From beesley at gmail.com Mon Oct 1 01:55:30 2007 From: beesley at gmail.com (Angela) Date: Mon, 1 Oct 2007 11:55:30 +1000 Subject: [Wikia-l] 75 new wikis Message-ID: <8b722b800709301855s75826fbfv815483d15b7bcc01@mail.gmail.com> There are 75 new wikis covering 15 languages this week. If any are related to your own wiki(s), you can add interwiki links between the two using the shortcut w:c: For example, a Halopedian might add [[w:c:haloclix:page name|page name]] on a Halo.wikia article to help promote the new Haloclix wiki. You can also view this list at http://www.wikia.com/wiki/New_wikis_this_week English - Gaming * D.N.Angel (anime/gaming) http://dnangel.wikia.com * Haloclix http://haloclix.wikia.com * Jericho Game http://jerichogame.wikia.com * Land of Devastation http://lod.wikia.com * Legacy of Dragons http://legacyofdragons.wikia.com * Light of the Wolf (gaming guild) http://lightofthewolf.wikia.com * Marathon Game http://marathongame.wikia.com * MFI Sim http://mfisim.wikia.com * Monster Hunter Frontier http://monsterhunterfrontier.wikia.com * Multiverse Crisis MUSH http://multiversecrisis.wikia.com * Party Princess Palace http://ppp.wikia.com * Runescape Fan Fiction http://runescapefanfiction.wikia.com * Star Wars Miniatures http://swminis.wikia.com * Uranme http://uranme.wikia.com English - Other * Ace Lightning (TV) http://acelightning.wikia.com * Air Gear(anime/manga) http://airgear.wikia.com * Airwolf (TV) http://airwolf.wikia.com * Brain Tumors (health) http://braintumors.wikia.com * Butler University Library http://bulib.wikia.com * Cassandra Cain (comics) http://casscain.wikia.com * Cromartie Highschool (anime/manga) http://cromartiehighschool.wikia.com * Dexter (TV) http://dexter.wikia.com * Dragon Booster (cartoon) http://dragonbooster.wikia.com * EOP MLA (library assn) http://eopmla.wikia.com * Etymology http://etymology.wikia.com * Fantasy Creatures http://fantasycreatures.wikia.com * Jaws (movies) http://jaws.wikia.com * Jewish Music http://jewishmusic.wikia.com * Kinnikuman (anime/manga) http://kinnikuman.wikia.com * LEADS (software) http://leads.wikia.com * Machine Tools (engineering) http://machinetools.wikia.com * Malayalam (language) http://malayalam.wikia.com * Milonakis (TV) http://milonakis.wikia.com * New Zealand Geography http://nzgeography.wikia.com * One Tree Hill (TV) http://onetreehill.wikia.com * Paint.NET (software) http://paintdotnet.wikia.com * Planet Urban (music) http://urbanmusic.wikia.com * Preston-Child (books) http://prestonchild.wikia.com * Prism (collaboration)http://prism.wikia.com * Reborn (manga/anime) http://reborn.wikia.com * Scrooge McDuck (comics) http://scroogemcduck.wikia.com * SMIL (programming) http://smil.wikia.com * Star Trek: The Continuing Mission (radio show) http://startrektcm.wikia.com * Statistics http://statistics.wikia.com * Suburban Legends (music) http://suburbanlegends.wikia.com * The Work and the Glory (books) http://theworkandtheglory.wikia.com * Top Gear (TV/cars) http://topgear.wikia.com * True Wealth (finance) http://truewealth.wikia.com * Warplanes http://warplane.wikia.com * Woodstock (music) http://woodstock.wikia.com * Yami Atomsk (anime/manga) http://yamiatomsk.wikia.com Bengali * Bikosh (Uncyclopedia) http://bikosh.wikia.com Bulgarian * Club Penguin (game) http://bg.clubpenguin.wikia.com Catalan * Comics http://ca.comics.wikia.com Chinese * Ace Combat (game) http://zh-cn.acecombat.wikia.com Finnish * How To - http://fi.howto.wikia.com French * 3d (software) http://fr.3d.wikia.com * Sahaj Marg (yoga) http://fr.sahajmarg.wikia.com * Merceries (embroidery) http://merceries.wikia.com German * Koeln (Cologne, Germany) http://koeln.wikia.com Hindi * Yog (yoga) http://yog.wikia.com Japanese * Fake Science http://ja.fakescience.wikia.com Norwegian * Tvogfilm (TV production) http://no.tvogfilm.wikia.com * Nettverk (education) http://nettverk.wikia.com Polish * Dexter (TV) http://pl.dexter.wikia.com * Prizee (game) http://pl.prizee.wikia.com * Rappelz (game) http://pl.rappelz.wikia.com Portuguese * Pokemon (game) http://pt-br.pokemon.wikia.com * Guild Wars (game) http://pt-br.guildwars.wikia.com * Comunidade Kelix (Linux) http://kelix.wikia.com Spanish * Terminator (movies) http://es.terminator.wikia.com * Kotor (game) http://es.kotor.wikia.com * RBD (pop group) http://rbd.wikia.com * Llion (place) http://llion.wikia.com Turkish * Klansavaslari (gaming) http://tr.klansavaslari.wikia.com -- Angela From phillipfriedrich at gmail.com Wed Oct 3 15:32:17 2007 From: phillipfriedrich at gmail.com (Muppets101) Date: Wed, 3 Oct 2007 09:32:17 -0600 Subject: [Wikia-l] Puppet Wikia Spam Message-ID: Hello, Puppet Wikia has had an incredible amount of spam lately and I was wondering what I can do about it? thanks, Muppets101 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.wikia.com/pipermail/wikia-l/attachments/20071003/7c13932b/attachment.html From toughpigs at gmail.com Wed Oct 3 16:36:48 2007 From: toughpigs at gmail.com (Danny Horn) Date: Wed, 3 Oct 2007 12:36:48 -0400 Subject: [Wikia-l] Puppet Wikia Spam In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Hi Phillip: I took a look -- it looks like you're doing everything that you should. It's really annoying when somebody vandalizes your site. When you're working hard to build up your wiki and make it great, it's frustrating that somebody else has enough time to come by and post something rude. So you had one vandal today, one yesterday (possibly the same one), and another person two days ago. In each case, they only made one edit. You reverted the edits, and blocked the vandals. That's really all you need to do; you're doing great. The best thing about what you've done is that you haven't made a big deal about it on your site. If you posted a "vandal warning" or said nasty things on the vandal's talk page, then that would just encourage them. They love getting you upset; that's why they're doing this. Staying calm, reverting the edits and blocking the users is all you need. If they're not sick of this game already, they will be soon. -- Danny On 10/3/07, Muppets101 wrote: > > Hello, > > Puppet Wikia has had an incredible amount of spam lately and I was > wondering what I can do about it? > > thanks, > Muppets101 > > _______________________________________________ > Wikia-l mailing list > Wikia-l at wikia.com > http://lists.wikia.com/mailman/listinfo/wikia-l > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.wikia.com/pipermail/wikia-l/attachments/20071003/eb64a6ff/attachment.html From cizania at gmail.com Thu Oct 4 16:37:58 2007 From: cizania at gmail.com (=?ISO-8859-1?Q?Ciza=F1a?=) Date: Thu, 4 Oct 2007 11:37:58 -0500 Subject: [Wikia-l] Global.js broken Message-ID: Yeah global.js is not working not even loading on the pages html code since yesterday, there is no notice here at forums or at wikia mailing list that this was going to be disable, has this bring some issues so it got suddenly disable?, is it going to be back again? Thanks Ciz -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.wikia.com/pipermail/wikia-l/attachments/20071004/6366b00e/attachment.html From johnq at wikia.com Thu Oct 4 17:19:58 2007 From: johnq at wikia.com (John Q) Date: Thu, 04 Oct 2007 10:19:58 -0700 Subject: [Wikia-l] Global.js broken In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <470520BE.9070308@wikia.com> Hi Ciz ... no, not disabled by policy. Sannse is seeing it work for her both on monobook and Quartz... is anyone else having trouble ? Thanks, John Q. Ciza?a wrote: > Yeah global.js is not working not even loading on the pages html code > since yesterday, there is no notice here at forums or at wikia mailing > list that this was going to be disable, has this bring some issues so > it got suddenly disable?, is it going to be back again? > > Thanks > Ciz > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ > > _______________________________________________ > Wikia-l mailing list > Wikia-l at wikia.com > http://lists.wikia.com/mailman/listinfo/wikia-l > From cizania at gmail.com Thu Oct 4 18:05:12 2007 From: cizania at gmail.com (=?ISO-8859-1?Q?Ciza=F1a?=) Date: Thu, 4 Oct 2007 13:05:12 -0500 Subject: [Wikia-l] Global.js broken In-Reply-To: <470520BE.9070308@wikia.com> References: <470520BE.9070308@wikia.com> Message-ID: In my case my Global.js [http://www.wikia.com/wiki/User:Cizagna/global.js] has no effect with Monobook or Quartz. Jack_Phoenix notice it did not load the in the HTML yesterday Dantman complain he could not use his interwiki JS that saves him a lot of trouble. switching between wikis GPT also noted the issue and decide to load the code in his wikis local JS And there was another person but i dont remember the name that complained at the same time as GPT. I have test in Halo.wikia, starwars.wikia, gaia.wikia, dofus.wikia, central.wikia and non loaded a single of the js that where properly working before, i notice the issue yesterday as i needed the tool but dont know if it has been happening before. >From what jack told in IRC CSS is working (i cant assure it as i dont use global.css) In my case im using firefox with WinXP SP2 if its needed but the issue looks more server side. If Sannse's is been loaded could it be it got like a permissions and only staff will be loaded? i found something while checking the HTML of a page in Starwars.wikia is that origin-www.wikia.com been access from central pages? i have also a but nothing there also Thanks Ciz On 10/4/07, John Q wrote: > > Hi Ciz ... no, not disabled by policy. Sannse is seeing it work for her > both on monobook and Quartz... is anyone else having trouble ? > > Thanks, > John Q. > > > Ciza?a wrote: > > Yeah global.js is not working not even loading on the pages html code > > since yesterday, there is no notice here at forums or at wikia mailing > > list that this was going to be disable, has this bring some issues so > > it got suddenly disable?, is it going to be back again? > > > > Thanks > > Ciz > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ > > > > _______________________________________________ > > Wikia-l mailing list > > Wikia-l at wikia.com > > http://lists.wikia.com/mailman/listinfo/wikia-l > > > _______________________________________________ > Wikia-l mailing list > Wikia-l at wikia.com > http://lists.wikia.com/mailman/listinfo/wikia-l > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.wikia.com/pipermail/wikia-l/attachments/20071004/98709da0/attachment.html From sannse at gmail.com Thu Oct 4 18:14:23 2007 From: sannse at gmail.com (sannse) Date: Thu, 4 Oct 2007 11:14:23 -0700 Subject: [Wikia-l] Global.js broken In-Reply-To: References: <470520BE.9070308@wikia.com> Message-ID: I also had a problem with global js, but it was fixed this morning (around 4am San Francisco time). It's working for me now. Can others check how it's going this morning? Thanks -- sannse On 10/4/07, Ciza?a wrote: > In my case my Global.js > [http://www.wikia.com/wiki/User:Cizagna/global.js] has no > effect with Monobook or Quartz. > > Jack_Phoenix notice it did not load the in the HTML yesterday > Dantman complain he could not use his interwiki JS that saves him a lot of > trouble. switching between wikis > GPT also noted the issue and decide to load the code in his wikis local JS > And there was another person but i dont remember the name that complained at > the same time as GPT. > > I have test in Halo.wikia, starwars.wikia, gaia.wikia, dofus.wikia, > central.wikia and non loaded a single of the js that where properly working > before, i notice the issue yesterday as i needed the tool but dont know if > it has been happening before. > > From what jack told in IRC CSS is working (i cant assure it as i dont use > global.css) > > In my case im using firefox with WinXP SP2 if its needed but the issue looks > more server side. If Sannse's is been loaded could it be it got like a > permissions and only staff will be loaded? > > i found something while checking the HTML of a page in Starwars.wikia > > > is that origin-www.wikia.com been access from central pages? i have also a > > > but nothing there also > > > Thanks > Ciz > > > > On 10/4/07, John Q wrote: > > Hi Ciz ... no, not disabled by policy. Sannse is seeing it work for her > > both on monobook and Quartz... is anyone else having trouble ? > > > > Thanks, > > John Q. > > > > > > Ciza?a wrote: > > > Yeah global.js is not working not even loading on the pages html code > > > since yesterday, there is no notice here at forums or at wikia mailing > > > list that this was going to be disable, has this bring some issues so > > > it got suddenly disable?, is it going to be back again? > > > > > > Thanks > > > Ciz > > > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > > > Wikia-l mailing list > > > Wikia-l at wikia.com > > > http://lists.wikia.com/mailman/listinfo/wikia-l > > > > > _______________________________________________ > > Wikia-l mailing list > > Wikia-l at wikia.com > > http://lists.wikia.com/mailman/listinfo/wikia-l > > > > > _______________________________________________ > Wikia-l mailing list > Wikia-l at wikia.com > http://lists.wikia.com/mailman/listinfo/wikia-l > > From johnq at wikia.com Thu Oct 4 20:48:25 2007 From: johnq at wikia.com (John Q) Date: Thu, 04 Oct 2007 13:48:25 -0700 Subject: [Wikia-l] Operations update... Message-ID: <47055199.3080404@wikia.com> Hi everyone, It's been a while since I sent out an operations and engineering update letting you know what we've been doing, so here we go. Over the last year we got the site more reliable than it was last year and faster... but as the site has been growing we also had to start making architectural changes earlier this year and bring in new equipment. That only got us so far and adding more equipment on the back-end wasn't really speeding things up. So for the last several months we've been focused on improving the site in layers. In order: the database, memcache, the image server, the apaches, and the cache machines. We ordered a bigger and faster database machine and got that going at the beginning of July (in addition to the existing db)... it has roughly 10x the capacity of our normal daily load. Adding this machine meant that the individual data spikes (i.e., not sustained) which happen randomly could be absorbed and the db wouldn't be a bottleneck. We didn't notice an overall speed-up in general from this box but rather the lack of a slowdown when we'd get these data spikes. For memcache, we've been analyzing the requests from the apaches and optimizing both the way we were handling requests and the queries being used. For the image server we tried httpd servers other than apache, such as lighttpd, which resulted in more capacity and therefore more speed (many small page elements that are common to all wikis are served from this machine). Last, but certainly not least, the last month has been spent looking at the cache servers. Our squid hit ratio has been about 60%-65% (meaning that they can give you a page element without having to go back to the apaches&db and ask for it ... which takes longer) and as the site grew those machines were getting CPU bound so something obviously needed adjusting. We added a pretty hefty new cache server at the beginning of September and it was pretty much immediately loaded up... so just throwing machines at the problem wasn't the answer to this one. Instead, we made several significant improvements here. Emil (head of the Polish office) has been working on a patch to the squid code that allowed us to ignore unique id's on common elements, thereby letting the squids operate more efficiently... that code is already in the Wikimedia SVN... and we let Jack & Travis at WikiHow know since they share a lot of stuff with us as well. Artur (more about Artur in a minute) has been tweaking the configuration on the squids in some fashion every day for the last 3 weeks. The result is that the squid CPU usage went from 60% to 6% while the hit ratio went from 65% to about 80% ... Artur's hoping to get that up to 90% shortly. After all of this work, just in the last week we are starting to see some definite improvements. You should be seeing pages serve more quickly overall (aside from the occasional ddos attack, a machine going off-line for a hardware fault, or 3rd party network problems). The next steps for us are to add more equipment to certain layers and put in more redundancy. We have an additional 2 databases waiting come on-line... and various other equipment at other layers. In other news... we have a new member of the technical team in the San Mateo office: Artur Bergman (found here: http://radar.oreilly.com/artur/). I hired Artur to spearhead operations and engineering for Wikia and the first thing he started focusing on was the stack as described above. You should be hearing more directly from Artur in future emails. If you have any questions, please feel free to ask. :) Thanks, John Q. From derrick at chainsofreason.org Fri Oct 5 07:56:55 2007 From: derrick at chainsofreason.org (Derrick Farnell) Date: Fri, 5 Oct 2007 08:56:55 +0100 Subject: [Wikia-l] layout problem with new default template Message-ID: <9729c7810710050056r5baf50e9p49cbfe7c98b045f2@mail.gmail.com> Hi I wish to point-out what I believe is a significant layout problem with the new Quartz template. I only joined Wikia a couple of weeks ago, so apologies if this issue has already been raised. As you'll know, unregistered users (or registered users who are not logged-in) now see the wikis with the Quartz template instead of MonoBook. As you'll also know, the new template has optional widgets which logged-in users can add to the sidebar on the right. However, when viewing a wiki while not logged-in, the 'top content' widget (which lists the most active pages on the wiki), is present in the sidebar, even though it disappears when you log-in (unless of course you have selected in your preferences for it to show). The problem, as I see it, is that this widget is located directly below the ad box, which is (I think) always a relatively large square-shaped box for users not logged-in, which means that the navigation box in the sidebar is so far down the screen that it is actually off the screen - at least, it is with me whether I view the wikis on my laptop screen or my 19" desktop monitor. While I appreciate that the 'top content' box is useful, and think it is probably a good idea to have it showing for users not logged-in, it is surely much less important than the navigation box, and even the toolbox, and so surely should be placed below them. I appreciate that it is possible to add a further four links at the top of the page, to the right of the logo, but, given the number of links in the sidebar, I'd prefer to keep to just the four most important links at the top (although I'd prefer to be able to customize those four links, which is not possible, and which is another problem I have with Quartz). I've spoken to sannse about this and she told me that it is not possible to customise this for users who are not logged-in, although there are plans to make the sidebar 'more flexible and customisable in the future', but I think that this a problem that needs to addressed in the short term - obviously, ease of navigation is one of the golden rules of web design, and I'm very concerned that new visitors to Wikia will not be able to see the main set of navigational links when a wiki page loads, and will only see the default four links at the top, which we have no control over. Does anyone else agree with me on this? If there does seem to be general agreement that this is a problem which needs to be sorted in the short term, could Wikia consider doing so? I should say that, other than the above, I think Quartz is a significant improvement over MonoBook. Best wishes Derrick Chains of Reason http://chainsofreason.wikia.com/wiki/Home -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.wikia.com/pipermail/wikia-l/attachments/20071005/f1be1521/attachment.html From johnq at wikia.com Fri Oct 5 09:29:01 2007 From: johnq at wikia.com (John Q) Date: Fri, 05 Oct 2007 02:29:01 -0700 Subject: [Wikia-l] layout problem with new default template In-Reply-To: <9729c7810710050056r5baf50e9p49cbfe7c98b045f2@mail.gmail.com> References: <9729c7810710050056r5baf50e9p49cbfe7c98b045f2@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <470603DD.3050405@wikia.com> Hi Derrick, Definite thanks for the feedback and, aside from your points below, glad you like the new skin. Yes, understand your point. The top nav (to the right of the wiki logo) has room for 8 links... right now the first 4 aren't customizable but we'll be changing that pretty soon so that admins have control of all the links up there. We'll be releasing that next week and the syntax will be changed to match how it's done for the regular Sidebar article. As for the navigation box and the top content box ... I'm looking at ways to reduce the vertical size of the top content box so that the nav box comes up higher. Also... right now the links in the navigation box we just pull from the same Sidebar article that monobook uses and there will probably be duplication of links between that and the top nav links. We will soon make it so there's an v2 skin equivalent of sidebar ... if it's blank the idea right now is to just use the monobook sidebar instead so that there isn't an empty list. Thanks, John Q. Derrick Farnell wrote: > Hi > > I wish to point-out what I believe is a significant layout problem > with the new Quartz template. I only joined Wikia a couple of weeks > ago, so apologies if this issue has already been raised. > > As you'll know, unregistered users (or registered users who are not > logged-in) now see the wikis with the Quartz template instead of > MonoBook. As you'll also know, the new template has optional widgets > which logged-in users can add to the sidebar on the right. However, > when viewing a wiki while not logged-in, the 'top content' widget > (which lists the most active pages on the wiki), is present in the > sidebar, even though it disappears when you log-in (unless of course > you have selected in your preferences for it to show). The problem, as > I see it, is that this widget is located directly below the ad box, > which is (I think) always a relatively large square-shaped box for > users not logged-in, which means that the navigation box in the > sidebar is so far down the screen that it is actually off the screen - > at least, it is with me whether I view the wikis on my laptop screen > or my 19" desktop monitor. While I appreciate that the 'top content' > box is useful, and think it is probably a good idea to have it showing > for users not logged-in, it is surely much less important than the > navigation box, and even the toolbox, and so surely should be placed > below them. I appreciate that it is possible to add a further four > links at the top of the page, to the right of the logo, but, given the > number of links in the sidebar, I'd prefer to keep to just the four > most important links at the top (although I'd prefer to be able to > customize those four links, which is not possible, and which is > another problem I have with Quartz). > > I've spoken to sannse about this and she told me that it is not > possible to customise this for users who are not logged-in, although > there are plans to make the sidebar 'more flexible and customisable in > the future', but I think that this a problem that needs to addressed > in the short term - obviously, ease of navigation is one of the golden > rules of web design, and I'm very concerned that new visitors to Wikia > will not be able to see the main set of navigational links when a wiki > page loads, and will only see the default four links at the top, which > we have no control over. > > Does anyone else agree with me on this? If there does seem to be > general agreement that this is a problem which needs to be sorted in > the short term, could Wikia consider doing so? I should say that, > other than the above, I think Quartz is a significant improvement over > MonoBook. > > Best wishes > > Derrick > Chains of Reason > http://chainsofreason.wikia.com/wiki/Home > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ > > _______________________________________________ > Wikia-l mailing list > Wikia-l at wikia.com > http://lists.wikia.com/mailman/listinfo/wikia-l > From derrick at chainsofreason.org Fri Oct 5 13:39:51 2007 From: derrick at chainsofreason.org (Derrick Farnell) Date: Fri, 5 Oct 2007 14:39:51 +0100 Subject: [Wikia-l] layout problem with new default template In-Reply-To: <470603DD.3050405@wikia.com> References: <9729c7810710050056r5baf50e9p49cbfe7c98b045f2@mail.gmail.com> <470603DD.3050405@wikia.com> Message-ID: <9729c7810710050639q21ba0589m59a01e8f71fc2784@mail.gmail.com> Hi John Thanks for the prompt response. That's great to hear that the first four links in the top nav will be customisable so soon. :) Indeed, I think the ability to customise all eight links in the top nav will solve the problem (as I saw it) of the 'top content' box pushing the main nav box down the screen, because I think it will lessen greatly the importance of having that nav box near the top. In fact, I actually now think the 'top content' should be kept where it is, and at its current height, because it's obviously a very useful tool for people arriving at a wiki for the first time and wanting to see at a glance which pages are most popular. Best wishes Derrick Chains of Reason http://chainsofreason.wikia.com/wiki/Home On 10/5/07, John Q wrote: > > Hi Derrick, > > Definite thanks for the feedback and, aside from your points below, glad > you like the new skin. Yes, understand your point. The top nav (to the > right of the wiki logo) has room for 8 links... right now the first 4 > aren't customizable but we'll be changing that pretty soon so that > admins have control of all the links up there. We'll be releasing that > next week and the syntax will be changed to match how it's done for the > regular Sidebar article. > > As for the navigation box and the top content box ... I'm looking at > ways to reduce the vertical size of the top content box so that the nav > box comes up higher. Also... right now the links in the navigation box > we just pull from the same Sidebar article that monobook uses and there > will probably be duplication of links between that and the top nav > links. We will soon make it so there's an v2 skin equivalent of sidebar > ... if it's blank the idea right now is to just use the monobook sidebar > instead so that there isn't an empty list. > > Thanks, > John Q. > > > Derrick Farnell wrote: > > Hi > > > > I wish to point-out what I believe is a significant layout problem > > with the new Quartz template. I only joined Wikia a couple of weeks > > ago, so apologies if this issue has already been raised. > > > > As you'll know, unregistered users (or registered users who are not > > logged-in) now see the wikis with the Quartz template instead of > > MonoBook. As you'll also know, the new template has optional widgets > > which logged-in users can add to the sidebar on the right. However, > > when viewing a wiki while not logged-in, the 'top content' widget > > (which lists the most active pages on the wiki), is present in the > > sidebar, even though it disappears when you log-in (unless of course > > you have selected in your preferences for it to show). The problem, as > > I see it, is that this widget is located directly below the ad box, > > which is (I think) always a relatively large square-shaped box for > > users not logged-in, which means that the navigation box in the > > sidebar is so far down the screen that it is actually off the screen - > > at least, it is with me whether I view the wikis on my laptop screen > > or my 19" desktop monitor. While I appreciate that the 'top content' > > box is useful, and think it is probably a good idea to have it showing > > for users not logged-in, it is surely much less important than the > > navigation box, and even the toolbox, and so surely should be placed > > below them. I appreciate that it is possible to add a further four > > links at the top of the page, to the right of the logo, but, given the > > number of links in the sidebar, I'd prefer to keep to just the four > > most important links at the top (although I'd prefer to be able to > > customize those four links, which is not possible, and which is > > another problem I have with Quartz). > > > > I've spoken to sannse about this and she told me that it is not > > possible to customise this for users who are not logged-in, although > > there are plans to make the sidebar 'more flexible and customisable in > > the future', but I think that this a problem that needs to addressed > > in the short term - obviously, ease of navigation is one of the golden > > rules of web design, and I'm very concerned that new visitors to Wikia > > will not be able to see the main set of navigational links when a wiki > > page loads, and will only see the default four links at the top, which > > we have no control over. > > > > Does anyone else agree with me on this? If there does seem to be > > general agreement that this is a problem which needs to be sorted in > > the short term, could Wikia consider doing so? I should say that, > > other than the above, I think Quartz is a significant improvement over > > MonoBook. > > > > Best wishes > > > > Derrick > > Chains of Reason > > http://chainsofreason.wikia.com/wiki/Home > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ > > > > _______________________________________________ > > Wikia-l mailing list > > Wikia-l at wikia.com > > http://lists.wikia.com/mailman/listinfo/wikia-l > > > _______________________________________________ > Wikia-l mailing list > Wikia-l at wikia.com > http://lists.wikia.com/mailman/listinfo/wikia-l > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.wikia.com/pipermail/wikia-l/attachments/20071005/27c742dc/attachment.html From robinp at paradise.net.nz Fri Oct 5 14:39:53 2007 From: robinp at paradise.net.nz (Robin Forlonge Patterson) Date: Sat, 06 Oct 2007 02:39:53 +1200 Subject: [Wikia-l] False edit conflicts References: <9729c7810710050056r5baf50e9p49cbfe7c98b045f2@mail.gmail.com> <470603DD.3050405@wikia.com> Message-ID: <003701c8075d$984e9960$5c0cf6d2@633> All but two of the last eight pages I have edited on Genealogy in the last couple of hours have advised of an edit conflict, when subsequent examination of the page history showed that nobody else had been near the page since long before I opened it. I've not checked other sites. They were working fine before I restarted my PC. [Mr] Robin Forlonge Patterson, 88 Motuhara Road, Plimmerton, Porirua City 5026, New Zealand Member of NZ Society of Genealogists since 1974 http://wc.rootsweb.com/~robinp And see http://genealogy.wikia.com/ a free cooperative MediaWiki site From c.stafford at gmail.com Fri Oct 5 14:15:19 2007 From: c.stafford at gmail.com (Chris Stafford) Date: Fri, 5 Oct 2007 10:15:19 -0400 Subject: [Wikia-l] Global.js broken In-Reply-To: References: <470520BE.9070308@wikia.com> Message-ID: <613c581d0710050715w236a1c76o94e7a28ea7726f11@mail.gmail.com> over the last week, i've also had intermittent times of both my global.js(holding my custom edit buttons), my global.css not loading. i mentioned it in the IRC the other night, tor said it was a known problem, and was soon to be fixed. it seems ok now. everytime i notice the .js not loading, i also notice changes to my widget layouts are also broken (as in they will not save). if that helps at all. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.wikia.com/pipermail/wikia-l/attachments/20071005/8eba27bf/attachment.html From martineznovo at gmail.com Fri Oct 5 15:08:24 2007 From: martineznovo at gmail.com (=?ISO-8859-1?Q?Jes=FAs_Mart=EDnez?=) Date: Fri, 5 Oct 2007 17:08:24 +0200 Subject: [Wikia-l] False edit conflicts In-Reply-To: <003701c8075d$984e9960$5c0cf6d2@633> References: <9729c7810710050056r5baf50e9p49cbfe7c98b045f2@mail.gmail.com> <470603DD.3050405@wikia.com> <003701c8075d$984e9960$5c0cf6d2@633> Message-ID: I'm experiencing the same problems. It's frustrating, because, you must copy the text on the bottom edit box to the top edit box to save your changes. New contributors wouldn't notice that and their edit won't be saved. 2007/10/5, Robin Forlonge Patterson : > All but two of the last eight pages I have edited > on Genealogy in the last couple of hours have > advised of an edit conflict, when subsequent > examination of the page history showed that nobody > else had been near the page since long before I > opened it. > > I've not checked other sites. They were working > fine before I restarted my PC. > > [Mr] Robin Forlonge Patterson, > 88 Motuhara Road, Plimmerton, Porirua City 5026, > New Zealand > Member of NZ Society of Genealogists since 1974 > http://wc.rootsweb.com/~robinp > And see http://genealogy.wikia.com/ a free > cooperative MediaWiki site > > _______________________________________________ > Wikia-l mailing list > Wikia-l at wikia.com > http://lists.wikia.com/mailman/listinfo/wikia-l > From toughpigs at gmail.com Fri Oct 5 16:47:53 2007 From: toughpigs at gmail.com (Danny Horn) Date: Fri, 5 Oct 2007 12:47:53 -0400 Subject: [Wikia-l] layout problem with new default template In-Reply-To: <9729c7810710050639q21ba0589m59a01e8f71fc2784@mail.gmail.com> References: <9729c7810710050056r5baf50e9p49cbfe7c98b045f2@mail.gmail.com> <470603DD.3050405@wikia.com> <9729c7810710050639q21ba0589m59a01e8f71fc2784@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: I completely agree with Derrick. I think the navigation box should be at the top, above the "top content" box, as the default for all users. I understand the rationale behind putting "top content" up front -- we're trying to encourage new users to explore the site. Still, I think the navigation box is much more important. Anybody who's used a wiki before is going to be looking for "Recent changes" when they get to the site; that's always my first click. Taking that out of people's view is guaranteed to frustrate the kinds of people who would be most likely to contribute. I like the "top content" box, but I think the job of showcasing content should be done mainly by the wiki's front page. The sidebar is for navigation and help, and cluttering that important area with more content links is redundant and off-putting. -- Danny -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.wikia.com/pipermail/wikia-l/attachments/20071005/a9c51c88/attachment.html From jamie at marveldatabase.com Fri Oct 5 17:40:48 2007 From: jamie at marveldatabase.com (Jamie Hari) Date: Fri, 5 Oct 2007 13:40:48 -0400 Subject: [Wikia-l] layout problem with new default template In-Reply-To: References: <9729c7810710050056r5baf50e9p49cbfe7c98b045f2@mail.gmail.com> <470603DD.3050405@wikia.com> <9729c7810710050639q21ba0589m59a01e8f71fc2784@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <757d22db0710051040r68ea02d4jd85ca6f38f3b048f@mail.gmail.com> Speaking for the Marvel and DC Databases, I whole-heartedly agree. In fact, I think that 'top-content' box should be more of an opt-in, than an opt-out choice. I have changed our sidebar so many times now, trying to find the _most important_ links for my visitors, both registered and unregistered alike. It is already a difficult challenge to present all the important links without creating a complete cluster#$!@ on the side of the page. Pushing article content too far down the page was the major concern with Quartz (v1). This was resolved by vertically shortening the header. The problem with v2, imho, is the navigation is being pushed too far down, especialy with ads! (Which puts food on Wikia's table, in turn paying for our free hosting, so lets not touch those just yet!) If users want, they can drag and drop widgets, but let's not ram it down their throats unless we have to. :) -- Jamie Hari Editor-in-Chief Marvel & DC Database Projects On 10/5/07, Danny Horn wrote: > > I completely agree with Derrick. I think the navigation box should be at > the top, above the "top content" box, as the default for all users. > > I understand the rationale behind putting "top content" up front -- we're > trying to encourage new users to explore the site. Still, I think the > navigation box is much more important. > > Anybody who's used a wiki before is going to be looking for "Recent > changes" when they get to the site; that's always my first click. Taking > that out of people's view is guaranteed to frustrate the kinds of people who > would be most likely to contribute. > > I like the "top content" box, but I think the job of showcasing content > should be done mainly by the wiki's front page. The sidebar is for > navigation and help, and cluttering that important area with more content > links is redundant and off-putting. > > > -- Danny -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.wikia.com/pipermail/wikia-l/attachments/20071005/1cb3ec02/attachment.html From martineznovo at gmail.com Fri Oct 5 18:16:08 2007 From: martineznovo at gmail.com (=?ISO-8859-1?Q?Jes=FAs_Mart=EDnez?=) Date: Fri, 5 Oct 2007 20:16:08 +0200 Subject: [Wikia-l] False edit conflicts In-Reply-To: References: <9729c7810710050056r5baf50e9p49cbfe7c98b045f2@mail.gmail.com> <470603DD.3050405@wikia.com> <003701c8075d$984e9960$5c0cf6d2@633> Message-ID: I noticed that, when editing a section of an article, the "Summary" field is empty, instead of showing the heading of the section being edited. And is in this case when happens the false edit conflict :( 2007/10/5, Jes?s Mart?nez: > I'm experiencing the same problems. > > It's frustrating, because, you must copy the text on the bottom edit > box to the top edit box to save your changes. New contributors > wouldn't notice that and their edit won't be saved. > > > 2007/10/5, Robin Forlonge Patterson: > > All but two of the last eight pages I have edited > > on Genealogy in the last couple of hours have > > advised of an edit conflict, when subsequent > > examination of the page history showed that nobody > > else had been near the page since long before I > > opened it. > > > > I've not checked other sites. They were working > > fine before I restarted my PC. > > > > [Mr] Robin Forlonge Patterson, > > 88 Motuhara Road, Plimmerton, Porirua City 5026, > > New Zealand > > Member of NZ Society of Genealogists since 1974 > > http://wc.rootsweb.com/~robinp > > And see http://genealogy.wikia.com/ a free > > cooperative MediaWiki site > > > > _______________________________________________ > > Wikia-l mailing list > > Wikia-l at wikia.com > > http://lists.wikia.com/mailman/listinfo/wikia-l > > > From johnq at wikia.com Fri Oct 5 19:12:54 2007 From: johnq at wikia.com (John Q) Date: Fri, 05 Oct 2007 12:12:54 -0700 Subject: [Wikia-l] layout problem with new default template In-Reply-To: References: <9729c7810710050056r5baf50e9p49cbfe7c98b045f2@mail.gmail.com> <470603DD.3050405@wikia.com> <9729c7810710050639q21ba0589m59a01e8f71fc2784@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <47068CB6.10108@wikia.com> Hi Danny, Yep, I hear you... you'll have 8 links on the top bar so I'm thinking many people may just put the most common/desirable links up there. Conceptually, I think it might make sense to have the top content box lower so as people read the article it's available to them as they finish reading but I want to see what the numbers tell us. Thanks, Q. Danny Horn wrote: > I completely agree with Derrick. I think the navigation box should be > at the top, above the "top content" box, as the default for all users. > > I understand the rationale behind putting "top content" up front -- > we're trying to encourage new users to explore the site. Still, I > think the navigation box is much more important. > > Anybody who's used a wiki before is going to be looking for "Recent > changes" when they get to the site; that's always my first click. > Taking that out of people's view is guaranteed to frustrate the kinds > of people who would be most likely to contribute. > > I like the "top content" box, but I think the job of showcasing > content should be done mainly by the wiki's front page. The sidebar is > for navigation and help, and cluttering that important area with more > content links is redundant and off-putting. > > > -- Danny > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ > > _______________________________________________ > Wikia-l mailing list > Wikia-l at wikia.com > http://lists.wikia.com/mailman/listinfo/wikia-l > From toughpigs at gmail.com Fri Oct 5 19:29:59 2007 From: toughpigs at gmail.com (Danny Horn) Date: Fri, 5 Oct 2007 15:29:59 -0400 Subject: [Wikia-l] layout problem with new default template In-Reply-To: <47068CB6.10108@wikia.com> References: <9729c7810710050056r5baf50e9p49cbfe7c98b045f2@mail.gmail.com> <470603DD.3050405@wikia.com> <9729c7810710050639q21ba0589m59a01e8f71fc2784@mail.gmail.com> <47068CB6.10108@wikia.com> Message-ID: Yeah, that makes sense to me. -- Danny On 10/5/07, John Q wrote: > > Hi Danny, > > Yep, I hear you... you'll have 8 links on the top bar so I'm thinking > many people may just put the most common/desirable links up there. > Conceptually, I think it might make sense to have the top content box > lower so as people read the article it's available to them as they > finish reading but I want to see what the numbers tell us. > > Thanks, > Q. > > > Danny Horn wrote: > > I completely agree with Derrick. I think the navigation box should be > > at the top, above the "top content" box, as the default for all users. > > > > I understand the rationale behind putting "top content" up front -- > > we're trying to encourage new users to explore the site. Still, I > > think the navigation box is much more important. > > > > Anybody who's used a wiki before is going to be looking for "Recent > > changes" when they get to the site; that's always my first click. > > Taking that out of people's view is guaranteed to frustrate the kinds > > of people who would be most likely to contribute. > > > > I like the "top content" box, but I think the job of showcasing > > content should be done mainly by the wiki's front page. The sidebar is > > for navigation and help, and cluttering that important area with more > > content links is redundant and off-putting. > > > > > > -- Danny > > > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ > > > > _______________________________________________ > > Wikia-l mailing list > > Wikia-l at wikia.com > > http://lists.wikia.com/mailman/listinfo/wikia-l > > > _______________________________________________ > Wikia-l mailing list > Wikia-l at wikia.com > http://lists.wikia.com/mailman/listinfo/wikia-l > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.wikia.com/pipermail/wikia-l/attachments/20071005/f6b0d85f/attachment.html From toughpigs at gmail.com Sat Oct 6 16:16:50 2007 From: toughpigs at gmail.com (Danny Horn) Date: Sat, 6 Oct 2007 12:16:50 -0400 Subject: [Wikia-l] Database locked Message-ID: The database has been locked all morning... Can anybody involved let us know what the status is? "The database is currently locked to new entries and other modifications, probably for routine database maintenance, after which it will be back to normal. "The administrator who locked it offered this explanation: We are experiencing site instability. We apologise for the inconvenience." -- Danny -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.wikia.com/pipermail/wikia-l/attachments/20071006/d5c56021/attachment.html From chadlupkes at gmail.com Sat Oct 6 16:44:32 2007 From: chadlupkes at gmail.com (Chad Lupkes) Date: Sat, 6 Oct 2007 09:44:32 -0700 Subject: [Wikia-l] Database locked In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <801553ab0710060944n41de5f7av45da74e6bd151d15@mail.gmail.com> You're magic, Danny! They just released the hold. Chad On 10/6/07, Danny Horn wrote: > > The database has been locked all morning... Can anybody involved let us > know what the status is? > > > > "The database is currently locked to new entries and other modifications, > probably for routine database maintenance, after which it will be back to > normal. > > "The administrator who locked it offered this explanation: We are > experiencing site instability. We apologise for the inconvenience." > > -- Danny > > _______________________________________________ > Wikia-l mailing list > Wikia-l at wikia.com > http://lists.wikia.com/mailman/listinfo/wikia-l > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.wikia.com/pipermail/wikia-l/attachments/20071006/5038a692/attachment.html From toughpigs at gmail.com Sat Oct 6 17:44:40 2007 From: toughpigs at gmail.com (Danny Horn) Date: Sat, 6 Oct 2007 13:44:40 -0400 Subject: [Wikia-l] Database locked In-Reply-To: <801553ab0710060944n41de5f7av45da74e6bd151d15@mail.gmail.com> References: <801553ab0710060944n41de5f7av45da74e6bd151d15@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: Well, I might be a little bit magic. It seems to be having trouble pulling up images now -- logos aren't loading for dexter.wikia, reaper.wikia and pixar.wikia. -- Danny -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.wikia.com/pipermail/wikia-l/attachments/20071006/9f42f460/attachment.html From sannse at gmail.com Sat Oct 6 18:09:57 2007 From: sannse at gmail.com (sannse) Date: Sat, 6 Oct 2007 11:09:57 -0700 Subject: [Wikia-l] Database locked In-Reply-To: <801553ab0710060944n41de5f7av45da74e6bd151d15@mail.gmail.com> References: <801553ab0710060944n41de5f7av45da74e6bd151d15@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: Hi, We've had a problem with an image server today, that's affected the rest of the site. Artur wrote on Live Journal: "Wikia's image store is down. It is sadly bringing the entire site down. Artur Bergman, Wikia's Director of Engineering, is working on the problem now and dragging his colleagues out of bed at 3am (San Mateo time) to help get the sites back up as soon as possible." Unfortunately the problem also affected this mailing list, so he couldn't post here at the time. Hopefully all will be back to normal soon. Sorry for the problem! -- sannse ---- Lisa "sannse" Carter Wikia Community and Technical Support Team http://www.wikia.com/ On 10/6/07, Chad Lupkes wrote: > You're magic, Danny! They just released the hold. > > Chad > > > On 10/6/07, Danny Horn wrote: > > > > The database has been locked all morning... Can anybody involved let us > know what the status is? > > > > > > > > "The database is currently locked to new entries and other modifications, > probably for routine database maintenance, after which it will be back to > normal. > > > > "The administrator who locked it offered this explanation: We are > experiencing site instability. We apologise for the inconvenience." > > > > > > > > -- Danny > > > > _______________________________________________ > > Wikia-l mailing list > > Wikia-l at wikia.com > > http://lists.wikia.com/mailman/listinfo/wikia-l > > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > Wikia-l mailing list > Wikia-l at wikia.com > http://lists.wikia.com/mailman/listinfo/wikia-l > > From s.menge at gmx.de Sat Oct 6 21:24:08 2007 From: s.menge at gmx.de (Sebastian Menge) Date: Sat, 6 Oct 2007 21:24:08 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [Wikia-l] Database locked References: <801553ab0710060944n41de5f7av45da74e6bd151d15@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: Am Sat, 06 Oct 2007 11:09:57 -0700 schrieb sannse: > "Wikia's image store is down. It is sadly bringing the entire site down. > > Hopefully all will be back to normal soon. Sorry for the problem! Somehow I expected a ";-)" here... What do you use the income of ads for? Parties? Please hire some good sysadmins (preferably security-paranoids) soon. Sebastian -- getting cynical. From johnq at wikia.com Sun Oct 7 00:21:37 2007 From: johnq at wikia.com (John Q) Date: Sat, 06 Oct 2007 17:21:37 -0700 Subject: [Wikia-l] Database locked In-Reply-To: References: <801553ab0710060944n41de5f7av45da74e6bd151d15@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <47082691.8050505@wikia.com> Hi Sebastian, We have no lack of paranoia here... only time. We are the middle of duplicating machinery throughout the colos (and the new colo) but when we do that we have to re-architect how things are fetched ... so many times this isn't simply a "throw another machine at it" solution. In addition to that, we've been focused on cleaning up the layers to improve efficiency so we know where the new machines are needed most. Income from the ads doesn't come close to paying for anything yet........... Thanks, John Q. Sebastian Menge wrote: > Am Sat, 06 Oct 2007 11:09:57 -0700 schrieb sannse: > > >> "Wikia's image store is down. It is sadly bringing the entire site down. >> >> Hopefully all will be back to normal soon. Sorry for the problem! >> > > Somehow I expected a ";-)" here... > > What do you use the income of ads for? Parties? > > Please hire some good sysadmins (preferably security-paranoids) soon. > > Sebastian -- getting cynical. > > _______________________________________________ > Wikia-l mailing list > Wikia-l at wikia.com > http://lists.wikia.com/mailman/listinfo/wikia-l > > From jamie at marveldatabase.com Sun Oct 7 01:45:43 2007 From: jamie at marveldatabase.com (Jamie Hari) Date: Sat, 6 Oct 2007 21:45:43 -0400 Subject: [Wikia-l] Database locked In-Reply-To: <47082691.8050505@wikia.com> References: <801553ab0710060944n41de5f7av45da74e6bd151d15@mail.gmail.com> <47082691.8050505@wikia.com> Message-ID: <757d22db0710061845m5468c914h61b8c40e7318a4c5@mail.gmail.com> Sebastian et al., First, let me say that my below response is completely unsolicited. I don't work for Wikia, nor do I have any vested interest in their company. (ie. stocks) Earlier this year I was fortunate enough to find myself in California and was able to stop by San Mateo and meet the actual people behind the aliases and email addresses. I personally vouch for the fact that Wikia, those I met, are a very hard-working, amiable bunch of individuals. Despite a few hiccups, they have generally bent over backward to help me and the 7 wikis I manage. (Thought I probably account for 10% of Wikia's requests, so I keep them very busy. :) Aside from a number of Force Majeure issues which are bound to occur in any tech company, they have nearly 3,000 wikis to attend to. Being a relatively new company, growing at an amazing pace, it won't be for some time until Wikia is as stable as an AS/400. Be patient. I would challenge you to setup and maintain a 100% uptime with a complex and changing architecture like Wikia's. I work with enterprise clusters every day for companies and governments fully 10x Wikia's size, all of which whom experience the same or similar uptime issues. It is part of the game. As for revenue, I have non-Wikia websites as well. Let me tell you that there is simply no way the cents per click a top-1000 site typically generates can support a company growing this quickly. They are most likely running in the red until the brand name, the wikis and the overall market matures. No parties for 99% of startup companies, I am afraid. I, for one, am happy about moving the Marvel and DC Databases to Wikia last year and would do the same given the chance again tomorrow. There have been marked improvements in the previous 12 months and I expect more again in the coming 12. A happy camper, -- Jamie Hari Editor-in-Chief Marvel & DC Database Projects On 10/6/07, John Q wrote: > > Hi Sebastian, > > We have no lack of paranoia here... only time. We are the middle of > duplicating machinery throughout the colos (and the new colo) but when > we do that we have to re-architect how things are fetched ... so many > times this isn't simply a "throw another machine at it" solution. In > addition to that, we've been focused on cleaning up the layers to > improve efficiency so we know where the new machines are needed most. > > Income from the ads doesn't come close to paying for anything > yet........... > > Thanks, > John Q. > > > Sebastian Menge wrote: > > Am Sat, 06 Oct 2007 11:09:57 -0700 schrieb sannse: > > > > > >> "Wikia's image store is down. It is sadly bringing the entire site > down. > >> > >> Hopefully all will be back to normal soon. Sorry for the problem! > >> > > > > Somehow I expected a ";-)" here... > > > > What do you use the income of ads for? Parties? > > > > Please hire some good sysadmins (preferably security-paranoids) soon. > > > > Sebastian -- getting cynical. > > > > _______________________________________________ > > Wikia-l mailing list > > Wikia-l at wikia.com > > http://lists.wikia.com/mailman/listinfo/wikia-l > > > > > _______________________________________________ > Wikia-l mailing list > Wikia-l at wikia.com > http://lists.wikia.com/mailman/listinfo/wikia-l > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.wikia.com/pipermail/wikia-l/attachments/20071006/20ccdf52/attachment.html From martineznovo at gmail.com Sun Oct 7 08:33:35 2007 From: martineznovo at gmail.com (=?ISO-8859-1?Q?Jes=FAs_Mart=EDnez?=) Date: Sun, 7 Oct 2007 10:33:35 +0200 Subject: [Wikia-l] Fwd: False edit conflicts In-Reply-To: References: <9729c7810710050056r5baf50e9p49cbfe7c98b045f2@mail.gmail.com> <470603DD.3050405@wikia.com> <003701c8075d$984e9960$5c0cf6d2@633> Message-ID: Maybe other related issue. Although I'd set in my preferences to preview the article when editing an article (after hit the edit link, without need of hit the preview button), since the edit conflict problem the preview doesn't show. The preview button works as before. ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Jes?s Mart?nez Date: 05-oct-2007 20:16 Subject: Re: [Wikia-l] False edit conflicts To: Central Wikia Mailing List I noticed that, when editing a section of an article, the "Summary" field is empty, instead of showing the heading of the section being edited. And is in this case when happens the false edit conflict :( 2007/10/5, Jes?s Mart?nez: > I'm experiencing the same problems. > > It's frustrating, because, you must copy the text on the bottom edit > box to the top edit box to save your changes. New contributors > wouldn't notice that and their edit won't be saved. > > > 2007/10/5, Robin Forlonge Patterson: > > All but two of the last eight pages I have edited > > on Genealogy in the last couple of hours have > > advised of an edit conflict, when subsequent > > examination of the page history showed that nobody > > else had been near the page since long before I > > opened it. > > > > I've not checked other sites. They were working > > fine before I restarted my PC. > > > > [Mr] Robin Forlonge Patterson, > > 88 Motuhara Road, Plimmerton, Porirua City 5026, > > New Zealand > > Member of NZ Society of Genealogists since 1974 > > http://wc.rootsweb.com/~robinp > > And see http://genealogy.wikia.com/ a free > > cooperative MediaWiki site > > > > _______________________________________________ > > Wikia-l mailing list > > Wikia-l at wikia.com > > http://lists.wikia.com/mailman/listinfo/wikia-l > > > From s.menge at gmx.de Sun Oct 7 11:20:29 2007 From: s.menge at gmx.de (Sebastian Menge) Date: Sun, 7 Oct 2007 11:20:29 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [Wikia-l] Database locked References: <801553ab0710060944n41de5f7av45da74e6bd151d15@mail.gmail.com> <47082691.8050505@wikia.com> <757d22db0710061845m5468c914h61b8c40e7318a4c5@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: > I would challenge you to setup and maintain a 100% uptime with a complex You are right, I could not do it better. That's why I chose wikia. Two further comments: 1) Growing too fast is always unhealthy. 2) Stability is more important than frontend. I want to see wikia stay alive and I really like the community, but ATM im not sure, if it will be still there in a couple of years. Since our wiki is meant to be very longterm, I fear we have to migrate elsewhere eventually ... Sebastian. From toughpigs at gmail.com Sun Oct 7 12:33:48 2007 From: toughpigs at gmail.com (Danny Horn) Date: Sun, 7 Oct 2007 08:33:48 -0400 Subject: [Wikia-l] Database locked In-Reply-To: References: <801553ab0710060944n41de5f7av45da74e6bd151d15@mail.gmail.com> <47082691.8050505@wikia.com> <757d22db0710061845m5468c914h61b8c40e7318a4c5@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: I think there can be a middle ground between Jamie's optimism and Sebastian's frustration. I work on a bunch of wikis too, and, like Jamie, I'm very happy with the progress that's been made in the last year. Sebastian, I don't know how long you've been running your wiki, so you may or may not have seen where things were a year and a half ago. The issues that come up now are nothing compared to what it used to be; this is a much smoother running site. At the same time, I think it's important to acknowledge the frustration that some users feel about the tech issues. Sebastian isn't imagining things; there have been outages of one kind or another just about every week. Yes, Wikia is growing quickly, there are a lot of changes that are being made technically, and there are always going to be glitches. There's a good explanation for each problem, and problems get fixed. But that doesn't change the users' experience, which has been a regular series of outages and bugs. This is especially frustrating for new users, who aren't comforted by the thought of how much better it is compared to a year ago. Wiki people are a special breed; we put our heart and soul -- and a whole lot of our spare time -- into building a site that we feel passionate about. That's the kind of people that Wikia wants to attract, and keep. So that means that when there are problems that seem to threaten the stability of the wikis, then those passionate people are going to get worried and upset. I think it's important for Wikia to figure out solutions for both problems -- how to fix the tech issues, and also how to help the passionate users know that their complaints are being addressed. If Sebastian is feeling cynical and frustrated, then I'm sure he's not alone. If we want to keep him around, then we need to listen to him, and take his comments seriously. -- Danny -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.wikia.com/pipermail/wikia-l/attachments/20071007/a83399c4/attachment.html From derrick at chainsofreason.org Sun Oct 7 13:20:17 2007 From: derrick at chainsofreason.org (Derrick Farnell) Date: Sun, 7 Oct 2007 14:20:17 +0100 Subject: [Wikia-l] Database locked In-Reply-To: References: <801553ab0710060944n41de5f7av45da74e6bd151d15@mail.gmail.com> <47082691.8050505@wikia.com> <757d22db0710061845m5468c914h61b8c40e7318a4c5@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <9729c7810710070620u6852aa80s57d3d0467ae5fb97@mail.gmail.com> As someone who joined Wikia recently, I completely agree with Danny. On three occasions over the past seven days I've been unable to work on the wiki I started, and this hasn't created a good first impression. Also, I'm concerned about the possibility of approaching major sites (when the wiki is ready) to ask for them to link to the wiki, only for them to find the wiki either inaccessible or uneditable. However, I don't believe in making judgements on first impressions and I'm willing to give Wikia a few months before making a decision about whether to stay. Given that the problem apparently affected Wikia's ability to communicate with users via the mailing list, how about they set-up a simple site with another hosting company where they can post news of problems? Dreamhost have one: http://www.dreamhoststatus.com/ I certainly think there should always be some form of immediate communication in the event of a problem, if only to save loads people having to enter the live help to ask the same question. :) Derrick Chains of Reason http://chainsofreason.wikia.com/wiki/Home On 10/7/07, Danny Horn wrote: > > I think there can be a middle ground between Jamie's optimism and > Sebastian's frustration. > > I work on a bunch of wikis too, and, like Jamie, I'm very happy with the > progress that's been made in the last year. Sebastian, I don't know how long > you've been running your wiki, so you may or may not have seen where things > were a year and a half ago. The issues that come up now are nothing compared > to what it used to be; this is a much smoother running site. > > At the same time, I think it's important to acknowledge the frustration > that some users feel about the tech issues. Sebastian isn't imagining > things; there have been outages of one kind or another just about every > week. > > Yes, Wikia is growing quickly, there are a lot of changes that are being > made technically, and there are always going to be glitches. There's a good > explanation for each problem, and problems get fixed. But that doesn't > change the users' experience, which has been a regular series of outages and > bugs. This is especially frustrating for new users, who aren't comforted by > the thought of how much better it is compared to a year ago. > > Wiki people are a special breed; we put our heart and soul -- and a whole > lot of our spare time -- into building a site that we feel passionate about. > That's the kind of people that Wikia wants to attract, and keep. So that > means that when there are problems that seem to threaten the stability of > the wikis, then those passionate people are going to get worried and upset. > > I think it's important for Wikia to figure out solutions for both problems > -- how to fix the tech issues, and also how to help the passionate users > know that their complaints are being addressed. If Sebastian is feeling > cynical and frustrated, then I'm sure he's not alone. If we want to keep him > around, then we need to listen to him, and take his comments seriously. > > > -- Danny > > > > _______________________________________________ > Wikia-l mailing list > Wikia-l at wikia.com > http://lists.wikia.com/mailman/listinfo/wikia-l > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.wikia.com/pipermail/wikia-l/attachments/20071007/d95b9376/attachment.html From c.stafford at gmail.com Sun Oct 7 13:25:27 2007 From: c.stafford at gmail.com (Chris Stafford) Date: Sun, 7 Oct 2007 09:25:27 -0400 Subject: [Wikia-l] layout problem with new default template In-Reply-To: References: <9729c7810710050056r5baf50e9p49cbfe7c98b045f2@mail.gmail.com> <470603DD.3050405@wikia.com> <9729c7810710050639q21ba0589m59a01e8f71fc2784@mail.gmail.com> <47068CB6.10108@wikia.com> Message-ID: <613c581d0710070625v58a4a402n2a9b3857e6a27970@mail.gmail.com> i'd like to jump in here, my biggest issue with having the top content box 1st in the list was for quite a while (and sometimes still is) was broken. most of the time when i go to use it, the dropdown seems broken. when i change it, i see the loaded animation bar under it, and the list of items changes to the new content, but (sometimes) as soon as the loading animation goes away, the list of items changes back to what it was before, but the dropdown is still on the new choice. so you have to change it to something, else, get this problem again, THEN try to pick your first choice again, and this time it loads the right list of things. -chris/uberfuzzy -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.wikia.com/pipermail/wikia-l/attachments/20071007/f9e8ed9f/attachment.html From beesley at gmail.com Sun Oct 7 14:47:25 2007 From: beesley at gmail.com (Angela) Date: Mon, 8 Oct 2007 00:47:25 +1000 Subject: [Wikia-l] Database locked In-Reply-To: <9729c7810710070620u6852aa80s57d3d0467ae5fb97@mail.gmail.com> References: <801553ab0710060944n41de5f7av45da74e6bd151d15@mail.gmail.com> <47082691.8050505@wikia.com> <757d22db0710061845m5468c914h61b8c40e7318a4c5@mail.gmail.com> <9729c7810710070620u6852aa80s57d3d0467ae5fb97@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <8b722b800710070747r2c257dc5l88d233593414343a@mail.gmail.com> On 10/7/07, Derrick Farnell wrote: > Given that the problem apparently affected Wikia's ability to communicate > with users via the mailing list, how about they set-up a simple site with > another hosting company where they can post news of problems? Our off-site status page is at http://wikia.livejournal.com/ When the mailing lists and site are completely down, I will post news about the problem there. Angela -- Angela Beesley Wikia.com From cbrown1023.ml at gmail.com Sun Oct 7 15:27:13 2007 From: cbrown1023.ml at gmail.com (Casey Brown) Date: Sun, 7 Oct 2007 11:27:13 -0400 Subject: [Wikia-l] Database locked In-Reply-To: <8b722b800710070747r2c257dc5l88d233593414343a@mail.gmail.com> References: <801553ab0710060944n41de5f7av45da74e6bd151d15@mail.gmail.com> <47082691.8050505@wikia.com> <757d22db0710061845m5468c914h61b8c40e7318a4c5@mail.gmail.com> <9729c7810710070620u6852aa80s57d3d0467ae5fb97@mail.gmail.com> <8b722b800710070747r2c257dc5l88d233593414343a@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <4053450b0710070827v31a4b02ds4fa4591fbc384041@mail.gmail.com> Everyone can also visit #wikia on Freenode IRC for updates as well. On 10/7/07, Angela wrote: > > On 10/7/07, Derrick Farnell wrote: > > Given that the problem apparently affected Wikia's ability to > communicate > > with users via the mailing list, how about they set-up a simple site > with > > another hosting company where they can post news of problems? > > Our off-site status page is at http://wikia.livejournal.com/ > > When the mailing lists and site are completely down, I will post news > about the problem there. > > Angela > > -- > Angela Beesley > Wikia.com > _______________________________________________ > Wikia-l mailing list > Wikia-l at wikia.com > http://lists.wikia.com/mailman/listinfo/wikia-l > -- Casey Brown Cbrown1023 --- Note: This e-mail address is used for mailing lists. Personal emails sent to this address will probably get lost. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.wikia.com/pipermail/wikia-l/attachments/20071007/7af82677/attachment.html From derrick at chainsofreason.org Sun Oct 7 15:35:21 2007 From: derrick at chainsofreason.org (Derrick Farnell) Date: Sun, 7 Oct 2007 16:35:21 +0100 Subject: [Wikia-l] Database locked In-Reply-To: <4053450b0710070827v31a4b02ds4fa4591fbc384041@mail.gmail.com> References: <47082691.8050505@wikia.com> <757d22db0710061845m5468c914h61b8c40e7318a4c5@mail.gmail.com> <9729c7810710070620u6852aa80s57d3d0467ae5fb97@mail.gmail.com> <8b722b800710070747r2c257dc5l88d233593414343a@mail.gmail.com> <4053450b0710070827v31a4b02ds4fa4591fbc384041@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <9729c7810710070835g341d7fd2ndd0420414f367d50@mail.gmail.com> Thanks Angela. Perhaps it's staring me in the face, but I can't see that link on the main Wikia site. At least, if it is there, perhaps it should be easier to find? Derrick On 10/7/07, Casey Brown wrote: > > Everyone can also visit #wikia on Freenode IRC for updates as well. > > On 10/7/07, Angela wrote: > > > > On 10/7/07, Derrick Farnell wrote: > > > Given that the problem apparently affected Wikia's ability to > > communicate > > > with users via the mailing list, how about they set-up a simple site > > with > > > another hosting company where they can post news of problems? > > > > Our off-site status page is at http://wikia.livejournal.com/ > > > > When the mailing lists and site are completely down, I will post news > > about the problem there. > > > > Angela > > > > -- > > Angela Beesley > > Wikia.com > > _______________________________________________ > > Wikia-l mailing list > > Wikia-l at wikia.com > > http://lists.wikia.com/mailman/listinfo/wikia-l > > > > > > -- > Casey Brown > Cbrown1023 > > --- > Note: This e-mail address is used for mailing lists. Personal emails > sent to > this address will probably get lost. > _______________________________________________ > Wikia-l mailing list > Wikia-l at wikia.com > http://lists.wikia.com/mailman/listinfo/wikia-l > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.wikia.com/pipermail/wikia-l/attachments/20071007/5722103d/attachment.html From johnq at wikia.com Sun Oct 7 20:38:05 2007 From: johnq at wikia.com (John Q) Date: Sun, 07 Oct 2007 13:38:05 -0700 Subject: [Wikia-l] Database locked In-Reply-To: References: <801553ab0710060944n41de5f7av45da74e6bd151d15@mail.gmail.com> <47082691.8050505@wikia.com> <757d22db0710061845m5468c914h61b8c40e7318a4c5@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <470943AD.3020107@wikia.com> Hi, Any time I hear complaints or concerns, I take them seriously... sometimes we're already working on the issue (like we've been working on site speed for the last few months)... sometimes it's that we have to get better about how our products get released so I take that feedback to the team internally... sometimes it's a hardware issue that happens in the middle of the night (we need to speed up architectural changes)... sometimes the issues are 3rd party and we try to adapt as best we can... that can be a ddos attack, one of our various bandwidth providers having an issue or even one of our own wikis accidentally causing an outage. I forwarded this thread to the entire technical team to remind everyone that as we are working on things or switching out servers that there is an audience that is getting effected every minute and we need to be more mindful of that. One thing Danny said that is definitely true... wikis and wiki people are a special breed. We know the dedication it takes to get a community going and our job is to help foster that as much as we can while also growing the site in other fundamental ways. The other side of that coin is that *everything* about this site tends to be dynamic. That, plus we enable a lot of extensions that various communities want (like DPL) that can cause additional load (this is why Wikipedia won't enable some of these extensions). So we also have a juggling act between site speed/stability and trying to satisfy a lot of the functionality requests that come in from the communities. It is better than last year... but we've been growing and the expectations that you the community have and that we have for ourselves have risen. For the past 6 weeks we have been moving a lot of equipment around while trying to optimize the site... and we have a lot more equipment coming in... so I apologize for the outages that happened as a result of that. I'll sit down with the team and discuss how we minimize this going forward. Thanks, John Q. Danny Horn wrote: > I think there can be a middle ground between Jamie's optimism and > Sebastian's frustration. > > I work on a bunch of wikis too, and, like Jamie, I'm very happy with > the progress that's been made in the last year. Sebastian, I don't > know how long you've been running your wiki, so you may or may not > have seen where things were a year and a half ago. The issues that > come up now are nothing compared to what it used to be; this is a much > smoother running site. > > At the same time, I think it's important to acknowledge the > frustration that some users feel about the tech issues. Sebastian > isn't imagining things; there have been outages of one kind or another > just about every week. > > Yes, Wikia is growing quickly, there are a lot of changes that are > being made technically, and there are always going to be glitches. > There's a good explanation for each problem, and problems get fixed. > But that doesn't change the users' experience, which has been a > regular series of outages and bugs. This is especially frustrating for > new users, who aren't comforted by the thought of how much better it > is compared to a year ago. > > Wiki people are a special breed; we put our heart and soul -- and a > whole lot of our spare time -- into building a site that we feel > passionate about. That's the kind of people that Wikia wants to > attract, and keep. So that means that when there are problems that > seem to threaten the stability of the wikis, then those passionate > people are going to get worried and upset. > > I think it's important for Wikia to figure out solutions for both > problems -- how to fix the tech issues, and also how to help the > passionate users know that their complaints are being addressed. If > Sebastian is feeling cynical and frustrated, then I'm sure he's not > alone. If we want to keep him around, then we need to listen to him, > and take his comments seriously. > > > -- Danny > > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ > > _______________________________________________ > Wikia-l mailing list > Wikia-l at wikia.com > http://lists.wikia.com/mailman/listinfo/wikia-l > From dawormie at gmail.com Sun Oct 7 23:44:41 2007 From: dawormie at gmail.com (Victor) Date: Mon, 8 Oct 2007 09:44:41 +1000 Subject: [Wikia-l] Database locked In-Reply-To: <470943AD.3020107@wikia.com> References: <801553ab0710060944n41de5f7av45da74e6bd151d15@mail.gmail.com> <47082691.8050505@wikia.com> <757d22db0710061845m5468c914h61b8c40e7318a4c5@mail.gmail.com> <470943AD.3020107@wikia.com> Message-ID: As a recent joiner of Wikia I don't know about the issues that have happened prior to June. But I can certainly say Wikia techs are fast to respond. Whenever I have an issue, my first stop is always the IRC channel. If no Staff are around someone with experience will typically be there. Longest I've waited for a response so far is about 5 minutes. If they cannot answer it, then someone often knows how to contact Staff and usually leaves a message for them. Keep it up Wikia staff! ~Victor On 10/8/07, John Q wrote: > > Hi, > > Any time I hear complaints or concerns, I take them seriously... > sometimes we're already working on the issue (like we've been working on > site speed for the last few months)... sometimes it's that we have to > get better about how our products get released so I take that feedback > to the team internally... sometimes it's a hardware issue that happens > in the middle of the night (we need to speed up architectural > changes)... sometimes the issues are 3rd party and we try to adapt as > best we can... that can be a ddos attack, one of our various bandwidth > providers having an issue or even one of our own wikis accidentally > causing an outage. > > I forwarded this thread to the entire technical team to remind everyone > that as we are working on things or switching out servers that there is > an audience that is getting effected every minute and we need to be more > mindful of that. > > One thing Danny said that is definitely true... wikis and wiki people > are a special breed. We know the dedication it takes to get a community > going and our job is to help foster that as much as we can while also > growing the site in other fundamental ways. The other side of that coin > is that *everything* about this site tends to be dynamic. That, plus we > enable a lot of extensions that various communities want (like DPL) that > can cause additional load (this is why Wikipedia won't enable some of > these extensions). So we also have a juggling act between site > speed/stability and trying to satisfy a lot of the functionality > requests that come in from the communities. > > It is better than last year... but we've been growing and the > expectations that you the community have and that we have for ourselves > have risen. For the past 6 weeks we have been moving a lot of equipment > around while trying to optimize the site... and we have a lot more > equipment coming in... so I apologize for the outages that happened as a > result of that. I'll sit down with the team and discuss how we minimize > this going forward. > > Thanks, > John Q. > > > > Danny Horn wrote: > > I think there can be a middle ground between Jamie's optimism and > > Sebastian's frustration. > > > > I work on a bunch of wikis too, and, like Jamie, I'm very happy with > > the progress that's been made in the last year. Sebastian, I don't > > know how long you've been running your wiki, so you may or may not > > have seen where things were a year and a half ago. The issues that > > come up now are nothing compared to what it used to be; this is a much > > smoother running site. > > > > At the same time, I think it's important to acknowledge the > > frustration that some users feel about the tech issues. Sebastian > > isn't imagining things; there have been outages of one kind or another > > just about every week. > > > > Yes, Wikia is growing quickly, there are a lot of changes that are > > being made technically, and there are always going to be glitches. > > There's a good explanation for each problem, and problems get fixed. > > But that doesn't change the users' experience, which has been a > > regular series of outages and bugs. This is especially frustrating for > > new users, who aren't comforted by the thought of how much better it > > is compared to a year ago. > > > > Wiki people are a special breed; we put our heart and soul -- and a > > whole lot of our spare time -- into building a site that we feel > > passionate about. That's the kind of people that Wikia wants to > > attract, and keep. So that means that when there are problems that > > seem to threaten the stability of the wikis, then those passionate > > people are going to get worried and upset. > > > > I think it's important for Wikia to figure out solutions for both > > problems -- how to fix the tech issues, and also how to help the > > passionate users know that their complaints are being addressed. If > > Sebastian is feeling cynical and frustrated, then I'm sure he's not > > alone. If we want to keep him around, then we need to listen to him, > > and take his comments seriously. > > > > > > -- Danny > > > > > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ > > > > _______________________________________________ > > Wikia-l mailing list > > Wikia-l at wikia.com > > http://lists.wikia.com/mailman/listinfo/wikia-l > > > _______________________________________________ > Wikia-l mailing list > Wikia-l at wikia.com > http://lists.wikia.com/mailman/listinfo/wikia-l > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.wikia.com/pipermail/wikia-l/attachments/20071008/e9bb0366/attachment.html From beesley at gmail.com Mon Oct 8 02:36:39 2007 From: beesley at gmail.com (Angela) Date: Mon, 8 Oct 2007 12:36:39 +1000 Subject: [Wikia-l] New wikis this week Message-ID: <8b722b800710071936v6691d784h8b6e2ede71db7017@mail.gmail.com> This is a list of the 66 wikis created last week.There is lots new in "entertainment" so check to see if your favorite TV show (or cartoon or anime or movie) is there and help a new wiki by starting a page. If you're not into TV, we've also got everything from liquor to ballet this week. English - Entertainment * Top Model - http://topmodel.wikia.com (TV) * Reaper - http://reaper.wikia.com (TV) * Drake and Josh - http://drakeandjosh.wikia.com (TV) * The Suite Life of Zack and Cody - http://suitelife.wikia.com (TV) * Camp Rock - http://camprock.wikia.com (TV) * Wizards of Waverly Place - http://wizardsofwaverlyplace.wikia.com (TV) * Murder, She Wrote - http://murdershewrote.wikia.com (TV) * Ugly Betty - http://uglybetty.wikia.com (TV) * Pixar - http://pixar.wikia.com * Mannino Infantry - http://manninoinfantry.wikia.com (film) * Indiana Jones Fan Fiction - http://indyfanfiction.wikia.com * Keroro Guns? - http://keroro.wikia.com (anime) * Neon Genesis Evangelion - http://evangelion.wikia.com (anime/manga) * Fairly OddParents - http://fairlyoddparents.wikia.com (cartoon) * Drawn Together - http://drawntogether.wikia.com (cartoon) * CC Asia Band - http://ccasiaband.wikia.com (music) * Progressive Rock - http://progrock.wikia.com (music) * Man Card Rulebook - http://mancard.wikia.com (entertainment) English - Gaming * Templars of Twilight - http://templarsoftwilight.wikia.com * Punch-Out - http://punchout.wikia.com * MechQuest - http://mechquest.wikia.com * 3D Armies - http://3darmies.wikia.com * The Suffering - http://thesuffering.wikia.com * Morrowind Construction Set - http://mwcs.wikia.com * Infinitas - http://infinitas.wikia.com * Team ICO Gamers - http://team_ico_gamers.wikia.com * Valkyrie Profile - http://valkyrieprofile.wikia.com * Star Wars AGD - http://swagd.wikia.com * First Strike Mod - http://firststrikemod.wikia.com * EA Sports - http://easports.wikia.com * Hidden Realms - http://hiddenrealms.wikia.com * Perfect Dark - http://perfectdark.wikia.com * ShadowGate - http://shadowgate.wikia.com English - Tech * BlackBerry - http://blackberry.wikia.com * Teens and Technology - http://teentech.wikia.com * Windows Services - http://winservices.wikia.com (computing) * Stellarium - http://stellarium.wikia.com (software) English - Other * Controversy - http://controversy.wikia.com * Mobilize - http://mobilize.wikia.com (activism) * Gay Celebrities - http://gaycelebrities.wikia.com * Rudersdal Bibliotekerne - http://rdbib.wikia.com (library) * Ballet - http://ballet.wikia.com * Liquor - http://liquor.wikia.com * Great Lakes - http://greatlakes.wikia.com * Maximum Ride - http://maximumride.wikia.com (book) * Friends With You - http://friendswithyou.wikia.com (toys) * Boston Red Sox - http://redsox.wikia.com (baseball) * WikiSam - http://wikisam.wikia.com (education) Dutch * Geofiction - http://geofictie.wikia.com French * Aviation - http://fr.aviation.wikia.com * Les Tests - http://fr.lestests.wikia.com (computing) * Seedfloyd - http://fr.seedfloyd.wikia.com (music) * Kalon - http://kalon.wikia.com (literature/fantasy) * Forum RPG - http://fr.rpgforum.wikia.com (gaming) German * Metal - http://de.metal.wikia.com (music) * BlitzBasic - http://de.blitzbasic.wikia.com (programming) * Semiocybernetics - http://de.semiocybernetics.wikia.com (science) * Braunschweig - http://de.braunschweig.wikia.com (place) Italian * Scoutismo - http://scoutismo.wikia.com (scouting) Japanese * Final Fantasy - http://ja.fianlfantasy.wikia.com (game) Korean * Kore - http://kore.wikia.com (encyclopedia) * Social Enterprise - http://ko.socialenterprise.wikia.com Spanish * Equilibrio General Computable - http://egc.wikia.com (education) * Infinity The Game - http://es.infinity.wikia.com (game) * Negropedia Wiki - http://amigosdelnegro.wikia.com (humor) * Bar - http://es.bar.wikia.com (cocktails) You can also view this list at http://www.wikia.com/wiki/New_wikis_this_week Angela -- Angela Beesley Wikia.com From cizania at gmail.com Mon Oct 8 17:43:04 2007 From: cizania at gmail.com (=?ISO-8859-1?Q?Ciza=F1a?=) Date: Mon, 8 Oct 2007 12:43:04 -0500 Subject: [Wikia-l] Global.js broken In-Reply-To: <613c581d0710050715w236a1c76o94e7a28ea7726f11@mail.gmail.com> References: <470520BE.9070308@wikia.com> <613c581d0710050715w236a1c76o94e7a28ea7726f11@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: HA! i manage to resolve it, looks like its a weird cache issue i had with server (i know this because i tested on various computers some of them i have never enter wikia to test if it was my computer), i had to purge my global and personal JS pages and then clean up my navigator cache and finally it worked out, also i got the new version of WikiEd that for FF its loaded as a plug in O.o Ciz -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.wikia.com/pipermail/wikia-l/attachments/20071008/56a99790/attachment.html From dan_the_man at telus.net Tue Oct 9 01:09:27 2007 From: dan_the_man at telus.net (DanTMan) Date: Mon, 08 Oct 2007 18:09:27 -0700 Subject: [Wikia-l] Fwd: False edit conflicts In-Reply-To: References: <9729c7810710050056r5baf50e9p49cbfe7c98b045f2@mail.gmail.com> <470603DD.3050405@wikia.com> <003701c8075d$984e9960$5c0cf6d2@633> Message-ID: <470AD4C7.6060301@telus.net> Ya, in addition to the Edit conflicts the edit-on-preview isn't showing up. I don't know if it's much of a helpful hint for the techs. But while I get an edit conflict for 99% of the edits I make anywhere, it doesn't appear to affect me when I edit as a Bot. ~Daniel Friesen(Dantman) of: -The Gaiapedia (http://gaia.wikia.com) -Wikia ACG on Wikia.com (http://wikia.com/wiki/Wikia_ACG) -and Wiki-Tools.com (http://wiki-tools.com) Jes?s Mart?nez wrote: > Maybe other related issue. Although I'd set in my preferences to > preview the article when editing an article (after hit the edit link, > without need of hit the preview button), since the edit conflict > problem the preview doesn't show. > > The preview button works as before. > > > > ---------- Forwarded message ---------- > From: Jes?s Mart?nez > Date: 05-oct-2007 20:16 > Subject: Re: [Wikia-l] False edit conflicts > To: Central Wikia Mailing List > > > I noticed that, when editing a section of an article, the "Summary" > field is empty, instead of showing the heading of the section being > edited. And is in this case when happens the false edit conflict :( > > > > 2007/10/5, Jes?s Mart?nez: > >> I'm experiencing the same problems. >> >> It's frustrating, because, you must copy the text on the bottom edit >> box to the top edit box to save your changes. New contributors >> wouldn't notice that and their edit won't be saved. >> >> >> 2007/10/5, Robin Forlonge Patterson: >> >>> All but two of the last eight pages I have edited >>> on Genealogy in the last couple of hours have >>> advised of an edit conflict, when subsequent >>> examination of the page history showed that nobody >>> else had been near the page since long before I >>> opened it. >>> >>> I've not checked other sites. They were working >>> fine before I restarted my PC. >>> >>> [Mr] Robin Forlonge Patterson, >>> 88 Motuhara Road, Plimmerton, Porirua City 5026, >>> New Zealand >>> Member of NZ Society of Genealogists since 1974 >>> http://wc.rootsweb.com/~robinp >>> And see http://genealogy.wikia.com/ a free >>> cooperative MediaWiki site >>> >>> _______________________________________________ >>> Wikia-l mailing list >>> Wikia-l at wikia.com >>> http://lists.wikia.com/mailman/listinfo/wikia-l >>> >>> > _______________________________________________ > Wikia-l mailing list > Wikia-l at wikia.com > http://lists.wikia.com/mailman/listinfo/wikia-l > > From johnq at wikia.com Tue Oct 9 05:57:03 2007 From: johnq at wikia.com (John Q) Date: Mon, 08 Oct 2007 22:57:03 -0700 Subject: [Wikia-l] Global.js broken In-Reply-To: References: <470520BE.9070308@wikia.com> <613c581d0710050715w236a1c76o94e7a28ea7726f11@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <470B182F.6050407@wikia.com> :) ... ok, that's good to know Ciza?a. I'm glad it was only a cache issue. Thanks, John Q. Ciza?a wrote: > HA! i manage to resolve it, looks like its a weird cache issue i had > with server (i know this because i tested on various computers some of > them i have never enter wikia to test if it was my computer), i had to > purge my global and personal JS pages and then clean up my navigator > cache and finally it worked out, also i got the new version of WikiEd > that for FF its loaded as a plug in O.o > > Ciz > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ > > _______________________________________________ > Wikia-l mailing list > Wikia-l at wikia.com > http://lists.wikia.com/mailman/listinfo/wikia-l > From emil at wikia.com Tue Oct 9 15:18:34 2007 From: emil at wikia.com (Emil Podlaszewski) Date: Tue, 09 Oct 2007 17:18:34 +0200 Subject: [Wikia-l] Fwd: False edit conflicts In-Reply-To: <470AD4C7.6060301@telus.net> References: <9729c7810710050056r5baf50e9p49cbfe7c98b045f2@mail.gmail.com> <470603DD.3050405@wikia.com> <003701c8075d$984e9960$5c0cf6d2@633> <470AD4C7.6060301@telus.net> Message-ID: <470B9BCA.5090304@wikia.com> Hi, please check it out now. I think we fixed it. Emil DanTMan wrote: > Ya, in addition to the Edit conflicts the edit-on-preview isn't showing up. > > I don't know if it's much of a helpful hint for the techs. But while I > get an edit conflict for 99% of the edits I make anywhere, it doesn't > appear to affect me when I edit as a Bot. > > ~Daniel Friesen(Dantman) of: > -The Gaiapedia (http://gaia.wikia.com) > -Wikia ACG on Wikia.com (http://wikia.com/wiki/Wikia_ACG) > -and Wiki-Tools.com (http://wiki-tools.com) > > Jes?s Mart?nez wrote: >> Maybe other related issue. Although I'd set in my preferences to >> preview the article when editing an article (after hit the edit link, >> without need of hit the preview button), since the edit conflict >> problem the preview doesn't show. >> >> The preview button works as before. >> >> >> >> ---------- Forwarded message ---------- >> From: Jes?s Mart?nez >> Date: 05-oct-2007 20:16 >> Subject: Re: [Wikia-l] False edit conflicts >> To: Central Wikia Mailing List >> >> >> I noticed that, when editing a section of an article, the "Summary" >> field is empty, instead of showing the heading of the section being >> edited. And is in this case when happens the false edit conflict :( >> >> >> >> 2007/10/5, Jes?s Mart?nez: >> >>> I'm experiencing the same problems. >>> >>> It's frustrating, because, you must copy the text on the bottom edit >>> box to the top edit box to save your changes. New contributors >>> wouldn't notice that and their edit won't be saved. >>> >>> >>> 2007/10/5, Robin Forlonge Patterson: >>> >>>> All but two of the last eight pages I have edited >>>> on Genealogy in the last couple of hours have >>>> advised of an edit conflict, when subsequent >>>> examination of the page history showed that nobody >>>> else had been near the page since long before I >>>> opened it. >>>> >>>> I've not checked other sites. They were working >>>> fine before I restarted my PC. >>>> >>>> [Mr] Robin Forlonge Patterson, >>>> 88 Motuhara Road, Plimmerton, Porirua City 5026, >>>> New Zealand >>>> Member of NZ Society of Genealogists since 1974 >>>> http://wc.rootsweb.com/~robinp >>>> And see http://genealogy.wikia.com/ a free >>>> cooperative MediaWiki site >>>> >>>> _______________________________________________ >>>> Wikia-l mailing list >>>> Wikia-l at wikia.com >>>> http://lists.wikia.com/mailman/listinfo/wikia-l >>>> >>>> >> _______________________________________________ >> Wikia-l mailing list >> Wikia-l at wikia.com >> http://lists.wikia.com/mailman/listinfo/wikia-l >> >> > _______________________________________________ > Wikia-l mailing list > Wikia-l at wikia.com > http://lists.wikia.com/mailman/listinfo/wikia-l > From derrick at chainsofreason.org Sat Oct 13 10:16:42 2007 From: derrick at chainsofreason.org (Derrick Farnell) Date: Sat, 13 Oct 2007 11:16:42 +0100 Subject: [Wikia-l] layout problem with new default template In-Reply-To: <613c581d0710070625v58a4a402n2a9b3857e6a27970@mail.gmail.com> References: <9729c7810710050056r5baf50e9p49cbfe7c98b045f2@mail.gmail.com> <470603DD.3050405@wikia.com> <9729c7810710050639q21ba0589m59a01e8f71fc2784@mail.gmail.com> <47068CB6.10108@wikia.com> <613c581d0710070625v58a4a402n2a9b3857e6a27970@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <9729c7810710130316s4c09f217g2ca3faf6635a1ef@mail.gmail.com> Hi I was told (earlier in this thread) that the four default links in the top nav of the Quartz template would be customisable from this week just gone, but I don't know where to go to find the instructions for how to do this. Can anyone help? Best, Derrick On 10/7/07, Chris Stafford wrote: > > i'd like to jump in here, my biggest issue with having the top content box > 1st in the list was for quite a while (and sometimes still is) was broken. > most of the time when i go to use it, the dropdown seems broken. when i > change it, i see the loaded animation bar under it, and the list of items > changes to the new content, but (sometimes) as soon as the loading animation > goes away, the list of items changes back to what it was before, but the > dropdown is still on the new choice. so you have to change it to something, > else, get this problem again, THEN try to pick your first choice again, and > this time it loads the right list of things. > > -chris/uberfuzzy > > _______________________________________________ > Wikia-l mailing list > Wikia-l at wikia.com > http://lists.wikia.com/mailman/listinfo/wikia-l > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.wikia.com/pipermail/wikia-l/attachments/20071013/16a901f1/attachment.html From johnq at wikia.com Sat Oct 13 17:15:52 2007 From: johnq at wikia.com (John Q) Date: Sat, 13 Oct 2007 10:15:52 -0700 Subject: [Wikia-l] layout problem with new default template In-Reply-To: <9729c7810710130316s4c09f217g2ca3faf6635a1ef@mail.gmail.com> References: <9729c7810710050056r5baf50e9p49cbfe7c98b045f2@mail.gmail.com> <470603DD.3050405@wikia.com> <9729c7810710050639q21ba0589m59a01e8f71fc2784@mail.gmail.com> <47068CB6.10108@wikia.com> <613c581d0710070625v58a4a402n2a9b3857e6a27970@mail.gmail.com> <9729c7810710130316s4c09f217g2ca3faf6635a1ef@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <4710FD48.9010209@wikia.com> Hi... yep, the release was supposed to be on Thursday but has been delayed till Mon-Tues. Several of our developers needed a bit more time to finish up on some other things. I'll send out a note when it's ready. :) Thanks Derrick, John Q. Derrick Farnell wrote: > Hi > > I was told (earlier in this thread) that the four default links in the > top nav of the Quartz template would be customisable from this week > just gone, but I don't know where to go to find the instructions for > how to do this. Can anyone help? > > Best, Derrick > > On 10/7/07, *Chris Stafford* > wrote: > > i'd like to jump in here, my biggest issue with having the top > content box 1st in the list was for quite a while (and sometimes > still is) was broken. most of the time when i go to use it, the > dropdown seems broken. when i change it, i see the loaded > animation bar under it, and the list of items changes to the new > content, but (sometimes) as soon as the loading animation goes > away, the list of items changes back to what it was before, but > the dropdown is still on the new choice. so you have to change it > to something, else, get this problem again, THEN try to pick your > first choice again, and this time it loads the right list of things. > > -chris/uberfuzzy > > _______________________________________________ > Wikia-l mailing list > Wikia-l at wikia.com > http://lists.wikia.com/mailman/listinfo/wikia-l > > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ > > _______________________________________________ > Wikia-l mailing list > Wikia-l at wikia.com > http://lists.wikia.com/mailman/listinfo/wikia-l > From beesley at gmail.com Mon Oct 15 02:51:00 2007 From: beesley at gmail.com (Angela) Date: Mon, 15 Oct 2007 12:51:00 +1000 Subject: [Wikia-l] New wikis this week Message-ID: <8b722b800710141951s53867c5q744aa467d6edb622@mail.gmail.com> 56 new wikis were made in the past week. The list below shows these broken into categories (gaming, entertainment, tech, other) and languages (13 of them). You can share what you've learnt by leaving some advice for the new users of these wikis. English - Gaming: * Gaming Steve - http://gamingsteve.wikia.com (forum) * HRPGU - http://hrpgu.wikia.com (game) * Portal - http://portal.wikia.com (game) * Engineering for Superheroes - http://super.wikia.com (RPG) * Wild Isle - http://wildisle.wikia.com (game) * Commandos - http://commandos.wikia.com (game) * Organization 13 - http://organization13.wikia.com (gaming) * Spelljammer - http://spelljammer.wikia.com (RPG) * Yu-Gi-Oh Card Maker - http://ycm.wikia.com (gaming) * Team Fortress - http://teamfortress.wikia.com (game) English - Entertainment: * Bee Gees - http://beegees.wikia.com (music) * Shannara - http://shannara.wikia.com (book/movie) * H.P. Lovecraft - http://lovecraft.wikia.com (author) * Dragonrealm - http://dragonrealm.wikia.com (books) * Empire X - http://empirex.wikia.com (Marvel comics fan fiction) * South of Nowhere - http://southofnowhere.wikia.com (TV) * Fandom - http://fandom.wikia.com * Storm Hawks - http://stormhawks.wikia.com (cartoon) * L. M. Montgomery - http://lmmontgomery.wikia.com English - Tech: * Linux Applications - http://linuxapps.wikia.com * Computer - http://en.computer.wikia.com * Coolinked - http://coolinked.wikia.com (web) * CHDK - http://chdk.wikia.com (photo software) English - Other: * Couples For Christ - http://couplesforchrist.wikia.com * Weapons - http://weapons.wikia.com * Stuga - http://stuga.wikia.com (travel) * Chicago Data - http://chicagodata.wikia.com * World Rally Championship - http://wrc.wikia.com (racing) * Magick - http://magick.wikia.com * Roller Coasters - http://rollercoaster.wikia.com Brazilian Portuguese: * Informateca - http://informateca.wikia.com (libraries) * .hack - http://pt-br.dothack.wikia.com (game) Bulgarian: * StarCraft - http://bg.starcraft.wikia.com (game) Chinese: * Biology - http://zh.biology.wikia.com * Jobs - http://mycareertogo.wikia.com * Education - http://tweducation.wikia.com * Red Cross Society - http://twredcross.wikia.com Finnish: * Tuleva - http://tuleva.wikia.com (event) French: * World of Warcraft Trading Card Game - http://fr.wowtcg.wikia.com * Tendance - http://tendance.wikia.com (trends) * Entreprise - http://entreprise.wikia.com (business) * Half-Life 2 Coding - http://fr.hl2coding.wikia.com (gaming) * Boomky - http://boomky.wikia.com (Calais) Italian: * Asburgo - http://asburgo.wikia.com (history) * Psychology - http://psicologia.wikia.com Japanese; * Romaji - http://ja.romaji.wikia.com (language) Korean * Legal - http://ko.legal.wikia.com * DoenJang - http://doenjang.wikia.com (cartoon) Polish * Club Penguin - http://pl.clubpenguin.wikia.com (game) Russian: * Matrix Films - http://ru.matrix.wikia.com Serbocroatian: * Srbija - http://srbija.wikia.com (Serbia) Spanish * Abbatia - http://es.abbatia.wikia.com (game) * Metroid - http://es.metroid.wikia.com (game) * WSIC - http://es.wsic.wikia.com (computer program) * Palace Chat - http://es.palace.wikia.com * Robotica - http://es.robotica.wikia.com (robots) -- Angela From dan_the_man at telus.net Sun Oct 14 12:39:17 2007 From: dan_the_man at telus.net (DanTMan) Date: Sun, 14 Oct 2007 05:39:17 -0700 Subject: [Wikia-l] Poor image design in Quartz skins Message-ID: <47120DF5.6080509@telus.net> I find the image setup used to make the headers in the Quarts skins to be /*extremely*/ poor. Other than my absolute dislike of the .gif which has been replaced in nearly every good design spot you can find on the internet with the .png format. The way the image for the header itself is split up is extremely poorly done. It's nearly impossible to line things up to fit pixel by pixel with the other parts of the header and even worse you can't match it with a background, furthermore the way the header image splitting is designed causes it to be impossible for you to fix that by adding transparency, because if you add transparency then other parts of the image show through. (If you make the background area of the curve in the header transparent, then the strait background of the header shows through) and you can't make that spot transparent, because if you do, then blocks of transparency start showing up inside the header area and also in the top bar. (Which makes me note, shouldn't be tiny menu area up top get it's background image from a different area of the image, not the same one used for the bulk of the search area so you can style that with something special to, and especially since they are shared it's impossible to line things up) It took me probably about an hour of fooling around with the image trying to find out where the badly positioned parts of the image went in the header to finally give up on giving the GaoGaiGar wiki a nice header. http://gaogaigar.wikia.com/index.php?title=MediaWiki:Quartzslate.css&useskin=quartzslate I first tried with a transparent curve background, but the search area's background showed through. I tried adding the grid background to the header, but nothing lined up with each other, and worse the image wasn't even evenly distributed horizontally so it's impossible to get a sane grid out of the header because it is broken by the non-uniform repeat. Then I tried removing the vertical bars from the grid, and just going for something horizontal. Unfortunately because the top menu and the bottom of the search area's background use the same area, it was impossible for me to create even a uniform set of lines, I tried to create a bit of an odd one, but the positioning was so poor that I couldn't even get it to work putting the lines in odd places just so that they could line up with each other in the header. Then before giving up, I tried going back to transparency and making the curved background transparent, this time I tried to make a part of the search area background transparent, and found out that the entire thing is repeated in the search area and also repeated inside of the top bar giving me transparent areas all over the place. It just doesn't work out right. You can't create anything good with the header. -- ~Daniel Friesen(Dantman) of: -The Gaiapedia (http://gaia.wikia.com) -Wikia ACG on Wikia.com (http://wikia.com/wiki/Wikia_ACG) -and Wiki-Tools.com (http://wiki-tools.com) From dan_the_man at telus.net Mon Oct 15 16:29:13 2007 From: dan_the_man at telus.net (DanTMan) Date: Mon, 15 Oct 2007 09:29:13 -0700 Subject: [Wikia-l] Interwiki Map not updating Message-ID: <47139559.8020503@telus.net> The [[Manga:]] link has been broken for awhile. It points to http://manga.wikia.com/wiki/$1 but the wiki is at http://en.manga.wikia.com/wiki/$1 I fixed the link in the map, but the interwiki tables are not updating. Is the update script still running on cron? -- ~Daniel Friesen(Dantman) of: -The Gaiapedia (http://gaia.wikia.com) -Wikia ACG on Wikia.com (http://wikia.com/wiki/Wikia_ACG) -and Wiki-Tools.com (http://wiki-tools.com) From tor at wikia.com Mon Oct 15 17:01:35 2007 From: tor at wikia.com (Lucas Garczewski) Date: Mon, 15 Oct 2007 19:01:35 +0200 Subject: [Wikia-l] Interwiki Map not updating In-Reply-To: <47139559.8020503@telus.net> References: <47139559.8020503@telus.net> Message-ID: <47139CEF.7020603@wikia.com> DanTMan wrote: > The [[Manga:]] link has been broken for awhile. It points to > http://manga.wikia.com/wiki/$1 but the wiki is at > http://en.manga.wikia.com/wiki/$1 I fixed the link in the map, but the > interwiki tables are not updating. Is the update script still running on > cron? It should be up later this week. I spent some time working on it today, still need to run a few tests, though. Hang tight. :) -- Best regards, Lucas 'TOR' Garczewski -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: tor.vcf Type: text/x-vcard Size: 193 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://lists.wikia.com/pipermail/wikia-l/attachments/20071015/890fecbe/attachment.vcf From johnq at wikia.com Mon Oct 15 17:35:46 2007 From: johnq at wikia.com (John Q) Date: Mon, 15 Oct 2007 10:35:46 -0700 Subject: [Wikia-l] Poor image design in Quartz skins In-Reply-To: <47120DF5.6080509@telus.net> References: <47120DF5.6080509@telus.net> Message-ID: <4713A4F2.3020502@wikia.com> Hi DanTMan, Let me have our designer respond to the points you have below... Thanks, John Q. DanTMan wrote: > I find the image setup used to make the headers in the Quarts skins to > be /*extremely*/ poor. > > Other than my absolute dislike of the .gif which has been replaced in > nearly every good design spot you can find on the internet with the > .png format. The way the image for the header itself is split up is > extremely poorly done. > > It's nearly impossible to line things up to fit pixel by pixel with the > other parts of the header and even worse you can't match it with a > background, furthermore the way the header image splitting is designed > causes it to be impossible for you to fix that by adding transparency, > because if you add transparency then other parts of the image show > through. (If you make the background area of the curve in the header > transparent, then the strait background of the header shows through) and > you can't make that spot transparent, because if you do, then blocks of > transparency start showing up inside the header area and also in the top > bar. (Which makes me note, shouldn't be tiny menu area up top get it's > background image from a different area of the image, not the same one > used for the bulk of the search area so you can style that with > something special to, and especially since they are shared it's > impossible to line things up) > > It took me probably about an hour of fooling around with the image > trying to find out where the badly positioned parts of the image went in > the header to finally give up on giving the GaoGaiGar wiki a nice header. > http://gaogaigar.wikia.com/index.php?title=MediaWiki:Quartzslate.css&useskin=quartzslate > > I first tried with a transparent curve background, but the search area's > background showed through. > I tried adding the grid background to the header, but nothing lined up > with each other, and worse the image wasn't even evenly distributed > horizontally so it's impossible to get a sane grid out of the header > because it is broken by the non-uniform repeat. > Then I tried removing the vertical bars from the grid, and just going > for something horizontal. Unfortunately because the top menu and the > bottom of the search area's background use the same area, it was > impossible for me to create even a uniform set of lines, I tried to > create a bit of an odd one, but the positioning was so poor that I > couldn't even get it to work putting the lines in odd places just so > that they could line up with each other in the header. > Then before giving up, I tried going back to transparency and making the > curved background transparent, this time I tried to make a part of the > search area background transparent, and found out that the entire thing > is repeated in the search area and also repeated inside of the top bar > giving me transparent areas all over the place. > > It just doesn't work out right. You can't create anything good with the > header. > > From christian at wikia.com Mon Oct 15 18:03:25 2007 From: christian at wikia.com (Christian Williams) Date: Mon, 15 Oct 2007 11:03:25 -0700 Subject: [Wikia-l] Poor image design in Quartz skins In-Reply-To: <47120DF5.6080509@telus.net> References: <47120DF5.6080509@telus.net> Message-ID: <31F87C8C-C68A-4A0E-B364-77D215D83001@wikia.com> Dan, You're almost absolutely right. :) First, here's some background on the Quartz skin project. When we were putting the Quartz skins together, there was a grand plan to have a colour picker page which would automatically generate the images for you. Smoke and Slate, along with Beach, Brick, Sapphire, and Gaming (which will roll out shortly) are all fairly straightforward colour combinations (no patterns or background images... well, I guess Gaming does). Anyway, the thought was that the colour picker would mask the image complexity. I realize that the header graphic and the article bar graphic are difficult to understand because the images don't really look like the page elements that they construct. I'm using a CSS technique referred to as "image sprites". With sprites, a single image is repurposed through CSS positioning to increase load time and decrease file counts and server roundtrips. Part of this technique often requires for portions of an image to overlap other portions of the image. Transparency causes big problems when trying to do this, because as you noticed, the other part of the image shows through the transparency. PNG images are great because they allow alpha transparency, not the bitmap transparency that can be achieved with GIF images. Bitmap transparency is either 100% transparent or 100% opaque, alpha transparency can be any percentage which allows the edges of an image to blend into its background. The problem lies in Internet Explorer 6.0's support for PNG. Natively, IE6 does not support alpha transparency in PNGs. There is a hack though, by using Internet Explorer's own proprietary AlphaImageLoader filter, but it once again defeats itself by leading to event handler troubles (clicks won't be detected). Once again, there's another somewhat recently discovered hack to overcome the event capturing bug. In short, it's possible, but a big pain for all involved. It means more CSS for you and I to write to customize the skin elements. After realizing the problems with blending the header into a background image, I started a project to convert the GIF images used in Quartz to PNG. The header is working, but the other parts aren't ready yet. Before releasing this change, we'd have to figure out a good way to roll the changes out to the Quartz skin so that everyone who has already customized their skins with GIF images aren't affected. There is a way to achieve what you're trying to do with the current infrastructure of the Quartz skin. Take a look at halo.wikia.com. I included a portion of the background image in the header image. Then, to keep the two in-step, the main background image is aligned to the top right. When the browser is resized, the background image shifts to the right, so the separation between the two images can't be noticed. I've learned a lot from the whole Quartz skin project. When taking designs from Photoshop to XHTML and CSS, I've always been able to spot the most technically efficient ways to implement the designs. In trying to customize my own work and from working with Annie on the Quartz customization guide (on inside.wikia.com), and of course reading your email this morning, I've learned that technical efficiency isn't enough when others need to build upon my work. I'll press to get the header PNG change fully tested and rolled out, since it is probably the most difficult piece to customize, and will of course apply my learnings from this project toward future projects. Thanks Dan. -Christian On Oct 14, 2007, at 5:39 AM, DanTMan wrote: > I find the image setup used to make the headers in the Quarts skins to > be /*extremely*/ poor. > > Other than my absolute dislike of the .gif which has been replaced in > nearly every good design spot you can find on the internet with the > .png format. The way the image for the header itself is split up is > extremely poorly done. > > It's nearly impossible to line things up to fit pixel by pixel with > the > other parts of the header and even worse you can't match it with a > background, furthermore the way the header image splitting is designed > causes it to be impossible for you to fix that by adding transparency, > because if you add transparency then other parts of the image show > through. (If you make the background area of the curve in the header > transparent, then the strait background of the header shows > through) and > you can't make that spot transparent, because if you do, then > blocks of > transparency start showing up inside the header area and also in > the top > bar. (Which makes me note, shouldn't be tiny menu area up top get it's > background image from a different area of the image, not the same one > used for the bulk of the search area so you can style that with > something special to, and especially since they are shared it's > impossible to line things up) > > It took me probably about an hour of fooling around with the image > trying to find out where the badly positioned parts of the image > went in > the header to finally give up on giving the GaoGaiGar wiki a nice > header. > http://gaogaigar.wikia.com/index.php? > title=MediaWiki:Quartzslate.css&useskin=quartzslate > > I first tried with a transparent curve background, but the search > area's > background showed through. > I tried adding the grid background to the header, but nothing lined up > with each other, and worse the image wasn't even evenly distributed > horizontally so it's impossible to get a sane grid out of the header > because it is broken by the non-uniform repeat. > Then I tried removing the vertical bars from the grid, and just going > for something horizontal. Unfortunately because the top menu and the > bottom of the search area's background use the same area, it was > impossible for me to create even a uniform set of lines, I tried to > create a bit of an odd one, but the positioning was so poor that I > couldn't even get it to work putting the lines in odd places just so > that they could line up with each other in the header. > Then before giving up, I tried going back to transparency and > making the > curved background transparent, this time I tried to make a part of the > search area background transparent, and found out that the entire > thing > is repeated in the search area and also repeated inside of the top bar > giving me transparent areas all over the place. > > It just doesn't work out right. You can't create anything good with > the > header. > > -- > ~Daniel Friesen(Dantman) of: > -The Gaiapedia (http://gaia.wikia.com) > -Wikia ACG on Wikia.com (http://wikia.com/wiki/Wikia_ACG) > -and Wiki-Tools.com (http://wiki-tools.com) > > _______________________________________________ > Wikia-l mailing list > Wikia-l at wikia.com > http://lists.wikia.com/mailman/listinfo/wikia-l > From chadlupkes at gmail.com Tue Oct 16 01:49:08 2007 From: chadlupkes at gmail.com (Chad Lupkes) Date: Mon, 15 Oct 2007 18:49:08 -0700 Subject: [Wikia-l] clocking Message-ID: <801553ab0710151849i7f122619h43504dbcc006c9fa@mail.gmail.com> Left.Wikia is clocking pretty bad right now, and I just got a database error. A database query syntax error has occurred. This may indicate a bug in the software. The last attempted database query was: (SQL query hidden) from within function "Parser::replaceLinkHolders". MySQL returned error "1053: Server shutdown in progress (216.151.156.15)". From duncan at wikia.com Tue Oct 16 01:52:43 2007 From: duncan at wikia.com (Matthew Silvey) Date: Mon, 15 Oct 2007 18:52:43 -0700 Subject: [Wikia-l] clocking In-Reply-To: <801553ab0710151849i7f122619h43504dbcc006c9fa@mail.gmail.com> References: <801553ab0710151849i7f122619h43504dbcc006c9fa@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <6BED9271-B284-459E-9704-8EB5969212DA@wikia.com> Chad, We are having a bit of a database issue. We hope to be back up to full speed shortly. Matthew On Oct 15, 2007, at 6:49 PM, Chad Lupkes wrote: > Left.Wikia is clocking pretty bad right now, and I just got a > database error. > > A database query syntax error has occurred. This may indicate a bug in > the software. The last attempted database query was: > > (SQL query hidden) > > from within function "Parser::replaceLinkHolders". MySQL returned > error "1053: Server shutdown in progress (216.151.156.15)". > _______________________________________________ > Wikia-l mailing list > Wikia-l at wikia.com > http://lists.wikia.com/mailman/listinfo/wikia-l > From dan_the_man at telus.net Tue Oct 16 02:14:56 2007 From: dan_the_man at telus.net (DanTMan) Date: Mon, 15 Oct 2007 19:14:56 -0700 Subject: [Wikia-l] Poor image design in Quartz skins In-Reply-To: <31F87C8C-C68A-4A0E-B364-77D215D83001@wikia.com> References: <47120DF5.6080509@telus.net> <31F87C8C-C68A-4A0E-B364-77D215D83001@wikia.com> Message-ID: <47141EA0.4060605@telus.net> ^_^ Nice to see things are being changed... And interesting idea on the color picker generating the images. Just when that's done, please make it also generate the CSS or otherwise make it so that you can both use the color picker and also customize css. Cause there will be those of us who want to add extra css in addition to what we can get out of the color picker. In fact, I can guarantee you that every single Wikia ACG wiki will require hard CSS in addition to what you can get out of the color picker because we have an @import at the top of the Common.css and also currently just in Monobook.css but when quartz is done, we'll also be including Quartz stuff. Nice to hear of things being converted from .gif to .png. Ya I know that IE 6 does not support alpha transparency, but the statement that IE 6 does not support transparency in png's without extra hacks is false. IE 6 still supports the same kind of 100% or 100% off transparency that is supported in a .gif. And IE 7 supports that and also the alpha transparency that other browsers have. So IE 6 still supports transparency, and IE 7 has added alpha transparency. Also the statement that a .gif is better compressed or takes a smaller file size than a .png is false. .png has very good compression, and the only reason you see .gif's with smaller sizes is because other than people only using it for small images which don't even need compression, .gif does not support more than 255 colors. The only reason you'll see a .gif with a smaller size than a .png is because the .gif is a bad quality image, and the .png is a good quality image that has all the colors intact. And still the .png still has good compression and file size. The only valid use .gif's now have are for small buttons, and animations. Ya, I know about image sprites, I've done that before and worked with that kind of stuff. It works great in mouseovers and images that have activation because the browser never needs to load another image when you hover over multiple times. I get what is done with the halopedia, in fact, without even looking at that I already tried to do that. But while that works for that image. It didn't work for a 30x30 grid. Mostly because of the symmetry. About that color picker, do you think it could also generate the Wikia_logo and Wikia_logo_small images based on a color set or gradient you pick. Many wiki match the logo's color to the color scheme. I did that, but when I tried to swap the colors, it didn't work out so well. http://gaogaigar.wikia.com/index.php?title=MediaWiki:Quartzslate.css&useskin=quartz My versions ended up bad quality and didn't work out to well. Same thing for the Article_bars, as you'll see on that same page I did one using a gradient, but I lost the curve. ^_^ And I guess since we're on the matter... I did manage to do the search icon, and the user_bar icon, but it was tricky and not everyone will be able to. So why not generate those to. And just for the heck of it, I'll add in the bullet icons. I notice issues with the New article/New wiki buttons, so in case someone is customizing the sidebar/widgets coloring that might be good to. ~Daniel Friesen(Dantman) of: -The Gaiapedia (http://gaia.wikia.com) -Wikia ACG on Wikia.com (http://wikia.com/wiki/Wikia_ACG) -and Wiki-Tools.com (http://wiki-tools.com) Christian Williams wrote: > Dan, > > You're almost absolutely right. :) First, here's some background on > the Quartz skin project. When we were putting the Quartz skins > together, there was a grand plan to have a colour picker page which > would automatically generate the images for you. Smoke and Slate, > along with Beach, Brick, Sapphire, and Gaming (which will roll out > shortly) are all fairly straightforward colour combinations (no > patterns or background images... well, I guess Gaming does). Anyway, > the thought was that the colour picker would mask the image complexity. > > I realize that the header graphic and the article bar graphic are > difficult to understand because the images don't really look like the > page elements that they construct. I'm using a CSS technique referred > to as "image sprites". With sprites, a single image is repurposed > through CSS positioning to increase load time and decrease file > counts and server roundtrips. Part of this technique often requires > for portions of an image to overlap other portions of the image. > Transparency causes big problems when trying to do this, because as > you noticed, the other part of the image shows through the transparency. > > PNG images are great because they allow alpha transparency, not the > bitmap transparency that can be achieved with GIF images. Bitmap > transparency is either 100% transparent or 100% opaque, alpha > transparency can be any percentage which allows the edges of an image > to blend into its background. The problem lies in Internet Explorer > 6.0's support for PNG. Natively, IE6 does not support alpha > transparency in PNGs. There is a hack though, by using Internet > Explorer's own proprietary AlphaImageLoader filter, but it once again > defeats itself by leading to event handler trou