Forum:Personalized homepage not loading properly on swfanon

On the Star Wars Fanon Wikia I can't get Special:MyHome to load, instead for some reason it redirects me to the Main Page. How do I change that?--Friedebarth (Talk) 16:41, December 1, 2009 (UTC)
 * This is because SWFanon has decided to disable MyHome (w:c:swfanon:MediaWiki:Monaco.js). You can, if you want, contact an administrator, and the admin might decide to remove it (if the community accepts it). Mark (Talk) • (Contribs) 16:59, December 1, 2009 (UTC)
 * Couldn't I go to User:Friedebarth/Monaco.js and add some code to change that just for myself?--Friedebarth (Talk) 21:06, December 1, 2009 (UTC)

As Administrators, we've discussed this. We refused such a disgusting debasement of basic Wiki principles, and redirected it to the Main Page. We consider Star Wars Fanon a Wiki, not a social networking site - Twitter and Facebook are for that. As the vast majority of users, and all Admins, supported this, we implemented it. Hope that explains it. :) --Thomas Rattim (talk)


 * Actually, that's Tom's view over on SWF. The rest of the administrators don't say things are disgusting debasements of basic wiki principles because we don't go over the top like that. ;-) We disabled it simply because we didn't feel the feature fit on SWF. Unfortunately, it couldn't be directed to your Monaco because it can only be redirected to one place across the wiki. That place is the Main Page. Now, in fact, it seems that it's been disabled entirely on SWF, so there's no redirect to the Main Page, no nothing. It appears to have been completely taken off. In the future, though, if you have a question about just SWF, feel free to ask me, Tom, or any of the other admins and we'll be happy to answer it. If we can't, we'll be sure to point you in the direction of someone who can! =) - Brandon Rhea (talk) 22:06, December 1, 2009 (UTC)

"Over the top" is very, very relative, and there are a lot of users on SWF, and every Darthipedian, who feel as I do. --Thomas Rattim (talk)


 * Well I have yet to see a single SWF user say anything remotely resembling that, so I think you're exaggerating. ;-) - Brandon Rhea (talk) 18:31, December 2, 2009 (UTC)

Thomas, you're speaking to a hardcore Wikipedian here (ask Brandon if you don't believe me), and I say: No, it's not. I agree that it should be optional, and not mandatory everytime you click on a link to the base URL of swfanon. But neither should it be completely disabled. That's my two cents. I'll stay out of this though.--Friedebarth (Talk) 14:10, December 5, 2009 (UTC)


 * It was a community decision to have it disabled, not just Tom's and not just the administrator's. We asked a lot of users about it to make sure it wasn't just a few administrators doing something on their own. =) That said, the hack may be irrelevant soon. Wikia is currently working on some new features for MyHome that they feel may make it integral to the editing experience, so the hack used to disable it may soon be disallowed. Wikia will be keeping us updated on that. =) - Brandon Rhea (talk) 17:23, December 5, 2009 (UTC)
 * Disabling the MyHome Special page is as evil as Wikia's decision to force users to have their extension used, like the "Edit enhancements". One thing is to force a redirect to the home page when a user reach MyHome from the domain URL. And other, very different, is to always force the redirect. You should at least check for the referrer before forcing the redirect, to allow users that want to go to MyHome to go there. --Ciencia Al Poder (talk) -WikiDex 18:46, December 5, 2009 (UTC)

Evil? Let's not get over dramatic here. One of the principles of all wikis is consensus, and we got that consensus from the majority of the people who actually participate in the community (as opposed to those who just stick to their own corner of the wiki and don't want to come out and do anything community-oriented). If any SWF user feels that My Home should be reactivated, there's nothing stopping them from putting up a discussion and a vote in the wiki's consensus track and working to get a new consensus. If they want it, they need to take the steps to get it. Help desk topics on Wikia Central aren't going to do anything to change that. In fact, because I'm such a nice guy, and because I really have no issues with My Home being activated to speak of, I'll set up that very consensus topic later today. The results will be the results. If it's decided to keep it, it'll be kept. If it's not then it's not, and the only thing that could change that would be Wikia disallowing the hack. That, to me, is very fair. - Brandon Rhea (talk) 19:28, December 5, 2009 (UTC)


 * Just a minute Brandon, Ciencia Al Poder knows more about Javascript than both of us. Ciencia Al Poder, is there any way you rewrite our script so that it's fairer and could allow those that would to go to MyHome to be able to go there? We still want http://swfanon.wikia.com/ to go to the Main Page, but can you also make it so http://swfanon.wikia.com/wiki/Special:MyHome would go to Special:MyHome? Perhaps that would be the best. --Michaeldsuarez (Talk) (Deeds) 21:41, December 5, 2009 (UTC)

Ok. That's what my CT was going to be about anyway, re-enabling My Home but not the auto forced redirect. - Brandon Rhea (talk) 21:48, December 5, 2009 (UTC)
 * Sounds good. --Michaeldsuarez (Talk) (Deeds) 21:52, December 5, 2009 (UTC)


 * Ok, there's a solution for you. It's not possible to grab the referrer page to determine if we came from the redirect or no, so my approach is to add a "redirect=no" to the URL when the user clicks the MyHome link in sidebar or upper menu. If we have redirect=no to the URL then the hack won't do the redirect.

/* killing the My Home thingy */ if( wgNamespaceNumber == -1 && wgCanonicalSpecialPageName == 'MyHome' && window.location.toString.indexOf('redirect=no') == -1 ) { window.location = wgServer + wgArticlePath.replace('$1',(window.wgMainpage||window.wgMainPageTitle)); }

$(function {	$('#header_myhome a,#community-widget-action-button,#myhome-feed-switch a').click(function { window.location = this.href + '?redirect=no'; return false; }); });
 * You can test it here: . If you click the MyHome links too fast before the page and scripts end loading, it may not add the "redirect=no" and then do the redirect, but that's a minor issue. --Ciencia Al Poder (talk) -WikiDex 18:39, December 6, 2009 (UTC)
 * Thanks. The script works as expected. --Michaeldsuarez (Talk) (Deeds) 23:29, December 6, 2009 (UTC)


 * I am grateful this discussion was carried out at this central forum because otherwise, I'd not have benefited from the learning. Thank you. -- najevi 23:34, December 6, 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the code, Ciencia! I've created the aforementioned CT here in case anyone wants to see how's it going. - Brandon Rhea (talk) 02:28, December 7, 2009 (UTC)


 * Hmmm, looks like there's one problem with the code. If you click "Watchlist" in My Home, it redirects you to the main page. You have to manually add ?redirect=no to the URL in order to view it. - Brandon Rhea (talk) 02:36, December 7, 2009 (UTC)
 * You're right. I've updated the avobe code to fix it. Also, did some updates, like using wgCanonicalSpecialPageName so it works for wikis in all languages, and added a fallback to wgMainPageTitle because this parameter will be added to the next MediaWiki release (see ) and maybe Wikia would remove the old one. --Ciencia Al Poder (talk) -WikiDex 19:37, December 7, 2009 (UTC)

Hi -- I want to quickly reiterate what Kyle posted on the Fall 2009 Update blog post: "We believe that these hacks are a bad idea and we may need to disallow them at some point in the future." That includes all of the hacks described on this page, including changing the behavior of the redirect, the activity feed widget and the top right menu.

About 65% of all pageviews on My Home come from the redirect -- that's the first introduction to the feature for new people. Having My Home turned on without the redirect basically means that only experienced users will ever see My Home. That would defeat the purpose of the feature to a large extent -- it's helpful for experienced users, but it's specifically targeted to help new people.

My Home has helped to increase the participation of new users -- as Kyle said, new editors are now 67% more likely to return and make more edits, and they make 50% more edits. Wikis that interfere with the My Home functionality are limiting their potential, and they're particularly disadvantaging new users. -- Danny (talk ) 23:27, December 7, 2009 (UTC)