Forum:Criticism of Wikia

Hey.

I believe in saying things as they are, instead of saying things like what someone might want to hear. And I feel that a serious criticism topic of Wikia is more than a requisite. After all, how else might the people with the power have the knowledge to change things for the good?


 * Firstly, the highly controversial Quartz skin with mixed reviews. I'm personally disgusted by it. I understand that Wikia needs to be seperated from Wikipedia. But Quartz is not the way to do it, at least not for me. Monobook is easy, classic, timeless and logical. Quartz is over-polished, stuffed and crammed, and I really am starting to dislike my own wiki because of Quartz as a required default skin. Admins should be able to change the default skin into their liking, other than - oh, six colors of Quartz.


 * Secondly, the board's dislike of IRC. Seriously, nobody uses Skype. I understand if an individual member of staff doesn't prefer IRC, but if bigshot bosses start to ban IRC usage, it goes over the top. This is - last time I checked the Wikia propaganda - an open community, not a conglomerate dictature. IRC is an easy communication method, and I personally dislike to ask the staff questions on their talk pages, in face of everyone. Wake up, and smell the technology.

Thank you for reading. I appreciate any kind of composed opinions. Thank you and peace. --Sysrq868 22:07, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

Comments
The Quartz skin... I know I'm not alone in my dislike of it. It does have a lot of potential to be great, but a number of complaints have arisen from the everyday user&mdash;I myself still use the Monobook for its simplicity. These complaints range from things such as the layout, the resources it takes to run, etc. I feel that more community input would benefit the development of Quartz, given the right amount of communication + time. Once this is done, I don't see any reason why we, the Wikia community, can't have a great look to be proud of as a whole.

Likewise, I know from many many&hellip;many&hellip;conversations in IRC that the lack of staff online in IRC is beginning to have detrimental affects on the Wikia community. Those who we feel should be helping to foster a sense of community (a great sense of community which has been developed over much time, and which is the envy of many other web communities, IMO) are absent for the large majority of the time, and IRC is slowly turning the wrong way without their guidance. Because of this, I do agree with Sysre868 and his comments above. Greyman ( Paratus ) 23:21, 10 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Quartz isn't final, I guess you can call it beta? There is a version 3 in the works and, ahem... feedback doesn't go unheard ;). -- 23:38, 10 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Oooh, I'm fully aware of that, trust me ;) Greyman ( Paratus ) 23:56, 10 December 2007 (UTC)


 * As I've mentioned elsewhere: the Wikia community is an idea that does not have basis in fact. It's more of an nebulous confederation of separate wiki administrators rather than a strong community of the rank-and-file users of the site. Most of the sites that have had any success have their own communities in their own right - and most of the members of these communities don't think of Wikia as anything but part of a domain name. Pretending they do is like saying members of a particular website hosted on DreamHost are all DreamHost members.
 * If they do feel an affinity with Wikia, that's all well and good - perhaps they'll appreciate having a big "Wikia" brand at the top right of their website. They already have the ability to choose that. Personally, I see our commitment to Wikia as ending at the borders of the ad box. It's up to us to design the rest to fit our communities. Funnily enough, most of them are heavy users of Wikipedia, and so an interface that works the same way is highly beneficial - and hence more likely to attract the traffic that Wikia craves. --GreenReaper(talk) 00:10, 11 December 2007 (UTC)


 * The thing is, there are times where actual staff assistance is required (something that cannot be achieved or answered by users in general). If staff are generally not on IRC, it makes it difficult to communicate. One option is email, but that would not be live and immediate support. People generally like quick responses from a live chat, and the delayed response would not make Wikia an outstanding host out of all the web hosts out there. Another option is to join the Wikia Skype channel, but like mentioned above, users may not (generally would not) want to download, install, and set up a moderately-large program just to ask a question or make a comment that is directed towards staff (which may be a private one).


 * Regarding the skin, like GreenReaper mentioned above, "It's up to us to design the rest to fit our communities." If the community wants a certain skin, they should be able to set it locally without submitting a request to the staff to make the modification. That should apply for all the possible skins; if a community feels that Simple (one of the old skins) is best for their design and theme, their admin should be able to set that locally. I understand that the techs spent a lot of time on designing the new skins, but if a community doesn't want it, it's not going to do anybody any good. GHe (Talk) 00:59, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

Ironically, I actually brought up the IRC issue with Jimbo lastnight in a conversation we had, he can share his thoughts here if he wants, but Skype is one method of communication, but IRC is also another. Wikians shouldn't have to download and register something just because they have a question or two to ask. I'm not saying ditch Skype, I've used it. But the Wikia community should not have to rely on it. Also, if Skype is going to be used as a method of communication between the community and staff, people need a way of knowing what names/accounts to look for. However, IRC, especially via the gateway, is very easy to use and get questions, issues, or problems addressed quickly if there are staff, helpers, or janitors are there to answer/handle them. I'm always in #wikia when I'm online available to help in whatever I can, hopefully staff can start coming back in as well. My two cents. -- 23:38, 10 December 2007 (UTC)


 * There is also a problem in letting every single user directly asking staff member their little "stupid" questions... Wait, no. I dont mean their questions are really stupid, but there's a real lot of questions that even I can answer. (Although my english spelling is not top notch)
 * Maybe we need way to, say, categorized users of Wikia. Like in; all admin of at least one wiki been in a category saying they are admin and if they are willing to help with adminship matter like setting up CSS or the forum. That could be done with a simple template or some user boxes. Oh, take this as some sort of a dream i've just had but there could be a kind of a tree showing who can help with what (category tree?).
 * As for communities been able to choose wich skin they prefer, it would be wonderfull. But, dont you think most (like in 96%) of the communities would not use the Quartz skin ? The skin is a beta, people are judging it hastly. But, maybe Wikia should have waited until the skin get less buggy before imposing it. But, they said somewhere that wikia users actually serve as beta testers. But, yeah, it' a little harsh (is this even a word?) on their part.
 * As for IRC, i mostly never use it. My wiki problem, when i have some, can wait a day or two. It's not the end of the world. But i understand that for some people it is the end of their world. — TulipVorlax 04:06, 12 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Yup, most likely the hasty judgment of quartz would cause most wiki to jump back to MonoBook without giving the skin a chance. I can actually understand reasoning for making quartz the specific default. I'd half to say that the Quartz skin is much like the entire state of Gaia Online as an example. The site runs on code being constantly improved, and people ask "can't you bugtest things before releasing them", but the truth is that they do bugtest it beforehand. But with the way it works you can't find the bugs, issues, or things that need improvement until after you release the code. So the common thing is for something to be coded, test for important bugs, the stuff is released, and it continues on a cycle of getting reports on bugs until it's stable.
 * That's a similar case to Quartz. If it wasn't forced, then few people would use it because of the hasty judgment not considering it's just in the beta state (or even alpha), then there wouldn't be enough feedback on what's wrong with it coming in from the general community, then quartz would never get improved, and quartz would never become the good skin that the community would accept and want. ~ NOTASTAFF Daniel Friesen (DanTMan, Nadir Seen Fire) (talk) (tricks) (current topic) Dec 12, 2007 @ 04:20 (UTC)


 * While I see your point, I disagree. I'm allergic to peanuts, and you can't cure it by force-feeding me them. In fact, you'd eventually kill me. Forcing things - especially on a wiki type establishment like Wikia - just kills the community. "Do this and this, don't do this, this, this or this, and you can't have that or this or do this or that; have fun." makes me doubt the pure openness of the community, which in turn makes me really doubt everything Wikia's worth.


 * What happens when they do finish Quartz, if ever? Does Wikia suddenly just allow Monobook again, apologizing for any previous inconveniences? If they start working on a new alternative skin, do they disable Quartz too, to take advantage of the free beta-testing power within the users? --Sysrq868 16:06, 12 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Concerning Skype versus IRC: The #wikia channel on Freenode has become something of a joke. I don't know whether or not the absence of staffers contributes to this, but I typically have lurked in that room to offer and ask for help, and that is certainly not the typical activity I've been seeing in there as of late. Personally, I have no issues with the staff being more active on Skype, as Skype is free and has not caused me any problems so far. I needed it to reach a particular staffer, so I downloaded it. No one was hurt. I really feel that the whole issue regarding Skype is overblown, and rather typical of bandwagon internet-topic-bashing, but I am also of the opinion that the current IRC channel should be reined in. It wouldn't surprise me in the least if the trolling issue that has arisen would have something to do with the juvenile antics in what should really be a help channel. Graestan ( Talk ) 06:14, 23 December 2007 (UTC)