Forum:Wikia's New Style

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Ad change for logged-in users

Last week, we proposed making a change for logged-in users -- turning off the ads on article pages, so that logged-in users only see ads on the main page.

We got lots of feedback from the community, and the response was generally very positive. So we're going to be making the change within the next 24 hours, and logged-in users will see the article pages without ads.

One of the popular requests was to give logged-in editors the ability to see articles as a logged-out user would. We took those requests to our engineering team, and looked at the logistics of each option. What you'll see is a new option in user preferences, in the Skin tab. There'll be a checkbox under the list of Monaco skins that says "Show all advertisements: Select this option to see article pages as logged-out users see them." You can check that box if you still want to see the ads. The box will be unchecked as the default.

For people that want a quick view of one page, without having to go to preferences, there'll be a URL toggle. Just add ?showads=1 to the end of any page URL, and you'll see the article as a logged-out user would. The toggle will only apply to a single pageview, so it'll go back to your normal view when you load the page again.

We know that this change doesn't address everyone's concerns or complaints -- but we're happy that people will now have a choice about how they see the wiki pages. The new code will go live tomorrow, July 10th.

Thanks again for your feedback, your dedication and your passion. Keep talking to us about what you think, and tell us how things are working on your wiki. -- Danny (talk) 20:25, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

Great news. Thanks for your hard work Danny. --LordTBT ^Talk! 22:38, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

Very good news :) ! Drewton File:Era-old.png ^{(Drewton's Holocron)} 02:03, 11 July 2008 (UTC), Philralph @sca21 10:19, 12 July 2008 (UTC)

Lovely! :D SkywalkerPL 11:44, 12 July 2008 (UTC)

This is a great change and although late (alot of criticism would probably have been avoided) solves many of the issues I think contributors/editors had with the new style changes when it comes to advertising. In many ways this goes above and beyond what Wikia could have done, so you've won me over. --Fandyllic 20:28, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

Bottom ad

There's a small problem with the bottom ad section on pages like this one where the name of the section show a lot higher than the add (and we have a lot of them on fr.guildwars). I think it miss a clear:both; attribute style. I could go in and insert the {{Clear}} template at end of every pages but that would be so tedious... — Tulip Vorlax 01:07, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

Oh and by the way, on a french wiki, it looks really bad that the section name is in english. I did not find anything in special:allmessages so i suppose it's hard coded. — Tulip Vorlax 01:20, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

Was there a discussion about the placement/type change for the bottom ads someplace that I missed? --GAHOO t/ c 13:29, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

TulipVorlax: Can you try and get a screenshot of the misplaced title? I couldn't reproduce that. The translation part is being fixed, the message will be at Mediawiki:fast-adv so you can translate. It isn't showing up correctly at the moment, but Inez is working on it.

Gahoo: To transfer what we talked about on IRC... the ad is always variable, sometimes a banner and sometimes a box. That's part of what we said originally about anonomous users seeing various sizes/placements of ads. The header was added when we realised that on pages with long final sections the ad appeared in the middle of the article... not what we intended! So this was a fix after seeing the effect in a live situation -- sannse (talk) 18:53, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

Oh i though that a link with showads=1 was enough...

Here the whole page capture done with Endicosoft tool and hosted on ImageShack :

http://img133.imageshack.us/my.php?image=screencapturedate110720ja9.jpg

The section title has changed and there's something strange to the left under the spotlight. — Tulip Vorlax 20:46, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

The following capture is from GuildWiki. Ad in middle of page : [1] — Tulip Vorlax 01:28, 12 July 2008 (UTC)

The first screenshot looks tiny to me, I can't see what's going on there... but the second works. That should be improved soon (I understand new code is going out today). Instead of that ad attaching to the last level 2 header, it will attach to the last header of any type. So in this case, it would be to the left of "Miscellaneous".

I've found out I made a mistake above... the box under the last header is an alternative placement to the banner under the "advertisement" header. The idea is that the text wraps around the box, in a similar way to the top ad. If the last section is so long that the ad starts to look like it's in the middle of the article, then you can add a header lower down (maybe something like "other links"?). Once the latests tweaks are out, this can be any size of header, and it will move the ad down -- sannse (talk) 12:00, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

Hurgh! The first link was badly done maybe : [2] This one is better.

I'm not sure i understand the last part of your response, it feel like my english skills are not good enough. The only real problem was that when you have an infobox or something, the section header for bottom ad appear at top of page or just below last section while the ad was at the bottom of the page. Otherwise said, there was a big space between the header and the ad. — Tulip Vorlax 17:41, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

AdBlocking

Thanks for making me install AdBlock Wikia. Really appreciate the way it made my Internet surfing smoother and prevented intrusive ads. Shaur M. S. Grizlin 10:07, 12 July 2008 (UTC)

I'm surprised that you say that... Logged-in users don't see ads on article pages anymore, so you shouldn't have any need for AdBlock on Wikia. -- Danny (talk) 20:26, 12 July 2008 (UTC)

Who says he didn't install it on June 17 and is just now getting around to mentioning it? Or that he's not installing it in preparation for when you inevitably backpedal on not showing ads to logged-in users (since you're clearly incapable of committing to anything anymore)? -- Darth Culator ^(Talk) 22:43, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

You corrupt corporatists, 99% of people who visit this place are just here to read articles on wikis. A few will click on ads and get spam in their inbox, or a computer virus/malware, or lose money in other ways, even get tricked into believing bullshit conspiracy theories from this www.NostradamusOnline.com ad next to me. --Whachsul733 02:07, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

Mikael, in addition to AdBlock Pro I recommend NoScript. For those web sites that you care to enable scripts it's easy enough to enable for that site either temporarily or permanently. najevi 05:14, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

...

Making logged-in uses unable to see ads is not the answer to the problem, as the ads are still there and decreases the quality of pages, lowing new users and even frequent users the doesn't log in frequently. It would be pointless to a user log in every time to just read pages, and the "preview as anon" button idea made me laugh. Wikia needs the ads, true, but as said here and in other parts of the forum, the ads should be outside articles like before, or Wikia will lose more revenue then win with the ads as it is now because users may block them, and blocking is a plus not only because it removes the intrusive ads, but also makes the pages load faster. I have a question: Making logged-in users unable to see ads would not also reduce it? Also, why not accept donations like Wikipedia? Obviously, if Wikia accepts donations there would be no need to be free of ads like Wikipedia, just place them in a better place of the pages that doesn't annoy everyone. --THIS IS ~~SPARTA~~ WIKIA! 02:49, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

Are unanswered questions going to be answered?

Danny and Sannse you know how politicians who plan to speak at conventions surround themselves by like-minded party members but screen out any vocal opposing party members? Well, that is what it seems like is going on here.

Wikia is pampering (even patronizing) the vocal few who care enough about the Wikia New Style to comment or ask questions. As new comment and questions evaporate from this population of users who either

no longer see ads themselves and/or
enjoy special permission to use a preferred Monobook skin as site-default and/or
have tired of your stone-walling tactics

you pat yourselves on the back.

In reality you just haven't measured the impact of your policy honestly.

Take this past week as an a example. You haven't exactly been swamped by comments or questions here and yet you have not used that freed up bandwidth to answer the very reasonable questions that have previously been asked and yet continue to go unanswered in the now archived posts of this forum topic. You may have forgotten about those questions but those who submitted questions surely have not.

When you announce new policy; invite feedback; receive feedback (especially feedback in the form of clarifying questions) but then ignore it ... well ... that does not foster good will. It most certainly does not demonstrate the assumption of good faith that you seem so fond of appealing to.

Do you plan to reciprocate the assumption of good faith by reviewing the unanswered questions and responding?
Or are you waiting for those of us who assumed good faith on your part to repeat our questions under fresh forum headings?

najevi 05:26, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

Like others here, I feel somewhat let down in that the wiki I work on was created on Wikia under a certain set of assumptions, and now we find, after a year's solid work, that life has changed.

However, I can't see any common ground between my views and what najevi states above. I have read all the comments on this page (and archives), and I just don't see the alleged sinfulness. Below najevi has asked some specific questions -- that's good. But the above is just totally uncalled for, IMHO. I have never seen greater honesty and transparency from a commercial organisation than what I have observed here.

What would be useful would be if someone could research what alternatives for free wiki hosting are available. I suspect from the lack of decent comment on this that there really are no good alternatives. Some might see that as further evidence of Wikia's guilt, but to me it suggests that they really need the ad changes to pay for everything. --JohnBeckett 09:58, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

Najevi. As I've said before, the detail you are asking for is not sustainable. We cannot sit here with you and micro-analyse every decision we make and every aspect of the company. We are answering all we can, but that doesn't mean we are able to reply to every single question and comment. And that extra time this week... we've been using it to get back to helping and supporting wikis and users. Discussing this is important of course, but so is all the other work we try to do to make Wikia as good as it can be. -- sannse (talk) 15:54, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

Why can't Monobook be a site-default skin?

Given that sites using Monobook as a default skin also see the 300x250 block ad and/or the 90x730 leaderboard ad, why shouldn't all wiki communities be free to specify Monobook as the site default skin to be seen by:

visitors that do not log in
logged in visitors who have checked "Let the admins override my skin choice."

The advertisers still enjoy the uniformity of their ads appearing in the two preferred locations. There is no impact to ad placement options available at the bottom of each web page.

The only obstacle I can imagine is the loss of the lower areas of the left hand navigation bar for so-called skyscraper ads.

Is the skyscraper ad format in such high demand that communities should be deprived of the Monobook skin as an option?

It is not reasonable to state that Monobook will continue to be available as a user preference skin and not make it available as a site preference skin.

It has been clearly stated that new wikia features (e.g. widgets) will not be developed for Monobook. For those communities who are happy with that condition, why not allow Monobook to be selected as the site default skin? Admins for a wiki community are able to make a decision as to whether the Monaco widgets provide any desirable value to their readers.

najevi 06:30, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

I thought that someone from Wikia had claimed that switching to Monaco led to greater community involvement (= greater interest to advertisers). That sounds complete nonsense to me, but I haven't seen any evidence. --JohnBeckett 09:58, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

I'm sure this is something that's in the archives... but they are getting rather long now. So... there are a few reasons for this. Including, in no particular order: The new skin has been designed to encourage people to participate. We tried to make sure it emphasises that you can edit rather than just read, and we believe it will increase the number of people joining the wikis. We also believe that new users will prefer the new skin, it's older users who will tend to prefer what they know. And it will help newbies (especially those completely new to wikis) to see the same skin as they move around Wikia. So we are looking out for them while still allowing older users to use Monobbook. We will be developing for Monaco. Obviously we want new features like EditTips to be available to newbies, but they will only be available on Monaco. That helps our development team and saves our resources. Also, advertisers like a consistent look to the site. They don't want to advertise on 6000 little sites, they want to advertise on one big one. Having some aspects of the site consistent (the overall look) will help us attract advertisers. So we think this skin will be good for us, and for users... but we understand that some will want to stay on Monobook, and so are providing that option as an individual choice. -- sannse (talk) 16:05, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

If the Monaco skin offered a genuine value-added experience to the majority of readers then surely those wiki communities that seek such a new experience would have migrated on the strength of those merits.

For reasons already detailed in the archives I find the removal of the Monobook site-preference option unnecessarily heavy handed on your part. Moreover, the continued support of Monobook as a user-preference is incongruous with your stated reasons.

In the absence of a commitment to support Monobook as a site-preference, the implicit message here must surely be that:

if and when something which currently works in your user-preference Monobook skin ceases to work; then don't be surprised if that feature is deprecated.

najevi 15:44, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

I think let the Monobook be the site-default skin would be better because I don`t want unlogged people get scared away by Monaco or other little-bit-messy widget themes besides some specified Monobook looks really rocks. That Monaco stuff ruined this wikia(one of the examples), and I have to stop editting it until the default skin get back to Monobook because now it looks really awful.--Erik^Talk ^Con 05:56, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

This is also true of the Illogicopedia, where visual similarity to Wikipedia is important and Monaco deprives us of this - I know of a at least one user that refuses to edit until the matter is resolved. Individual wiki admins should be free to choose what they think is best for their wiki and not be ruled by third parties who think they know what is best for them. This is just not on, I'm afraid, Wikia - pull your socks up. -- Hindleyite 11:07, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

Does Wikia approve of a link allowing readers to dismiss an ad?

This question or suggestion has appeared more than just a few times in the past two months but has never drawn a response from Wikia staff. It is clearly not a violation of the Wikia terms of service since it leaves the choice of action to each visitor on a page by page basis. najevi 06:42, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

Folks, can we get real! No one is going to document precisely what text can be used on a wiki. I could create a page commenting on some public figure, then each week make subtle changes that move the article ever closer to unsupportable defamation. No one can come up with a formula in advance that would predict when Wikia would react to my silly behaviour.

If we can assume anything, it is that Wikia is introducing ads to earn an income (they are not doing it to upset people). Actually, there is one other thing that we can assume: Naturally a "click here to irritate an advertiser" button will eventually cause trouble between a wiki and Wikia. Likewise, if a site notices ads for a particular brand of shoes, and the site then cunningly introduces a bunch of pages criticising those shoes, there will be trouble. Life is unfair, particularly when you have to pay the bills. --JohnBeckett 09:58, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

The link I am referring to is a simple "Dismiss Ad" or "Close Ad" link. I think you read more into this than intended. najevi 14:58, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

Still no response to a very reasonable question that had been asked in early June, went unanswered for over one month and was repeated here a little over three weeks ago. najevi 14:14, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

You can be sure, that Wikia team have seen it. -- HenryNe 17:10, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

Does WIkia get paid for impression ads regardless of the number of page views?

I understand that click-through ads require viewers to click on the ad for Wikia to collect revenue. I also read that Wikia plans to transition away from click through advertising revenue to impression advertising revenue.

I assumed Wikia is paid for hosting impression ads regardless of whether people view them, is this the case?
- Does number of page views somehow factor into the revenue formula?
Is there some date by which all click through ads at Wikia will be phased out?
Are there going to be any click through ads in the 300x250 block or the 90x730 leaderboard?
Is it accurate to assume that all ads appearing in the left hand nav bar are click through ads?

najevi 07:15, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

In short:

No
- Yes
No
Yes
No

In slightly longer: we are using a variety of ad suppliers, a variety of types of ad, and are working to increase and improve both. The individual deals that we make are more likely to be impression ads than click-throughs. But when we don't have a specific deal then the ads will be more likely to be per-click. All this is generalisation though, there are many variations. -- sannse (talk) 16:13, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

Ad

I'm not sure if you are able to see this but I see an h2 header saying <fast-adv>, which I'm guessing is an ad space, on the bottom of pages across Wikia when you check "Show all advertisements" in your preferences. I see it here and here as an example, and I see it on the bottom of the Forum. Wikada - ^{Talk Contributions} 22:36, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

"Reported" a little higher on this page see #Bottom ad. — Tulip Vorlax 23:47, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

Yo. On safari (for the PC, but presumably for the mac as well,) your deep-page ad-block is mis-rendering with visible HTML.

Also- you suck. -Derik 02:33, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

This is fixed now (the visible code that is, not us sucking). Which also means that the "advertisement" header is translatable. Just edit Wikiamedia:fast-adv for your language -- sannse (talk) 16:15, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

You mean MediaWiki:Fast-adv. ;-) — Tulip Vorlax 21:26, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

Eep! how did I make that mistake? (again) -- sannse (talk) 10:09, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

I just wish to reiterate the "you suck" part of my thesis. Not you specifically- the object of my current weath is our Wikia "community helper," but seriously, the whole "sucking" problem's been pretty across the board. We are now 0 for 2 of Wikia people coming in to adjust our site without us wanting them to- both times they broke things and didn't bother to check, their work, simply declaring "mission accomplished" and scuttling off.

Suuuuuck. -Derik 18:05, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

Derik, I fully understand that you think we suck. Message heard, several times, thank you for you opinion. But I don't think that this level of incivility is helpful or takes us forward in any way. Please can we keep it polite and constructive?

On the main page changes: as Scott showed with his screenshots, he did check... although it's possible that there was a caching issue. The main page ads are turned on now, and it's currently pushing the main page content down. We've shown you how to fix that; you've suggested on the community portal that you'd like to leave it broken in order to spite Wikia. I don't think that would benefit anyone, including your readers. Let us know if we can help. -- sannse (talk) 19:35, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

No actually, it's not "currently pushing the main page down," as his screenshots show. It's actually broken in Safari (which his screenshots show,) and firefox (which his screenshots don't.) See- he's running the shiny-new version of firefox which the rest of the world isn't using yet. And FYI, the version HE uploaded broke firefox and Safari too, because he only checked it in IE and the completely-rewritten-rendering-engine Firefox 3.

And I kinda take issue with describing having a little bit of extra white space 'broken.' Scott's layout let me with a buttload of unwanted whitespace on the formerly-dense main page (of course, I'm running adblock,) and that's clearly not considered "broken." How can pushing down content be considered broken? It's what your ads do on every other page! If puching down content constitutes breaking your page, can we disable your adscript because it's breaking our site? You know, for usability reasons? Surely we're allowed to fix broken functionality.

As for spiting Wikia... while our wikia helper was reformatting our main page, he also stopped to remove our non-wikia-url branding (a redirect, but a provision in case the community decides to move,) our links to adblock, and the link to the community discussion about whether or not to leave wikia. No other content was removed.

Do you understand that the community's decision not to allow that to take place is not merely "a sullen resistance to change," you characterized it as, but actually a more fundamental, completely justifiable outrage at Wikia's conduct?

TT1 feels that those proposed changes would render our main page more broken on a fundamental and essential level, than whatever minor rendering quirks might occur with the previous layout.

Besides, the ads are on top. That's what's important, right? -Derik 20:12, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

I mean, I have to believe that going in and deleting or hiding things critical of Wikia on your communities isn't Wikia policy, and if you knew it was happening you'd be upset.

Should I not tell you about this sort of thing? I mean, granted, when I pointed out that Monaco's searchbox so badly coded that it didn't work if was turned off, the immediate response I got was "Less than 1% of users surfs with Javascript turned off." But your tech-guys did eventually fix it, because while you are willing to accept some degree of Monaco sucking, you'd prefer to to suck in that way, since it was completely avoidable and gained you nothing. Don't you want to be told about avoidable suck?

Hey Wikia, you know that sucking thing you do? You're doing it again! -Derik 20:30, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

Hi, Derik -- Just to clarify... Where was the phrase "a sullen resistance to change" used? You're attributing that to Sannse, but I haven't seen her use that phrase anywhere. -- Danny (talk) 21:19, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

She described our unwillingness to upgrade to a new-improved-CENSORific page as "you'd like to leave it broken in order to spite Wikia." I translate that as putting us in the "sullen resistance to change" box, which isn't the right box at all, we're in the "broken is better than bowdlerizd" box.

I thought it was clear by context that I was telling her what seems to be being communicated via rhetorical paraphrase so she can either affirm or correct my perception. Telling the other person what you're hearing from them instead of simply parroting back the words they used (which you might both be interpreting differently) is a very useful cross-check device- it allows you to correct one another's understandings until you achieve a true meeting of the minds instead if skewing one another's words through the filter of your preconceptions or an emotionally volatilized moment. To some degree, her response to my original post was a summation/assertion of what she felt the dynamic in play was. I have corrected that model and emphasized aspects that I feel will re-orient her perspective, and in turn described my understanding of the message she is attempting to communicate to me- which she will doubtless also whack a few times until it's more in line with what she's actually trying to say. Takes a bit longer, but the result is worth it.

If only we both spoke German. A language so blunt and to-the-point that their word for a sex act has the same root as "to commit violence." And EVERYTHING you say in german sounds rude- which renders the emotional component null and forces you to actually listen to one another. One day perhaps mankind shall develop a universal-interchange language for unambiguious communicating on this level, and much of our problems may vanish overnight. :~)

Don't worry, I know Saanse just went to bed and I won't get a remittance on that response-token for 12-16 hours. I'm under no illusion that an absence of that response makes me right in the meantime. I shall wait on her response. -Derik 22:10, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

Telling users they can avoid ads, apart from main page, by signing in

Are there examples of this being done yet? Is it being included in welcome templates? Philralph @sca21 07:04, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

I haven't seen any yet. Have you put it in your welcome template? I think that's a great idea, for anon contributors. -- Danny (talk) 21:09, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

On fr.guildwars, i had this in Mediawiki:Anonnotice. But i've remove it... Maybe it's time i put it back... — Tulip Vorlax 21:20, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

I really question the idea. If the premise is that logged in users won't get the page-destroying ads, and we're encouraging everyone to log in regardless of whether they can, will, or should contribute... then nobody will be seeing the new obnoxious ads. Once that's the case, won't we be back to square one? Won't there be no choice to switch things around so we're all seeing those ads? This seems like, at best, delaying the inevitable. Chip 00:16, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

So, if we're allowed to instruct readers to log-in in order to avoid the ads, then logically we are allowed to, in general, instruct them on how to remove the ads in ways that do not make the ads mandatorily invisible?

If this is correct, then we would be allowed to post a message near the top of many or every page, advising readers to install the Firefox AdBlock app, or similar apps for other browsers? This would have practically the same effect as suggesting they log-in, with the added bonus of not having to give out personal information to a faceless company, as well as benefitting them on sites other than just wikia.KrytenKoro 06:25, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

That is ridiculous. You don't even need an email address to register. What personal information are you talking about? It takes less than 20 seconds to input a username. --LordTBT ^Talk! 07:00, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

Kryten: From Wikia's point of view, encouraging people to log in is a positive thing, but encouraging people to use AdBlock is a negative.

People who are logged in are more likely to feel like part of the community, and more likely to make an edit. We want more logged-in people -- that's why we have big, shiny, green buttons around the page encouraging people to log in.

So we're happy if people encourage their readers and contributors to log in... it's better for the community and better for Wikia overall. Encouraging people to use AdBlock doesn't help anyone.

To answer Chip's question - we don't expect that everyone will log in, so there will still be plenty of people who'll see the ads. Right now, about 1% of our visitors are logged-in. Even if that number triples, it'll still only be 3% - and if that encourages more people to contribute, then the content that they write will bring even more readers to the site.

We already did this with the Quartz skin - logged-in users didn't see any ads on Quartz, and we didn't see a huge rush of people logging in. Taking ads off for logged-in users is just a way to make life easier for the people who are working to build up their wikis. If some people end up logging in without contributing, we can live with it :) -- sannse (talk) 22:50, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

Creating an account does encourage you to give out personal information, and at minimum, it tracks you as a person and you necessarily lose some anonymity. Furthermore, encouraging people to use AdBlock would help...pretty much everyone but wikia. Readers who did so would be able to avoid ads not just here, but everywhere, and it would allow editors to be more altruistic in formatting pages. Plus, it would allow readers to get rid of the ads totally on their side, without having to give up any anonymity at all.

I also have to ask, again - if getting rid of ads by logging in is considered the "carrot", and seeing them is the "stick"...then either wikia plans to renege on this (as they seem to have gleefully admitted in other discussions), or they are content with a permanent situation in which they are constantly hitting 97% of the user-base with the "stick". How is this a "positive thing", and "better for the community"?KrytenKoro 21:07, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

I agree with KrytenKoro's assessment of the likelihood of Wikia doing an about face wrt who does and who does not get served with advertising. However, I don't share all of the same concerns about the identifying information required when registering.

It seems to me that revealing your IP address is unavoidable so the rest (e.g. choosing a user name and specifying an email address) is just a formality which can be considered just one form of customization/personalization.

I found the carrot and stick analogy easy to relate to.

If it was crystal clear just how many page views of impression ads is necessary to adequately fund the wiki that I contribute to then I would gladly logout and run some bot program or add-on with my firefox browser at times when I am not at the screen just to cycle through a bunch of random pages on my wiki and presumably increase the advertising revenue that Wikia enjoys.

Some questions (that I feel I have been chastised for asking) in the past were intended to solicit that type of insightful information. However, the Wikia staff responses have been so superficial and/or guarded that ambivalence now seems the less stressful path to take.

IMHO, Wikia staff have shown themselves to be one herd of horses (and I am deliberately being polite by refraining from modifying that metaphor!) that you can lead to water but you can't force them to drink.

najevi 00:20, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

Ads with suggestion as Login?

Ads suggest as "Login" middle in the content? It's not a picture. You can fill out the form. Nice to catch accounts from Wikia users. I feel this is big security risk. Depend on the page colors user can not see the different! -- HenryNe 23:58, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

Please report all problem adverts to community@wikia.com - see Help:Bad advertisements for more on what to send us. Thanks -- sannse (talk) 12:06, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

Ok, done. -- HenryNe 20:02, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

Banner Ad Menu Overlap

Image

The main page banner is overlapping the first menu. -- LordTBT ^Talk! 03:33, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

I think this is related to a problem we've seen with login and other boxes on some wikis - I'll add this to the report on that. Thanks for the screenshot -- sannse (talk) 12:07, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

I have problems with horrible ad-boxes pushing down whole tables, look at w:c:fantasy:Aerina in anonymous mode with a Monaco screen, the same on other wikis like conworld , ancientgreekfanfiction and conmyth... How stinky New style!!! Golden Eagle 23:02, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

Whatever happened to that second ad?

You know that 300x250 ad that will appear on the main page on the right, when's that coming? --Taylor Karras ^talk _{contributions} 18:13, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

Try to go to your preferences and look of a "Show all advertisements" checkbox in the skin tab. If you missed the info, the ads are gone for login users. But, both ads are supposed to show on the Main page for everyone. Maybe some other bug... Or maybe some temporairly excluded wikis... — Tulip Vorlax 04:28, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

I tried it logged out, no second ad on the right on the main page to speak of. --Taylor Karras ^talk _{contributions} 05:43, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

Hi, Taylor -- The 300x250 ad is getting turned on one wiki at a time... in order for that ad to work, you need to format the main page using column tags that we've developed. We're going around to each wiki to help them use the new column tags, but there's a lot of wikis, so it's taking a while. If we haven't gotten around to yours, then we will! Let us know if you want your wiki to get switched sooner; we'll come and help you out with it. I know you work on a few wikis -- which one are you thinking about? -- Danny (talk) 17:43, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

Mostly this wiki. --Taylor Karras ^talk _{contributions} 08:53, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

Firefox + long pages suck

You did something.

w:c:transformers:Transformers_Wiki_talk:Community_Portal#Firefox_blues

I feel justified in saying this because;

The text did not slowly erode as we "went over" whatever this arbitrary rendering limit now is- it vanished all at once.
The rendering problem does not exist in Monobook. Therefore the problem is not in Firefox, it is in Monaco. (And therefore it is your problem.)

I leave you to it.

Also, you suck. -Derik 12:18, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

Firefox 3 problem

A few people have mentioned a problem with Firefox and cut-off long pages. It seems that Firefox 3 changed how it handled some css, and that's affecting us. It should be fixed soon, we are making changes our end that will mean this doesn't happen. Sorry for the problem. -- sannse (talk) 22:20, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

I've just heard that Firefox 2 is also affected for some people - which puts theory one out of the window somewhat. We are still looking into it, and I hope to report more soon -- sannse (talk) 07:31, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

I have Firefox 3.0.1 and everything show up for me on the page cited in previous section. Do you have other exemples ? But maybe it's because i mostly never login in Firefox. — Tulip Vorlax 16:43, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

But i see something wrong in that page in both browsers; after the section named "Section naming conventions", all following sections have a big gap at the left as if something wasn't closed in there. — Tulip Vorlax 16:52, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

TulipVorlax, Is it possible for you to upload a screenshot of what you see? We applied a fix for the cut-off pages today, so if you are still seeing distortion it would be great to know. Thanks -- sannse (talk) 18:42, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

The gaps i reported are still there. The problem begin right after the pink rectangle. The capture of the whole page in a low quality jpg is still 3 Mo. I'll try to import it here anyway :

I hope it will work. — Tulip Vorlax 23:54, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

It work ! Lol. So, as i said, right after that pink rectangle, many things goes wrong; gap between header and left side of content area and many paragraphs gets right align instead of left align. — Tulip Vorlax 00:02, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

I ported TT1's (broken) long page to community test in order to make sure it wasn't some of our custom code causing the problem before making the bug report. (It wasn't, as the page was still broken on community test.)

That page is now working, so I'm gonna take that as a good sign the change applied did fix the problem. (The original page was truncated and archived a could days ago to avoid the problem, and is no longer a good test.) So uh... if you're looking for a Baconian Inductive Proof to test your work against. *points* That's a page that used a to break and now does not.

Thanks on the fix! -Derik 22:21, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

Looking at the longest archived version of the community portal page - [3], I cannot see any problems on Firefox 3 logged in our out - however, I /do/ see the problem on IE7. Very strange. I can't see anything in the article code that would cause it. Will see if I can see it occur elsewhere. Kirkburn talk contr 01:26, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

Update: I've tried the longest version of the WoWWiki village pump and don't see the problem there - [4]. All that I can see that occurs on that page at that point is a div, which looks to be coded fine. Kirkburn talk contr 01:32, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

Update 2: Now I've tried that community portal on IE7 with the simplest skin possible, MySkin: [5]. Still occurs, but disappears when the div is removed. This leads me to the conclusion it is an IE/MediaWiki issue with divs on very long pages. Kirkburn talk contr 01:37, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

I'll try correct the div's code here.

Original code is :

<div style="background-color:pink;">
:==Generation 1 cartoon==
:Optimus Priem Blah blah blah...
::===Japanese Gumball comic===
::Optimus Prime, Elita 1 hubba-hubba!
:==Generation 1 cartoon==
:Which was followed by the episode that led into.</div>

Did you tried :

<div style="background-color:pink;">
:==Generation 1 cartoon==
:Optimus Priem Blah blah blah...
::===Japanese Gumball comic===
::Optimus Prime, Elita 1 hubba-hubba!
:==Generation 1 cartoon==
:Which was followed by the episode that led into.
</div>

It give this :

==Generation 1 cartoon==

Optimus Priem Blah blah blah...

===Japanese Gumball comic===

Optimus Prime, Elita 1 hubba-hubba!

==Generation 1 cartoon==

Which was followed by the episode that led into.

The little problem i was seen was that the closing div was inside the UL or is it a blockquote? — Tulip Vorlax 20:35, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

I think there's no problem here with the closing of the div on it's own line, do you see anyting different ? — Tulip Vorlax 20:42, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

I've just taken the liberty to repair that thing on the tranformers wikia bacause it seemed nobody was caring about it. Now, everything seems well. — Tulip Vorlax 11:20, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

Almost !

It seems that if Wikia has done something repairing the badly closed div just broke the page in Firefox 3... So maybe that was the problem in the first place ? — Tulip Vorlax 11:23, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

Or maybe i talked too soon as it's ok now in my Firefox 3. — Tulip Vorlax 11:40, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

How come wikis connected to wikia central have to have ad's while some don't

I feel let down that wiki's like http://www.FEwiki.net don't need ad's while wiki's like http://fireemblem.wikia.com don't, if anything i would have thought it would been the other way around.

--Semajdraehs-Talk page 17:58, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

In wikis like the one you cited above, who do you think is paying the hosting and bandwidth usage ? If you buy an account with an hosting service and a domain name, you pay for it and it is your liberty to not put ads on it.

If you get a free email from any free email provider, you get ads on the pages used to check your account. If you create a forum in some popular free forums hosting service like http://www.forumactif.com/ or http://www.yuku.com/ you have Google Adsense on them.

And what about "wikis not connected to Central" ? Don't think that because they use the Mediawiki software they kind of have a connection to Wikia. Anybody can download and install that software on any hosting account that support Php 5 or so (depend on the version of software). — Tulip Vorlax 10:56, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

Many errors on validator.w3.org

Hello, I was just checking pages on the validator.w3.org. All Monaco pages have 100 or more errors. Or it is an error in the header? I don't know. But, it is not the MediaWiki engine behind (see last check). For pure test I used a Special page without content. Pages with content have lot of more errors.

Validate inside.wikia.com Main Page Result: Failed validation, 130 Errors
Validate www.wikia.com (Monaco) Result: Failed validation, 100 Errors
Validate www.wikia.com (Monobook) Result: Failed validation, 39 Errors
Validate www.mediawiki.org (Monobook) Result: Passed validation (0 Errors)

-- HenryNe 22:05, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

Please fix follow main errors:

All ampersands in URLs needs to replace with &
After <script> block often is missing the comment /*<![CDATA[*/ ... /*]]>*/ block for non script browsers
lists (ul, ol, dl) require list items (li, or dt, dd)
id="1... id and name attributes must begin with a letter, not a digit.
onChange=... Remember XHTML is all lower-case
Space needs before id, href and style. Run this replacements: s|"href=|" href=| and s|"style="|" style="|
id="community_login" ... id="login" have double identifier, remove the id="login"
<div class="widgetToolbox"></div> not allowed inside dl/dt
At this point can see now, that <div class="community_details color2"> was not closed before </dd> (near <ul id="101-recently-edited">)

As final result I got error free from validator . The original page Special:MIMEsearch was well good small page for this test, and have no side effects from content.

Monobook have similar syntax errors. After fixing this, you would see, that this skin has two </div> with missing open. Ones is perhaps the line marked with "(#2068)" before id="column-google". The other I have not found. Changes for Monobook are here.

Please fixup the style generator. Than the validator can also locate errors from inside content code. -- HenryNe 20:37, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

Hurray for writing all that down. I saw 100+ errors from the validator for a monaco page with new ads where monobook without ads used to validate (now monobook has 27 errors or so, from the ad code that lacks URLencoding) and just gave up. --◄mendel► 13:34, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Hi Henry, I've checked with our tech team, and they confirmed that these errors are not serious. As a random comparison, http://news.bbc.co.uk/ has 375 errors - this sort of thing isn't unusual or (depending on the errors) harmful. Right now we need to put available engineering resources and time to fixing issues that have a more significant effect on the site, and into developing tools that help editors and visitors. That's not to say we won't fix these more stylistic errors, but they are not high priority. -- sannse (talk) 17:26, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

I know, that mostly errors are harmfully. But the one significant error you can not see with an over flooded error/warning log. We (wikianer, admins and helpers) can not check the errors from inside the contents. After we would have a clean frame, or I would say less than 10 errors and warnings, then we would be able to check the wiki contents also and would better locate errors from in the content, mostly missing close-div`s and so. The one or two miss matched open-close div to see near the end of an empty content page are not harmfully (my last bugfix)! As long you have one open-div not closed, every wrong placed </div> makes interesting site effects, for example #Firefox 3 problem above. --HenryNe 19:45, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

<dt class="color1 widget_title" id="101_header"><div class="widgetToolbox"></div>Community</dt>
<dd class="shadow widget_contents" id="101_content">17 articles on this wiki<br />
...
<div class="community_details color2">
   <div class="community_toggle" onclick="WidgetCommunityDetailsToggle(this);"></div>
      <h3>Latest Activity</h3>
      <ul id="101-recently-edited">
      ... <li> ... id="101-more" ... </li> ...
      </ul>
      <br />
<!-- please insert the missing close div here! It's from "community_details color2" -->
</dd></dl>
<dl class="widget WidgetAdvertiser" id="206_wg">

Please fix this code passage above. --HenryNe 05:15, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

Update: The code is what we see now. The comment needs to replace with a /div. --HenryNe 07:56, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

And please - don't say that fixes aren't needed. Web standards were written so that the page would display correctly on every browser! -- Jamjumetley 12:36, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

I support web standards and W3C things (most of the time). But they didn't said this wont getting fixed, they said they have others things to work on first.

Like i said, if some sort of petition were done, i'll sing it. But is a petition really needed ?

Most browsers are tolerant to thoses kind of errors so people dont feel the need to fix tings. Maybe browser should not have been toleran to HTML errors in the first place. — Tulip Vorlax 19:24, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

It took JSharp to point it out to me, but the divs in your paste there are closed...

<dt class="color1 widget_title" id="101_header"><div class="widgetToolbox"></div>Community</dt>
<dd class="shadow widget_contents" id="101_content">17 articles on this wiki<br />
...
<div class=" community_details color2">
   <div class="community_toggle" onclick="WidgetCommunityDetailsToggle(this);"></div>
      <h3>Latest Activity</h3>
      <ul id="101-recently-edited">
      ... more <li> ... </li>
      </ul>
      <br />
</div>
</dd></dl>
<dl class="widget WidgetAdvertiser" id="206_wg">

What am I missing? -- sannse (talk) 21:14, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

Is the /span there is a typofix from you? A span is not opened at this place. It's closed some lines above, before the div class="community_details color2" starts.

There is no code (no /div and no /span) between the </ul><br /></dd></dl>. These four end tags are all, what I see. Yust view the html source of real page (not my copy), search for id="101-more", and scroll 3 lines down. My browser is the IE6, and have the same in Firefox2 and FF3. Logged in or not make no difference. You can use any *.wikia.com, also here in the forum. A related problem from the missing /div is, that the Language box can not hide, unless you move the Languages box above the Community box. --HenryNe 07:44, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

Here is a view of badly code with syntax highlights (Exported from Kwrite-Editor). --HenryNe 08:50, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

Sorry, the /span was a typo on my part, and I thought the your text was uncorrected. I'll get this added to the bugs list. Thanks -- sannse (talk) 19:49, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for update last day. It's nice to see, that Language box can hide now. --HenryNe 19:16, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

Block ad on right side of main page

Is there a preference or something in which the 300x250 block ad doesn't have to appear on the main page? I've seen this on a couple of wikis. And how do I make it so the monaco skin looks like the Redwall Wiki where it uses the wide logo and a custom banner across the top? -16:48, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

There is not an option to turn it off. What your seeing is wikis that have yet to have it turned on. In order to minimize the breakage of layouts, that ad unit is not being turned on enmasse. The mainpage of a wiki has to be redesigned to accommodate the mainpage column tags first before the box ad is turned on. As for redwall: that is their custom monaco skin, they chose to re-push the content area down, and apply an image to the background_strip element, as for the wide logo, contact LordTBT on that wiki for details on how he did that. --Uberfuzzy 17:01, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

I heard my name ;). As Uberfuzzy said, I customized our Monaco skin; I liked the look of Monaco 1.0 better. I turned off the Wiki.png logo in Monaco.css and changed the content area size. Then I took my wide_logo and positioned it onto my background_strip image in an image editor, and re-uploaded it. So the wide logo is actually on the image itself. --LordTBT ^Talk! 18:30, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

showads=1 via checkbox on edit pages?

I know that I can add ?showads=1 (or &showads=1, as the case may be) to a URL to get a view with ads when I am logged in. I just now wanted to see ads in edit preview, but I don't know how to turn this on while I am editing (i.e. for the preview). Could you give me a checkbox (next to the "This is a minor edit" and "Watch this page" checkboxes, maybe) that allows me to turn the ads on? and it would be checked for me to uncheck if I had "show all ads" on in my preferences? --◄mendel► 13:29, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

We considered this as a possible solution, but the quickest way to get it implemented and the ads turned off as the default was the button in preferences. So, we may be able to revisit this some time, but for now... just make the change in your preferences if you want to see ads while editing. -- sannse (talk) 17:31, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Ads on top left

I'm seeing ads for other wikis on the top left of the page over the wiki logo. Is this normal? Drewton File:Era-old.png ^{(Drewton's Holocron)} 02:02, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

No it's not. What browser are you unsing ? On what wiki this is hapenning ? On wich page ? Can you put a screen capture ? — Tulip Vorlax 19:02, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

Nevermind, it was a problem with my global.css. It's fixed now. Drewton File:Era-old.png ^{(Drewton's Holocron)} 20:28, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

Stats

Given that the new ad system has been in place for about 2 months now, are there any statistics to report? -- LordTBT ^Talk! 08:04, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

Delete

The only solution for all this is:Deleting monaco!!!!!! {{SUBST:User:Pierlot/HT}} 13:32, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

Then say to all Windows Vista users to delete it.

I often make a link between Wikia's style situation and the situation around OS upgrading. On my part i can say that i will never install Vista on any of my computers. But, i set up both wikis i started to use Monaco and it's the skin i use on all Wikia wikis.

To me, if someone want to return to Monobook, good for him. But as all anon see the site in Monaco, i need to see what they see. I also have ticked the checkbox "see as anon".

When Windows XP was making it's firsts steps in the world, everyone were complaining that it was bugged or incompatible with external devices and older softwares; no drivers... Today, many say that it is the most stable Windows version. I dont want to start a fight with Vista users here, Vista might be stable enough too but personnally, i really dont like it and dont need the change (wich is a costly one).

Here on Wikia, we have a big team that is working to offer a free service to all the world. And they really are working hard, mind you. They worked on Monaco many month before it goes live and they are still working on improving it.

So, if you want to complain about Monaco, complain. It can help to know where Wikia need to put some efforts. But what you said up there is not helpfull at all. It serve no one but yourself. It's your right tough. — Tulip Vorlax 03:09, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

That's like wikipedia:Embrace, extend and extinguish, isn't it? --Ciencia Al Poder (talk) ^-WikiDex 17:56, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

I'm not sure what you mean but i'm against MS behaviours on most part. The only good thing about Microsoft is that they are the only compagny that produce true french-canadian keyboard for the french residents of Canada (or specifically, in my town, among all sold keyboard, only MS ones are true french-canadian, others are multilingual-canadian wich miss a lot of accentuated character or doesn't show them on the right key).

Are you meaning Wikia is taking the wikimedia software, adding to it (extending) so it become incompatible with others mediawiki implementations and force every wiki users in the world to use the "improved" version of it ?

I think first of all that for every compagny that offer a free service, it's their right to change it as they see fit. Nobody complain that much when MSN changed the free MSN Chat so that non paying people could not created a room.

Second, Wikia isn't forcing others wikis outside it's farm to change anything.

And as every free hosting services like Lycos Multimania that i was using at first, if you don't like the ads that come with it, you can still get a real hosting (what i've done, moving my sites from Lycos to QuebecIt - by the way i've learn of that marvelous hosting service by an ad that was showing on a wikia wiki).

I know that most of you say "but Wikia should listen to the community as it is us that produce thoses wikis that attract people". Yes, and they have done it by letting contributors turn off the ads.

I stopped using MSN Chat service when they "closed" it. Now i dont chat anymore (i have great difficulties in liking IRC services), i use lot's of forums and lot's of wikis.

Lastly, i want to make clear that i won't defend Wikia on every move they make but without wikia, none of the two wikis i've started would have existed. I'm really grateful to Wikia for this but nothing more. In a way, they changed my life, but it's no big deal. It happen to me every time i find new and cool stuff, lol. — Tulip Vorlax 21:09, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

#redirectMsg now Javscript-based?

moved to Forum:Redirects