Forum:Why can't we know every change going on around here?

It's come to my attention that the Watch button image just got changed from binoculars to a star. I was never informed of this change, and was quite surprised as a result. Additionally, the rating icon just got changed from stars to hearts, and I didn't even ask for the change. I realize now that every change that Wikia makes, no one is alerted/supposed to be alerted, which brings up the question: "Why are we left in the dark?" Anyone have a good answer to this question? R A N 1  (talk • contributions) 19:10, April 28, 2010 (UTC)
 * Please, stay calm. The search icon was a mistake in the CSS not uploading at the same image as the image it was fixed quickly, and a refresh of your browser should fix it. As for the the hearts, lets keep that discussion over there. Wikia staff do try their best to keep users (admins too) in the loop. We cant always announce every minor change, or people would get numb to them, also some changes are rapid "lets see what happens, will this help or hurt?" tests, that are changed weekly. We need some flex room to try out new things. Feedback is greatly needed, but it needs to be seen. Forums are great for user chatting, but if you want to make sure that staff see your message, fire it off to Special:Contact so that we have trackable proof to show the other teams that we've gotten X complaints about a feature and it needs to be changed. --Uberfuzzy 19:21, April 28, 2010 (UTC)
 * I posted the request to this in a calm fashion; I don't see why you're telling me this. On the other hand, a list of changes that do go permanent would be nice to see here; I'd feel a lot more comfortable when I see that, that's all I'm saying. R A N 1  (talk • contributions) 19:42, April 28, 2010 (UTC)


 * Minor question - So if we don't like a new feature or a change, we should send the team an e-mail saying "I don't like this change" ? -- LordTBT Talk! 07:04, April 29, 2010 (UTC)

I'm with him here, a list of permanent updated changes would be nice. -- Light Daxter |  Talk  19:47, April 28, 2010 (UTC)

I can see advantages to the feature, but the overall implementation of them, especially in terms of documenting them, is sorely lacking. Every time something like this is done, we end up having to spend 2-3 hours trying to come up with a decent workaround for it, time that could be better spent improving articles instead ... Telling us in advance and showing us what changes what makes us happy clients. Telling us after and then taking your time to actually document it makes us very annoyed clients.''"
 * I also agree with RAN1's request. It is not fun to have to keep up with the layout errors generated by these sudden unannounced changes. Aside from the icons being changed, which is odd but not really bad, the changes to the Activity and Watchlist tabs at Special:MyHome obviously didn't take into account the color schemes of wikis with darker backgrounds. (Example) I understand what you are saying, about wanting us to send you these error reports through Special:Contact, but the issue isn't with the changes, the issue is that the Admins who care are not being informed beforehand. Some people in the past, in comments on staff blogs (like this one), have also requested better communication on these matters. Let me quote them for you:
 * ''"It would be exceptionally nice if changes like this were documented so that they can be tested on different skins (ie, ones that aren't the basic default) to ensure that they don't look out of place when added to Wikis that don't use the default and standard skin exactly as is.
 * -Sulfur
 * "This might be the wrong place for a comment like this, but why aren't feature changes like this being sent out to admins as global messages to our talk pages? I know it's not a major change, but it would be nice to have a "gee, we changed this" or a "please check the staff blog for a feature update.""
 * -Topher208
 * "But as has been said above notification of new features would be nice rather than randomly by chance finding info from a post in the forum section."
 * -BulldozerD11
 * I understand that this change was a relatively minor one, but even so it is annoying not to be informed of something that directly affects our sites. I would really appreciate it if there were some kind of list we could sign up to that would send updates to the admins who really care about it. You say "We cant always announce every minor change, or people would get numb to them" so just limit the updates to people who want to know. If there were some kind of RSS feed to publish this information I would gladly take advantage of it. ~Gardimuer 20:30, April 28, 2010 (UTC)


 * Agree with the above, a number of templates broke on our main page without my realization when they were working fine previously, perhaps because the older codes were more tolerant of 'loose' coding. Now I have to run through all the pages every now and then just to check whether other templates have broken down, and I don't even know when these 'changes' will end, if ever, which means I just have to add my edits blindly and keep my fingers crossed that I don't have to re-edit/re-do the template again 1 week later> I highlighted this 'inform before implementation' issue in the recent email survey they sent us Gin-san (Talk) 11:02, April 30, 2010 (UTC)


 * To be fair, one really shouldn't blame Wikia for breaking the appearance of templates that were utilising wikitext/HTML that had problems in the first place (e.g. if you aren't closing your tags properly, expect the template to break sometime). In any case, if lots of templates utilise the same styles, then they should have a unified style defined in Common.css, and that would save having to go through each and every one in the case the way something shows up in CSS changes. On the other hand, notifications of changes aren't perfect (probably never will, really), and there's always room to improve on that. Often, I only realise changes will happen with some post hidden away in a forum or talk page many never see. :P The 888th Avatar   (talk)  12:42, April 30, 2010 (UTC)

I've added a suggestion / idea for discussion on the subject of wikia update notification in the blogs section. Here To put the idea into a more general 'public' arena & invite comments on the idea. - BulldozerD11 14:19, April 30, 2010 (UTC)


 * I'm not sure whether to post here or on BulldozerD11's blog post....


 * So Uber said it well, but I just wanted to add: we are listening and appreciate all of your feedback. The feedback we get here, on the blog and through emails, really helps us, and we thank you all for letting us know what you think. And this type of feedback is just one way we gather information about how users view the site. We also track a lot of activity to learn how the wider community (who contact us a lot less than the group that use Central) are using features, and how changes affect their activity.


 * Remember, we also make all the changes made to the code fully public. I know that most people won't be able to follow that, but possibly those that can could pass on the interesting bits to the rest of the community? I think that's a more viable solution than asking us to give daily notes on changes. Things happen fast here, and we need to have the flexibility to develop the site for everyone... newbies, anons, new founders, and oldbies combined. We'll keep working ot improve our communication, but I don't think we will ever be able to communicate every tweak and update in advance -- sannse (talk) 00:54, May 1, 2010 (UTC)


 * Well, in fact there's a RELEASE-NOTES of Wikia changes. Not sure if all those changes are documented. --Ciencia Al Poder (talk) -WikiDex 08:33, May 1, 2010 (UTC)


 * Not all changes are documented, that's right.


 * Remember, we also make all the changes made to the code fully public.
 * This is an interesting claim. It could even be true, but since I'm not a Wikia staff member, I can't say for sure. What I can say, however, is that certain bits of Wikia codebase are not open source and thus accessible by the general public. Let me demonstrate this with a few select examples.


 * Vital parts of Answers codebase. For example, the new Answers skin (used on sites such as Wikianswers Doctors) is not open source, although some open-source code parts refer to it (see r21847 to see what I mean. Then again, it could be possible that after the new Answers skin was coded, no changes were made to it, but honestly, I find that very hard to believe. I asked on Wikianswers about this new Answers skin and the question hasn't yet been answered.
 * Old social code used on ArmchairGM. I had a long discussion with Jimmy Wales and Gil Penchina about this earlier this year. The end result is history, but it saddens me very much. Having developed the SocialProfile MediaWiki extension further, I can say that the code is a bit difficult to understand at first, but once you get used to it, reading it won't be difficult. One tech from Wikia's tech team could have been assigned to make sure that there are no passwords etc. info in the files, but no, paid techs apparently have higher priorities. Surely it doesn't take more than a few hours to grep the ArmchairGM social extension files for the passwords used by Wikia currently and after verifying that the files contain no passwords, publish the files. And I can't do it myself remotely, because of trust issues &mdash; which I can obviously understand. According to Wikipedia, Wikia paid $2 million to purchase ArmchairGM. What's the idea of paying a lot of money for code you aren't going to use and/or open source? I've said it before and I'll say it again: it would be a real shame if all those cool social extensions used on ArmchairGM would be lost forever.
 * Some code parts currently used by Wikia that cannot be found on the public SVN. A nice example of this is the script that updates TagsReport data. That data isn't updated automatically but rather by some kind of a script, which isn't in Wikia's public SVN. When I asked (RT #44807) if someone from Wikia staff could add this script to the public SVN so that non-Wikia users could use TagsReport one day, I was told that almost all new code is released there and older code may be moved there one day, but the script wasn't added then and still hasn't been. I'm quite sure that this isn't the only such case.


 * It would be best for everyone if Wikia would make sure that the claims about Wikia's open-sourceness are true. You've written some great extensions and other things (such as ArmchairGM's default skin) that really could help other MediaWiki developers, if they only were open source. --Jack Phoenix (Contact) 12:44, May 1, 2010 (UTC)
 * Yes, I'm sorry, I misspoke there somewhat (the downside of the non-techy-type talking on technical issues). Most of Wikia's code is publically available. We do at times have code in different places, and some of that code hasn't been transferred to the public space. The Answers code is likely to go in to the public system soon - that's actively being used, and taking the time to move it will help our developers as well as making it open for others. And LyricWiki's code has already been released (it wasn't open source before the wiki moved to Wikia). But as for older code: yes, Jack, paid techs do have higher priorities than finding and cleaning up old and obsolete code so that it can be released for your use. I'm pretty sure it's safe to say that the majority of users on Wikia would much rather our guys spend their time fixing stuff on Wikia or developing new features. -- sannse (talk) 18:14, May 3, 2010 (UTC)


 * Open-Source has little to do with the topic here, the topic here is being informed of changes. And sannse's comment had nothing to do with open-source "making changes fully public" != open-source. The code in question is in svn, so even without updating the RELEASE-NOTES logs are available, since svn has logs of code changes, in fact changes to the codebase are reported to #wikia-dev (which few people appear to bother joining) in real time in the same way changes to the mediawiki codebase are. Yesterday I found out Wikia seams to be working on something to do with FBConnect through that. ~ NOTASTAFF Daniel Friesen (DanTMan, Nadir Seen Fire) (talk) (tricks) (current topic) May 1, 2010 @ 19:13 (UTC)


 * Errr. I know this is getting off topic now, but after I asked Wikia to join FB Connect a few times, now you're a little too late guys. Facebook announced they were killing FB Connect in favor of OpenGraph a few weeks ago. -- LordTBT Talk! 09:11, May 2, 2010 (UTC)


 * Oooh, thanks for that tidbit LordTBT. We were going to integrate FBConnect into our auth system whenever we started that at work. Now I know to prefer a contractor with OAuth experience over someone with FBConnect experience. ~ NOTASTAFF Daniel Friesen (DanTMan, Nadir Seen Fire) (talk) (tricks) May 2, 2010 @ 10:01 (UTC)
 * From what I understand, that change won't affect our work on FB Connect. See here for the work that Sean and others are doing to update and integrate the system with MediaWiki -- sannse (talk) 18:14, May 3, 2010 (UTC)
 * Whatever happens, I will be very excited if Wikia becomes integrated with Facebook in the near future. I think it opens up a major door to new contributors. -- <font color="Green">LordTBT <font color="Green" size="2">Talk! 22:23, May 3, 2010 (UTC)
 * I subscribe to the RSS feed of changes to Wikia's release notes, and before I used RSS for almost everything, I checked it every weekday. Previously, it did not announce new extensions and skins, changes to unreleased extensions and skins or a few other changes such as jQuery upgrades. Recently, this seems to have been changing with extensions such as IE6PhaseOut.
 * Also, Sannse noted that some community members might be able to announce notable changes to Wikia's code to the rest of the community. Although there have not been any notes that I would consider to be worth telling others about, nor would I have a place to, doing so would be easier if the release notes were licensed under the CC-BY-SA. All in all, I give the release notes being tacos. Beep21 22:58, May 3, 2010 (UTC)