Forum:Personalized homepage not loading properly on swfanon

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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: [1]. 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 [2]) and maybe Wikia would remove the old one. --Ciencia Al Poder (talk) ^-WikiDex 19:37, December 7, 2009 (UTC)

  Good work :) Just a little thing, the button in the user masthead still redirects to the main page. -- Porter21 ^(talk) 18:46, December 8, 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)

• Well that's what our proposal is for now, as it really is a sufficient compromise for those who want a forced redirect and for those who don't want My Home at all. There comes a point when you have to play politics a bit. If you guys want to disallow all forms of hacks in the future then that's fine, but as it stands now the hack taking out the forced redirect is the compromise that's been proposed at SWF. =) - Brandon Rhea ^(talk) 23:40, December 7, 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, I would say that that's actually the worst option as far as Wikia is concerned -- a situation that allows experienced users to enjoy the benefits of My Home without surfacing it appropriately to its intended audience, the new users. If you're hoping that the current SWF proposal will be okay with Wikia, then that's a misunderstanding of the situation. All of these hacks are a bad idea. -- Danny (talk) 23:44, December 7, 2009 (UTC)

I never hoped you'd be OK with it. I know your stance on hacks. Right now, though, there's nothing to prevent it from happening because Wikia doesn't have a policy on it, just an opinion. Until otherwise, this is the compromise proposal on SWF. The redirect was the whole reason why members of our community wanted it gone in the first place, which is why it's been disabled from September until yesterday. My Home without the redirect is better than no My Home at all, and the redirect is going to be put back in (most likely) anyway. It's better to have this compromise now than having no My Home right now and then having to deal with the crap storm of putting both My Home and the redirect back onto the wiki later. I'm saving the SWF community a headache and I'm saying Wikia a headache by proposing it like that, which in the interim is an effective solution.

Now like I said, I know your stance, but we have to play politics on this one if My Home is going to be there in any form. Are either of going to be satisfied completely right now? No. That's what compromise is, two sides coming away with gains but still having some feeling of disappointment.

This whole problem could've been solved in the beginning had hacks been prohibited in the first place, but they weren't and still currently aren't so this is the situation that we're in. I understand you don't like it, but it is what it is. Come a few months from now, we won't have to worry about it because the hack will likely be disallowed. Until then, like I said, this is a good compromise for SWF until we have no other choice.

The way I see it, the only way Wikia can 100% get what it wants now is to just disallow the hacks right now. If that doesn't happen, then you really have to acknowledge that community consensus is community consensus. There's no way of getting around that other than putting that policy in place right now. - Brandon Rhea ^(talk) 23:55, December 7, 2009 (UTC)

I completely support the idea of disabling the redirect with a hack (I'm talking to the redirect, not Special:MyHome). Because wikia forces it to be an individual opt-out instead of an individual opt-in we need to do those hacks to provide our community the choice of the appearance of the wiki to other people - our visitors. The best page to show new readers of a wiki the purpose of the wiki is the main page, not MyHome, and that's what they get when follow a link from a forum post, blog link or search for the wiki in a search enigne. MyHome is still accessible for those who want it. There are two big links to MyHome on EVERY page, and another one in the user masthead, so the new users Danny refers to should really know how to get it. The redirect is simply abusive.

The statistics about the increment of edits from new users are simply interpretations, because you don't know what's the real cause of that increase, and you don't know if the increase is from new editors or from experienced editors. We can access the data on quantcast and it can't tell the difference for it. --Ciencia Al Poder (talk) ^-WikiDex 10:51, December 8, 2009 (UTC)

In case anyone's still interested, that proposal passed. My Home is activated on Star Wars Fanon, but the auto-redirect is not. - Brandon Rhea ^(talk) 20:05, December 20, 2009 (UTC)