User blog comment:Susanolivia/Fixed Width, Sidebar, and the Removal of Monaco/@comment-3100721-20101001024040

Alright, I'll bite. I'm used to the fixed width due to other sites that I use daily. I have nothing against the 1000px of fixed width, but I do have a profound loathing of the image-attribution, the lack of logic outside of the Spotlights module, and the air brought upon by the schedule. This has lead to the concentration and absolute hatred of the Wikia skin (Oasis is the default theme as Sapphire was to Monaco) as seen through the many negative comments about a wretched skin by a "dictatorship." While we do not pay in cash, we invest our time creating articles that at least once brought profit to Wikia.

I know I personally didn't add content to any wiki for Wikia's behalf, and most certainly not in the expectation of ever leaving Wikia as an active editor. I will stay and other editors may not. I believe that the constant addition of new, so-called "innovative" user interface features should not be rolled out but rather allowed on a per-wiki basis.

The removal of the ability to exclude those features that lie within the LocalSettings.php the can only be hidden via CSS/JS et al disallow the look of being professional based upon said wiki policies. While some wikis have policies and others do not, we are the state government and your the federal. You overrule, but not without a justification in this cesspool. If a wiki wants to remove a feature deaned unnecessary due to conflict of interest, then allow the wiki to request the removal of the feature through Special:Contact. On the previous staff blog, Liquid brought a good point in that with wikis like the RuneScape wiki, there are policies like Ownership that state:

''Players who create or contribute to an article have no specific ownership over that article. After all, this is a wiki, and everything released here (excluding things already protected by copyright laws) is under the fair use rationale.''

''While some fan sites may list contributors of information to give credit, we can't do that in articles. With this site being a wiki, a single page may have had hundreds of different players contributed. On the history of each page (accessible through the "history" tab at the top of the page), every contributor is listed automatically, making listing contributors unneeded.''

''Users have no exclusive rights over the images that they upload to the wiki. As with wiki pages, others may edit or delete your uploads if they think it serves the project, and you may be blocked from uploading if you abuse the system. As with articles, file pages contain a File history, where every uploader is listed automatically. Sometimes this cannot be preserved as files must be re-uploaded in different formats, however there is still no need for credit to be given to the previous contributors.''

Now why must Wikia ignore any wiki and violate the community policies? I know we don't pay for jack, and I know Wikia has every right to add what they will to the skin, but that doesn't make it right. While it is not listed at the AWA forum thread, nor on the actual Wikia wiki, but talk within the game suggests that some users wish to find a new host and then convince the active editors to switch to the new host and/or new domain. While this is just talk, it can evolve even more. I've seen a staff member say "They'll be back" but there is nothing in that statement that can be hold true. It's an older saying and hope that they will, but alas I don't want to get off on a tangent.

All I ask is that Wikia needs to address the communities of not just the small wikis that need traffic (let's be honest, 140,000 wikis created doesn't mean even 10,000 active wikis). Whenever the time is set to transition all of the active wikis to the Wikia skin, it should be taken that features should be removed from the LocalSettings.php file and/or allow exceptions that we should remove from the readers to keep the individual wiki less dependent on other Wikia wiki traffic. Professionalism overrides profit to keep contributors.