Forum:New features on Wednesday, March 18th

Hi everyone! We have three new features that we're excited to be releasing tomorrow, and I just wanted to give you a quick heads-up with some information about them all. In addition to enabling video thumbnail previews in the Rich Text editor, tomorrow morning, we will be releasing the Wikia Welcome Tool, Category Select, and more Edit Page Enhancements.

Wikia Welcome Tool
Welcoming new contributors is a really important task on a wiki. When a new person shows up to help, we want to make sure that they feel appreciated, and connected to the community. Some wiki communities work really hard to make sure that every new contributor gets a welcome. Unfortunately, it's also a big chore, and there are a lot of communities where it doesn't happen.

Wikia has developed a new feature that will make the welcoming process a lot easier -- the Welcome tool! It's an automatic process that will welcome every new contributor, leaving a welcome message that the community can customize.

When a contributor makes their first edit, the Wikia Welcome tool leaves a talk page message for them, and creates a user page.

Hi, welcome to (Wiki Name)! Thanks for your edit to the Article title page.

Please leave a message on my talk page if I can help with anything! -- (signature)

The talk page message is signed by the admin (or Wikia staff member) who's edited the wiki most recently, to help the contributor find someone who's available to talk to them if they need it. The message is left one minute after the contributor's edit, so they'll get the message while they're still on the wiki.

We've been testing this on a dozen wikis over the last week, and the results have been really positive. On the test wikis, new contributors have been responding to the messages, reaching out to admins with questions. It's helping to create connections between contributors and admins, opening up the opportunity for conversations and collaborations.

There seems to be a real advantage to this method, even for communities that currently do their own welcomes. A welcome message left by a person can happen hours later, when the contributor isn't there anymore. Automating the welcomes accomplishes the same goal, but it's a lot faster, and active contributors don't have to spend time on a routine task.

Each wiki can still have its own specialized welcomes. The whole system is completely customizable by the admins, by editing the following pages:


 * MediaWiki:Welcome-message-user is the welcome message that's left for logged-in contributors.
 * MediaWiki:Welcome-message-anon is the welcome message that's left for anonymous contributors.
 * MediaWiki:Welcome-user-page is the user page that's created for logged-in contributors.
 * MediaWiki:Welcome-user -- You can use this page to change the signature that's left in the welcome message, or to turn the feature off. There are three settings for this page:
 * @latest -- This is the default setting. This means that the message will be signed by the latest admin to make an edit on the wiki.
 * Username -- If you replace @latest with a contributor's username, then all of the messages will be signed by that contributor.
 * @disabled -- This turns the feature off, so nobody gets a welcome message. If you turn it off, you can turn it back on again by replacing this with @latest or a username.
 * MediaWiki:Welcome-message-log is the edit summary that the tool uses when it is leaving messages.

Because the new welcome tool has not yet been translated to other languages, we are only releasing it to English-language wikis for now. If you have any questions about the Wikia Welcome tool, please contact a staff member for help.


 * Great work, staff! — Robin Patterson (Talk) 04:17, 18 March 2009 (UTC)


 * It states that these get added a minute after the contribution. Are they in the job queue or something, as we have seen one on MA this am, and it took 51 minutes to get added.  There have been a few anon users that have edited since then, and no automated welcome. -- sulfur 13:44, 18 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Yes, it goes in to a job queue. Right now things are backed up a little over 2 hours.  We're working to speed things up now. --KyleH (talk) 15:15, 18 March 2009 (UTC)


 * Is there a way to disable the welcome message for only one group? E.g. is it possible for a wiki to have an automated welcome message for new logged-in users, but disable the message for anonymous contributors? --Fritzophrenic 19:23, 19 March 2009 (UTC)
 * We're working on adding that feature in soon. I should be able to provide more information on this tomorrow. --KyleH (talk) 19:57, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

There's a slight problem with this tool: it welcomes ANYONE. So if the user vandalized, it would say thank you for your edit. Not a very good thing... GB 04:11, 20 March 2009 (UTC)


 * Welcoming a vandal won't change their behavior in any measurable way. You're going to block the vandal anyway. On the other hand, welcoming a good contributor has obvious positive benefits.


 * If you treat every new contributor like a potential vandal, then you risk driving away the good people. You can create the kind of community that you want by treating every new contributor like a new friend. Vandals are a dime a dozen, and they're easy to block. Good new contributors are gold. You should treasure them. -- Danny (talk ) 04:22, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

Hi. It'd be much better if it is possible to hide 'auto' welcome messages in 'Recent changes' page. (Or putting a bot edit flag.) The function itself is nice. Thanks - 60.39.102.165 04:59, 20 March 2009 (UTC).


 * Yeah, we've got that feedback from a bunch of people. We'll have some news about tweaks to the feature tomorrow; we're hoping to add the additional customization that people want. Stay tuned for more news. -- Danny (talk ) 05:12, 20 March 2009 (UTC)


 * I would not like these auto-welcome edits by "Wikia" to be completely hidden in recent changes. Marking them as "minor edits" and letting the filter for minor edits hide or reveal them would be OK. I used to rely on the red talk links to pick out new contributors and simultaneously greet them as well as take a look at whatever change they made on whichever page. I am grateful for the auto-welcome message but would still like an easy method to search the recent changes list (e.g. for that username "Wikia") to do spot checks on changes by such newcomers so as to remain vigilant for vandals. najevi 05:45, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

I test this feature--88.113.38.202 18:20, 20 March 2009 (UTC)
 * It's Working!--88.113.38.202 18:22, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

When would it be available in other languages? Is to possible to help translating? --Doly

"Bot" Edit?
No offense, but this is kinda driving me nuts. Half the RC is filled up with these edits. Plus, half the time it's someone who forgot to log in, and then we admins half to delete it for them. Could these automatic edits please be marked as bot edits by default? Or, is there someone way one of the admins could set them to be bot edits? It would make tracking edits so much easier. Timeroot|undefinedTalk • Contribs • Edit count 21:59, 24 March 2009 (UTC)


 * Yeah, that's easy to do -- thanks for letting us know! I just took care of it on the FunOrb wiki. For anyone else that wants this switched to a bot -- just let us know that you want us to switch it, and we can make User:Wikia a bot and take it out of recent changes. You can use Special:Contact to write to us, or leave a message on my talk page. -- Danny (talk ) 00:19, 25 March 2009 (UTC)

Category Select
On Wednesday, we're also releasing a new Category Select tool site-wide. Using this tool, you'll be able to add categories to pages in two new ways:


 * 1) From the article itself: At the bottom of each article there is a new "Add Category " button, this allows users to add categories to any article without going into full edit mode.
 * 2) From a new category section in edit mode: While in edit mode there is now a separate box for categories which allows you to add categories by simply typing their name and clicking enter without wikitext.

You can still access the raw category wikitext by clicking on the code view link in the right side of the category section. If you would prefer to disable Category Select altogether, you can do so within the Editing tab of your personal preferences and checking the "Disable Category tagging" option. For more detail about this feature, please see the help page.


 * Is there any way to have this give a list of categories that match or something similar? It doesn't appear to do that now. -- sulfur 13:37, 18 March 2009 (UTC)
 * To do that it would have to have a way of knowing what you're thinking. The best solution is just using simply-named or easy-to-remember categories.  // masterConjurer  ( Talk ) 13:43, 18 March 2009 (UTC)
 * We have simply named categories, I was more thinking in the same style as the "Search Wikia" dropdown thing works. You'd type the first two or three letters, and it would then list them.  After all, in some wikis, the words may be a bit odd, especially when the wiki is either Fantasy or SF based. -- sulfur 13:49, 18 March 2009 (UTC)
 * But it's working like that now. Type a letter and wait 0.5s for dropdown. --Marooned 13:54, 18 March 2009 (UTC)
 * edit conflict: There already is something like that. I use it all the time. Here's how to make sure you have it turned on: in Preferences, under Editing, make sure that "Do not show link suggest" is not checked. // masterConjurer  ( Talk ) 13:57, 18 March 2009 (UTC)


 * Ok, never mind then. It was taking longer than a half-second or so for anything to drop down, so I figured that it wasn't exactly working.  Heh.  My bad. :) -- sulfur 14:00, 18 March 2009 (UTC)


 * Hi, I just wanted to congratulate you guys at Wikia for adding this tool! Not only is it useful for every user, but it is really useful for new users, as they don't have to type out all the (talk) 19:07, 18 March 2009 (UTC)


 * Well, only a little more useful than the one-click edit tool that should appear below the edit box. But for those of us who have difficulty scrolling at times, that's a distinct bonus. Some of us, however, have managed to add a "category" button above the edit box, usually quicker still. — Robin Patterson (Talk) 05:20, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

Edit page enhancements
After taking in some of the feedback that you provided, we're also releasing a modified version of the edit page enhancements that went out last week. Here is how the edit page on Monaco will change for wikis that do not have the Rich Text editor enabled: These changes will not affect Monobook. If you would like to tweak how these changes display on your wiki, you can find out more information about doing so here.
 * In order to make more room for the edit window, the site notice, wiki tagline, and talk page message notification are not displayed on the edit page. Additionally, the size of the page title has been reduced (rather than eliminated, as it was before).
 * A bar at the top of the preview window now displays with a bright red background to make it clear that the edit has not yet been saved.
 * The "Show changes" button on the edit screen has been restyled to look more like a link. We found that a number of users were accidentally clicking it instead of the "Save page" button.


 * All looks good. I was missing the page title when giving categories parent categories, because a dragged copy of the page title is often the best starter line. On point about the "edit not saved" notice - above the preview is the best place for it, but it should say "scroll up or down" rather than "scroll down" so as to be correct for people who have the edit box above the preview. — Robin Patterson (Talk) 04:26, 18 March 2009 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the fix to the "Show Changes" button. I was constantly clicking on it, because it was in pretty much the same place as where Wikipedia has the "Save Page" button. — Young Ned (talk) 04:00, 21 March 2009 (UTC)

More Information
If you have questions or comments or need help with any of these features, please contact a Wikia staff member. Thanks! --KyleH (talk) 22:21, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

I've got a
question. If we leave a template at MediaWiki:Welcome-user-page, will the template be placed? And also if we want the signature to be inside at table how do we place it? &mdash; 22:40, 17 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Templates are supported; however, please use subst: on your templates wherever practical for performance reasons. MediaWiki:Welcome-user-page is the user page that is created (eg: User:KyleH), and it doesn't accept any parameters.  MediaWiki:Welcome-message-user and MediaWiki:Welcome-message-anon are the User talk pages (eg: User_talk:KyleH) that are created, and they do support 3 parameters: $1 is the first page that the user edited, $2 is the talk page link of the user signing the page, and $3 is the signature of the user signing the page (this only supports the standard MediaWiki signature though; if you want something more complex, you'll probably have to manually enter a signature here).  To enclose the signature in a table, edit the Welcome-message pages and put $3 where you want the signature to appear. --KyleH (talk) 23:11, 17 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Is this fine? Or do we have to put brackets around $3 and $2? &mdash; [[Image:BalisticSig.png]] 23:42, 17 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Just putting $3 should be fine, without the $2. $3 will add your whole signature, so if you've got the talk page link in your sig, that'll appear.
 * Since I see people already customizing, here's the default code for MediaWiki:Welcome-message-user:
 * Hi, welcome to ! Thanks for your edit to the $1 page.
 * Please leave a message on my talk page if I can help with anything! $3
 * $1 is replaced by the name of the page that the contributor edited. $2 is replaced by User talk:Admin-name. $3 is replaced by the admin's signature. -- Danny (talk ) 23:48, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

Is it possible to have the "SUBST:" effect on talk pages created, but have the MediaWiki pages still update when the welcome templates do? // masterConjurer ( Talk ) 00:05, 18 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Yes, but there's a trick to it: You need to create the MediaWiki message BEFORE you create the template (or delete/temporarily rename the template before creating the message).  If you do that, MediaWiki won't process the subst: until it is actually placed on a user/talk page. --KyleH (talk) 00:23, 18 March 2009 (UTC)
 * And then if you update the message it'll break because it'll actually subst it. I think the real solution is to know if the trick we've always been using is compatible with the message. ~ NOTASTAFF Daniel Friesen (DanTMan, Nadir Seen Fire) (talk) (tricks) (current topic)  Mar 18, 2009 @ 01:36 (UTC)
 * I had assumed that templating tricks would not work, but if they do, my night will be easier. I personally have not checked yet.  // masterConjurer  ( Talk ) 01:40, 18 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Good point.  appears to work. --KyleH (talk) 02:19, 18 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Will you be adding parameters to the User page soon (MediaWiki:Welcome-user-page)? And can you make one that is the user's name? That functionality is useful for creating user specific links for the new user. Example:  &mdash; JeiaraTalk 16:46, 18 March 2009 (UTC)
 * should be the same as the username, so  should work just fine.  That makes the code a little bit ugly ... you should also be able to use the subst: hack from above to make it a little bit cleaner when it is eventually output (eg.  )  (I haven't, however, tested this myself.) --KyleH (talk) 17:36, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

Category Tag question
Has this bug and its update been corrected for monobook, is it going to be disable for monobook ? --
 * CategorySelect is now only enabled for Monaco. --KyleH (talk) 23:58, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

Two Questions
I have two questions.

Welcome
We at the Club Penguin and Club Penguin Fan Fiction wikis take pride in manuall adding Template:Welc to every page by hand. Is there a way to disable the Automatic Welcome so that we can continue our proud tradition of maintining welcome articles? —This unsigned comment is by TurtleShroom (talk • contribs). Please sign your posts with ! 00:23, 18 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Look up. If you add @disabled to MediaWiki:Welcome-user then it will be disabled. &mdash; [[Image:BalisticSig.png]] 00:26, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

MonoBook?
How many of your nifty new features will be available on good old MonoBook? Some of us still use it, and it would be very eaningful to use it there. MonoBook needs to be updated too! Don't leave it in the dust! —This unsigned comment is by TurtleShroom (talk • contribs). Please sign your posts with ! 00:23, 18 March 2009 (UTC)
 * We support Monobook for users who prefer the familiar editing environment that it provides, and we will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. Because we are committed to providing that familiar editing interface through Monobook, we are not releasing any new features for it.  If you want to try out the new features, I encourage you to give Monaco another shot. --KyleH (talk) 01:01, 18 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Yes, I support not modifying Monobook this way. -- ◄mendel► 21:27, 18 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Second - old school monobook is the best RT  22:40, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

Timestamp
Is it possible for the welcome message to include a current timestamp ? Some users see an early welcome date as a sign of honor or something. // masterConjurer ( Talk ) 00:40, 18 March 2009 (UTC)
 * The signature used in MediaWiki:Welcome-message-user and MediaWiki:Welcome-message-anon ("$3" parameter) includes a timestamp for the time it was left. It isn't possible to leave a timestamp without a signature though.  (At least I think it isn't; it may be possible to fake it using magic words and parser tags or something of that nature.) --KyleH (talk) 01:01, 18 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Is there someone who would know if and how it could be faked? // masterConjurer  ( Talk ) 01:13, 18 March 2009 (UTC)
 * To leave a timestamp, use five tildes like so: 02:17, 18 March 2009 (UTC) See? Orngjce223 02:17, 18 March 2009 (UTC)
 * That is very much not what this conversation was about. // masterConjurer  ( Talk ) 02:49, 18 March 2009 (UTC)


 * The word "current" is ambiguous as to whether you are looking for the timestamp of when the welcome tool left the message, or of the timestamp when the user is viewing the page., 2024 August/27.  I am not sure whether the "honor" is something you want to make use of to make users feel cooler, or something you wish to discourage to better preach equality. -Afker All hail AliceSoft! 02:56, 18 March 2009 (UTC)
 * I mean when the tool leaves the message. // masterConjurer  ( Talk ) 03:21, 18 March 2009 (UTC)
 * subst: the date magic words? -- ◄mendel► 21:31, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

MediaWiki:Welcome-user
Is there a setting that disables the signature without disabling the entire tool? // masterConjurer ( Talk ) 00:49, 18 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Yup, just remove the $3 parameter from MediaWiki:Welcome-message-user and MediaWiki:Welcome-message-anon. --KyleH (talk) 01:01, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

Editor Size
This is about the making of more room for the editor. I find that the editor is already too tall. In order to more easily research the subjects of my edits I often stack windows. Is there any chance that there will someday be an option to shrink it so that I won't need to operate two scroll bars just to see the entire edit? // masterConjurer ( Talk ) 04:46, 18 March 2009 (UTC)


 * Have you checked your preferences and tried all the editing options? I use one that restricts to a nominated number of lines - though recently there have been some funny goings-on. — Robin Patterson (Talk) 05:39, 18 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Depending of how this preference are set, Monaco doesn't fully respect preference settings --

Star Wars Fanon
I'm not exactly sure how this works, but are the changes I made to w:c:swfanon:MediaWiki:Welcome-message-user, w:c:swfanon:MediaWiki:Welcome-message-anon‎, and w:c:swfanon:MediaWiki:Welcome-user-page‎ fine? --Michaeldsuarez (Talk) (Deeds) 13:16, 18 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Yup, all of those edits look good to me. --KyleH (talk) 15:16, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

writable staff members
If you have any questions about the Wikia Welcome tool, please write a Wikia staff member. Wish I had known that were possible before, hoooooow?
 * Special:Contact is your best bet--that goes directly to staff members. --KyleH (talk) 15:25, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

The goal is to show new contributors that there's a community on the wiki -- and to help connect them to admins, so they know where to go if they have questions. Won't this be applied even if there isn't a community, and that new editor is a lone contributor there?
 * Yes, this is the case. In many of these situations, however, the most recently active person is a staff member or helper, and putting them in contact with a staff member still helps them out.  Even in situations where the message is signed by an inactive admin, if the user leaves a message on that user's talk page, they'll probably get an email ... perhaps it will even prompt them to return. :) --KyleH (talk) 15:25, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

@latest Isn't working here... A problem I have with it is how it welcomes vandals, we don't want to make them 'feel welcome'... -- Sixorish 14:06, 18 March 2009 (UTC) I just kicked the tyres on this auto-welcome message feature and I love it. Thank you! najevi 02:12, 19 March 2009 (UTC)
 * @latest will only have an effect if $2 and/or $3 are in your MediaWiki:Welcome-message-user and/or MediaWiki:Welcome-message-anon messages--it replaces the signature and talk page links with those of the most recently active admins. You haven't included those parameters in your messages, so the only effect that @latest has is leaving the tool itself enabled.  Regarding vandals, that is a side effect of this tool, but I don't believe that these welcomes will substantially change their behavior, and I believe that the benefits that we have seen on wikis that do welcomes far outweigh the effects it might have on potential vandals. --KyleH (talk) 15:25, 18 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Leaving a standard welcome message for a vandal and then optionally appending a polite note explaining whatever temporary ban may have been issued is a decent way of turning a vandal into a productive contributor.

Welcome-User help
I have simple question about this new tool. We currently only want it to welcome new users who have signed up for an account, not IP's. Am I able to place "@disabled" in MediaWiki:Welcome-message-anon to have it not welcome them, or will it simply welcome them with "@disabled"? Also, can we do the same under MediaWiki:Welcome-user-page so it will not create a page for them? 19:02, 18 March 2009 (UTC)
 * I would like that too. The system doesn't tell vandals and trolls apart from honest contributors, and it makes us look like idiots when it welcomes IPs that have vandalized a wiki and signs the message with our name. ―  T hailog  20:25, 18 March 2009 (UTC)
 * I second this suggestion. Our policy is NOT to have user pages for IP users. --Lirielle 06:35, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

I too do not think it should be thanking people whose contributions have not been examined. Two of the first four uses on Genealogy were thanking vandals. I don't mind giving them a qualified welcome, but thanks are not appropriate. Here's what I've changed to, on Genealogy:
 * User: Hello, and welcome to Familypedia, the Genealogy wiki! We volunteers hope you can continue making contributions to articles and/or discussion and other improvements. ...
 * Anon: Hi, we are pleased that you have found our Genealogy Wikia! It is unlikely that anyone has looked at your edit to the $1 page yet, but someone will. ...

— Robin Patterson (Talk) 11:37, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

Edit summary
Perhaps a site specific welcome summary could be part of the customization. Perhaps MediaWiki:Welcome-user-summary. Some communities might have a more appropriate or, say themed, summary than a generic "welcoming new contributor" -- 21:10, 18 March 2009 (UTC)
 * As you found out, it looks like this is already possible. You can edit MediaWiki:Welcome-message-log to adjust the edit summary. --KyleH (talk) 01:03, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

Bug Fixes?
To be honest, I'm slightly irked new features are being released when other features have bugs that need fixing. What's the status of these? --LordTBT Talk! 19:12, 18 March 2009 (UTC)


 * With respect to video games, it's usually two different groups of people working on it. One fixes bugs, one makes new bugs. :) I suspect there is a divide at Wikia as well, though I wouldn't know if people cross it/it's a small divide... --Sky (talk) 23:29, 18 March 2009 (UTC)


 * We have a multi-talented tech team who make fun new stuff and fix bugs all the time :) As long as bugs get reported, we'll keep working on fixing them. 18:59, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

New user userpage
How do we turn this off completely? Admin consensus on Wookieepedia is that redlink userpages for new users in the recent changes are more useful than a generic template. -- Darth Culator  (Talk) 20:24, 18 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Agreed, the Narutopedia awhile ago reached concensus to create a policy on limiting the use of userpages. We had so much userpage spam coming from users who never helped out (and even worse sometimes acted hostile towards the real contributors) that the community decided to delete irrelevant, and personal profile type userpages not relevant to the user being an editor. I'm experimenting to see if setting it to the standard "-" disables it. ~ NOTASTAFF Daniel Friesen (DanTMan, Nadir Seen Fire) (talk) (tricks) (current topic) Mar 18, 2009 @ 20:39 (UTC) (nope doesn't)
 * I'm also going to agree here. Some people just don't use their user page, they don't fill it with anything, but they're still good contributors, having this feature seems to be foisting it on people who might not ever want it. --Tangerineduel 14:06, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

See the next section for an update 19:01, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

Updates
Hey all, thanks for all the feedback! I just wanted to provide you with a quick status update about where things are going. The majority of requests that we have received have been asking for one of two things: Both of these seem like pretty reasonable requests, and we're working with our engineering team figure out how we might be able to implement them. I should be able to reply tomorrow with more information about if and when we will be able to implement these changes.
 * 1) The ability to mark the edits made by the welcome tool as bot edits so that they are not shown in Special:Recentchanges, or
 * 2) The ability to prevent the welcome tool from creating the User: page for all users, or the User_talk: page for anonymous users.  (Perhaps by putting "@disabled" in MediaWiki:Welcome-user-page or something of that nature.)

In the mean time, if you have any questions, please contact a Wikia staff member. Thanks! --KyleH (talk) 20:37, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

Category tag; Reorganizing categories when not modified
The category tag system is creating a lot of edits like this. Whenever a user makes a minor edit to a jutsu page the tool reorganizes the to be at the bottom of the page. This is basically going to continue happening to piles of our articles because we've kept to a style of going category tag, followed by semantic annotations, followed by interlanguage links. And it looks like the new tool wants to reorganize the category tags to the absolute bottom of the page even when noone change the categories. ~ NOTASTAFF Daniel Friesen (DanTMan, Nadir Seen Fire) (talk) (tricks) (current topic) Mar 18, 2009 @ 20:43 (UTC)
 * Hi There, Unfortunately this is one of the side-effects of the tool that we can't workaround. If you are wedded to the placements of the Category Tag on the edit page, we should just turn this feature off all together for Naruto. That would be sad, but if that's what you want, it can be done angies (talk) 22:03, 18 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Sounds good, quite frankly the Narutopedia barely uses any categories at all. We prefer to abstract as many categories as possible into infobox templates, and annotate pages with more useful semantic tags so we can do nice things like use semantic drilldown to drilldown jutsu lists. ~ NOTASTAFF Daniel Friesen (DanTMan, Nadir Seen Fire) (talk) (tricks) (current topic) Mar 18, 2009 @ 22:33 (UTC)
 * How does one go about removing said feature, and how much of the rest of the editor is effected? // masterConjurer  ( Talk ) 03:15, 20 March 2009 (UTC)


 * The tool has been switched off on Naruto. 18:40, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

New edit window - Show changes button
And now... what the hell did you do with the ' button on the edit window'''? Why are you deleting useful stuff? Please, return it back again. --Ciencia Al Poder (talk) -WikiDex 21:11, 18 March 2009 (UTC)
 * On my screen the "Show changes" button is still there. We did change the style of it a little bit when we made the edit page changes (to make it look more like a normal link) because we discovered that a number of users were accidentally hitting it instead of the "Save page" button.  Are you not seeing it at all on your screen?  If so, could you please post a screenshot?  Thanks! --KyleH (talk) 21:21, 18 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Weird. It has no underline like Cancel and edit help, so I missed it. Time to change it back for me now... --Ciencia Al Poder (talk) -WikiDex 21:39, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

Admin Signature
Is there a way so that it can use my actual signature when welcoming new users, instead of the generic signature? -- LordTBT Talk! 21:22, 18 March 2009 (UTC)
 * It isn't possible for it to automatically do this, but you can manually add your signature in MediaWiki:Welcome-message-user and MediaWiki:Welcome-message-anon. --KyleH (talk) 21:49, 18 March 2009 (UTC)
 * This is definitely a concern, as it means no personalized signatures. Also, is it reasonable that the wiki's founder or bureaucrat in charge should be the designated signer of welcomes? -- Energy bend  er  22:02, 18 March 2009 (UTC)


 * Energy, the bureaucrat isn't "in charge", and since our own active Bureaucrat is far less active than some of the admins, it isn't reasonable to sign all welcome messages with Omni's sig. The 888th Avatar  (Talk) 22:13, 18 March 2009 (UTC)
 * The Sardapedia actually came up with a sort of solution to this. We put in and tags around the admin's and mods' custom signatures so that a random figure of authority would be the signer of the welcome.  It should work out fine, as we're all on about 20/7 anyway.  // masterConjurer  ( Talk ) 22:36, 18 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Ya that's obvious, but then you would have a load of different tags and names after the message when it is substed to the page. It may not be visible, but is just a pain when viewing it edit mode and take a lot of space. It would be easier to put them into a template and transclude that template (as long as that doesn't get substed as well). I'm still for a more 'automatic' solution though. ~Joey~  <font color="Green">^Talk^  16:51, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

add category null edit not possible
On IE7, when I click on "add category", it says "press enter when done", but when I don't want to change anything and press enter, the input box doesn't close. -- ◄mendel► 21:59, 18 March 2009 (UTC)


 * For me, same browser, it has partialy close when i moved focus elsewhere. By the way the string "press enter when done" is badly translated in french. — TulipVorlax 01:17, 19 March 2009 (UTC)


 * I can't speak for the translation, but I see the same thing on Firefox. I'll see if we can change that. 17:29, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

Add Category : Limiting to main namespace ?
I found the feature a tad stupid when it show up on page like this one. It's a user page. Maybe this should be limited to main namespace. — TulipVorlax 01:17, 19 March 2009 (UTC)


 * User pages can have categories - but it's rather up to the wiki, than us to mandate. Even so, it could make sense to not show the view mode version for certain namespaces? 17:14, 19 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Would it be possible to twiddle that based on a mediawiki page? Something like Mediawiki:category-tag-namespaces, and that would, by default, include everything, but could be changed on fr.guildwars (for example) to simply Guildwars, and Main.  Or something as such. -- sulfur 21:29, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

Add Catgory : Unwanted on certain pages...
Would there be a way to add a sort of magic word in vastly used templates that autocategorise page depending on the parameters passed to it ? I really think that letting any user add a catogry to any page is not really wise. On fr.guildwars, lots of pages dont need to be in more categories than what they already are.

I'm not talking about articles that users could write on a perticular subject. The tool is usefull in that case. It's when the categories are decided by a template and no other category should be added.

Maybe i'm not clear. So i'll awnser any question. — TulipVorlax 01:17, 19 March 2009 (UTC)


 * I think I know what you mean, but I'm not sure of a good solution to it (if it needs one). Wikis are so dynamic and changing, magic words could cause more harm than good, especially if they change the editing experience. 17:42, 19 March 2009 (UTC)


 * A magic word would be a great idea for pages that are based on template categorization and it does not interfere on keeping those pages to do automatic and dynamic updates by just editing the template and then having to cleaning those manual(feature) additions --

Categorizer on Preview
When previewing new edits before committing them, the categories no longer appear at the bottom of the page. --<font color="Green">LordTBT <font color="Green" size="2">Talk! 03:59, 19 March 2009 (UTC)
 * I, too, am annoyed by this. The Looking For Group Wiki has many templates that automatically add categories, and I used that feature to be sure said templates are functioning properly in a new page.  // masterConjurer  ( Talk ) 04:25, 19 March 2009 (UTC)


 * We'll get this sorted out - thanks. 17:23, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

Categorizer badly broken

 * Make it stop doing this, or make it go away entirely. Only one byte of that edit was deliberate. Your "feature" is violating our layout guide. Don't make us start blocking people who use Monaco for this vandalism. -- Darth Culator  (Talk) 02:51, 20 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Already note here for Narutopedia complain --


 * If that's the case, it needs to be turned off on Wookieepedia ASAP. We have pre-existing rules that this is BREAKING. There's no need for protracted discussion, we had that already to make the rules that this BREAKS. -- Darth Culator  (Talk) 03:11, 20 March 2009 (UTC)
 * For quickest i recommend yo to send a note to wikia staff using w:Starwars:Special:Contact --
 * Observe how the category is pulled off the HTML comment that pertains to it, in the first link Darth Culator posted. -- ◄mendel► 10:04, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

The extension has been switched off for starwars. We'll look at these issues and see if we can come up with a good solution. Thanks for the reports! 18:43, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

Monaco's Edit tips margin issue
I Wish to know the reason why the Div with id  has a top margin of 20px? as it looks like a waste of space could that be remove or coded by CSS so it can be alter --


 * What effect are you seeing due to it? A screenshot would be rather useful. 18:47, 20 March 2009 (UTC)


 * [[Image:editingTipsToggleDiv issue.png|thumb|right]] Here is an image as i use Firefox+firebug i have selected the div so it can be clearly see the wasted space in light yellow. Also i notice now there is a page size msg on monaco (i had never seen it on monaco) that does not show because it has bottom:20px that displaces somewhere out of my view i tested this also on IE not logged --
 * Oh found the size thing it appears at the bottom right with the edit tips update it has more than enough space to the right. i prefer to see it above at least i can see it before the page finally loads but thats a matter of taste --
 * Looks like it got corrected with the addition of the following code to the NewEditPage.css
 * #editingTipsToggleDiv {margin:0 !important;}
 * Thanks --

Make this awesome for cross-wiki editors, please!
Users who edit across multiple wikis find themselves creating their userpage and talkpage all over again whenever they come to a new wiki. The welcome bot adds the nuisance of added notifications, and the welcome messages it posts get largely ignored by these experienced editors.

Hence, I propose the following feature:
 * If a user has set up Special:MyPage/Userpage and/or Special:MyPage/Talkpage on Wikia central (i.e., here), the welcome bot does not add any wiki-specific welcome messages; instead, it copies these pages (if they exist; if only one exists, the other is not touched) to the user's local userpage and talkpage on the welcoming wiki.


 * The pages should be copied with the full history so as to assign proper credit, or at least be attributed in the page history to the editor to whom they pertain, not User:Wikia.
 * Technically speaking, the addition should be simple: the bot is already set up to create these pages, it just needs to check for these special pages and use them as source instead if they exist.

With this feature, cross-wiki editors would never have to remake their userpages again, and they don't have to endure welcome messages that aren't really meant for them. It transforms the welcome bot from an annoyance to a boon. :)

In other words, when I edit on some other wikia wiki, the welcome bot wouldn't post some newbish welcome at me, but instead copy my own generic userpage and talkpage from central wikia to save me work (I could still modify them later if I wanted to).

How do you like this proposal? Good idea! I don't need that. Bad idea. -- ◄mendel► 09:37, 20 March 2009 (UTC) & 11:30, 20 March 2009 (UTC)


 * I would really love this feature, anything to keep me away from the twenty five emails I got from that bot since it started. <font color="Green">~Joey~  <font color="Green">^Talk^  16:47, 20 March 2009 (UTC)


 * It seems that staff don't know how annoying it would be, because they are not affected. Look: . Was this a condition to roll out this extension? --Ciencia Al Poder (talk) -WikiDex 16:54, 20 March 2009 (UTC)
 * I don't think this is a good idea. The Welcome-Bot welcomes me to the wiki, which i edited, not in the Wikia-Community. Perhaps some wikis would like to say other things to their new users than an other wiki. And: i.e. I don't want to have the same User-Talk-Page on different wikis, because there are always different subjets on different wikis. So: the User-page... this could be nice, although it's not very difficult to copy a Userpage to another wiki. But the Talk-Page: no, these pages should be different in different wikis!! Sorry for my (perhaps real bad) English, I'm just a german... :-) MorpheuzZ (Fragen/Probleme?) 17:58, 20 March 2009 (UTC)


 * It's not a terrible idea, but it would much better if it were part of the preferences and off by default. I don't want to have to generalize my user page for all the wikia wikis I edit, but it would be nice to have a custom boilerplate that I can apply, similar to how custom signatures work. -- Fandyllic  (talk &middot; contr) 1:04 PM PST 20 Mar 2009

This would be off by default because the pages I listed are not your regular user- or talkpage. If you do not consciously create them, you will see the wiki-specific welcomes, so it is strictly an opt-in feature as proposed.

The difference is that you don't activate it via preferences, but by creating the source pages. If you don't create /Talkpage then the bot won't touch your talkpage at all. —This unsigned comment is by M.mendel (talk • contribs). Please sign your posts with ! --01:10, 21 March 2009 (UTC)


 * This is a really good point -- we want to make sure that people aren't discouraged from doing helpful things on lots of wikis. We've got a solution in mind for it, and we'll have more information early next week once we check with an engineer about it. :) -- <font color="Blue">Danny (<font color="Blue" size="1">talk ) 01:29, 21 March 2009 (UTC)


 * So, if i would set this up on Central wikia, it would have the effect of creating an english user/talk page on all wiki even when the language of the wiki is not english ?
 * Like some said, i prefer doing "custom" user pages for all wikis base on subject (and language). So, i guess i'll have another thing to disable in prefs... — TulipVorlax 23:47, 21 March 2009 (UTC)


 * Let me repeat, if you do not want this feature, simple don't create the pages on central, and nothing will happen. In short: Do nothing, and this is disabled. How can that be bad?
 * Alternately, you could set up a multilingual userpage using the magic word, as in


 * This wiki has "" set as content language. -- ◄mendel► 12:35, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

Category Tree picker
I try to organize a wiki's categories into a connected tree with a common root (so far, Category:Categories or Category:Browse ). Is it possible for CategorySelect to display that tree (much like the categorytree extension does) to select a category (and maybe flip the tree open when an existing category on that article is clicked)? -- ◄mendel► 14:39, 20 March 2009 (UTC)
 * I like this idea! &mdash; JeiaraTalk 17:02, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

Welcome tool is excellent
The new welcome feature is extremely helpful. Thanks a bunch you guys for automating this task and making it easily customizable. Blue Rook 15:06, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

A few issues about the "Category Select" feature
I think the CSS of the Add Category feature is weired. And it behaves sometimes a little bit strange. And two bugs: I think the feature is in total a good idea, but I don't really like the current concept for several reasons: A better solution in my opinion would be, if the feature would not remove the category tags from the code window. Instead it should manipulate the category markup in the code window. For example if you click "Add category" the respecting is added in the code window at the end (or right after the last category). If you click the x to remove a category, the code is searched for the respecting category tag and it gets removed. Similar if you change the sort key. If the user adds categories in the code by himself they are detected and and also displayed visually by one of the follwing mechanisms: Either every few seconds the code is scanned for correct category tags, or there is a button which updates the visual list based on the code window. Justme2 18:01, 20 March 2009 (UTC)
 * 1) Why does this small piece of code use so much inline stylesheet and doesn't use one of the global CSS files? This is much cleaner and makes styling simpler.
 * 2) Why is the "Add Category button" positioned floating? It causes the button to lay outside of the main category div box . Example: It's outside of the blue box at Dan-Ball_Wiki. Of course you can overwrite this setting but if there is no reason you should maybe remove it.
 * 1) Why does the autocomplete feature add a leading and wrong "Category:" to the first few categories? Example: Go to Dan-Ball_Wiki, click "Add Category", and enter "Pow" (It will show: Category: Powder Game community, Category: Powder Game elements, Category: Powder Game physics. Also note the different spacing) or enter "Sti" (It will show: Category: Stick Ranger stages.).
 * 2) In the edit mode for an article press "Add category" than enter a few letters. A popup "Press Enter when done" will appear. Now don't press enter but change to "Code view". The bug is that the "Press Enter when done" message doesn't go away anymore.
 * 1) It prevents new users from learing the syntax about categories.
 * 2) It does not respect the placement and the order of the categories in the article code.
 * 3) The feature is disabled for templates. But if you are testing a template which should include categories into an article in your user namespace, the feature will completly obfuscate your code and make it impossible to work with (have a look at this example where the category is included right before the closing onlyinclude).


 * Heya. First off, thanks for the feedback :) Now to try and answer each question/point:


 * 1) The inline CSS should only occur on view mode. Since we want page code to be as small as possible, and extensions to be modular, this means we initially adds a little bit of CSS for the "Add category" button. When you click this, then the rest of the CSS is added.
 * 2) What would you suggest as an alternative? The button is intended to intersect the bottom line of the category bar.
 * Bugs:


 * 1) Good spot: I'll pass it on and see if we can find out why. Note that you don't need to type "Category:" anyway for this.
 * 2) I can't reproduce this: what browser and OS are you on?
 * Other points:


 * 1) Essentially, we want to ultimately make it possible to use MediaWiki without having to learn the code.
 * 2) Understood, although order should be preserved. Placement on a page does very little with categories, though we understand different wikis have different customs - we'll look into this more.
 * 3) We plan to work more on making it clearer for template-style usage, especially where special tags are involved. However, showing the category in two places we don't feel would be a good solution, as you would need to track category editing in two places at once.
 * 12:53, 25 March 2009 (UTC)


 * Sorry, that my answers here took so long. I didn't seen your response.
 * CSS:
 * 1. You can also be modular if each module has its own style definitions in a seperate file. There is no need to do it inline in style attributes. The reason is, that the inline method conflicts with a clean way of skining and the main idea of cascading style sheets. You have to use a lot of "!important" to change the style.
 * 2. Yes, in the meantime I've noticed how it was intendend. Might be OK, although it caused some problems for me to get the button into the catlinks box, because I couldn't clear the float after the button and inside the box. I had to cheat with paddings. Furthermore the second purpose of the float is to provide an automatic width to the button. Maybe using a push- instead of misusing a  would be more clean.
 * Bugs:
 * 1. Still not working correct!
 * 2. Strange. I use Win XP32 and I can reproduce the bug with Opera 9.64, IE 7.0.5730.13 and Firefox 3.0.7. Here are two images which show the problem:
 * Other points:
 * 1. This is correct. You can provide a tool, which helps the users. But you should not get rid of something if the tool, which you are using to replace it, is not powerful enough to cover all cases. It is the same reason why visual HTML editors, where you can not switch to the code view, have been a complete failure: They restrict the users to only a subset of all possibilities.
 * 3. I don't see the argument about the two places, unless it is: "We have lazy programmers!" ;-) The system (JavaScript) would have to do this, and it is powerful enough to do this.
 * Another easy but presumably very good solution (which should also be easy to implement) would be: Parse only categories which start at the first character in a new line. By doing this, the problem with template coding can be avoided. And it even provides a mechanism to avoid destroying complicated category placement on other pages, or if you simply don't want it: Just add a whitespace in front of it. As far as I can tell, at every place where a category does not start at the.first character in a new line you also do not want the "Add category" feature to manipulate it. Of course: You would have to document this behaviour in the help pages.
 * --Justme2 14:05, 16 April 2009 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the update. Now for some more responses :)
 * CSS:
 * 1. Due to how the extension works, the way we have it at the moment gives the lowest page load size. If we put it all in separate CSS files it'll need to be loaded every time a user visits a page, regardless of whether he plans to edit the categories. I do understand the issue of having to use !important for everything, so we'll have a think on this.
 * 2. I've passed this on to the guy who did the CSS. Will see about getting back to you on this.
 * Bugs:
 * 1. After some testing we found that this is due to the database giving us categories that only temporarily existed, even when only redlinked - e.g. see the initial edit on . Very odd, and somewhat annoying. We're going to see how we can fix this. Ideally, it should only suggest from the list on Special:Categories.
 * 2. Not sure why I didn't see this issue before, but confirmed and ticketed it, along with another situation where the popup wouldn't disappear.
 * Other points:
 * 1. We do provide the ability for users to switch off CS via their user preferences. We do not want to prevent people from being able to use wikitext, as it will always be the most powerful editing method ... don't worry, we won't take away the old editor.
 * 3. I shall try and paraphrase what I have been told:
 * There are many problems with tracking what user writes using JS
 * A simple example that can cause problems:
 * Now the user changes 'a' to 'b' in the CS tool. We have to replace it in wiki editor but: we can't do a simple search/replace - we need to find the exact category (in this case - the second one), so we would need to parse the whole wikitext in JS to know the context.
 * Note, this is just a simple case.
 * It's possible we could use AJAX and do this on server side, but that would mean an AJAX call every time user change any char in the editor - but that would kill us. :)
 * Thanks again! 18:07, 16 April 2009 (UTC)
 * It's possible we could use AJAX and do this on server side, but that would mean an AJAX call every time user change any char in the editor - but that would kill us. :)
 * Thanks again! 18:07, 16 April 2009 (UTC)


 * CSS:
 * 1. Well, static CSS files are usually cached by the browser and don't cause additional traffic per page call. That's why you have to do a CRTL+Reload after changes to the CSSs. And maybe you could also merge it with this allinone.css mechanism (I don't know how it works). Also if you keep this argument strict, this would also mean: Load the CSS stuff for all seldom visited special pages only if you actually visit these page. As far as I know you usually don't do this because it doesn't really pay off.
 * Other points:
 * 1. Thanks. Haven't noticed you added it to the preferences.
 * 3. Ah, I see now. I was supposing you alread have a full Mediwiki parser (or some dirty hack) in javascript, which you are using when you toggle from "Code view" to "Visual view", but you are doing an ajax call there. I know about the parsing problematic: The parser is usually wrong, unless you are using a parser generator, and even then you still need people who really know what they are doing. So this isn't an option.
 * --Justme2 15:02, 19 April 2009 (UTC)


 * Update on the bugs - both should be fixed on our end, and are just awaiting the next available code release. The fix for the category suggestions is to use only the list from Special:Categories. 12:42, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

New features for the Welcome bot
Hi all,

We've been listening to your feedback regarding the welcome tool, and I'm pleased to let you know that we have added some additional features based on that feedback which are now available:
 * Bot edits: If you'd prefer not to see the welcome messages in your wiki's recent changes, you can ask a Wikia staff member to flag User:Wikia as a bot.


 * Enabling and disabling anon welcomes / user pages: You can edit MediaWiki:Welcome-enabled to set which pieces of the welcome you want to enable. The default message says: "page-user message-anon message-user". You can remove any of those phrases to disable part of the welcome tool.
 * Taking out "page-user" will stop the welcome tool from creating user pages for logged-in contributors.
 * Taking out "message-anon" will stop the tool from leaving welcome messages for anonymous IPs.
 * Taking out "message-user" will stop the tool from leaving welcome messages for logged-in contributors.


 * @sysop: MediaWiki:Welcome-user now supports an @sysop option, which tells the bot to always sign the message as an admin rather than a staff member or helper, even if the staff member or helper is the most recent contributor.


 * $4: You can use $4 to add the name of the person that you're welcoming to the message. For example, you can customize MediaWiki:Welcome-message-user to say: "Hi, $4 -- welcome to the wiki!"


 * Block the bot: You can now disable the welcome messages by blocking User:Wikia. It was already possible to disable it using the MediaWiki message so this is a bit redundant, but the bot now respects blocks.


 * Talking to yourself: Welcome messages will no longer be left for users with flags such as sysop, bureaucrat, bot, staff, or helper. This is mainly because in some cases users were welcoming themselves if they didn't have a talk page.

We are also evaluating some additional features, such as implementing a way for users who visit several different wikis to opt-out of receiving welcomes Wikia-wide, as well as some tweaks to how the bot selects whether to sign as a local sysop or a Wikia staff member. I should be able to provide more updates about whether these are possible some time next week.

If you have any questions or comments, please contact a Wikia staff member. Thanks! --KyleH (talk) 22:14, 20 March 2009 (UTC)


 * If annon can be excluded, i can reactivate this on fr.guildwars. We (or I) likes to keep an eye on them because about 66% (or more) of anon edit are vandalism or so. So, when i welcome them i use that accept a custom message and a sig as parameter. (I have done this template and another for logged-in users just a few week before the welcome tool was annonced, duh! Now i'll try to see if i can copy and adapt it for the tool.) — TulipVorlax 00:02, 22 March 2009 (UTC)


 * Please also consider allowing sysops who do not wish to be referenced in the welcome message to opt-out of being selected by the @latest option. (Requested by a colleague.) The interim workaround is to use a static username instead.
 * Now I think of it some more ... simply allowing more than one static username to be listed in an opt-in (volunteer) fashion and have the automatically generated welcome message use whichever of those usernames was most recently active would seem like a much better (more generic) solution. That way users who are not sysops can also volunteer to be named in those automatic welcome messages as an optional point of contact. This might serve to share the mentor responsibility without creating the unnecessary impression that a mentor must be a sysop. 60.225.224.199 00:36, 22 March 2009 (UTC)


 * On my part, i think it could be better that this automatic welcome would not "fake" anynone sing but send users to a list of admins to contact for problems and questions. — TulipVorlax 01:13, 22 March 2009 (UTC)


 * I suppose it is easy enough to specify "Wikia" as the static username to be cited. Then you simply modify the message templates to not refer the newcomer to Wikia's talk page at all. (other than in the signature, I guess)
 * I respect my sysop colleague's wish not be named in these auto welcome messages but if I put on the hat of a complete newcomer to the wiki community and I visualize from that newcomer's perspective arriving at a community where the most recently active admins don't seem to want you to approach them ... well ... I can see how that might be interpreted as a less than sincere welcome.
 * So long as you have one active sysop who doesn't mind being named as the static signatory then it's no problem. The problem arises when that static signatory is no longer active! najevi 01:28, 22 March 2009 (UTC)
 * I don't object to welcoming new users (I did that fairly frequently on Wookieepedia before this feature was added) but I don't really like an automatic process signing my username to a message I didn't write myself. &mdash;Silly Dan (talk) 13:49, 22 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Oh you've read my mind Silly Dan, thanks you. Lol. ;-) — TulipVorlax 05:20, 23 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Oh but thats a relative issue lets say for example

Hi,

Welcome to thanks for your edit on $1 page.

Bla bla bla, if you need any help please contact any for the following users in their talk page. User:,
 * The feature does not forces (or does it?) for a signature so there are options like directing to the sysops page on listusers, or to a forum or to a set of links its all in how you write your msg can be as effective --
 * Wow ! You too !
 * That is what i wanted to try.
 * Currently, it is activated on the wikis where i'm sysop but i did not created the messages yet. I'm bein a bit lazy and have more importants things to do. — TulipVorlax 10:21, 23 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Yeah, I'm actually very happy with the welcome bot on Wookieepedia now that it leaves unsigned messages. I just wanted to explain why some people may dislike automatically signed messages, even though the unsigned messages are striking other users as impersonal and unwelcoming. &mdash;Silly Dan (talk) 11:51, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

Categories wrapped in noinclude tags
The tool automatically changes the way categories are listed when they are wrapped in noinclude tags (see here for an example), but still leaves the noinclude tags. This also makes unnecessary whitespace when the page is transcluded (see here), since they are on a different line. The multiple noinclude tags is redundant in my opinion. :X Can something be done about this? --D. (talk · contr) 17:21, 21 March 2009 (UTC)
 * So that's what that was -- I've been seeing that and wondering. -- ◄mendel► 21:50, 21 March 2009 (UTC)


 * As we move the categories to the end of the wikitext, to edit them without removing them from the page text, we have to preserve the tags. It shouldn't be causing extra space though - I'll pass it on, see if there's something we can do about it. 12:59, 25 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Just in case anyone asks, I've decided to use  (by wrapping all to-be-transcluded content), although I'd hope something can be done with   if it is possible. Afaik, it has always created whitespace before for transclusion, so I don't know if this can be fixed within the tool. --D. (talk · contr) 17:45, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

[BUG] Edit view pre-processor deletes category tags from within <tt>pre../pre</tt> tags
This is not easy to demonstrate because of the problem with whatever pre-processor that I am reporting as bugged however, I'll do my best to describe it.

At my user page (see Skills section) I share wiki markup code snippets to help contributors understand how to create a new page for some specific part of the wiki. I enclose those code snippets in <tt>pre../pre</tt> HTML tags for obvious reasons. In the past all wiki markup code enclosed within <tt>pre../pre</tt> tags is left unchanged by "whatever parser".


 * Often it is necessary to communicate what category tag should be used. Until now that could be done by including the traditional wiki markup, viz. <tt> Category:Name of  category</tt>, for a category tag within that <tt>pre../pre</tt> block. FYI in BOTH code snippets below there OUGHT to be _two_ lines of code. The first line survives but the second line which contains a traditional category tag is removed as soon as the page is next opened for edit.

The next line ought to show <tt> Category:Name of  category</tt> but does not.

It displays correctly while in edit preview and even displays correctly after the initial save but ... the second line is removed as soon as you open the page for subsequent edit. The result is that you see only the following in a subsequent edit view:

The next line ought to show <tt> Category:Name of  category</tt> but does not.

... and of course the host page is added to the category: "Name of category"


 * Since Category Select feature was introduced "whatever" pre-processor that creates the Category Select GUI for edit mode appears to remove these literal category tags from within the <tt>pre../pre</tt> block and mistakenly assigns that tag to the host page. Clearly that was not the original intent.

So I think that the "edit view pre-processor" (or whatever parser) needs to recognize and respect the <tt>pre../pre</tt> HTML tags and refrain from removing those traditional wiki markup forms of the category tags. najevi 01:15, 22 March 2009 (UTC)


 * Yep, I see it too, and I think you're right. We'll get that sorted. Thanks! 13:03, 25 March 2009 (UTC)

Translation
Where can I translate some new words used for these features? --Cywil 15:22, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

Disadvantages on the new category
In the es dofus wiki i think this is the 2nd time some one answers using the category feature --


 * That's not a disadvantage, that's just noob (or just plain dumb) users. Just explain them what they did wrong and they hopefully won't do it again. 14:49, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

D'oh. Any ideas how that might caused or avoided? 13:09, 25 March 2009 (UTC)


 * It's human error, not Wikia error. I don't see anything that you can do. Simply put, some "noobs" don't know what categories are. --Michaeldsuarez (Talk) (Deeds) 13:18, 25 March 2009 (UTC)

However, if it happened more than once, perhaps some part of the tool or that wiki in particular is somehow implying that it can be used that way. // masterConjurer ( Talk ) _ 13:23, 25 March 2009 (UTC)


 * The idea for this feature, is to help noobs to participate by adding categories more easily, and since noobs are doing this, then we are watching paradox where the feature is creating an issue that a human is doing because its seeing the feature. Also may i note that the ones i have seen are by IP users, so been able to teach them properly is as successful as doing long term IP bans.
 * Also this wiki is poorly configure since non of the old admins know how do it, recently (2 days) i was named sysops to help fight vandalism so it has all wikia defaults so if some one has imply something is wikia not the wiki, thought for me its as clear as it could be.
 * Now to answer Kirkburn, I think the cause is because its simply there and is easier to go and type what you want to say there instead of scrolling the article text_box. Ideas on how to prevent it, well thats hard i thought to size limit the characters per category but some wikis like to have long names so then i thought well the feature could check if the category exists but then would be annoying when adding categories that have not been created. Or both ideas and this extra screening will only affects IP users that have add something by means of this feature. I thought the took has suggesting capabilities but then i remember wikia has already try with clouds --

I wonder if it is possible to disable talk page categories for the whole wiki. // masterConjurer ( Talk ) _ 14:04, 25 March 2009 (UTC)


 * Dev side? yes, sysops side not disable but, yes to hide it, i have hide for forum talk pages the same way they did for central --

Exactly. If the newbies/anons can't find the category button, how do they manage to mess that up? // masterConjurer ( Talk ) _ 14:08, 25 March 2009 (UTC)


 * But you're loosing perspective my intentions is not to say "hey this feature is evil" as it seems thats what you are reading, im just stating the fact that i had 2 edits that i saw that they use this feature as msg box instead on how is intended. That is call a flaw and talk pages are calculated flaws where they are design so the article is not clog with comments, so in other words talk pages are comment spots contrary to "add category" feature. The feature is not hidden on the wiki i post nor disable by wikia so i don't see the point of your hidden comment, since im striving to note a flaw/disadvantage of the feature. Like the fact of the welcome feature that thanks vandals for vandalizing a page --

Note: CS should not be enabled on talk pages anyway, and so far as I can tell, it isn't. The idea of disabling it on the Forum namespace is intriguing, and sounds fairly sensible - I'll bring that up. 11:41, 26 March 2009 (UTC)


 * I have not seen CS it on talk pages, and disabling for forums would be a good idea. PD. 3rd edit using the CS feature as a comment box --
 * AHHHH NOW I SEE WHY >.> first i was confuse since i only saw it when editing pages, but now i see it's on all the pages, well it looks like some forums quick responses/comment --

Okay, now I'm a little confused. I have been informed that CategorySelect should only show on the main, user and image namespaces. Is it being seen elsewhere? 11:47, 27 March 2009 (UTC)


 * The issue is that some people instead of using edit are using "add category" to add something that is not a category. All this on main namespace. As it looks like the "instant reply" that certain forums have like http://www.invisionpower.com/ not our wikia-forums --

New plan: Let's actually get a "instant reply" interface for users to use on forums. That would be cool. --Michaeldsuarez (Talk) (Deeds) 13:33, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

However, how do we stop this from happening on the main namespace without removing the feature? --Michaeldsuarez (Talk) (Deeds) 13:37, 27 March 2009 (UTC)


 * Simply limit the feature to only be able to add existing categories (that have a page). If someone tries to add a category that doesn't exist, give them an error message. 14:25, 27 March 2009 (UTC)
 * And Michaeldsuarez' idea is good. An "add comment" button (in addition to the edit button) next to the title of sections on talk/forum pages would be awesome. 14:28, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

I think his idea was more like the instant reply where at the bottom of the page there is a window/box where you just type what you want to reply and click save with out having to click reply(in wikis "edit") and then save --


 * And why is enabled in the User: namespace? --Ciencia Al Poder (talk) -WikiDex 19:53, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

A popular reason is the language categories, like Category:User en. // masterConjurer ( Talk ) _ 20:02, 27 March 2009 (UTC)


 * @Cizagna: if this feature was to be implemented, there would need to be separate comment boxes for each section of the talk page, amrite? 21:34, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

@Ose: Yes in the wiki way, no in the forum way. Wikis way is to divide subjects into sections and that way people can just answer what they are interested in a clear example is/are villagepumps where basically the forum its contain in a single page. Forums on the other hand are subjects per page where answer and comments are add to the bottom, The issue arise when a subjects bifurcates in different ways what forums do is "quoting" so its known what is that person talking about a simple manual addition of what you are talking about from our part like you did with the "Cizagna:".

@Michaeldsuarez:I already give some ideas that where the feature checks for true existing categories or/and checks for the size (a 50 character category is not normal well not for me) or/and do this filtering to IP users only and exhibit as another advantage on signing up/registering to wikia.

--


 * I think I know what you mean by the quick reply idea. It doesn't sound it would only apply to talk pages, but would also be quite good for normal article section editing. For example, you click "edit" on the section, and the edit window opens up right there (via JS) instead of having to take you to a new page. I totally have to go note this down :)
 * As for the thoughts about why/how CS is being used incorrectly, keep it coming - very useful feedback to read. 08:53, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

More edits/examples of users(IP) using improperly the CS feature... -- -- -- --
 * put the recipe of the cloak please [this page at the end got deleted]
 * very usefull
 * how do i get it, tell me, Weapons of and magical reduction equipement [this last one is useful in the english version]
 * it looks like other thing
 * now
 * [ops wrong one]
 * look with weapons is good to have a fire or earth kwak [game term] or what ever but if you are intelligence the god rod [game term] o another staff of the set equipemnt of int damage (mage)[game term]
 * tends to normally give as loot, pincers and water Lots of water


 * What kinds of things are the users saying? I don't speak Spanish, unfortunately. Is it a language issue - that is, is the category bar showing in English? Are they responding to the article, or trying to summarize it, or something? 13:11, 16 April 2009 (UTC)

There i have add a translation of the category text inside the category code inside the [] are comments i made, like i told since the start, people are using it as a "quick post/edit". why? i already give possible reasons but i dont know for me its just because its there, that wiki has zero customization. --


 * Thanks! That does help :) 11:49, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

This one is an interesting edit here at central --


 * Perhaps it should be made impossible to put non-existent categories on pages. That should more or less remove the inappropriate ones. -- Sixorish 21:21, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

I gave that idea already but with a twist that it should only apply to IP users, as users are easy to teach compare to IP users. And would be another bonus on becoming a register user. The technical problem i see is that if the article has already categories that dont exist it will cause problems. -- -- --
 * In this island mobs of monsters appear
 * [this is basically a user creating a link]
 * be careful he can use liberation [gameterm]
 * atacks
 * [This ones are to long do you really want me to translate them?]


 * It's okay, the ones you have provided so far have been useful to look at. 14:18, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

Any way since i keep reverting them i will keep adding them here (to express my annoyance) with no translations -- --
 * 
 * [page got deleted]
 * [page got deleted]
 * at guildopedia


 * 


 * The last two look more about adding categories that don't exist. That suggests two main issues: using them for discussion and creating redlinks. However, for the second, I'm not sure we'd want to prevent that, but I do like the idea of giving some indication that a red link is being created. 12:10, 27 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Well so far to me this feature has only give more troubles than usefulness. Like i said in the past the best solution is to add a filter make it like category select that only will allow categories that already exist. And that filter only apply to IP users for normal users dont require to be filter like i said its easier to teach a user than to teach an random IP.
 * 


 * The issue I see with that, is that it can actually result in a worse editing experience for anon users, because they can no longer freely add categories. While I understand for a wiki like yours, you already have an excellent category system - but there are many that don't. If we prevent anons from being able to create and build up categories, it can be a big issue for the wiki's development. However, I still like the idea of showing users that the category they're adding does not exist, somehow - though I am not sure of an easily understood way to do so. 10:16, 5 May 2009 (UTC)


 * The worst part of this situation is that for me this feature i see it has usefulness with the massive categorization of Images pages and restructuring of Category pages that i need to do later on the wikis i manage, thats where i see where the tool is really useful and saves me the hassle of entering edit on every single page but not on article pages. And you may be right small wikis may benefit from it but as many wikis tend to start categorizing by template rather than page, its more efficient and consistent. There is no easy way unless another popup appear informing that. Guess i will have to start thinking on removal of this tool via CSS so it can be use where it will be needed or requesting removal of this feature on the wikis i manage as the benefits dont cut the extra work load im been having reverting them --
 * Update: Since i hide the Add category feature that appears on the Main namespace pages (note: this does not remove when editing so its still working) my issues with this went down dramatically i only had 2 vandals... adding weird categories in the whole time since i hide it compare to the almost daily additions of useless comment focus categories --

Was the Welcome Bot tipsy earlier?
See. -- <font color="Green">LordTBT <font color="Green" size="2">Talk! 03:35, 28 March 2009 (UTC)


 * Yup! We were working on fixing something yesterday, but the fix didn't work, and there were a couple hours where everybody was being welcomed by @latest. We figured out what was wrong, and rolled back the change. Sorry about that. That sort of thing always happens with a brand-new feature -- there are temporary bumps when it rolls out live. -- <font color="Blue">Danny (<font color="Blue" size="1">talk ) 22:32, 28 March 2009 (UTC)

This same thing happened with this> http://ogame.wikia.com/wiki/User_talk:Dekker500 <, ie the bot welcomed a user who was not new. --Master Bob 18:03, 12 April 2009 (UTC)


 * This is not a bug. Despite the fact that the autosummary displays welcoming new contributor, the welcome tool welcomes any contributor whose talk page doesn't exist yet. So if you delete the talk page of a user and the user make an edit it will get welcomed again --Ciencia Al Poder (talk) -WikiDex 10:06, 13 April 2009 (UTC)

Disable Wikia Welcome Tool via preferences
As a clean solution to, simply: Make the users the ability to disable it across wikia via Special:Preferences.

It's extremely easy to do this. Look for example, and get the user preferences via:

if($this->mUser->getOption('disablehawelcome') == true) { // User disabled it. Do not welcome! }

So please, let us to disable it via preferences. --Ciencia Al Poder (talk) -WikiDex 19:12, 28 March 2009 (UTC)


 * This is definitely something that we're working on. I don't have a date right now when that'll happen, because we're heading into the MediaWiki 1.14 upgrade, and the engineers are going to be really busy for a couple weeks. But this request is high on my list of things to take care of, and when I have more information, I'll let you know! -- <font color="Blue">Danny (<font color="Blue" size="1">talk ) 22:33, 28 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Thanks, nice to know people are working on this, all the best — RC-1136 Hate Mail Here 16:05, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

Category Select not in categories?
I was going to order a couple of categories (like +50) so i switch to monaco skin to go and enjoy the CS feature there where i think it can be useful for easy category organization as i dont have to edit every single page as category pages are mostly fill with categories (dur....) and seems like its not there why? --


 * Category Select should be enabled only in main, category and image namespace. These are the namespaces where categorization is more useful, while the user: namespace is not worth to have CategorySelect extension enabled, because it's not content namespaces, and often user categories are inserted via userboxes. I don't know why User: has categorySelect enabled while other namespaces not. --Ciencia Al Poder (talk) -WikiDex 14:57, 3 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Don't forget video namespace. -- ◄mendel► 20:52, 4 April 2009 (UTC)


 * We want to try and keep the new editor (where enabled) and CategorySelect on at the same time, for a fairly consistent experience. That being said, enabling CS (and thus the new editor) for the category and video namespaces makes sense - they're fairly normal articles, generally without weird coding. For the user namespace - we feel this is still a fairly "normal" article, though I realize categorization is not a large part of the user experience. Even so, not all users will want to use userboxes, and we don't really want newbies finding a different editing experience between their user pages and articles. 12:23, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

Welcome Bot Suggestion/Issue
If the first thing someone does is upload a file, they are not welcomed. -- <font color="Green">LordTBT <font color="Green" size="2">Talk! 04:18, 10 April 2009 (UTC)


 * I noticed that too on fr.guildwars and was wondering if i set it up properly. — TulipVorlax 07:22, 10 April 2009 (UTC)


 * I may have disagree since i had seen a couple of IP users that are editing and article and because they want to put an image they register so basically that their first contribution --


 * See the last few uploads of fr.guildwars. Look the history of their talk. It's me who had to welcome them...
 * This is all i know. — TulipVorlax 01:56, 11 April 2009 (UTC)

If they only upload an image, it's not exactly an "edit". However, I think I understand the issue - the tool is only looking out for article edits, rather than events in logs (e.g. the upload log). I'll pass it on. 12:55, 14 April 2009 (UTC)


 * Yeah, that's a good one; thanks for bringing it up! There's a short list of welcome tool fixes that we want to make once the MediaWiki upgrade is finished, so this will go on the list. -- <font color="Blue">Danny (<font color="Blue" size="1">talk ) 16:47, 14 April 2009 (UTC)


 * Kirkburn: Well uploading an image its a 2 part thing one is the image upload and the other is the image page that its created hence why the welcome tool welcomes when an image its upload, and every time an image its re-upload the page its modify as the any image page history can witness. So an idea is that the Welcome tool does a cross reference between the log and the edit and determinate its the same so it ignores it. Or MediaWiki some how tell the welcome tool its just an upload. Or disable welcome tool from images... --


 * Still acting wonky...it welcomed one IP, but not others. -- <font color="Green">LordTBT  <font color="Green" size="2">Talk! 04:31, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

Welcome Message additions
I'd like to suggest the addition of $5. This would be the most recent admin's name (same guy as $2 and $3 for talk pages and full sigs respectively). It would be nice to be able to simply put in a name, as opposed to a full name, date, etc, so that you could do something like:
 * Currently, the administrator $5 is active. Click on their name to access an administrator's "talk page", where you can add a message if you have further questions.

Right now, you can't easily do that. -- sulfur 21:52, 14 April 2009 (UTC)


 * That's odd, someone just asked the same thing on Wikia Help ... are you in cahoots? ;) It sounds like a fairly cool idea - will pass it on to Danny. 13:00, 15 April 2009 (UTC)


 * I have a better idea for all this. Just take the variable that adds the signature with the admin's name now, and split it up into separate components, e.g. a name, a time, a date, etc. That way, one could put their custom-made signature into the message, and then use the time and date variables at the end. -- <font color="Green">LordTBT <font color="Green" size="2">Talk! 18:41, 15 April 2009 (UTC)
 * I like this idea. I've been banging my head against a wall for an hour trying to figure out a way to present a message with my custom sig, yet still having a timestamp until i realized, it can't be done with the current system. It'd also be nice if instead of what it currently does, $3 were to check the admin's preferences for how their sig should appear and put that in. (in other words, it'd be as if whoever's name appears there had typed 4 tildes.) &mdash; DeFender1031*Talk 08:33, 24 June 2009 (UTC)