HammerWiki talk:Community Portal/Archive 2

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[edit] Revisiting the Wikia Discussion

Hello there, I am the gaming community manager at Wikia. First of all, welcome to the Wikia family! I have been watching this wiki grow over the last several months and have been very impressed with the quality of content and strengh of the community (esp for a game that isn't even released yet!) As you know we have our own Warhmamer wiki which has some great content and contributors despite being much smaller of a project. Erdimus is suggesting that Wikia close Warhammeronline.wikia and just redirect the URL Hammer Wiki. I would actually like to propose the idea of a merger, but more of a reverse merger (where wahammeronline.wikia is absorbed (imported) into Hammer Wiki There are a couple of advantages to this:

1. Hammer wiki would inherit the great content Warhammeronline.wikia has been building. Specifically, there is a lot of content on the Warhammer IP which is very complementary to the online community
2. Wikia can focus its marketing and promotion efforts on one wiki. I am in talks with the Richard from EA/Mythic about things we can work on together (In addition to the Beta contest we ran on Wikia last month)

Erdimus started a post about this on their forum here

Thoughts? Angies 16:54, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

Angies,

This is going to be a rather short reply, and I apologize for that, but I am currently a little pressed for time.

Thanks so much for replying so quickly. I will hopefully answer all your questions Angies

First, about Wikia. You already know I have some previous history comparing the two wikis. And there's obviously still a raging debate and a lot of unanswered questions going on on GuildWiki -- but which ultimately concerns the entire Gamewikis project -- that may have impact on what the future of HammerWiki will look like (although HammerWiki content is GFDL so not everything may apply). However, keeping my personal bias and the ongoing controversy in mind, here are some of my thoughts on the future of HammerWiki:

Currently, I see two wikis with different focus. The HammerWiki, my brainchild, a focused, reasonably comprehensive, strongly founded wiki that attempts only to document Warhammer and its IP as far as it concerns the game Warhammer Online. And the Warhammeronline.wikia (using your name for it, as I have been a bit at a loss for what to call it in the past), a wiki with a broader scope, less comprehensiveness and a smaller editorial base. However, I am certainly not blind to the fact that there is also good content in Warhammeronline.wikia -- much of it is just in the broader scope of the entire Warhammer IP rather than with focus on Warhammer Online.

And here's the thing: the Warhammer IP is massive. Huge. Immense. It spans many games, many worlds, many settings and many platforms. And much of that is not really all that relevant to Warhammer Online beyond a subset of information. I invite you to have a look at the first few paragraphs of HammerWiki:Original content, to possibly better understand where I am coming from. What we are trying to document with HammerWiki is Warhammer Online, with a belief that a more narrow focus allows for more specific, relevant content.

This does not mean, however, that there is no need for a wiki about Warhammer in general. In fact, that may very well be the case. I have not researched if there is, simply because I have not been interested in participating in such a project. I'm sure you can see where I am going with this: my current thoughts is that it would make good sense to merge any and all directly Warhammer Online related information from Warhammeronline.wikia into HammerWiki and, if there is interest, transform what remains into a more generally oriented Warhammer Wiki that could and would cross-reference with HammerWiki where appropriate.

Yes, I agree with your assessment and think this is the right way to move forward: with one combined wiki focusing on Warhammer Online which cross links to the Warhammer 40K or perhaps a more general Warhammer Portal page. I am not sure the best way to do this, but am sure you and erdimus can figure it out :) Angies

I'm going to leave it at that for now, because of time constraints. I do have a few questions I'm going to have to ask, however, so here's a few unrelated to the above:

1. Who's running the back end now? More generally, what is going to happen to HammerWiki from your point of view in the immediate future? And more specifically, who do we turn to with tech issues, like that fact that the GameWikis top bar has a dead link that has been dead since the move ("Suggest a Wiki")?

Everything is running on Wikia's servers and databases now. If you have any questions or technical issues, you can [contact the Wikia Com Team a few different ways but the fastest right now is probably to just shoot me a message or email (angie at wikia.com) Angies

1. What do you consider to be the HammerWiki URL? war.gamewikis.org? hammerwiki.org? Something else? This is of some personal interest to me, since I registered the hammerwiki.org domain, long ago.

We don't have any plans to change the URLS. IF you guys collectively decide you want to move to a wikia url (war.wikia.com) we would happily set that up, but that will be totally up to the community. Angies

1. And finally, what plans do you have for the day-to-day stewardship of HammerWiki as well as the other GameWikis projects in the near future? I'd like to be able to update HammerWiki:Administrators and, again, I'm sure you can imagine that this is of some personal interest to me, as I was basically put in charge of HammerWiki back in the day by Gravewit and left to my own devices (the inauguration consisted of exactly one line of text that you will still find on the top of my talk page). Such devices have led to my appointing Pendrako as co-admin and I have been considering appointing a few more simply to not have the entire project hinge on two people. But the situation could obviously be completely different now, as there's new people in the drivers seat and from that perspective I'm simply a passenger.

From the community side of things, nothing should change. Wikia does not have "admins" for any wikis. The community team has/or will be given sysop access to the gamewikis sites, but that is merely to be of service to the communities (to help with vandals, etc). You should have all the same rights and access you had before the move. Please let me know immediately if this is not the case. Angies

In closing, please don't take any of the above to mean that I believe I somehow "own" HammerWiki, or have any kind of entitlements beyond any other community member. That is far from the case. My interest in this entire endeavor is first and foremost to create, and facilitate the creation of, good documentation. As part of a community effort.

It sounds like you are a great community steward. I am glad you are here, and look forward to helping you grow this community. As for next steps, perhaps you can and erdimus can get together and decide which content stays and goes. I can coordinate with our tech team to do an import and then we can change all the links throughout wikia to point to this wiki!! Angies

--Bishop 22:33, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

Angies,

Thank you for the replies. I am currently out of town -- with a few minutes on a hotspot -- so no time for a real reply, but I will get to work on organizing something when I get back in a few days. In the spirit of cooperation I will also be offering Erdimus admin privileges on HammerWiki (should he desire to be part of the team) to make sure the wikia community does not feel left out of the process. Unless the HammerWiki community objects, that is, which I doubt. But if you're reading this, and you object, please let your voice be heard. --Bishop 16:28, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

Sounds good! enjoy your vacation. Let me know when you get back. Happy to help how-ever I can.Angies

Hi Angie, thanks for dropping by, and for the clarifications. I just thought I'd add my bit to this discussion. As usual though, Bishop already said most of what I want to say, so I'll keep this quick ;)

• Moving content: It's pretty clear that although there's a fair amount of good articles at warhammeronline.wikia, not all of them deserve to be included here. For instance, Storm of Chaos was a Warhammer tabletop campaign run by Games Workshop which introduced characters and events which probably won't have any mention in this interpretation of the Warhammer world. It might be worth creating a quick template to tag the wikia articles as candidates for moving, which can then be discussed and ported over if the consensus is favorable.
• Guild pages: These are a tricky issue. I'm personally of the opinion that they don't work on a wiki. It's a policy which we carried over from GuildWiki that by all accounts worked well over there.
• Warhammer portal: Sounds like a great idea. There's already a good place to start on the right hand section of the warhammeronline.wikia main page, where it lists a selection of Warhammer-themed games. Unfortunately, the WFB and WFRP content seems to have been merged into Warhammeer Online, when they should really have wikis of their own. I'd suggest setting up a general warhammer.wikia page to act as a portal.
• Marketing and Promotion: Unfortunately, it seems that as far as this wiki is concerned, you've recently been talking to the wrong people, namely Gravewit (who's had minimal involvement with HammerWiki) and Richard (who no longer works at EAMythic). While I'd like to see HammerWiki taking advantage of promotional opportunities, they need to be handled carefully to work effectively. It's my understanding that a wiki works best when it can provide a useful resource to a community, and when people are willing to contribute to it simply because they appreciate the kind of service it can provide. I'd like to see whether a few creative promotional ideas can be developed by HammerWiki contributors (featured articles and such and such). Obviously, the better the quality of the content here is, the more likely we are to get that word-of-mouth buzz within the WAR community, which IMHO is the most effective and least offensive kind of marketing.

-- Pendrako talk 22:42, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

I agree with making this the WHOnline wiki and the other one a general Warhammer portal, but I disagree with not having guild pages on this wiki. On GuildWiki guild pages were not allowed, but on the official Guild Wars wiki we decided to try it out and it turned out pretty well. I would suggest trying out the guild section on this wiki with similiar restrictions to those of the official GW wiki and it might prove to be a success. The important thing that people need to remember with the section is that the main point should be to present the guilds to other players and possibly try to get others to join the guild, not to act as a guild website with regularily updated news about guild events and such. -- (gem / talk) 23:04, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

Hello, about including warhammer world related information in this wiki: we had in mind the way wowwiki works (info for all warcraft games not only wow in the same wiki) when we started adding articles about things that dont exist on war-online yet. Its important imo for someone who wants to learn more about the game world to have a place for it. and this seems to be the apropriate place. I would like to see war40k and war-fantasy in the same wiki (here). Ausir did a lot of work on this. (i am not familiar with warhammer world).

I dont have much available time to help with "merging", i dont care about been an admin here or not and i dont feel i "left out of the process" or something. Maybe you sould ask the other 2 admins if they want that privilege (Wiks and Ausir). My only concern atm is to include links to the other non-english language wikis on the main page. The warhammer world (and 40k and fantasy) information is still there and available to anyone who wants to import it here: IF the community wants (i made the template {{import}} to include other articles as well). thanks, Erdimus ^(talk) 08:31, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

Mixing up FB, 40k and WOnline to the same wiki doesn't sound like a good idea imho. A wiki specialised in WHOnline will be large enough on itself since an MMO has lots and lots of content and stuff that changes all the time. Skills, quests, areas, professions, guides, etc. Keeping all that organised with general WH world information and other WH games would be very painful. And adding 40k to that... no way. -- (gem / talk) 13:51, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

Okay, it looks and sounds to me like we're going to go ahead and do some kind of merger of the content from warhammeronline.wikia to HammerWiki. I note with glee that much of the useful content has already been assimilated by pendrako, but I still feel there could be a need for a bit more structure to the process. As such, I recommend that we take the process to a separate page like HammerWiki:Community Portal/Wikia Merger and its associated talk page where we can hash out the tasks that need to be accomplished, take more specific stock of what we have and where to want to go with the merger.

I would also hope that some of the current admins (and users, of course) on the wikia WAR project would come fourth, join the discussion here and participate in shaping the future of HammerWiki. But knowing the history, I am not going to attempt to force anyone's hand.

At any rate, I will go ahead and create the mentioned pages after this posting with some skeleton content in the hope that others will join me in making it a combined community effort. --Bishop 20:42, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

Sounds like you guys are working though all the details which is awesome. Let me know if you need any help (tech or otherwise) and when you think its ready to redirect warhammeronline.wikia to war.gamewikis.org. Angies 17:04, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

Thank you for the words of confidence. Things are going a bit slowly with the move at the moment, but I do not believe that to be a real issue -- things are going slowly with all things WAR-related. Good thing too, as other important life-related stuff is keeping me a bit busy.

There is, however, one bit of technical help you could perhaps provide. If you check the RecentChanges, you'll notice that HammerWiki is under rather tiresome vandal-bot assault, and has been for some time (to be blunt, since the Wikia move). If your techs could find a way to curb said vandalism, without resorting to blocking anonymous edits, that would be sincerely appreciated by us admins. --Bishop 18:00, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

Hi Bishop. I'm part of Wikia's community team. Is this edit the type of vandalism you were talking about above? I suspect this is a spam bot testing before it tries some actual spam. Since it's using a different gibberish word each time, it's really hard to stop. If it was actual comments or links, we have tools to block that, but for random words used once by different IPs, it's much harder. One thing that might help is to automatically detect open proxies, though they do have some genuine uses as well. How bad would you say this problem is? Is it a couple of edits a day that need reverting or something that is taking up too much of your time? Are you more interested in people to help reverting it, or for tools to stop it? Angela (not to be confused with angies) 02:17, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

I honesly havent seen more than 2-3 a day, but still...thats time taken away from looking at other things. Plus, when more and more people come here to edit, it will be quite troublesome to contantly revert all the little spam bots on top of watching all the other edits from actual people. I would gladly revert it back, but it takes a lot longer for a non-admin without the 1 button reverting thing that the admins have. - Entice789 (Talk | Contributions) 03:11, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

Just in case you've missed the addition to MediaWiki, non-admins now have a two-click revert option called 'undo' that's quite convenient. Example. --Bishop 15:09, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

Where am I supposed to be looking?  :S the top of the page has all the buttons it normally does... >.< - Entice789 (Talk | Contributions) 02:49, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

Never mind, I found it =) - Entice789 (Talk | Contributions) 05:04, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

Hi Angela! Thanks for stopping by. Those are indeed the type of vandalism that we are getting a bunch of. And you may be right, it may not be intentional vandalism beyond spammer stupidity. Some days are quiet, but today (2007-10-25) for example, there was a bunch. The problem is not so much that it takes up (negligible) time, but more that it (combined with reverts and IP blocks) drowns out real edits on RecentChanges.

Of course, that effect may well become less of an issue as the wiki gets more active (currently, new information about WAR flows very slowly, resulting in a bit of a standstill). And I realize that this is not a trivial issue to solve through technical means. Which is why I asked you for advice. :)

Currently, I only see two possible solutions. And I am not sure I like either. One is to block open proxies -- an obvious choice, but one that goes against the grain of what I believe a wiki to be. Still, blocking unregistered edits from open proxies while still allowing registration (possibly with a registration-from-proxy-ip CAPTCHA -- reCAPTCHA is my personal favorite) may well be a reasonable middle ground that still allows even those desiring absolute anonymity, or who are otherwise blocked, to contribute.

The other option would be to have an admin tool that destroys an edit completely, including history and RecentChanges lines, thus solving the problem of pollution there. That, however, creates an air of unaccountability for admins and sets a bad precedent. Because basically, I am of the opinion that admins should only have the bare minimum of access beyond that of everyone else and any additions might foster a feeling of segregation from the community, which is certainly the last thing we want.

Before jumping the gun on any kind of solution, however, I would like to know what Wikia does on other sites? I'm sure HammerWiki cannot be the only wiki to be targetted by spammers or otherwise. And I would like to hear from others who might have an opinion on either of the solutions I have outlined (or who have even better ones). --Bishop 15:09, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Featured gaming Wikia

It might be worth nominating HammerWiki to be featured on Wikia's gaming hub. Seems like a good time to start bigging ourselves up a little - if the Age of Conan wiki can do it, then so can we ;) --Pendrako talk 22:08, 14 November 2007 (UTC)

I went ahead and nominated HammerWiki.

Feel free to drop by there and vote ;) -- Pendrako talk 11:14, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

Eck. Turns out wowwiki does not share user base with the rest of Wikia. And now someone's snatched my handle on wikia proper. That's going to cause me some grief. » Bishop · talk « 11:47, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] HammerWiki is Cursed

If anyone's interested, there's a Wikia link on the Curse gaming WAR page, which points to here. - Pendrako talk 03:27, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Featured Articles

I'd like to see HammerWiki introduce a featured article system to draw attention to some of our better work. I've set up a couple of pages to explain what it's all about. I mostly copied what I found on OblivioWiki, but customised it for our purposes. Bear in mind that this is in no way the finished article, there's plenty of room to change things if needed.

To fit a featured article section on the main page, I rearranged things a little - you can see the results on the editcopy. - Pendrako talk 17:46, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

I think this is a great idea.. I would encourage you to add new featured articles often (weekly even).. Its a great way to keep the home page fresh and to surface great content on the wiki. w:c:Callofduty:Project:Featured_content and w:c:Masseffect:Project:Featured_content use a standard Featured Article process that allows them to send out an api feed of featured content to GameSpot's Wiki Tab.. Gamespot would like to also have content from Hammer Wiki too. We are working towards a Feb roll-out, but would need you guys to adopt the same featured article system. you think that's possible?

Angies 21:24, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

Sounds good. I was thinking that the featured article should be rotated monthly, but a quicker rotation might be the way forward. I'll see if I can implement the system you suggested in the next few days. -- Pendrako talk 20:19, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

I believe that featured articles are now good to go, using a {{FA/#}} template system. Don't forget to nominate and vote for articles you want to see featured! -- Pendrako talk 21:47, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

Love it. Good work. » Bishop · talk « 23:58, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Special:CreatePage

Hey guys,

I just wanted to let you know that I enabled Wikia's Special:CreatePage extension on this wiki. The CreatePage extension makes it easy for people who might be unfamiliar with wiki syntax to create quality pages of a standard format on the wiki. I created plates for Zones and Beastiary Entries. Check it out, and check out the documentation on inside.wikia for more information about how to create additional plates for CreatePage.

Let me know what you think! --KyleH (talk) 18:08, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

Heya. Do you guys have any suggestions for where we should link to Special:CreatePage to make sure people know that it exists? Also, do you think it would be a good idea to send users to it when they follow a red link?

[edit] Semantic MediaWiki

Ok, so this is another neat feature that seems especially useful for MMO-based wikis. Semantic MediaWiki is a tool that allows you to tag pages with information, then you can write complex queries based on that data. For example, if I typed [[Level::70]] in to an ability template, it would create a property called Property:Level and assign that page with a value of 70. I could then, for example, write a query that automatically lists all pages with a level greater than 60, or combine different properties. The possibilities are pretty cool. Do you have any suggestions about how we could best integrate it? --KyleH (talk) 02:48, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

This sounds great. At this point, there isn't much game data to organize (such as levels etc), we can still use it to better organize the information- this makes up for the deficiencies of MediaWiki categories. --deadpool (t/c) 21:12, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Interwiki Linkage

For anyone wanting to write about the wider Warhammer universe, including all the stuff that's not in WAR, there are other Warhammer wikis on the wikia network to contribute to. Warhammer 40,000 is well served, Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay less so (after most of the RP articles were lost during the merger). I've also just started a Blood Bowl wiki, and I'm sure there's a good case for having a seperate Warhammer Fantasy wiki as well. If you want to write something about a part of Warhammer not covered in WAR, you could always try out the other wikis.

Also, it might be an idea to add links to other WH wikis, for the sake of completeness. Being able to link to other sources of general lore info would also mean that our articles could focus on the WAR-relevant bits. As an example, adding a discrete link to the 40k version of Chaos, or the WFB version of Dwarfs, would give readers the chance to get an extra perspective on the topic that they otherwise might have missed if they just stuck to HammerWiki. - Pendrako talk 00:56, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Registered Domain?

Has anyone looked into the possibility of using a registered domain? While I love Wikia, and what they've done for us, having our own domain name might lend a greater sense of credibility within the community (essentially, they seem more professional.) HammerWiki.com, and HammerWiki.org are both taken, but HammerWiki.net is unregistered. --Mikeblack 16:51, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

Heh, I never noticed this. Sorry for not replying before. Mike, HammerWiki.org belongs to me, and already points here. Always has. :) » Bishop · talk « 21:35, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

HA! So, would you rather us start "promoting" the wiki as "HammerWiki.org" then? --Mikeblack 00:52, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

I have a personal preference for using the hammerwiki.org domain (obviously, I guess) but I am not going to advocate one way or the other. I'm all for letting everyone use what they feel sounds best. As long as the site is Wikia run, that's going to be what people see in their browser, either way. And I don't imagine that changing unless something major happens. » Bishop · talk « 15:16, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] HammerWiki default skin

I already posted about this on Galezewski's talk page, but noone else has spoken up on the issue (not even Galezewski), so I am going to request community input here. Please, voice your opinions on the skin issue here and, at the very least, I will listen. Do not hesitate to disagree with me, either, I'd like to know if I'm alone on this one or not. » Bishop · talk « 21:40, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

Wow, I just now noticed this. Out of all of them? I think Monaco Brick looks the best - as it already fits our "cream & brick" color scheme. Actually, either of the brick skins work. I'm just not a fan of the Wikia tool bar on it, and the new logo that was put up (I think both look "plasticy" and sort of "cheap". Plus, there is no tall banner for Rappelz on the right side of my screen any more and it makes me sad not to see scantily clad anime chicks while I'm editing. I like the "Wiki" look. It's classic. But if we decide to switch to the Wikia style - I would say Monaco Brick, definitely. I'll try it out for a few days and see what I think, but I like the way the wiki looks now. --Mikeblack 01:00, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

I only just noticed this as well. It's weird looking at HammerWiki with the monaco skin, with all the extra bits and pieces Wikia have added to it, but I'm not convinced we need it at all. Although if we have to pick a monaco skin, I'd also have to go with Brick. - Pendrako talk 09:53, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

One thing to keep in mind is that the Monaco skin is completely customizable. You can change it however you'd like, and our staff designer can even create something for you. Check out FFXIclopedia's custom skin, as well as WoWWiki's. --KyleH (talk) 17:21, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

We should definitely keep MonoBook as default. The way the Monaco skin uses space is just terrible, and I think MonoBook is way more easy on the eye and "harmonic" or how to describe it, while the Monaco skin feels kind of gaudy and complex. However, we could definitely still support Monaco, just let MonoBook be the default one since I think it's superior for new users. Bootini 01:51, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

For now, i'd say keep monobook as default, and fully support users choosing their own skins from preferences. However if we get a custom skin (which would be nice) then make that the default skin, and still let users choose their own skin from preferences if they wish. ~ Revoran 05:45, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Actions Information

As of now there are a lot of actions pages created with various incomplete information in them. The information on these articles seem to most often be taken from podcasts and videos with the devs.

Now I would like to make it clear if we really should start to fill up these articles with information already, since I'm sure whatever actions info exists now is sure to be changed before a retail version anyway.

I'm also sure there are a lot of persons sitting on the information of all the various actions that exists in the game so far, so it would help to make things clear for them as well.

So what do you think, is it appropriate to add incomplete information from podcast AND is it appropriate to add any other game information from the beta that is not supposed to be public? Bootini 02:14, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] HammerWiki is getting a new skin

Whether we like it or not. Wikia is implementing site-wide changes to wiki styles and advertisement behaviour. I know many of you only ever see HammerWiki, so I figured I'd point it out here. I'm too tired to voice my personal opinion coherently at the moment, and I should probably not be the first to speak anyway. But I am interested in hearing what the rest of the HammerWiki community thinks of these changes to come. » Bishop · talk « 22:40, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

I don't see this as being all bad. With the New Monaco skin we get to keep the HammerWiki logo, and we've been offered a chance to make our own custom skin. On the other hand, from the quick peek I had of New Monaco, it doesn't fill me with enthusiasm - I especially don't like the placement of the adbox - and we've been told a couple of times that we would be free to decide amongst ourselves what our default skin should be. Hopefully we can tweak the new skin to suit our purposes, because it seems like the decision has already been made for us. - Pendrako talk 13:05, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

I've got to agree with Pen. I am not a fan of having the ad box inside the actual articles. It detracts from the professional nature of the wiki. If we can move it outside the articles, it'll be fine. But it's going to be hell trying to format everything from here on in. --Mikeblack 13:50, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

Honestly I prefer our current skin, although I sometimes think the Warhammer universe is too dark for a white background :P -Rovdyr 00:18, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] More skin discussion ...

Hey guys! As I'm sure you noticed, this wiki was not changed over during the transition to New Monaco. We're allowing our wikis currently on Monobook some extra time to get ready to move over. Since we originally posted the announcement, however, we have made one major change to our plans: logged-in users who use Monaco now see no ads whatsoever except on the homepage. So, I was hoping we could talk about Monaco again.

As I mentioned before, colors aren't too much of an issue--we can make the colors whatever you want them to be. In fact, Christian, our lead designer, is working on a custom skin specifically for HammerWiki. He's the one that created the FFXIclopedia skin and a few others. He'll be stopping by sometime soon to show you a mock up of a possible design.

In the mean time, are there any specific questions or concerns that you have about Monaco that I might be able to address? --KyleH (talk) 22:29, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

That's actually quite nice of you guys, you do take this seriously, don't you? ;) While i'm not a fan of blue on blue, it certainly does suit the FFXI wiki well. If we are getting a custom skin, i particularly like the design of WoWwiki (more for the way they've managed to get a Dark theme to work really well) and the AoCwiki. Though others may prefer a white background for ease of use - I currently use monobook because I don't particularly like the Monaco schemes, mostly because i like minimalistic shcemes with a lot of space for the article, and less space for buttons / sidebar / ads. However if there is a custom skin in the works, even if it is based on Monaco, then i'd be willing to switch to Monaco, just out of the fuzzy wuzzy warm feeling now that i've invested time and energy in this wiki. As much as I dislike ads i'll conceed they are necessary - I don't want Hammerwiki to freeload.

My main concern is if we're going to have to change every article for people who view the wiki in Monaco - to make it neater and more viewable. As the wiki isn't a fixed width site and the width (hence the layout) would change with each skin? Making tables run into images / templates etc. ~ Revoran 23:04, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

We make mistakes from time-to-time, but we always try to listen and help out wherever we can. I can tell you that Christian is working on a light theme because it is very difficult to migrate a site from a light theme to a dark theme. That's not to say that we can't go with something darker, but every page would have to be redesigned if we went in that direction. If we stay with a light-colored skin, then the only article that would need to be changed is the homepage so that it would make use of the main page column tags. The article dimensions are pretty similar, and because people browse using a variety of screen resolutions, pages are already designed to accommodate varying widths.

Monaco actually has the largest article area of all the skins we offer. For anonymous users some of that article area is occupied by an ad, but logged-in users don't experience that. But, I totally understand that you prefer to use Monobook, and we have no plans to remove Monobook as an option for you to use as your personal skin. It's only the default skin that anonymous users see that would change. --KyleH (talk) 00:13, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

Thanks Kyle, I really appreciate the effort that's gone into this. I can see the benefits in having a standard layout across all Wikia sites, but I imagine that getting everyone to agree isn't an easy task.

As far as a new custom skin goes, the theme I thought would be most suitable for HammerWiki in the current Monaco skin options was Brick, so using that as a starting point for a new skin wouldn't be the worst idea ever. I'm looking forward to seeing what Christian can come up with. - Pendrako talk 13:11, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

Hi Kyle! Good to hear from you. I'll get right to the point: With the skin-change in general, and Monaco specifically, I've always had two issues.

The first has to do with Monaco and the fact that all the Monaco options are heavily coloured and use enormous fonts. In my personal opinion, documentation should strive to be clean, concise and "professionally" formatted. And I've generally been of the opinion that Monaco did not live up to these ideals nearly as well as Monobook, especially because all of the Monaco skin variations are so dark and color-heavy. Not my idea of professional, easy to read documentation. However, I am not blind to the fact that Monaco is improving. It may, in fact, soon have improved enough to sway my opinion of it. At any rate, I am very excited to hear that you have a great designer working on a custom skin for us. It'll be very interesting to see what he comes up with.

My second hang-up about the skin transition, and this one is the biggie, is the new concept of inline advertisements. I find those to be an abhorrent idea and completely disrespectful of the content contributors that are not just the foundation but the entire reason for the existence of Wikia and the wikis it contains. Of course, I am not a great fan of advertisements in any shape or form, and that may bias my opinion. But to put it bluntly, the firm distinction between what is content and what is advertisement is the only thing that makes them bearable for myself and many others. Once you start blurring that line, you are, quite frankly, showing great contempt for the the time and effort of the people who have created the only thing that makes Wikia anything: the content. And while the "no inline ads for logged-in users" is a step in the right direction, it is not enough, in my opinion. When wikis such as HammerWiki were conceived, no one in their right mind would have imagined such invasive advertisement would eventually be deployed. I can say honestly that had I known this would happen, it would have influenced my decision to put hours after hours of effort into this wiki to the point that I would not have started it in the way, or at least the place that I did. And while the credit for HammerWiki certainly does not go to me alone, I can say with certainty that it would look different today had I not started it up when I did. That is why, to me, this new policy amounts to a breach of trust (although I do not challenge the legal right of Wikia to present the content as you please, only the moral right). I really hope Wikia ends up reconsidering this horrible misjudgement. I still believe the "heart" of Wikia is in the right place and you have corrected bad decisions in the past (even this one, partially), so I am not without hope.

Let those be the words for now. I'll be happy to elaborate more if my position is unclear. Thanks for listening. » Bishop · talk « 13:02, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

Wait a second - advertisements in the article? I don't like that idea. I personally wouldn't see them unless I chose (ablocker etc for Firefox) - but people aren't going to like reading articles with ads right in the middle, especially wiki articles where formatting can be important. I don't want any wikis to start looking like an IGN article. While i'm not as incensed as Bishop, I really don't want ads inside the article space (or even inside the square/rectangle that should be for the article. It can't honestly be the only economically viable option. Plenty of wikis operate without them, why can't Wikia? ~ Revoran 08:14, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

Bishop, I understand and appreciate how you feel about Monobook vs. Monaco. In gaming especially, wikis tend to run along a fine line between a fan site and a reference site, so I think it's important to try to appeal to some degree to both audiences. While people familiar with wikis love Monobook, our research has found that the average visitor finds it daunting and uninviting. Monaco is designed to make wikis accessible to a more widespread audience by, for example, making it much easier navigate, log in, and find the edit button. When wikis change to Monaco, we find statistically significant increases in user registrations and contributors.

Keep in mind, however, that it's not just the colors that can be changed in Monaco. All sorts of other aspects of the style can be modified. GuildWiki is working on a huge modification for Monaco that makes it a bit more like Monobook. If you want to check it out, edit User:yourusername/monaco.css and insert:

@import "http://guildwars.wikia.com/index.php?title=MediaWiki:Monaco-common.css&action=raw&templates=expand&usemsgcache=yes&ctype=text/css&smaxage=18000";

Save it, then change your skin to Monaco (you may have to CTRL+Refresh). I would generally recommend against such substantial modifications for HammerWiki because it eliminates most of the more "inviting" aspects of Monaco, but it's something for you to think about at least.

I totally understand where you guys are coming from regarding ads in the content area. I was a bit freaked out when we made the decision to include ads in the article space as well. Now that it's been implemented, however, I've noticed that it isn't nearly as bad as I had feared. It's true that the ads are in the article space, but it is abundantly clear where the content ends and where the ad begins. The banner ads are almost in the exact same position, and a box is only used when it won't conflict with the page design (although we're still tweaking the logic that determines whether or not there is a conflict). I know it's not ideal, but there are some compromises that we must make to ensure that we are able to continue providing free hosting for a long time to come. We're still monitoring all of the discussions and collecting data though, so nothing is set in stone. We've already tried to ease the pain by disabling ads for logged-in users who browse using Monaco, and I'm sure we'll be making more tweaks as time goes on. --KyleH (talk) 21:44, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

Monaco mockup

Heya guys. Christian took a look at the official Warhammer Online site, and created this mockup as a possible skin for HammerWiki. What do you guys think? Do you have any suggestions for improving it or thoughts about changes that you would make? Also, take a look at the small homepage revamp that I've been working on at User:KyleH/dev. That layout uses a fixed right column using the new main page column tags which will allow it to work properly once everything is changed over. Feel free to make any changes to it that you see fit. --KyleH (talk) 21:57, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

Not to come off sounding all too bitter here, but to be honest, it really doesn't appear to work all that well for the other sites that have already gotten the overhaul... » Bishop · talk « 22:34, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

D'oh! That looks like a bug in IE6. Thanks for catching that. That should be fixed pretty soon. Any thoughts aside from that? Either way, a change is eventually coming, so any specific suggestions that you have on how to make it work best for your community would great. :) --KyleH (talk) 23:09, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

If you guys are really so determined to have this change (as much as I don't like the idea): how exactly could we specify which articles require specific formatting and so shouldn't have in article ads, and which are less important (backwater articles etc). Do the ads automatically dodge tables and templates? Things like the Main Page and some of the more important game articles (Career, Army, Bright Wizard, Campaign, Scenario, Advancement, Tome of Knowledge, Reikland, Slaurith etc.) and background articles World of Warhammer, Chaos, Winds of Magic, Empire, High Elf, Old World, Lustria - and others I can't think of could really do without ads being super intrusive. Particularly the Career articles like Chosen. Can we specify which side ads are on per-article if we can't disclude them from our top content articles? ~ Revoran 02:55, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

The software which inserts the ad runs through some logic to determine whether or not a box ad will break the formatting of a page. If a box ad can be inserted without interfering with the formatting, then one is placed, otherwise a banner add is used instead. Currently there is no officially supported way of forcing a banner ad on a page. If you see any pages where the advertisement does outright break the formatting, let me know and I'll check with our tech team to see if we need to adjust the logic which determines whether or not a conflict occurs.

Unfortunately, there is no way to adjust advertisements on a per-article basis. The one exception is the wiki's homepage: that has a fixed layout that will always display a single banner and a single box ad (like I have showing on User:KyleH/dev. The size of the box ad on the homepage may change sometimes, but it will usually be a 300x250. You can view any page with Monaco enabled by appending "?useskin=monaco&showads=1" to the end of the address. For example, http://warhammeronline.wikia.com/wiki/Career?useskin=monaco&showads=1 for the career page. Right now that will display in Monaco Sapphire rather than a custom skin, but it should give you a better idea.

Keep in mind that advertisements only display for anonymous users. Anyone using Monaco who logs in will see no ads at all except for on the homepage, and it is perfectly alright to let users know that they can remove all ads simply by logging in (we don't even require an email address to create an account). Also, we have absolutely no intention of removing Monobook as an option for you to set in your preferences, so as long as you're logged in, you can use whichever skin you choose. --KyleH (talk) 04:33, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

Heya! I just wanted to check in really quick. What do you guys think of the proposed design? Is there anything that you would like to see done differently? Does the color scheme seem appropriate? --KyleH (talk) 17:32, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

I went ahead and asked our engineers to create that skin so you can actually see it in place. Check it out for yourself: you can view any skin in the custom version of Monaco by appending ?useskin=monaco&usetheme=custom to the end of any URL. For example:

• http://warhammeronline.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page?useskin=monaco&usetheme=custom
• http://warhammeronline.wikia.com/wiki/HammerWiki:Community_Portal?useskin=monaco&usetheme=custom

Check it out, and let me know what thoughts you have.

Thanks! --KyleH (talk) 16:33, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

Well I've already said I don't particularly like the Monaco skins, but then that's just a personal bias - I certainly agree about the functionality. I like the colour scheme of the new skin. The logo doesn't seem to fit as well with the rest of the colours, but that makes it more readable. Thanks for taking the time to put up with our concerns, even if you had to change it anyway. I can certainly see the influence of the official site, similar to how the colour scheme of Warhammer Alliance (a prominent fansite) and WAR-RvR (another) were.

One thing, I don't think so, but is the sidebar/navigation bar (eg to left in Monaco) customisable width-wise. I like the functionality, but if I could shave a few (ie: Too many would interfere with the sidebar format) pixels width off it I would. Just because i'm personally a fan of minimalistic buttons (one of the reasons I like Monobook). I understand that the bigger naviagtion and buttons + larger edit/article/discussion links up the top are easier for new users, though. If not i'll just suck it up, I guess.

With the ads, if we could not have gold ads, that would be awesome. The whole buying gold thing only really works against the game industry and we'd be doing a disservice to the community as a game information resource, to have gold ads (or other in-game currency) should those type of ads become commonplace like they have for WoW. It's one thing to advertise free mmorpg's and game magazines and military surplus goods (must be from all the mentions of WAR, silly Google)... but i'm afraid the Google (or another) ad-assinging program might like to put in seedy gold selling ads. Obviously it's not the end of the world, but i'm sure you can appreciate that i'd be really dissapointed, especially with the in-line ads. ~ Revoran 06:10, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the constructive feedback. This is a pretty big change, which is why we're working to make it go as smoothly as possible. I see what you're saying about the HammerWiki logo. I actually think that the colors work well with the rest of the theme, but they may be clashing with the background strip. Do you think that might be the cause? Just for the sake of testing, I changed the background of that space to plain black. Ignore that you can't read the "Wiki" part of the logo for the time being and let me know if you think that looks any better.

Unfortunately, the width of the sidebar is something that we can't adjust. Part of the reason is because we want larger buttons to make it easier for people to find content and edit, but the other issue is that the Wikia Spotlight that lives in that space is 200px wide. Also keep in mind that, while the sidebar in Monaco is a bit bigger than the sidebar in our version of Monobook, there is no ad on the right side that runs the entire length of the page, so the content area is actually wider on Monaco than it is on Monobook despite the larger left sidebar. When there is a box at the top of the page the width of the content area is reduced, but that is only on some pages and only at the very top.

Finally, I totally agree with you that gold-sellers and the like are evil and need to stay away from the site (I play FFXI where the economy was completely ruined by RMT until Square-Enix made some dramatic changes). We currently have filters in place for Google ads so that certain words should never appear in a Google ad for this site (words like "gold", "powerlevelling", etc.) We have the system tweaked pretty well, so gold ads and the like are pretty rare these days, but occasionally one does slip through. If you see any ads that shouldn't be there, please follow the instructions here to report them.

I hope I answered all your questions. Thanks again for your feedback! --KyleH (talk) 15:08, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

Just a quick comment:

• I like the plain black logo background better, though obviously we'd have to change the word "Wiki" to another colour if it's to be permanent. That's just my personal preference though - I wonder what others think?
• It's good to know there are means to stop the gold-selling ads, i'll bookmark that link and report any I find.
• It's a pity about the sidebar but I understand if your item has to be that wide. And you're right about Monaco being more spacious, even if it doesn't look it at first - mostly a personal aesthetic choice. Thanks for the counter-feedback. It's encouraging to know you're here to help, even if I disagree with the in-line ads etc. ~ Revoran 04:18, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, I understand why you would prefer a thinner sidebar. That's actually why we added the widescreen editing mode in Monaco ... if you click "Enter Widescreen" at the top of the window, it hides the sidebar completely. It's not perfect, but it at least helps some. Do you have any thoughts on the homepage I have drafted at User:KyleH/dev? --KyleH (talk) 21:52, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

(resetting indent) Heya! I know you guys are really busy, but we're running up against our deadline for changing the skin to Monaco. I would really like to enable Monaco on Friday afternoon. That doesn't mean that the new design has to stay the same after that, but I think it is much easier to get feedback when Monaco is the default skin and normal visitors actually start using it. To the left, you'll see a slightly modified logo to make "Wiki" visible on the black background of the logo area. Any vehement objections to this? If so, what specific changes do we need to make to the design to make it ready for prime time? (Unfortunately, we can't make any changes to the type or the positioning of the advertisements.) --KyleH (talk) 22:59, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

I feel bad speaking here like this when other people aren't so much - because I'm not speaking for everyone :/ But at any rate, The HammerWiki logo looks nice and should be very readable. The new homepage obviously isn't ideal for me - but from what i've seen it's following the standard set by other Wikia Wikis and WoWWiki etc. Thumbs up from me, I guess? I'm sure we'll contact staff members if we have any future concerns. (It's actually Friday arvo here, but you guys are a bit behind I think.) ~ Revoran 04:06, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

Kyle, I'm not chiming in here because I have a feeling I'll like it better the way it is pretty much whatever you do. And my personal opinion shouldn't sour the whole process. I'll be using monobook and generally not be seeing the ads anyway, and while it'll look silly with the black logo, I'll live. It's not like I could provide you with great input anyway, as I am by no means a web designer. And when it comes down to it, making the wiki work as a great documentation effort is more important to me than the currently dubious nature of the Wikia stewardship, so I am not going to attempt to block these inevitable changes. Perhaps I will be pleasantly surprised. » Bishop · talk « 20:01, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

I appreciate your honesty. I know it's a difficult change to stomach, so I'm just trying to make the transition a bit easier. I went ahead and put in place the changes we discussed, and posted a site notice linking to HammerWiki:Skin to tell people how to remove advertisements and change their skin back. Feel free to edit that to give it more of your own voice. Personally, I think that the customized skin looks pretty good, but I'm sure it's not perfect. Like most everything else on the wiki, I would consider it a work-in-progress. If you do choose to try it out for a little bit, let me know if you see any colors that you think don't work well or anything of that nature. As always, I'm available to help out with any questions regarding the skin, or anything else for that matter.

By the way, the logo should look fine on a white background with Monobook--I think I set it up so it will look fine on either. --KyleH (talk) 23:32, 8 August 2008 (UTC)