Win VIP Tickets to See "Glee Live!"
Are you a Gleek? The Glee Wiki is one of the largest entertainment communities on Wikia -- collectively, users have spent nearly 45 years editing and reading the wiki since January 1.
Right now, the Glee Wiki is running a contest where they'll send three winners VIP tickets to see the cast perform live in either L.A., Chicago, or London.
To enter the contest, all you have to do is submit your gleekiest photo. Snap a shot of yourself with your Glee CD collection, posters, fan art, bedspread, costume, or whatever else you can dream up — but hurry, the contest ends in a few days. Check out more contest details to find out when the Glee Wiki will announce winners.
The contest is open to U.S. and U.K. residents only due to international law, but t…
Translation Rally Helps International Community
Several months ago, I wrote about our (TWN) and described how new Wikia features become available in different languages. Since we started working with TWN, users have helped translate thousands of messages, including more than 100 Wikia extensions.
As a thank you to the community, and to show that we really appreciate all their great work, Wikia sponsored a Translation Rally for TWN's multiple projects from April 23–April 30.
As you can see from the graph below, the results were awesome: 212 translators made 63,516 translations, and the most active translator worked on 3,407 messages alone. After MediaWiki, Wikia received the most new translations, including 8,000+ to Wikia extensions. Overall, users translated nearly 12,000 messages on Wikia…
Busy Week for the Tech Team
Hello, Wikians! Can you guess what happened in our office last week? Sure, we got new bean bags... but the bigger news is that our engineers and server admins met for the Wikia Tech All Hands event.
In an unprecedented concentration of techiness, the Wikia Technical Team gathered for a week-long summit at our development center in Poznań, Poland. Here are some highlights from the event:
If you’ve ever tried to read a handwritten note, you know how difficult it can be to decipher another person’s scribbling. There’s a similar problem with codes — when a bunch of different people code, the results can be messy and hard to follow. At All Hands, we worked on a method to streamline writing code, which will hopefully result in a better, faster, an…
L.A. Noire Giveaway, Plus Fun Extras
Hang on to your seats, Wikia gamers. Rockstar, the company behind Grand Theft Auto and Red Dead Redemption, is releasing L.A. Noire on May 17. The game is a dark, gritty take on 1940’s Los Angeles, where players work their way up from beat cop to detective as they solve historical high-profile crimes.
To celebrate, we’re giving away five free copies of the game -- you can find out how to enter the contest here. While you’re at it, cruise around the comprehensive L.A. Noire Wiki for more information about the game. The community is doing a great job of cataloguing everything noteworthy, from character bios and case descriptions to an expanding list of featured locations. In fact, the wiki had more than 1.3 million page views and 4,000 edits …
Customize Your Wikia News
Wikians, have you recently updated the blog lists you follow? If your answer is no, now is a great time to double check which Community Central blogs you're interested in.
Over the past year, we've been working hard to expand the number and diversity of blog posts. Our goal is to provide insights into Wikia -- new features, cool wikis, and fun topics -- but also to discuss interesting trends and events that relate to our wiki topics.
We hope that this diversity provides a little something for everyone, but we know that some of you are only interested in specific topics. To help sort things out, we've created six different blog lists. These categories appear in the drop-down menu under Wikia News:
- Community News
- Contests & Giveaways
- Technical Up…
Inside the Minds of TV’s Hottest Writers
Hey, television buffs! Have you ever wondered what it’d be like to write for a show like Cheers, The Killing or Bones? At the Digital Hollywood conference in Los Angeles this week, the biggest names in TV gave us the inside scoop on what happens behind the scenes and scripts.
Hart Hanson, creator of Bones, Liz Tigelaar, creator of Life Unexpected, Jonathan Steinberg, creator of Human Target and co-creator of Jericho, Nicole Yorkin, co-executive producer of The Killing, and Rob Long, creator of Cheers (among others) told some awesome war stories, describing the highs and lows of working in the entertainment biz.
Here are some great quotes that we wanted to pass along:
On working backstage
“It’s not really one job, it’s five or six jobs... and …
Give Your Wiki a Makeover
Do you want your wiki’s homepage to look awesome, but aren’t sure how to make it shine? At Wikia, we’re constantly trying to improve the experience of creating and managing a wiki. I’ve been working on wikis for the past four years, and in my new role as Content Manager, I’ll be your go-to person for approving and fulfilling community requests.
If you’ve never made a request for customizing your wiki’s theme, logo, or home page, this should help answer a few questions. For those of you who have made requests before, we’ve changed the requirements, so here’s your chance to brush up on the updated process!
Before submitting a request, look over the best practices guidelines. To receive help, your wiki needs to have an active admin, a minimum o…
¡Feliz Cinco de Mayo! Plan a Fiesta with Flair
Did you know that Cinco de Mayo marks Mexico’s victory over France on May 5, 1862? The holiday has become a fun commemoration of Mexican heritage, and what better way to celebrate than with colorful crafts and delicious treats?
When planning your fiesta for later this week, use these great tips from the Recipes Wiki and Easy Crafts Wiki:
Whether you decide to celebrate with a big group of friends or make it a low-key night with the family, transport your guests to Mexico with some do-it-yourself decorations. Start by sprucing up your walls with a Sombrero and Chili Paper Garland and decorating your table with Paper Bag Maracas, which could also double as name cards if you put one at every place setting. For a post-dinner treat, fill this thi…
Introducing Chat
Howdy Wikia!
I'm Trevor (Ohmyn0 here on Wikia), newest member of the product team, and I have the pleasure of introducing a brand new feature that we've been building: Chat.
Currently wiki discussions occur over a long period of time via talk pages. The openness of this method is super helpful, but it doesn't provide the speediness that a modern online community needs. With chat, we aim to fill that gap. Already we've seen post-episode discussions happening on Glee chat, article architecture discussions in Muppet chat, and gamers helping each other solve problems in the Runescape chat.
Chat is still in its beta test stages, but we've already been blown away by the enthusiasm of some of our great communities who want it on their wikis, even tho…
Wikia Trivia on the Game Show Network
Who was the actor that played “man of faith” John Locke on LOST? Which is not considered a root vegetable: a carrot, turnip, lima bean, or rutabaga? These are just some of the questions that The Game Show Network asked viewers, prompting them to dig through wikis for a chance to win snazzy prizes.
Last week, Wikia Trivia was featured on the Game Show Network’s live show, GSN Live. Throughout our sponsored hour, we ran 15-second interstitials (short commercials) that notified viewers of the contest, asked them the first question of the day, and directed them to the Wikia Trivia page to find the answer. Then, toward the end of the show, the host took a caller to answer the question -- which hopefully they’d found out by then! -- and surprised…