Forum:Wikia's New Style

Communitytest is open! Check out how the new ad format will look. Feel free to copy over pages and templates from your wiki, to experiment with the new format.

Discussion
Please discuss Wikia's New Style here!

Archive of previous discussion

Freaking Terrible it is


First of all, this new version of Monaco is horrible, The artistic style of Monaco is being lost, and all because of advertisers. You know if I were a Wikia Staff member. I would keep it the way it is and add an ad on the bottom of every article and on the sidbar itself. That should satisfy your advetisers instead of going for substance over style. This is how my wiki looks.

How would the new wiki look change that, it's congruent, has a consistent flow. This new monaco's going to ruin it all, we should have a vote. --Taylor Karras talk contributions 18:10, 8 June 2008 (UTC)


 * At this point we are planning to vote with our feet.
 * Wikia maintains the position that they - and not the communities - can act in "the good of the community" (their own good) by buying up domain names - domains which represent service marks established by the wiki administrators through their individual promotion of the site. They are not even using them - the only reason they have them is to prevent others using them. Nor are they are willing to deliver them over to the rightful owners of the mark. Imagine if you found Dreamhost had thoughtfully bought up the name of your site just in case someone else tried to, and then when asked to hand it over said "well, who owns the site, really?" That's not what I call "protection" - it's extortion and domain-squatting.
 * Wikia may be able to host GFDL'd content with or without us, but if they are not willing to provide a service that meets our needs, and willfully act in opposition to our interests, we will not provide our services (or our good name) to them either. --GreenReaper(talk) 18:46, 8 June 2008 (UTC)


 * I figure Wikia is acting in this way because they want the community to be part of their value, rather than have them "just" be a hosting service, and for this to happen they need to maintain control of both the wikis and the communities that spring up around them. However, whether the users and contributors see it that way...


 * I imagine I'm probably not coming to any conclusion here that you haven't already come to yourself. --Silvermink 19:17, 8 June 2008 (UTC)


 * You're exactly right, as I see it. ElasticMuffin 19:25, 8 June 2008 (UTC)


 * It's probably not how the courts would see it, either. For a service, the basis for ownership is use of the mark in the sale or advertising of the service. Guess who's been doing that? The people promoting the site to their target communities - i.e., you and me. Wikia's involvement in this area is the exception, not the rule - they (rightly) expected the people founding the wiki to present it to their communities. They can't have their cake and eat it, though - if they don't do the work, they don't get the mark. --GreenReaper(talk) 19:29, 8 June 2008 (UTC)


 * I don't know about you, but I'm now desperately curious about how Wikia would describe their business model. --Silvermink 20:17, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

In reference to the new image you added at the right there, BladeBronson- what happened to this one? What is the actual front page going to look like, anyway? ElasticMuffin 19:56, 8 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Initially, mainpages will have a single leaderboard ad at the top of the page and will be fixed-width (my screenshot shows the fixed width, which will be essentially unnoticeable to folks running 1024x768 resolution). We'll work with you to prepare your mainpage layout for the 300x250 ad before turning it on. We've created some parser tags to help and have written a help article for how to use them. BladeBronson (talk) 05:02, 9 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Yeah. Except for the mainpage and various other pages that aren't articles. I don't see that much of an improvement over old monaco. Besides, it looks bad in my opinion. --Taylor Karras talk contributions 13:51, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

Jumping in
I just want to jump in here quickly with a couple of things. Firstly, it was mentioned over on Wookieepedia that they felt that most of the staff team weren't listening to, or caring about your comments. So I just want to assure you that other staff are reading here, and taking part in the discussion via those of us that are commenting. We just feel it's better not to get in each other's way as we talk here.

Secondly, there was a comment way up there ^ somewhere that the staff attutude to people leaving was: "that's sad, but there are always more users". This worried me because I think this may be a distortion of something I've said, it's most certainly not what I meant! What I have said, it that change is inevitable in any online communiy. And when it happens, yes, some users will leave. I've seen it happen here, and at Wikipedia, and at communities I took part in before. I was even one of those users in one case. It's sad, it's true, and it doesn't mean the community won't go on and continue to grow, and become stronger. Whatever the ins and outs of this discussion, that's always what I want for Wikia. -- sannse (talk) 21:11, 8 June 2008 (UTC)


 * "That which does not kill us makes us strong?" It's a nice idea, but Wikia isn't the cohesive community that you would like it to be. It is a company that provides a service to individual communities. The service it now wishes to provide is not acceptable to a large proportion of the diverse communities which are your customers. Please reconsider, or you will lose not users, but whole communities. --GreenReaper(talk) 21:56, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

GreenReaper,

I want to start by just telling you that you're admired by many here at Wikia. Everyone who met you in Boston at Wikimania, those who have interacted with you or reads your comments or seen what you've accomplished on WikiFur is impressed by you. You have a unique way with words, and great passion and integrity that we all appreciate and admire. For what it's worth, you have many fans within the Wikia team.

That said, you have always referred to Wikia as a wiki host - or a dumb provider of bandwith that you use on a cost-benefit basis. In your case - that may be true. You have tremendous technical skills as well as community knowledge that makes you fairly rare in this world. But - I choose to differ with your characterization of the Wikia team members who work passionately to support the communities on our site.

A successful wiki takes people with many skills. Some have deep content knowledge, some help with vandal fighting, others handle adminship duties or install extensions at the request of the community. We get involved with each of our communities, to the extent that people need it or want it. We join IRC chats, we answer questions, we install extensions, we scramble when the site is slow or a bug needs to be fixed. We pitch in to fix things after a MediaWiki upgrade.

Many of these are thankless tasks, just like adminship. In fact, I think you could compare your view of Wikia staff with the same view a content contributor might have of an admin. To someone who spends a lot of time writing long, detailed articles, it might seem like an admin doesn't "really participate" in the wiki, as if doing cleanup, welcoming new users, organizing content, tagging pages as stubs, etc. doesn't contribute as much to the whole.

Yet to say that our contribution is a commodity service that deserves no thanks, or that the people who do this are not part of the community, is an unfair comment to our team. When one of our guys sleeps overnight at the colo, it's because he's passionate about supporting the wikia communities. When Sannse gets up at 4am to help with vandal fighting or a conflict between users, it's because she feels she's a respected and valued member of the Wikia communities.

We don't believe that we're a hosting service. You linked to a cheap hosting service -- nearlyfreespeech.net -- and I went to check it out. I noticed a few things about their service.
 * They don't provide customer support.
 * The don't fix bugs.
 * They don't offer upgrades to your MediaWiki software or install extensions for you.
 * They don't help with search engine optimization.
 * If you have a spike in traffic -- don't worry -- they'll disable your site if the costs exceed the amount you deposited with them for fees.
 * There's no place to get help with templates, infoboxes or css if you want a little help as a newbie.

The more I looked at it, the clearer it became to me that I needed to make this post now, rather than quietly choosing to differ with you as I have in the past. We have chosen not to be a wiki host, but rather a hard working, tirelessly contributing member of each community on Wikia and an advocate for creating new communities, in the goal of creating a home for all the world's information. That is a much more expensive service, but one we believe is valued by the vast majority of our users.

If you choose to leave because you don't consider your experience at Wikia to be worthwhile, we will cheer you on from afar. If you choose to stay, I am happy to work with you to see if there is any creative ideas we can come up with for WikiFur. But I need you to show our team the same respect and admiration that they have for you.

Regards,

color="Blue">Gil (color="Blue" size="1">talk) 22:19, 8 June 2008 (UTC)


 * Thank you for your post, Gil. I appreciate your direct response, and also the work which Wikia has done for us in the past.


 * I do count several people at Wikia as my friends - and I hope that, whatever happens, we can remain friends. Over time, though, it has become clear that Wikia's objectives are not necessarily congruent to our own. My friends have recently been in the position of having to explain this as part of their duty as Wikia employees. I hope they understand that any anger I have expressed is not directed at them, but at the words that they have to say.


 * I also appreciate the service that Wikia has, up until now, provided to the communities of WikiFur and the Creatures Wiki. It is not the easiest of things to set up or maintain a wiki, and avoiding it was one of the reasons I came to Wikia for hosting in the first place. I have always been impressed with the level of technical and social talent that Wikia brought to the table, and I am sure that many will continued to be attracted by it.


 * As I hope I made clear in my letter, continued service under current conditions is something we would consider paying directly for; but what I have got from Wikia so far is that you no longer intend to offer it. As each community has different needs, for some this may not be a problem. For us, it is.


 * If the level of independence and control that we desire is not going to be offered by Wikia, we need to find another service provider who will. It really is that simple.


 * I will consult further with the members of the communities which I represent. If the consensus is to separate from Wikia, I hope that we can do so in an amicable and mutually satisfactory way. --GreenReaper(talk) 22:55, 8 June 2008 (UTC)


 * I noticed that while you said plenty about GreenReaper's contention that Wikia is a hosting service, you didn't say anything about how buying up domain names and then not releasing them to the wiki admins fits in with your own vision of Wikia, which was a major part of what he brought up in the first place. Care to enlighten? --Silvermink 22:41, 8 June 2008 (UTC)


 * I do appreciate the help that some Wikia admins have given to our communities. However, you're not doing it for free, are you?  You're employees of a company whose job it is to provide a service.  A good and valuable service, but a service nonetheless.  Please don't harangue us about how "thankless" a task being an admin is- you get paid for it and always have the option to do something else, whereas we, the users, receive no money to provide you the content.  I appreciate that a direct comparison to a normal hosting company is not entirely appropriate, but you guys need to figure out that the various communities you host don't always want a lot of direct meddling in their affairs under the guise of "one big Wikia community".  And as Silvermink mentioned above, it interests me how Wikia continues to dodge my and others' persistent questions concerning Wikia's apparent domain-squatting practices.
 * As for the people that don't have technical savvy that do benefit from some of the conveniences Wikia provides, well, I guess they're the ones that are going to get the short end of the stick in this new setup. I feel sorry for them, and that is why I am still here talking about this.  Otherwise I would already have packed up and left. ElasticMuffin 23:37, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

New Monaco test live at Communitytest.wikia
We've been talking a lot about the new ad format, but folks haven't been able to see it themselves yet. We've got a test site ready now -- Communitytest.wikia.

There's been a change to the plan, based on the feedback we've received, and you'll see that reflected on communitytest. Instead of a 300x250 box on every article page, you'll see either a banner ad or a 300x250 on articles.

You'll still see a combo banner/300x250 ad on the main page. User pages, talk pages and special pages don't have any ads.

So folks can go ahead and use this site as a sandbox. Copy over pages and templates from your wiki, and see how they'll work in the new format.

One thing to be aware of -- this communitytest site has been used before for a bunch of different tests, so it's possible that you may notice something unrelated to the new ad format. I've tried to take out all the old stuff left over from previous tests, but I may have missed something. (For example, there's a Refresh button on the edit bar... I don't know what that's left over from, or how to remove it.) So if you see something that looks weird, but isn't related to the new ad format, it's probably just something from another test and has nothing to do with this.

Please feel free to play around on communitytest, and tell us about things that don't work right. We're fine-tuning the logic for the ad format, so if you find anything that doesn't work properly, this is a great time for us to fix it.

We're also still talking about how to make more changes based on the feedback. You'll see the first change reflected on communitytest, and we'll be meeting tomorrow morning to see if there are more changes that we can make.

I'm glad that we can get beyond just talking about screenshots -- communitytest is open! Go mess around with it. -- Danny (talk ) 23:46, 8 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Yeah. What about it customized, can we see it crazy customized please? also I don't think New Monaco is friendly to me, and I also don't think that the new ad format will work at all. --Taylor Karras talk contributions 23:50, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

Though there's a 50% chance it appears, having the ad at the top of the article actually looks okay. Drewton  ( Drewton's Holocron ) 00:50, 9 June 2008 (UTC)


 * I'd like to see an article with a 300x250. I clicked on a few and all I got was a banner, which is essentially status pro quo but with a banner inside the content instead of out. I think I could live with the 300x250 on a page without a table... :/ Also, good of you to add the widget ad. --Sky 00:56, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

That looks absolutely horrible, even with adblock plus removing the ads, theres no way in hell that I will help a wiki that looks like that to our average visitor.-- 01:31, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

The ads on articles won't help out and isn't it the same as the old monaco only with the content moved up? --Taylor Karras talk contributions 02:04, 9 June 2008 (UTC)


 * If there's going to be banner ads, is/was it really necessary to alter the Monaco scheme so we can't customize the background next to the logo? I'm failing to see the difference between banner ads right at the top of an article (which if someone scrolled down will no longer be visible) versus banner ads at the top of the page like now. -- LordTBT Talk! 03:15, 9 June 2008 (UTC)


 * Why the random component to which type of ad? Or is that a bug?  For example, go here and reload the page several times:  []  Sometimes it displays an old-style banner, and sometimse a new-style box.


 * for LordTB's question: The difference is in how people perceive ads in different places... and so in how advertisers value them. So there is a significant difference in placing them above and below the bar
 * The random element is a test. The original logic was "box unless there is a clash with content such as a table, then banner".  It seems so far that the boxes are the most disliked (which generally means most visible, which generally means most valuable).  So we are trying this pattern of "random, unless there is a clash, then banner".  This sort of thing is where the next few weeks will be vital, as we see how this all works in practice and make whatever tweaks are needed -- sannse (talk) 12:39, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

Accessibility considerations and end user testing queries
Has much been said about how the end-user testing for the skins was done? I'm concerned that as I find the "flyout menu" navigation system in Monaco to be painful and difficult to use, others may also have this problem. Has Monaco been tested with screen readers such as JAWS? What about for where someone has all fonts set to display at a larger size for readability? Have other forms of disability (such as motor skills impairments) been taken into consideration with Monaco? I know that technically, I could change my own system to Monobook (for now...), but most users and casual browsers assume that the default skin is the best skin - and in the case of Monaco, I would beg to differ! I don't want anyone put off the Creatures Wiki because the default skin is physically painful to use. I'm concerned that if Monobook becomes only a 'user preference' skin, that it will be depreciated entirely. I'm sure there used to be a pink one which was entirely removed. -Malkin 00:07, 9 June 2008 (UTC)
 * It's not hard to use. I find it easy and accessable to use. New Monaco's going to ruin that man. Artisticly I mean. --<font color="#306ac1">Taylor Karras <font color="#e13f5d">talk <font color="#51b732">contributions 00:29, 9 June 2008 (UTC)
 * I believe Malkin means "accessible" in the sense of "for those with disabilities". --Silvermink 00:59, 9 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Yes, I did mean accessibility in the sense of for people with disabilities. :) It physically hurts me to use Monaco, even for short periods of time.  I find it difficult to keep the mouse in the correct location on the flyout menu for long enough to navigate the two or three menus to find what I want to find.  I understand that this is not the case for all users, but as about 20% of the general US population has some form of disability (sorry for the US statistics, best I could find..) hopefully a professional company such as Wikia would consider designing their online prescence to accomodate people with disabilities. -Malkin 00:47, 9 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Also, I'm finding that as I browse across Wikia with my preferences set to Monobook, not letting the admins override it, that I keep on seeing Monaco pages pop up - when I find my preferences again, I find that the button is checked to let admins override my preferences. Could this be a browser issue?  I'm using Safari 3.1.1 on a Mac. -Malkin 02:57, 9 June 2008 (UTC)
 * This is very strange, not a problem I've seen (I switch skins a lot for testing, so have spent time on all of them. I'll get it reported to the technical guys, and possibly contact you for more details if they need it -- sannse (talk) 13:21, 9 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the response, Sannse. :) I can't help but notice that you haven't addressed my first questions about if people with disabilities were involved in the end user testing of Monaco - I hope this is because behind the scenes Wikia staff are busily discussing how to make Monaco more accessible to people with disabilities. ;) I'm concerned that the default skin, the skin that will be applied across all wikis and seen by all casual readers is less than accessible, as it discourages people with disabilities to join in in the first place - and possibly even prevents them from accessing the information on Wikia, at the most casual of levels.  I know that I've given up on sites in the past where they have converted to flyout menus, and I don't want other people to give up on Wikia before they've started because of Monaco. Something like a key, prominently named in the menu, that could be pressed down to hold the flyout menu open regardless of where my cursor is would make Monaco significantly more useable for me, as would having the printable version link in a prominent location. The World Wide Web Consortium has a Web Accessibility Initiative page with much more information on how to design pages (even wikis! :) ) taking various disabilities into consideration. -Malkin 23:37, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

I hate it. I will revert to monobook. And please do not remove the function to change the skin for anonymous users Pierlot McCrooke 13:04, 9 June 2008 (UTC)


 * There's a lot of javascript-only features: Interlanguage links are not links. Users without JavaScript can't navigate them. The same for search engines: this reduces the relevancy that brings up the inter-wiki links. Accessible and useful links are missing, like recentchangeslinked and a "printable version" --Ciencia Al Poder (talk) -WikiDex 19:02, 9 June 2008 (UTC)


 * On somes wikis, accessibility seems not something that should be a priority because, for exemple, on a wiki about the Guild Wars game, i dont think people that need a screen reader or have some motor problem can play that game in wich we need to move the mouse and press some keys real fast.
 * But, otherwise, accessibility should be a great concern. — TulipVorlax 21:22, 9 June 2008 (UTC)
 * You'd be amazed what assistive technology can do these days. ;) I gather that Guild Wars is one of the more inaccessible games, but hopefully more designers will take disabilities into consideration when testing games. Just because the game may have accessibility issues, doesn't mean the whole of the default Wikia site has to. ;) -Malkin 23:37, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

Hi Malkin, I don't really know a lot about accessibility, so I can't speak to this fully. But one thing I will do is ensure that it's raised with the rest of the staff team. We have already discussed blind.wikia as a specific case, and agreed that this will stay on Monobook until we can be sure that Monaco it works with page-readers. (Interestingly, I seem to recall much the same concerns when Wikipedia first switched to Monobook) -- sannse (talk) 13:35, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

Costs
I want to know the costs of hosting and operating and the revenue currently coming in from ads along with what you want to get with this crap your pushing on us. And don't tell me thats unknown otherwise you wouldn't be claiming to need more for hosting.-- 07:42, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

Main page whatnow?
Have I misunderstood you, or are you planning to give the main pages a fixed width? If so, I have three words to say: stupid stupid stupid. Kirkburn made the wowwiki mp have aright column with fixed width, and made the content area adjust its width by itself. That means that on wowwiki, no matter what your resolution is, the right column will have a fixed width, but the content area will be wider on a 1280x1024 monitor than on a 1024x728 monitor. Isn't that much better than what you've proposed? 08:25, 9 June 2008 (UTC)


 * That was the plan (and as of now still shows on CommunityTest) but as Angie says further down: "we are removing the fixed width parameter for main pages (we may need revisit this, but we will discuss that with each community individually before that happens.)" -- sannse (talk) 13:03, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

Alternate Proposal
Instead of switching to Monaco 3.1. We stay at the same version as Monaco only instead we do this.


 * Additional ads at the bottom of articles and on the sidebar.
 * Default Monaco for all wikis.
 * No bottom ads in anypage except articles.

Please reconsider your actions. I feel this'll work much better and still appeal to advertisers. --<font color="#306ac1">Taylor Karras <font color="#e13f5d">talk <font color="#51b732">contributions 13:55, 9 June 2008 (UTC)
 * The only thing what i hate is this: Default Monaco for all wikis. Pierlot McCrooke 14:13, 9 June 2008 (UTC)
 * There's a reason wikipedia, the most prominent wiki, uses monobook default...--[[Image:AlariSig.png]] 18:15, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

Would it ruin Halopedia?
Since we have only ONE skin in effect on Halopedia. This would make reading pages PURE INSANITY! Not to mention the infamous overlapping ads that obstruct reading. It's going to be hell if this is going into effect. It's going to shove pages together, more than likely causing words to overlap. The skin in effect on Halopedia is a custom system, we DON'T have the option of switching skins if this happens.

Grievous797


 * Halopedia is still on the "New York" code, because of the social tools that were tried out there. Until the code is merged in to the main codebase, it will stay as it is now.  Once it's moved over, the skin changes will also happen there - but you will then have the skin options too. -- sannse (talk) 13:05, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

LMAO

 * As word of this latest . . . "action" spreads around the Wikiaverse, the Darthipedians (Star Wars Humor Wiki) have offered their unique look at things: . Take a look and join the hilarity. Atarumaster88  ( Talk page ) 16:07, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

How nice
You see, I've been considering asking another site to accept the entire C&C Wiki. Seeing how now Wikia's gonna try and dictate how what we create should be done, I think I should start moving. Shaur M. S. Grizlin 16:10, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

Ads showing on printed version
The ads are printed along with the article content. That must be fixed. --Ciencia Al Poder (talk) -WikiDex 19:06, 9 June 2008 (UTC)


 * We've got this on the bug list. Thanks Ciencia -- sannse (talk) 13:05, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

Yay! Time to vent my worthless opinion!
Ok, so, I mostly edit Uncyclopedia, which probably won't be affected much by this change, and where I already use some .js or .css (I forget which) to block the adds that show up there now. Since my time is occupied by Uncyc, I'm mostly a reader at other wikis, though I do stop by darthipedia or illogicopedia to make a page once in a while. As a reader, I can say that the single most annoying thing you could add is an advert that is a animated. Some 300x250px .gif flashing or jumping around in my face is all that it would take to make me stop reading, and click that shiny left-facing arrow in the top-left of the screen, or that little red x in the top right. The google adds aren't actually too bad to simply ignore, although it's annoying that they're composed of text and found in the text of the article--they can be pretty easily misconstrued as something put into the actual page's text. Also, I'd still like to see some more infobox examples... how would it affect those? So far, I've tried it here, and it actually doesn't look too bad, although I'd prefer to see some other types of infoboxes before I make that call... Also, what about wikis with a dark background? That box would need to turn black, or else be extremely harsh on the eyes of whoever looks at the page. Anyways, just some thoughts... -  TLB ( Tick Tock ) ( Contribs ) 20:05, 9 June 2008 (UTC)


 * TLB, feel free to add more infoboxes and so on to CommunityTest. The more we know about different set ups and oddities of layout the better.  -- sannse (talk) 13:07, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

Impression-ads: OK, but only on the top banner
You want to change paid-by-click ads to pay-per-impression ads? OK. Put flash ads, animated gifs or what you want, but only on the actual top banner of monaco. The ad will be the first thing users will see when a page loads, but they can scroll down to see the content without a flashing ad annoying him.

It took a lot of time until you realized that you need a change to make Wikia financially stable. Why not start with a small change rather than putting ads everywhere?

There are many wikis hosted outside wikia with no more than one banner ad, only a google ad. Yes, look. The server runs several websites, including 3 wikis. The main wikis in other languages are also hosted there. How do they maintain that with only one banner?. They could host WikiDex without problem (in fact, they still don't have a spanish wiki)

Wikia is a specialised service of hosting, so it can optimize costs. Wikia has a strong cache farm that deals with the high traffic, and so on... The costs go down when the needs grows. --Ciencia Al Poder (talk) -WikiDex 19:24, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

Halopedia is furious
Put this on us and we are leaving. Thats right, gone. And we have this crazy intution that our disappearence would leave wikia royally screwed. So think about it, Cherry'O! User:Ghost_sangheili


 * Indeed we are! Plans are in the works to leave! Grievous797

KEEP IT THE SAME!!!!!! It looks better the way it is already. bLack0tt3R 20:21, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

Change in Schedule
The release of the Monaco update has been delayed. There will be no changes to the site tomorrow, June 10th, as previously mentioned. The update is tentatively scheduled for next Tuesday, June 17th. There are a couple reasons for this:


 * 1) We want to give everyone more time. More time to see the changes in a live environment on Community test, more time to communicate with your respective communities about any changes to be made in preparation (logo updates, infobox templates, etc), and more time to give us feedback. We've noticed that not all of our active admins and user are aware of these upcoming changes, so we will be sending out a global talk page message tomorrow announcing the changes. This will likely result in a new wave of feedback, and we want to have time to respond to everyone's questions and concerns.
 * 2) We are making some changes to incorporate your feedback. We are refining our ad logic to ensure the highest quality content experience (i.e no ads on stub pages less than < 400px) and we are removing the fixed width parameter for main pages (we may need revisit this, but we will discuss that  with each community individually before that happens.). These changes will be live on community test in the next couple days if not sooner, and we will keep you posted so you can check them out.

We know change is tough, and we are all learning from this as we go. Please continue to be patient with us, and to share your voice. angies (talk) 22:50, 9 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Yes! Score 1 for the Wikia Community! --<font color="#306ac1">Taylor Karras <font color="#e13f5d">talk <font color="#51b732">contributions 23:59, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

How people see wikia and why
What Gil said about the wikia team is true. I believe every word when he says wikia strives to be much more than just a hoster. I believe wikia does sincerely want the best for our communities. I believe him couse I met him and other staff in person and that's the impression I got. However, wikia shoudn't expect most people seeing it in the same way.

People may have such a view of the wikimedia foundation, couse of the educational nature of its projects and the fact they are non-profit. Even if wikia was founded and is maintained by people who share the same values wikimedia does, it's still a for-profit entretaiment business. I understand it must be frustrating for the enthusiastic and passionate wikia staff, but people see wikia just as another service provider, noting less, nothing more. People will keep judging wikia as such, and none of the points Gil brought up will change that. Thanks to its passion, wikia does supply a far superior service than any of its competitors. However, after a change like this one, it may cease to be the case, and you shouldn't be surprised by comunities leaving following GreenReaper's logic.

Edit conflict: I wrote this before Angie's note, I'm not sure if the last sentence still applies, I hope not.--Rataube 23:04, 9 June 2008 (UTC)


 * Not to be mean, but please, please, please... use a spellchecker. --Fandyllic 00:16, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

Alternative suggestion - AD outside content area
FWIW, this is a quick mockup of a Monaco skin alternative with a 300x250px Ad box OUTSIDE the content area. It even leaves some more space to play around with in a useful way... -- Cid Highwind 23:05, 9 June 2008 (UTC)
 * This I could live with. All wikis with custom banners would have to redesign to fit the new width, but article design would be unaffected. &mdash;Silly Dan (talk) 23:21, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

I would go for this, if you just made the ad space a wee bit smaller. Even if you couldn't, though, it'd still be better. -- Joe Butler (Obi Maul12)  (Chow) 23:24, 9 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Well, I'm one of those people who'd prefer no ads (like the customers in the Dilbert cartoon, I usually want excellent products and services for free), but ads which are there, but don't disrupt the articles are the next best thing. &mdash;Silly Dan (talk) 23:29, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

Right. Highwind's proposal seems likes a plausible solution to me. -- Joe Butler (Obi Maul12)  (Chow) 23:52, 9 June 2008 (UTC)
 * To Silly Dan: Wikia wouldn't make any money if there was no ads. MarioGalaxy2433g5  { talk /contribs/Logs} 23:55, 9 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Yes, this proposal is a million times better if we're going to need more ads. I like that it gives us more space to work with, too. --Freakatone 00:00, 10 June 2008 (UTC)
 * MarioGalaxy2433g5: I'm aware of that, thanks. As soon as Wikia develops a way to pay for their servers through the power of positive thinking, I expect they'll go for it.  8) &mdash;Silly Dan (talk) 00:13, 10 June 2008 (UTC)
 * I seriously doubt that if wikia has the funds to buy out wikis and assimilate them that they are having even a little trouble with hosting funds...--[[Image:AlariSig.png]] 00:43, 10 June 2008 (UTC)


 * Honestly, this is all I've been asking for. Ads outside content. Above, to the left, to the right, below, FINE. Just outside. We should not have to design our pages to account for random external crap being shoved into them. -- Darth Culator  (Talk) 01:03, 10 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Unless I am misunderstanding, this makes no sense to me. It leaves layouts intact, yes, but pushes all of the content down to the middle of the page.  Versus Image:New_Monaco_A.jpg which at least only pushes the right side down. -- 01:11, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

It's not perfect, but still much better than where the infobox is. Drewton ( Drewton's Holocron )
 * I agree, this is much better than having the ad in the primary content area. Xwing328 01:32, 10 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Gahoo, most of us would rather have our layouts intact and maintain the integrity of our articles then have the content start at the top of the page. jSarek 01:35, 10 June 2008 (UTC)


 * This I could live with, though smaller ads are always better. To extend an analogy I said on Wookieepedia, it's still a neon-green vinyl sofa, but at least now it's out of the living room. Atarumaster88   ( Talk page ) 13:29, 10 June 2008 (UTC)
 * I agree, this looks much better. :) --Jedimca0(Do or Do Not, There is No Try) 14:36, 10 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Gonk like. Gonk like lots. Gonk no smash.  Gonk  ( Gonk! ) 14:41, 10 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Aye, definitely better - Kingpin13
 * As I said below, I'm fine with ads as long as they don't disrupt the layout of the article itself, which, quite frankly, would be an aesthetic nightmare for most pages, one that would take an indeterminable amount of time to correct. More ads, brighter, more visible ads, all of this I'm willing to accept as long as they don't interfere with page layout. --MattyDienhoff 16:25, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

I haven't had the time to comment further, yesterday - so here it goes, now: A decision has been made that every article page needs a big ad box for Wikia to survive in the long run. One may like this decision or not (and obviously, no one likes to have an ad taking up about 15% of the initially visible space of a webpage!), but it is equally obvious that this decision won't be revised.

However, once this decision has been made, it should be in Wikia's best interest to also think about the other party involved - their contributors and readers, without which the whole system of getting money for page views won't work, either. :)

So, how does one best take care of the contributors? In this case, by at least sugar-coating the bitter pill they have to swallow - by not just dumping the big ad box somewhere on the page (and in the one area that contributors care about, no less!), but by redesigning the whole layout around the ad box that is now a given.

People may have complained about the big header area of the original Monaco (or Quartz), and they were correct - but the situation has changed now that a big box needs to be placed somewhere in the upper right corner. Let the ad take up whatever space is necessary - add something nice and important to the left of it, so that people won't just ignore the pwetty ad - and then start the actual page content below it, uninterrupted... please! -- Cid Highwind 16:15, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

Wikia people are good people, but this is a bad change and makes them look bad
Okay, I think most of us understand that Wikia is a for-profit business and some of the changes that are made to Wikia wikis from time to time reflect the nature of the business.

However, Wikia is not like other businesses. A majority of the work done to support Wikia's business is not done by Wikia employees, but an army of volunteers. If these volunteers stop doing what they're doing, Wikia really has no business. On the other hand, these volunteers generally pay nothing for the opportunity to work on the wikis they like. Wikia pays for the upkeep and expansion of servers and software to host the wikis. For this they turn to advertisers apparently to fund this infrastructure and pay the employees who manage and improve the infrastructure software.

So, with all that in mind who are Wikia's customers? In simplistic terms, they are the volunteers and the advertisers. In the mind of Wikia employees, the advertisers might be seen to be paying the bills. However, without the wikis to draw the advertisers, no bills would get paid. Lets face it, no one really likes this new advertising scheme except maybe the advertisers. Also, for the record, I have visited the Wikia office in San Mateo, CA and they are not living in luxury. They have a small office with mostly shared workspace. They aren't trying to get rich on the backs of wiki editors.

Why would Wikia want to anger their volunteers? They aren't really trying to anger their volunteers, but they seem to have made a choice to favor their advertisers while pretending they really tried to think about how the volunteers would react. From the overwhelming negative reaction and the multiple starts and stops, it appears that the Wikia folks were taken somewhat by surprise.

So what is so bad about taking up the upper right quarter with ads? Well, as someone who has been with WoWWiki well before Wikia took it over, the use of space on wiki pages has always been a hotly debated topic. On WoWWiki we decided to move most of our navigation boxes (similar to TOCs) to the bottom of pages because they moved around info boxes in bad ways. I think the Wikia folks didn't really want to take the time to look at alot of how various wikis are laying out their pages and wanted the volunteer community to just cope and they would use the feedback to try to "fix" things.

Another thing I think is happening is what I call the "cash cow" mentality. Wikia management may be starting to think that the more popular Wikia wikis that advertisers are most keen to advertise on have come near the peak of their possible content and a loss of editors to make improvements or changes is not needed as much. So, if they alienate a bunch of editors, it may not matter bcause a bulk of the content that would draw advertisers is effectively "done." Only a catastrophic act of massive vandalism or loss of multiple databases would cause them to lose existing content. In the software world, this is known as cash cow mode, because you basically stop new feature development and just "milk" the cash cow until it is dry.

Will editors stop contributing? Some will, but unless there is an obvious and massive revolt, most will continue to contribute and just grumble. Wikia may be betting on this, but I doubt it. I think they just didn't want to do forward looking research and hope the angry mass of us will offer them new ideas, alternatives, or do nothing. Then they just cherry pick the ideas that piss off the least amount of people.

What should have Wikia done? I wouldn't say anything dramatically different, but they should have given a much longer lead time. A few weeks to absorb a small change is okay, but this is not a small change. On WoWWiki we did a merge of our user database with the central Wikia database that included a wiki software upgrade, but it was announced months in advance. I would have expected a change of this ad box type to be given at least a month lead time. I don't know what the Wikia folks were thinking. Now they have paid the price. The other problem with this change is that it took alot of control away from editors on how to organize the look of their pages. Wikia should have introduced some new markup to control the positioning of ads between a couple choices (top banner or upper-right corner) or more. If some control were given, more editors would feel less manipulated.

What should we volunteers do? Simple, go on strike. If a large enough chunk of us will sign up to say we're going to take a month off (the same month), Wikia will notice and stop or slow the process. The negative feedback has already slowed them.

If you want to join my boycott, see Forum:Boycott Wikia's New Style. --Fandyllic 01:18, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

I would personal advise Wikia to seek out websites of similar rank on Alexa or Quantcast and what not to see how they deal with advertising and location of content. What we need here and now is to be provided alternative layouts; other ways which Wikia has considered and thrown out the window. --Sky 02:12, 10 June 2008 (UTC)
 * I agree with everything, except for going on strike (now). They have definitely been taken by surprise (how, I do not know) which suggests they were doing this with good faith in hand, rather than bad, and I think repaying that good faith with bad is a bad approach. They, quite simply, may have thrown out one of the layouts which Wikia editors would welcome over this. More than anything, it is certainly the fact that this switcheroo came with so little time to prepare, adjust, and adapt to the change that Wikia is seeing an uprising, rather than the fact that it is an intrusion on the content space which wiki editors hold sacred.


 * I can almost guarantee you that Wikia will not change course, unless we do more than just complain. See you on June 17th. If they reschedule for mid-July or later, then you win, but if they just go ahead, then I was right. --Fandyllic 17:19, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

Looks like Illogicopedia has something to say about it
New Monaco. lul what? That is so absurdly funny. --<font color="#306ac1">Taylor Karras <font color="#e13f5d">talk <font color="#51b732">contributions 03:10, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

Two cents
I have to make it plain that I - like the majority of those who've posted here, it seems - take issue with the idea of putting advertisements in the content area. This is completely unacceptable. I understand Wikia needs advertisements to gather revenue and also that making them more visible may be necessary if the ads are not bringing in enough revenue, but at the expense of the content itself? I don't even need to say it, do I? I think it's clear to everyone here that the new advertisement placement will adversely affect many articles' aesthetics. Myself, I mainly contribute to the Half-Life wiki and I can honestly say that the vast majority (70% or more) of the 347 articles on that wiki will be severely messed up by this change. Most pages have infoboxes and many are also small. Inserting a advertisement block into the upper right corner will displace many infoboxes and images. I've worked on this wiki for several months perfecting and tweaking article layouts, making it as tidy and professional as possible, and all of this work will be effectively undone in one swift stroke if this change goes through. If that turns out to be the case I'm just going to throw in the towel, because I don't have the time or the energy to change the layout of nearly every goddamn article on the wiki to make it look decent again.

In addition, as has already been said; even if I can disable the ads personally, that's entirely beside the point because how everyone else sees the wiki is just as important to me. I never had any interest in disabling advertisements before because they quite simply didn't bother me - because they weren't particularly intrusive and I know that they have to be there. In fact, I wouldn't mind if the Wikia crew added more ads if they think it's necessary, as long as they stay well and truly out of the content area. I feel this is a completely reasonable compromise.

But on that note, if this "place ads in the content area" plan is just an elaborate ruse to convince everyone to accept something else as a compromise that we might not have accepted if it was proposed on it's own (such as more ads, but in the same places as before), I don't appreciate being treated like an idiot. The "demand more than you really want so you can paint what you really want as a compromise, therefore making it more attractive" strategy is well known, and I can't help but see that behind these changes. Come on, Wikia staff, did you honestly not expect any backlash to this kind of change with the sheer volume of content it's going to affect?

If this change goes through, I'll stop contributing, immediately. As much as I hate to do it, I'll strike. --MattyDienhoff 04:16, 10 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Just an fyi on one of your points, as was stated above here in this forum, the impression ads will not appear on stub articles, or other small articles. Greyman ( Talk ) 13:09, 10 June 2008 (UTC)
 * True, but I already thought of that. It all depends on what standards you use to determine whether a page can be considered "small". Personally I consider any page with less than two headers to be small. Take this article as an example. Now look at this article for comparison. I highly doubt this article would be considered small, yet any advertisement that would displace the right-hand infobox would play havoc with the layout of the article. --MattyDienhoff 16:25, 10 June 2008 (UTC)
 * I'll just add to the above statement that I'd love to place those example articles in the community test wiki to illustrate just how screwed up they'd be, but to do so I'd have to port the templates over and that's messy business as some of the templates are dependant on one or more others. --MattyDienhoff 16:38, 10 June 2008 (UTC)


 * You should be able to do that by copying the wikitext to a temp page on your wiki, and then repeatedly "subst:" all templates until none is left. Might result in ugly code, but should work when copied to another wiki. -- Cid Highwind 16:43, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

Page-wide infoboxes (tables) and questions from Wikijuegos.
First of all, sorry for my bad english.

I understand that Wikia needs de ads, they must be at top-right corner and the size will be 300x250.

The little problem is that in wikijuegos many pages use a wide page infobox, like: Template:Infobox juego, Template:Infobox personaje, Template:WikitrucosCabecera, etc. it is actually not a big problem as I can re-adapt them, but I put a   in a test page (I suppose that the adds will be wrapped by something like this) and... I was not sure what result that I expected is better (The table compressed or the ads over the table); but seeing the result, at least on Mozilla, with the ads in the content of the page will cause problems with tables on the top of the page, not for infobox-like tables only. (well, you can try to wrap the table with another div, not tested).

Now, the questions: — @ Chixpy 04:45, 10 June 2008 (UTC)
 * 1) Will be the Google Ads changed for this new ads? or... they only will be added to the existing ones of Google? If Google Ads will be changed (say, removed)... Will this politicy change in some way? Specifically, I'm asking about this thread. I'm not asking for explicit images, only for some censured (if needed) and description of the games)
 * 2) Will the ads be a Javascript injection (like Google Ads) or Wikia Spotlight/FastClick like? I heavily use JavaScript and the ads of Google are veeery slow for waiting to load and do quick edit, for example. (By the way, I sometimes stop loading the page because sometimes googlesindication freezes ...)
 * 3) Uhm... nothing more, I think.

Star Wars Fanon
Our community is outraged of this add crap! If you want to see out opinon please see if you want to. -- <font color="Green">Arav (<font color="Green" size="1">talk ) 06:15, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

I don't think you could call us "Outraged", like we're screaming our heads off, but we are certainly unhappy. -- Joe Butler (Obi Maul12)  (Chow) 12:57, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

Maybe
Maybe also this causes controversy: 1. Every wiki will use Monaco as the default skin. In the past, communities have used a variety of skins – Monaco, Quartz or Monobook. You will still be able to select alternate skins for your personal view, but Monaco will now be the default for all non logged-in users. Pierlot McCrooke 06:42, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

Inevitable conflict: ads vs. content
On content-focused sites, where the information is your top priority (as is typical for a wiki) everybody designs the site to make the information the center of attention. I know I couldn't even tell you what's in our wiki's side bar even though I've seen it thousands of times by now. This is fine.

If you want ads to break a user's concentration on this content, they have to be obtrusive and obnoxious, or they won't get noticed. How do print media do that? Daily newspapers get subscriptions (and run some inobtrusive ads, e.g. in the title bar on the front page), glossy magazines run full-page ads. The analogies in the web world are subscriptions/donations and interstitial ads, be it an ad page that is inserted when you click a link, or a javascript that shoves an ad banner above the page content. These two are the options you have to display advertising without affecting page design.

There is a third option actually, and that had no parallel in the print world: this is what Project Wonderful is doing (no, I'm not affiliated with them in any way except clicking on ads managed by them). They're auctioning ads for specific web sites. I've been seeing those on webcomic pages, and they're usually so interesting that I've often clicked on them even though they're in no better spot design-wise than our wikia top banners are here. The pricing is so transparent that I've even thought about taking out an ad just to sponsor a site I like, and if it means making a site I visit viable financially, I'd probably do that.

The way wikia is going is to try to design the page layout so that uninteresting ads get noticed, and that has to clash with the need to put the information foremost in the design. I personally would not mind if non-registered users had to see interstitial ads of some sort - I don't mind myself when I visit some sites that I occasionally go to because they have good information. The javascript ads are better if it's not to hard to see where to close them because the page is already loaded when I close the ad, so the ad's not causing me another perceived delay. You might want to get some research data on that, though. It's not as if web site usability is exactly a new field.

Changing the google ads to a Project Wonderful-like scheme for registered users might be worth trying; if I were wikia, I'd offer the wiki admins/communities a chance to try that for a while and see how it works out, on a wiki-by-wiki voluntary basis.

There can be no way for wikia to communicate "look at this information" and "look at that ad" within the same page design. It's just not possible. --mendel 07:12, 10 June 2008 (UTC)


 * I'm not sure I'm saying anything that hasn't already been said above, but I oppose these changes. The advertisements within the article space is the most idiotic idea anyone has come up with so far. The point of creating a new style for the wikis is to bring in more readers, not drive them away. Also, why would you want to make the articles on the various pages look like absolute crap? It's bad enough the ads are at the sides of the pages, but to put them within the actual article? Why don't we just replace all the articles with advertisements? That's what we're going for here, right? Seriously, nobody cares about these ads, nobody clicks on them, nobody likes them so why shove them in people's faces? Heck, the ads won't even appear for me (I'll have NoScript block them), so for me and anyone else using NoScript, there will just be a big, ugly box above the page's main image and sidebar. In other words, having the ads in such a location will be both pointless (kinda hard for advertisers to make money when the ads don't come through and when no one clicks on the links) and annoying. So my suggestion to you, Wikia... assuming you're taking suggestions... is don't do this. We won't like it. You won't like it. Trust me. --From Andoria with Love 07:21, 10 June 2008 (UTC)


 * (After reading a comment above) So logged in users will get to use the skin they prefer, but this "new style" will be the default setting for non logged-in users. What a great way to drive away new visitors! Keep it up, Wikia! ;) --From Andoria with Love 07:27, 10 June 2008 (UTC)


 * This is the most idiotic advertising idea you've heard? You really should get around the Internet more.  The worst I've seen is ads that cover up (as opposed to moving) content so that the only way to get at the content is to reload the page and hope for a different ad--and if that doesn't work, just give up and leave the site.  Talking ads, huge downloads for video clip ads, and pages that are nothing but advertisements that require you to click another link to get to the "real" page are also much worse than what Wikia is proposing.
 * Let's not forget that Wikia isn't selling wiki information on various topics. Wikia is selling the attention of random people to advertisers.  That's essentially the same thing that many television and radio stations are selling, as well as many other web sites.
 * As for Project Wonderful, that sounds like a huge amount of micromanagement on the part of advertisers. That would presumably drive down the rates that they'd be willing to pay.  If an advertiser sets one fixed rate for a long period of time and leaves it, others can simply outbid them at peak times and make them pay for exactly the times they didn't want.  A second price auction system that lets people withdraw bids (as theirs does) opens itself to all sorts of micromanagement to game the system.  Quizzical 07:57, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

Alternatives
Lots of people are asking to see alternatives that we considered when we were working on this new format. I'll give you some examples of websites that we looked at, and you can see how they handle ads and spotlights.


 * Lostpedia: A very popular wiki. They use "ContentLink", which automatically highlights selected words as green links. When you mouse over those words, a related ad pops up. I personally argued to reject this option immediately, because I think it's horrible. It's ugly and distracting, and it creates a direct link between what contributors type and what advertisers sell. It couldn't be clearer there -- the words I type = money for the site. Still, it's a super-popular wiki, and I bet they make a profit.


 * The New York Times: A headline and a big picture on the first screen, but no article text. Six external ads on the page, including an Ameriprise button next to the search box and a Fox Searchlight button inside the article content. There are also three in-house ads within the article content, and six in-house ads along the side.


 * Slate: Twelve external ads on the page, including two in the article space, plus a separate search box sponsored by Ask.com. Three big in-house ads along the sidebars.


 * IGN: Four external ads on the page, including a big box at the top of the article space and a sneaky "Click here for more info" link that's part of the main infobox. It also has interstitials. The box in the article space has animation. At least five in-house ads around the content.


 * The Washington Post: Five external ads on the page, including one in the article content. In-house ads at the top right of the content space.


 * TheForce.net: Twelve external ads on the page, including a big box at the top right. The article itself is about six sentences long.

I can go on, but I think I've made the point. Every major content site on the internet has an ad format that's way more aggressive than what Wikia plans to use. This includes major newspapers as well as sites for fans and user-generated content sites. Across the board, Wikia has fewer ads, and less aggressive ads. -- <font color="Blue">Danny (<font color="Blue" size="1">talk ) 15:01, 10 June 2008 (UTC)


 * Almost all your examples are inapplicable to this situation. People are paid to produce content for almost all of those sites.  And since they are single, cohesive sites, and the content providers and web designers are all paid for their work for the site, a single look-and-feel is appropriate.  You're trying to take a bunch of essentially separate sites where the content is provided by volunteers, combine them, and pretend that they're all one big community as a pretense for making decisions for them.  There is a difference.


 * Also, the ContentLinks on Lostpedia are ugly but better in my opinion than mashing the page layout and content with giant ad boxes. ElasticMuffin 15:20, 10 June 2008 (UTC)


 * Showing other sites that look bad, does not make the proposed solution better. --Fandyllic 17:12, 10 June 2008 (UTC)


 * I was responding to Sky's request above: "I would personal advise Wikia to seek out websites of similar rank on Alexa or Quantcast and what not to see how they deal with advertising and location of content. What we need here and now is to be provided alternative layouts; other ways which Wikia has considered and thrown out the window." Those are all sites that we looked at when we were working on this process.


 * It's true that none of those sites fit Wikia exactly, because Wikia is unique. This is one big website that hosts thousands of different wikis, with all user-generated content, and we offer that service to everyone for free. As far as I know, there are no other sites like that, so it's hard to come up with an exact parallel.


 * Still, if anyone can find another example of a for-profit user-generated content site that you'd like Wikia to emulate, please post it for everyone to see. -- <font color="Blue">Danny (<font color="Blue" size="1">talk ) 17:20, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

Proposal to make feedback easier to navigate

 * 1) Make a page for just feedback on the new style without any proposals to change the current plan.
 * 2) Make a page for proposed changes to the plan, excluding changes to the advertising placement.
 * 3) Make a page for proposed changes to advertising placement.

I know this may make it harder to see everything at once, but ther current gob of feedback is very hard to navigate.

Also see my Forum:Boycott Wikia's New Style. I include some proposed solutions or at least changes to the current plan. The current plan seems to be more like "let's please the advertisers and stuff the editors." --Fandyllic 17:12, 10 June 2008 (UTC)