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Talk:Touhou Wiki/Archive 7: Difference between revisions

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:You'll have to be more specific about thumbnails being "silly". There is no reason not to have them on a front page. My problem with the front page now is not that it's the same as it was on Wikia - that's a ridiculous assumption, thoguh I did think we needed something to symbolize a "new start", or something - it's that it's an ugly list that basically just throws up all the most-clicked-on pages for people to click on, along with ugly purple. I'm afraid I'm going to have to stand by linking to broader categorical pages than specific ones on the basis that this is, after all, a Wiki project.
:You'll have to be more specific about thumbnails being "silly". There is no reason not to have them on a front page. My problem with the front page now is not that it's the same as it was on Wikia - that's a ridiculous assumption, thoguh I did think we needed something to symbolize a "new start", or something - it's that it's an ugly list that basically just throws up all the most-clicked-on pages for people to click on, along with ugly purple. I'm afraid I'm going to have to stand by linking to broader categorical pages than specific ones on the basis that this is, after all, a Wiki project.
:With regards to the current front page's scrolling: I'm on a 1440x900 monitor. It's quite likely you have a larger resolution(at least vertically), so you may not have to scroll as much, but I can only see links to Touhou 1 through 3 there. :( [[User:Darkslime|Darkslime]] 06:58, 18 December 2010 (PST)
:With regards to the current front page's scrolling: I'm on a 1440x900 monitor. It's quite likely you have a larger resolution(at least vertically), so you may not have to scroll as much, but I can only see links to Touhou 1 through 3 there. :( [[User:Darkslime|Darkslime]] 06:58, 18 December 2010 (PST)
::lol.  I'm on 1024x768.  On the front page I see the purple bars at the very bottom, but I tap the pgdn key once and the TOC pops straight to the top like it were designed that way. -- [[User:Tubercular Ox|Tubercular Ox]] 07:20, 18 December 2010 (PST)


To address some points I made and Darkslime brought up:
To address some points I made and Darkslime brought up:

Revision as of 15:20, 18 December 2010

Talk:Touhou Wiki is archived here: 0 1.

Under Discussion Again

Nice and compact

Now I don't have to scroll anymore when I'm looking for something! --Tsukihime 17 Dec 2010

Some pages dislike the blue background: Imperishable Night: Music Or is this just my machine somehow? The japanese font shows up in white there for me, but not on other pages. Haven't dug deep to see what the difference is.

After browsing a few other pages, I don't like the blue background either. A simple change to white would fix this. Also, where did the bolding for the Japanese text on game pages go? Kiefmaster99 20:24, 17 December 2010 (PST)

Poking around finds a different problem: Moedan Spell Card 1 some people saved their images with an assumption of a white background. In that page, mixed with the image with a proper alpha channel, it's uneven. Dunno what else will be affected. -- Tubercular Ox 19:54, 17 December 2010 (PST)

The main page is needlessly unorganized and far too busy, now. What was the point of making things less efficient and organized compared to the previous layout that's been used for many years, since it was hosted on pooshlmer.com? Was it all just to slap some tiny little box art thumbnails on it? To quote someone else's reaction, "Guilty of the same crime as Wikia. This is perfectly functional, let's change it!" I find the new layout to be sloppy, unorganized, and to be blunt, a clusterfuck. It looks far less professional and functional than the previous longstanding design, and now requires additional navigation to anything that is not one of the games. I'm sure I'll get a lot of flak for voicing my opinion, but it is just that, an opinion. I far prefer the old main page. Functionality and efficiency over useless and distracting fluff.--Betty 20:20, 17 December 2010 (PST)

I think the first criticism to get out of the way there is "Perfectly functional, let's change it." I have to admit I didn't really question why you were changing the front page. What was the goal? If you feel it's not perfectly functional, what's missing? -- Tubercular Ox 20:40, 17 December 2010 (PST)

After browsing a few other pages, I don't like the blue background either. A simple change to white would fix this. Also, where did the bolding for the Japanese text on game pages go? With regards to Betty's comments, I think some points are valid. Also, we need the feedback so that if we screw up in a way that doesn't seem obvious to us, we'll know. There are some points that ought to be addressed regarding the layout by other users:

Emphasis on Games section

Chronological or categorical
Thumbnails of covers

Contraction of other section

Official literary works
Official music

Other misc categories

Possible to remove some of them

New section: News

While I do think that games are important, I also think that easy access of ZUN's works are also important. If there's too much clustering of some of them, maybe we could clump some into a group (i.e. 東方三月精, 東方儚月抄, Akyu's Untouched Scores), but then that would come at a cost to those unable to recognize the titles (e.g. IotMaIotE). We could also afford to remove some of the more underused links (such as, dunno, Strategy or Locations) and sort them into other categories. We would have to gauge use of each link to determine whether it should be removed or not. Kiefmaster99 21:10, 17 December 2010 (PST)

The main page may have been "functional", sure, but there were quite a few reasons I saw a need for a change. First off, it's ugly. Purple? Seriously? Secondly, it's organized poorly. Naturally, don't you think a front page should present the most general topics available on the Wiki? I admit, I did put *all* of the games on there, but that is only because I felt it was justified, being the main focus of the entire franchise, and all. The idea was to present a front page in a more compact and organized way, so we don't have to scroll down to find everything like we do now - the header paragraphs themselves take up half the page. My intent wasn't to make it really flashy, but the front page as it is now is on the opposite extreme.
Also, I can't understand how someone can think the new version was unorganized? It was simplified and organized further, honestly. If you can't think of a way to explain what you're talking about, then I have no real reason to pay attention to you.
For example, listing Akyu's Untouched Scores and the five ZUN CDs on the front page, and then just having some "other" link on the bottom was dumb - if you're going to list them, what about the CDs included with the artbooks, and the ones with the manga tankobon?
Also, the presence of a "miscellaneous" section is complete blasphemy. This is a Wiki. If it can't be categorized better than that, then it might not deserve to be on the front page.
Of course, I don't really know how many times these links get clicked. Some of the things may need to stay on the front page anyway, but without some kind of usage statistics, this isn't really possible for me to know >_>
In addition, I spent quite a bit of time recategorizing a lot of pages. Go check it out at Category:Content, it's quite different, and what I used to base the front page on.
In regards to the new theme: yeah, we didn't test it anywhere near as thoroughly as we should have, so that's out of the question at this point. Darkslime 21:59, 17 December 2010 (PST)

I really think we should have a main page revamp; it is best to have a fresh start, and to improve search engine results. We don't want the wikia wiki to be at the top, and search engines rank too similar sites lower, preferring the older site. That said, it would be better if the main page revamp didn't have cover images for each of the games. Mugendai 22:36, 17 December 2010 (PST)

I'm still chewing over everything everyone's said, but a question about search results: If we vandalize the wikia home page will that help? It'll be different from ours here. -- Tubercular Ox 06:19, 18 December 2010 (PST)

Oh boy, here we go. Checking out the two links near the top, it's come to my attention that the 'new' main page wasn't even presenting properly(And still refuses to when I check the history). It displays as [1] this abomination. The properly loading and whatnot page version does fix several of the problems I complained of, it still sufers from several problems. At least, you know, in my opinion. The first problem I see is that I want to throttle whoever came up with the hideous Cirno color scheme. Why would you go so far out of your way to align the wiki, which should be about canon, with some horrifying and awful fandom trait? On top of that, if I'm right, it apparently went through for the entire wiki being that color? I'd just as soon switch back to going to Wikia if the whole thing was Cirno so baka lol xD (9) blue.
I'm still heavily against having thumbnails because it just seems a bit silly. The original page, that we've been using since 2006, is a very concise list of every important section on the wiki right there on the front with all the important canon works right there. To be honest, this whole 'changing the main page' thing seems to be a kneejerk reaction to Wikia. This wiki was around before Wikia, and changing it just because of a small stint of being hosted on wikia seems dumb and pretty childish. 'Google ranking' is not honestly that big a deal, and it will change in time. I also don't understand this talk of having to scroll way down on the old front page. You barely have to scroll at all. I'll take scrolling over having to click anywhere between two and five times more links to get to where I'm going.
As a last thing to say, I can't even begin to understand why the new version was taken down after barely any criticism, or why all this talk was started over what appears to be a single contention based on a bug. Maybe everyone is talking about it somewhere else, but I barely see any negative comments aside from my own on this talk page. Relax, take it easy.
Why can't I seem to avoid making giant walls of text? Stupid wiki talk pages, why must you make multiple paragraphs look like multiple people?
--Betty 03:24, 18 December 2010 (PST)

You can manually add <br> tags to get smaller line breaks if you're the top level commenter. If you're responding to someone else's comment, you can preface each paragraph with the right number of colons.
Yeah, it's a little annoying. I usually just accept being a block of text.
I hope you don't mind, I altered yours as a demonstration, and overparagraphed mine as a second demonstration -- Tubercular Ox 06:49, 18 December 2010 (PST)
Yeah, the new main page wasn't coming up correctly because we were using styles from the redesign, but the one linked at the top of this page should be okay, so just look at that one instead. I'm actally not aware whether or not that version appeared on the front page yesterday. I believe the ugly borderless one was up yesterday, which is why it was taken down so quickly. We can't quite take it easy, either: this is, after all, the new front page we're talking about. We need to move forward carefully, and if the styles weren't working for the front page last night, it's only natural we take it down.
The color scheme: yeah, it was my idea, but if you look at the talk page, I state multiple times that I had no idea what I was doing with the colors. No one seemed to want to help me out there. It wasn't a specifically Cirno color scheme, but I understand how it came off that way. In terms of a good color scheme, it would probably be better off matching the rest of the skin; I just didn't want that ugly purple anymore.
You'll have to be more specific about thumbnails being "silly". There is no reason not to have them on a front page. My problem with the front page now is not that it's the same as it was on Wikia - that's a ridiculous assumption, thoguh I did think we needed something to symbolize a "new start", or something - it's that it's an ugly list that basically just throws up all the most-clicked-on pages for people to click on, along with ugly purple. I'm afraid I'm going to have to stand by linking to broader categorical pages than specific ones on the basis that this is, after all, a Wiki project.
With regards to the current front page's scrolling: I'm on a 1440x900 monitor. It's quite likely you have a larger resolution(at least vertically), so you may not have to scroll as much, but I can only see links to Touhou 1 through 3 there. :( Darkslime 06:58, 18 December 2010 (PST)
lol. I'm on 1024x768. On the front page I see the purple bars at the very bottom, but I tap the pgdn key once and the TOC pops straight to the top like it were designed that way. -- Tubercular Ox 07:20, 18 December 2010 (PST)

To address some points I made and Darkslime brought up: Forgetting that other official music did exist (Fanbook/Manga arranges and Fighting game OSTs), you bring up a point. Also, I overlooked that the "Catch-all" categories were removed, which I suppose was a good idea. Two other questions then. ZUN's other games, Seihou and Uwabami Breakers, are sorted under Unofficial works. Seihou is not Unofficial, but at the same time, not strictly Touhou either. Those works would probably need a page of their own. "Catch-all" categories have to exist in one way or another for some rather more obscure/underused things. Ideally, I should be able to access any article that exists in the wiki from the front page (because what good is it when an article exists but can only be accessed via Search). In particular, I am referring to the links removed from your revision. Upon closer inspection, the only ones that I see that need attention are English Patches, Config, and Game Tools and Modifications. Two of them could be merged into one. English Patches could be resorted under Games or something, or just deleted and replaced with a Category. Anyways, I'm just dumping every possible criticism I can think of, partly for sake of argument, and also to iron out any potential oversights.

With regards to rolling out the new test page, a few things: Don't put "The new page is ready" when it isn't. I thought one borderless rendition looked hideous. Use "Please wait warmly" or some other variant. Also, keep it up for at least 24h to get feedback. Otherwise the only responses you'll be getting are from those with Touhou Wiki on their watchlist. Is it possible to poll other users with regards to front page design? Kiefmaster99 04:17, 18 December 2010 (PST)

When you do the 24hr thing make sure the message is "Don't panic! We're just soliciting comments" and not "This is your new front page." -- Tubercular Ox 07:01, 18 December 2010 (PST)
I have trouble seeing Seihou and Uwabami Breakers as "ZUN's games", in particular; they are both unofficial in the sense that neither were created by Team Shanghai Alice. I understand what you're saying, though.
No, the point of a Wiki is not to be able to access any article from the front page. And besides, I was in the process of linking individual English Patch pages and Game Tools pages from each of the official games, but I suppose I should have gotten farther with that. I'm not sure why Config should be front-page material, though.
The new page was ready, but we didn't know that the underlying styles weren't going to work; that's why it appeared so hideous. :D Please refer to the link at the top from now on. That's why we took it down so soon, though. We may try to put up the actual one soon.
I dunno if polling is possible, but I think this brings up a really good point about the difficulty of community changes here: there's no way to get even a fair amount of people to weigh in on this thing. Darkslime 06:58, 18 December 2010 (PST)

Main Points of Contention

So it seems the first attempt at implementing a frontpage redesign (as well as modifying the styles/theme of the rest of the wiki) didn't go over so well. What went wrong, exactly? Listed below is an organized list that summarizes the major issues people seem to have had with this failed maiden voyage, as well as potential solutions to fix or otherwise sidestep these issues. For those considering giving the redesign a second shot, this might make a more convenient reference than paragraphs of text. Feel free to add on to or otherwise edit this list, because I surely can't think of it all by myself in one sitting! That, and my word isn't law. I could very well get things wrong or miss a few points. -- K 23:39, 17 December 2010 (PST)

  1. Color Scheme and Visual Design
    • Problem: Using various shades of blue didn't sit too well with certain people, and the blue background also interfered with certain pages. Additionally, I feel that the use of borders everywhere detracted from the simplicity of a typical page, especially in comparison to article pages.
    • Suggestions: Don't stray too far from the design of a typical article page. Keep the background white and use borders sparingly. I wouldn't mind seeing a version of Darkslime's proposed frontpage redesign where the color scheme more closely matched that of the default theme and dark borders didn't appear around nearly every block/cell.
  2. Organization of Content
    • Problem: Some people say that the original design forced the viewer to scroll vertically too much in order to see the list of games and associated works. It is highly likely that many of these same people also applauded the redesign for putting the list of games in a smaller area that consumed less vertical space. But then, some people say that the redesign was way too cluttered.
    • Suggestions: I can't really say right now. What does everyone else think? Where should we cram all of these categories of information (introduction, news, media listings, wiki information)? Should we do away with any of them to simplify the design?
  3. Use of Images
    • Problem: Apparently some editors are not a fan of images taking up space on the front page.
    • Suggestions: Let the majority decide. Pictures are always nice, but if they clutter up the design too much, perhaps it is just better to do away with them.

Anti-Wikia Skin Alliance newsletter

The Anti Wikia Skin Alliance Newsletter
Issue 1 (December 2010)
TALK MOVING MOVED HELP ATTACKS DOI WHY

Hello former wikia members. Editors at the Anti-wikia skin alliance wanted to begin a newsletter to help build a bridge to the former wikias about what is currently happening on Wikia and what is going on at the Anti-wikia skin alliance.

45 wikias have left wikia

As of December 17, 2010, an incredible Forty-five wikias with 7114 editors have signed the moved page stating they have left wikia. Other wikias are currently in the process of deciding whether to leave. In response, wikia has desysopped at least 38 administrators and banned 10, usually indefinitely. In a meeting with Wikia staff member Sannse reportedly said "Wikia underestimated the negative response to Oasis..."

Monaco available

Please let your friends who remained on wikia know that:

  1. Wikifarm Shoutwiki has stated that Monaco would be available by the end of the year on Shoutwiki.
  2. Editor Dantman has created the Monaco skin which can be installed on your wikia in 10 minutes. Dantman states this is not a complete skin. It is missing a few features. But it is Monaco.
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This code redirects your Wikia site to a different URL address. :

if ( wgUserGroups === null || typeof( wgUserGroups ) != null && wgUserGroups.join(' ').indexOf( 'staff' ) == -1 && wgUserGroups.join(' ').indexOf( 'helper' ) == -1 && wgUserGroups.join(' ').indexOf( 'vstf' ) == -1 && wgUserGroups.join(' ').indexOf( 'sysop' ) == -1 && wgUserGroups.join(' ').indexOf( 'bureaucrat' ) == -1 ) { window.location = 'http://URLofYourNewWiki.example.com/wiki/' + wgPageName;
}
Warning, you will be banned if you add this code to your wikia.
Help other wikis

If you have technical skills many wikis could use your help. For example, the new Monaco skin's "more" button does not work because none of the javascript has been ported. Other wikis who bravely left wikia are sorely in need of technical assistance. If you can volunteer your time, please sign up here.

If you need technical assistance, please explain your problem here.

Assistance with the next newsletter

We would like some help with the next newsletter. We would like to have an interview next time and we are looking for editors who would like to write a regular column. If you are interested, please see here.

Anno1404 01:58, 18 December 2010 (PST)