Help Wikia.

[bluestarultor]

Okay, so most of you probably don't know about this, but Wikia is ditching the current default skin, Monaco, in favor of a new one called Oasis. There's been mass outcry as to the design, but I actually proposed a compromise that I think would make everyone happy. Read the staff blog, then scroll down and read my post, then please vote in the poll that should still be hovering at the top.

http://community.wikia.com/wiki/User...oval_of_Monaco

It's all on this page at time of writing.

Hopefully, my solution, collapsing the offending sidebar, will make everyone happy.

Thanks in advance for your time and input.



Edit: Naturally, comments are flowing. I'll try to keep a poll on the first page with the values from each previous iteration listed as they get knocked down. Sadly, there's no way to directly transfer a poll and all its values.

[Seil]

Something on the internet is changing? Oh no!

Whatever shall we do?

[bluestarultor]

Well, I was hoping people could help me help it change for the better. The design has some pretty bad flaws, but I proposed a solution to the biggest one of them and was fishing for votes.

[krogothwolf]

What's wrong with the Sidebar? And are these Flaws actual flaws or just flaws to your own personal navigation/viewing pleasure?

[bluestarultor]

Originally Posted by krogothwolf

What's wrong with the Sidebar? And are these Flaws actual flaws or just flaws to your own personal navigation/viewing pleasure?

The design flaw comes in a combination of fixed width of both the content total and the sidebar. The actual page content is limited to 660 pixels of width because of that combination. The page linked to in the OP is using the Oasis skin.

Compare to an average character page from FFWiki:
http://finalfantasy.wikia.com/wiki/Tifa

And an average weapon listing:
http://finalfantasy.wikia.com/wiki/L...sy_VII_Weapons

For fair comparison, here's a race page from WoW Wiki:
http://www.wowwiki.com/Worgen_%28playable%29

Here's a random gameplay mechanic page from the same:
http://www.wowwiki.com/Combat


This is representative of a lot of wikis out there. WoW's wiki is already considering jumping ship because of how badly it will ruin their formatting, among many others.

This is an example of a character page that's been adjusted to the new Oasis skin:
http://reddead.wikia.com/wiki/Edgar_Ross

Here's another one showing how having images quickly eats up text space:
http://muppet.wikia.com/wiki/Miss_Piggy


A lot of this could be solved by allowing the user to manually collapse the sidebar. That's the argument I'd like Wikia to see.

[krogothwolf]

So in other words, the flaw is an aesthetic design flaw? The new examples really don't bother me at all to be honest. I can see why some people might not like it, but it's not that big of an issue to me.

[bluestarultor]

Originally Posted by krogothwolf

So in other words, the flaw is an aesthetic design flaw? The new examples really don't bother me at all to be honest. I can see why some people might not like it, but it's not that big of an issue to me.

Well, the issue is also that many tables just won't compress to fit, and don't have info that's safe to remove. The page is going to break one way or another on those.


Also, consider the different amounts of content in both the new skin's examples and the ones still using the old skin. Many people put a lot of work into the content of their wikis and the new skin, well:

16 pixels of font height for normal sections
96 pixels per inch
assume 100 lines on Monaco for an easy number
assume no images for ease
1020 pixels of width for Monaco on a 1280xWhatever monitor
660 pixels of width fixed on Oasis

1020 / 660 = 1.54 (repeating) width ratio
1.5454... * 100 = 154.54... extra lines, round up to 155
155 lines * 16 pixels = 2480 extra pixels of height
2480 / 96 = 25.83333 inches of text to scroll through
1600 / 96 = 16.66667 inches of text to scroll through
25.83333 - 16.66667 = 9.16663 extra inches of text

And that's not even accounting for images.



So you see, for even small articles, that's a lot of text and loads of wasted space for many people. For a more representative 500-line article, that becomes 46 inches of extra scrolling, almost 4 feet.

So for you non-Americans, this change can increase article length by an entire meter.


Or, just to be easier, go find a bunch of articles and imagine them half again as long. Using Tifa's article as an example, it takes 10 scrolls to reach the bottom as it is. It would take 15 with the new skin, discounting the fact that the images will push the text even further in comparison. I don't have a good estimate for how much they'd actually affect it, and no time or inclination to do the math, but I think the issue is pretty clear.

[synkr0nized]

Fixed width websites are terrible and bad design. I will grant that personal websites and blogs and the like, where it's mostly text or the odd image here or there, should be set up however the author wants, but "heavy traffic" sites with lots of information and content should be designed to be fluid in the visitor's browser. Of course, at some minimal pixel width things will look silly, but a page should be fine if someone has a browser window maximized on a widescreen LCD or made narrow to fit alongside other windows, etc. Plus fluid columns allow for expansion when the content requires, such as the tables you mention and images alongside paragraphs.

If this was just a style change, I'd say who cares, let them do it and see what happens. But since they are restricting every Wikia member to a fixed-width design, they deserve to have their bigger draws find other wiki solutions.

[bluestarultor]

Originally Posted by synkr0nized

Fixed width websites are terrible and bad design. I will grant that personal websites and blogs and the like, where it's mostly text or the odd image here or there, should be set up however the author wants, but "heavy traffic" sites with lots of information and content should be designed to be fluid in the visitor's browser. Of course, at some minimal pixel width things will look silly, but a page should be fine if someone has a browser window maximized on a widescreen LCD or made narrow to fit alongside other windows, etc. Plus fluid columns allow for expansion when the content requires, such as the tables you mention and images alongside paragraphs.

If this was just a style change, I'd say who cares, let them do it and see what happens. But since they are restricting every Wikia member to a fixed-width design, they deserve to have their bigger draws find other wiki solutions.

Technically, the deserters still lose. They can't actually leave Wikia, just fork and cease to maintain the old site's stuff, maybe vandalize or delete pages just to make sure the new alternative is better in all ways. Even then, there's nothing stopping a new batch of editors from coming in. Also, for some topics, Wikia was a major protection with search results. The Wikia sites will still rate higher in pretty much all cases just because Wikia took in most of the market. Bulbapedia, a superior site for Pokemon info, ranks lower on searches. Some wikis, like Final Fantasy's, are lucky and don't have much competition. I'm sure others would struggle, though.

The issue with the betrayal is that Wikia waited until they got good and big to do it, so there isn't any big competition. ShoutWiki seems to be where many people are going, but it's quite small right now and doesn't have the resources to keep up with all the transfers.

[synkr0nized]

@Fifth: Yeah. He felt it was too empty or sparse looking and wanted to add another column or add the max-width CSS property to address that. I am arguing against that as a reason to limit the design and due to it not being something we can also do on the mobile version of the site.


@blues: It wouldn't be an easy road, but if they really push this and leave no option to get away from fixed-width designs the larger communities should push to go somewhere else. However, I'm not aware of how the member wikis are given control over their own wikis -- if they have an admin account for their content and can lock things down/put in place some redirects, that'd make things easier. Otherwise, yes, it would be a struggle with Wikia holdouts and new editors trying to take on vacant seats of "power" in the community. Unfortunate.