a few things blogs are useful for. I don't think many people have really thought about it, especially Star Wars, who took "all of five minutes". Well, really, five minutes? Think about it more for a little more than that! :) Basically, I think there are a lot of users who simply reject new features on Wikia because they simply say that wikis will never be the same again. It's become quite a culture, and I think we should be more open about new features on Wikia.

I like this feature, much more than quite a few others - especially because it has very few bugs - and I think it is genuinely useful. Like on Avatar Wiki, if you can open your mind and at least give the blogs a chance for a month or two, you will start liking it. Wjxhuang, the 888th Avatar  {Talk} 14:22, 2 July 2009 (UTC)


 * Give me some more demand and a day, and I can give you a DPL-based news system that works better because the news can be written by more than one person and stored in a standard archive rather than individual user's blogs. -- ◄mendel► 16:26, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

Great Job!
It is very useful to me. I have a new idea for it. On admins pages, it could say "Administrator" on the menu bar on the top. -- seahorseruler | Talk  (EditCount) Yoshi! 14:30, 2 July 2009 (UTC)


 * It's certainly an interesting idea, and seems fairly appropriate. We'll look into it. 16:14, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for all this feedback
...we are collecting it, and will be looking very closely at it. Thanks to everyone who is taking the time to add their bug reports, thoughts, and ideas to this page -- sannse (talk) 19:50, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

Useless category cloud
On fr.guildwars many categories should not appear in the category cloud. Why would images categories be needed in this ? They're only there to know uder wich licenses are images. The group of categories that show the biggest are categories for knowing wich articles are missing interlanguage links. Not usefull in the cloud.

Could it be that thoses categories should be hidden categories instead ? Or is there another way to make them no appear in the cloud ?

If there's no solution, i think i'll have to remove it from the UI using CSS. — TulipVorlax 21:30, 2 July 2009 (UTC)
 * I think only categories that already contain blog posts should be visible by default. Ausir 00:07, 3 July 2009 (UTC)


 * I was thinking the same. Then i feared it would be seen as to... drastical ? — TulipVorlax 04:12, 3 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Not if they'll be able to add other categories manually. If an existing category doesn't have any blog posts yet, chances are it shouldn't have any at all. Ausir 00:06, 4 July 2009 (UTC)


 * I asked about this before (see the archive). It's "being worked on". -- LordTBT Talk! 04:20, 3 July 2009 (UTC)


 * Yep, I confirm we're going to replace that old category cloud. 16:12, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

Google Blog Search
I brought this up to the Wikia Twitter account a while back and never got a response, so I'm bringing it up again. Wikia blog posts do not appear in Google Blog Search results, and I'm under the impression this is because Google does not know to search for it as a "blog". Is this fixable? -- LordTBT Talk! 16:49, 3 July 2009 (UTC)


 * A good question, I'll ask. 15:17, 6 July 2009 (UTC)

can the summaries on a user's root blog page be refreshed?
I saved a blog article and got a corrupted file (see image below). I deleted the blog article and re-created it, taking care not to use the editor at all. The corrupted summary version of the article remained visible at the root blog page. Maybe this is a cache delay and this will be updated, but the corrupted file can be seen in the image, below. Note that the first image in the article was deleted and the text at the start of the article ("I've been collaborating on There are other minor") shows where there was a deletion between the words "on" and "There". Today I cannot select a category from the "category cloud", but I know that feature was working a few days ago. The buttons on the wikitext edit toolbar are not doing anything. When I try to edit the root blog page all I see is a blank edit window. Is there no way to correct errors in the automatically generated article summaries? ....maybe it will update eventually to show a valid article summary...... --JWSchmidt 17:54, 4 July 2009 (UTC) 
 * also: I don't like how the "Read full post" links go to the bottom of the full article. Why not show the top of the article when people click on "Read full post"? --JWSchmidt 17:59, 4 July 2009 (UTC)


 * If you dont see last version of any page on a wiki, simply add ?action=purge at the end of the URL. The following is what i see :

http://img248.imageshack.us/img248/3875/04072009151853.jpg
 * — TulipVorlax 19:20, 4 July 2009 (UTC)


 * Oh ! It's the same as you !
 * Sorry. — TulipVorlax 19:22, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

The cache should be refreshed - I'll ask what's up. As for "Read full post" linking to the comments, we'll get that fixed, thanks. 15:16, 6 July 2009 (UTC)
 * update: Today the "save" button also does not work. However, I can once more select categories from the category cloud. I tried deleting my root blog page in an effort to get rid of the corrupted blog post summary. Even after deleting the page, the corrupted blog post summary was still there. --JWSchmidt 14:46, 9 July 2009 (UTC)


 * I believe the corrupted summaries may be a different issue to the cache - we're looking into it.
 * Regarding the save button, where are you seeing this? If on fiction.wikia, it happens if you click save on a new blog post? All blog posts, or specific text? Also, what browser please - thanks! :) 15:43, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

RTE + Blog = Fail
Apparently now, besides the already reported problems that arise from allowing the RTE to work with the blogs, the RTE likes to remove portions of blogs that are wrapped in tags (same goes for several tags, see the ones I tested here). All you have to do, is create a blog with some content and a pair of tags surrounding some more content, open up the editor, switch to Wikitext view, and voila, it magically disappears. This is one instance and here's another. Looks like fail to me :) ~Joey~  <font color="Green">^Talk^  20:13, 4 July 2009 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the report - we'll look into it. 13:48, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

More Color Scheme Customization & Commenting
Had a thought this evening. It would be nice to be able to customize the background color for comments, as well as the colors for the "COMMENTS" bar text and background. I also mentioned while back it would be worthwhile to have a "preview comment" button, and I'd like to reiterate that. -- <font color="Green">LordTBT <font color="Green" size="2">Talk! 03:40, 6 July 2009 (UTC)


 * These sound like great suggestions. I've seen quite a few stuff-ups as a result of a lack of a preview button... Wjxhuang,  the 888th Avatar  {Talk} 13:24, 6 July 2009 (UTC)


 * Comment previews is something that's on our list to look at. I'm not sure what's not customizable about the comments area though. It appears to have classes you can use to do so. 15:05, 6 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Found the classes. Cheers. -- <font color="Green">LordTBT <font color="Green" size="2">Talk! 17:57, 6 July 2009 (UTC)

Overcrowded pagebar


The page bar can get a bit crowded with the blog extension entries, causing it to be two lines in height at a resolution of 1280*1024. Image above was taken on w:c:fallout:Blog: Recent posts. -- Porter21 (talk) 11:00, 7 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Happily, only admins will have some of the tabs that you display, so it's not a problem for most of your readers. You can change the text that is displayed in those tabs by editing MediaWiki:Blog-create-listing-label and MediaWiki:Blog-create-post-label on your wiki, I changed them to "New post" and "New listing". (I hope they're not reused outside of a blog context.) -- ◄mendel► 11:41, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

This is something we've been working on a solution for - we'll have more details soon. 13:43, 7 July 2009 (UTC)


 * On french wikis, this is a really old. I mean, french text is already longer. And there's no way to set it shorter or we'll loose the meaning. — TulipVorlax 17:18, 7 July 2009 (UTC)


 * Yeah, it's been an issue for some time, mainly because we didn't have anywhere else to put the links - but next week should see that dealt with. 14:32, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

Templates & categories in comments
will categorize neither blog post nor comment subpage. Just mentioning.--AB 22:19, 7 July 2009 (UTC)
 * That's the fifth point on my list above, thanks for confirming that "adding a category to a comment doesn't place the comment in the category". ;-) -- ◄mendel► 00:05, 8 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Um, you're welcome. Ahem.--AB 13:03, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

Masthead bug on Sub-Subpages
The masthead does not work on Sub-subpages such as User:M.mendel/sub/subpage because it gets the username wrong, and everything based on that as well. -- ◄mendel► 00:19, 8 July 2009 (UTC)


 * Confirmed. Thanks, we'll look into it. 14:24, 9 July 2009 (UTC)