User blog:ShermanTheMythran/All in favor of CSS tournament, say Aye!

This is Wikia. On Wikia, people create, people collaborate, and people innovate. And when I say 'innovate', I mean working a stylesheet until the wiki is pixel perfect. That's right - there are many, many CSS enthusiasts across Wikia, spread across more topics than most people can count, and that's not because most people can't count very high. The point is, there are CSS enthusiasts everywhere, and that's how I got the idea to have a styling competition. A massive, massive showdown to see who can style the best.

Contestants line up from communities all across Wikia to write a unique stylesheet for a test wiki that has no custom CSS applied. It will start when a Wikia Staff member(s) picks two or three hex codes to be used as base colors, which they will apply via ThemeDesigner to give contestants a base to work with. Each round will have its own set of colors and its own theme word. This will be something like "glassy", "bubbly", "groovy", "psychedelic", "metallic", "creepy", etc., which the contestants will use combined with the given colors to create an entirely unique, original stylesheet for said test wiki. Each round will last one or two weeks, after which all work on stylesheets will immediately cease and proceed to be judged by the public via a top ten list (after being advertised across the entirety of Wikia). The top-voted say, half of the participants will move on to the following round. There will continue to be rounds of the competition until there are few enough contestants (perhaps five or so) to pick an immediate winner from.

The grand winner might get a wiki of their choice put on Wikia Spotlight or something to that extent, while possibly all contestants will get the option to publish their stylesheets to a library or archive for anyone else to use on their own wikis. As far as the judging goes, I'm sure many people will wonder how the masses will view so many different stylesheets in order to vote for their favorite. I'm willing to bet someone will be able to invent a clever JavaScript-based contraption that will allow users to select which stylesheet is applied to the page without reloading, maybe a dropdown list placed on the footer toolbar.

While I'm on Javascript, many people add JS to there wikis to speed along the design and demonstrate new abilities and functions. But this is a CSS competition, adding JavaScript may give unfair design advantages over those who don't know the language. Therefore JS will be a no-no. Of course, contestants will be allowed to access w3schools and other sites to confirm that one attribute or pseudo-class they can never remember or what-not, but taking CSS from any source, including one created by you, will not be allowed. That's called cheating.

Everybody who has touched CSS within there lifetime hates Internet Explorer in one way or another. But let's face it: writing a stylesheet involves making it compatible with all main browsers. Which Internet Explorer is still one of. It's kind of sad. Browser-specific hacks will, therefore, probably be allowed. To qualify, each stylesheet must be compliant with the latest version of each Chrome, IE, and Firefox. Opera and older browser compatibility not required, but if someone comes along with one of those browsers... Just sayin'.

With all that being said, keeping in mind that everything above is purely conjectural, who here thinks that it would be a good idea to hold an official Wikia stylesheet tournament?

Regardless of whether or not you personally would participate, would you like to see a CSS competition held? Yes No

Just an idea at the moment, please share your opinions/ideas!