As you may have noticed, Wikia unveiled a new skin, which has caused a fair bit of discussion (see comments here) and a fair bit of dissent, which has caused several wikis to consider alternate hosting.
So, the question that should be discussed (at least briefly) is if this affects the d20 NPCs wiki as well. Here's some points I as an admin have seen so far:
- Emphasis on Photos: The new skin has a right sidebar with widgets, which currently only include Recent Changes, Photos on this Wiki, and Wikia spotlight advertisements. I talked with a Wikia staffer who said there's the possibility that more types of widgets will be added, with the admin of the wiki able to pick them, but for now, that's set in stone. Recent Changes is useful, but Photos on this Wiki is not useful at all for this wiki, as there is not an emphasis on photos here. The d20 NPCs wiki has around a 30:1 article to image ratio, while the Muppet Wiki (that Wikia featured to present this new skin) has a 1:3 article to image ratio, which is a massive difference. So for this wiki, the whole right bar pretty much becomes useless to the content of the site, and is only promoting other Wikia spotlights
- No Semantic Data: After we got the Semantic Mediawiki extension installed and got it working to be able to filter NPCs by multiple criteria, rather then by a single category, the new skin does not show the Semantic data for a page in the article itself (the Monaco and Monobook skins have a "Data about this page" block at the bottom of the article). While you can still search semantically, when you're creating a page, you have no idea if you set up the semantic data correctly, since you can't see it anywhere.
- Narrower content space: If you're on a widescreen monitor, there's a lot of wasted space on the sides of the new skin design, as it fixes the width to what's appropriate for a 1024x768 screen. Plus a fixed-width right bar means the wiki articles now only have 550 pixels of width. This is actually not that bad for most of the articles here; most RPG sourcebooks have a multi-column approach that makes the stat blocks narrow, for readability. So this may not be as big a deal for this wiki as it is for others.
- Wikia, Wikia everywhere While it's a great service that Wikia offers to host this wiki for free, and they should be entitled to put their name on it somewhere, and encourage more people to do the same, the new look places an emphasis on getting people to leave the wiki. The whole top navigation has become links to other wikis, and the spotlight highlights are now above the fold in the right column. Which for some people is crossing the line on how much exposure "everyone else" should get on "their" wiki, and getting people to leave the wiki as soon as they've arrived.
So, there's a few options to discuss of what path this wiki should take for the future:
- Stay at Wikia, and ride out the dissenters; convert the pages to look good in the "New Look"/"Oasis" skin.
- Join Dungeons and Dragons wiki in their move to a new, private server, as there was talk of merging the two anyway.
- Move to another hosted MediaWiki farm, such as ShoutWiki
I've noticed that there's been not a whole lot of editing this year as compared to past years, though the User statistics page shows that people are visiting and reading the content. So, not sure how many users will view this, but now would be the time to speak up with an opinion!
--MidnightLightning☇(talk) 16:17, October 15, 2010 (UTC)
Well, it's been a week and no one has responded, so I'm pretty sure I'm just talking to myself here. So, I'll speak for myself, which looks like it is speaking for the "community" at the moment. Until Wikia makes several improvements to the new skin (namely, including Semantic data, and being able to de-emphasize the Photos aspect), it's not worth it to keep updating this content in my opinion. Wikia, your new skin is very modern, and most content can be made to work in it. However, you are still enforcing a 'one size fits all' skin, without a lot of flexibility. And as with anything "one size fits all", there's going to be outliers that it just doesn't fit. For your skin, that's content that emphasizes tables, numbers, lists or grids, or makes use of semantic data rather than MediaWiki categories. It also is pulling further away from an encyclopedia/reference focus, and more towards a social/Facebook focus. Again, that can be made to work for some content, but you're still going to have outliers. And as the Admin here, who has worked with this data for several years, as well as a professional web developer, I'm raising my hand to say that this content doesn't fit your mold.
Therefore, I'm officially not going to add content here anymore, and I will move with the Dungeons and Dragons wiki to their new server, since that's a much more active community, and willing to make their wiki match their content, rather than forcing the content to match the wiki appearance. I'll keep an eye on my Talk page, so if you need me, leave a message there. Otherwise, I won't be updating this wiki, and until someone else steps forward to administrate it, it will likely be a pretty quiet place. --MidnightLightning☇(talk) 13:48, October 22, 2010 (UTC)
MidnightLightning,
I am willing to take over the administration of this wiki; however, I am unsure how to contact you. I hope that this message reaches you. Please respond as soon as possible. --Ericalt91 16:06, June 10, 2011 (UTC)
- You've reached me; I'm glad you're interested in taking on a larger role here! However, it looks like you're rather new and haven't made any sort of contributions as of yet. Have you been lurking for a while and just got a user account now? What is your experience with running a Wiki/Mediawiki site/Wikia site? --MidnightLightning☇(talk) 16:16, June 10, 2011 (UTC)
- I'll be honest, I've never administered before; however, I have had a few classes on website design, and I am quite the quick study. Besides, I have a lot of free time on my hands to practice and get good. I just feel that somebody should step up, and since it looks like nobody else will, I figured I'd give it a shot. --Ericalt91 16:22, June 10, 2011 (UTC)
- Okay, I'd suggest you dive in editing pages (changes listed in the Semantic Upgrade page are a good place to start). Managing a wiki is actually very little about website "design" and more about website "maintenance", especially with a wiki hosted with Wikia, since they control the skin appearance. Have you worked with Mediawiki before? Mediawiki templates? What gaming system(s) do you DM? There's several systems that are all represented here under the generic "d20" banner, and while I am familiar with several, there's a need for more user champions to represent the other systems. --MidnightLightning☇(talk) 16:52, June 10, 2011 (UTC)
- As a follow-up, Erica hasn't logged in since July 2011, so does not look to be picking up the mantle of admin-ship. If anyone else is interested, feel free to chime in --MidnightLightning☇(talk) 22:00, January 16, 2013 (UTC)
Well, it seems Wikia Staffer Brandon Rhea has decided Wikia really wants this wiki to be orphaned; he's revoked my admin-ship and banned me, and since he doesn't seem to want to talk to me about it, that leaves no active admins on the site. So, to anyone who comes behind, good luck! --MidnightLightning☇(talk) 22:53, February 11, 2013 (UTC)