23 replies to this topic

[Linda]

I am planning to take another look at the possibility of making the wiki skin match the forum skin more closely. Last time I tried, it proved much too difficult, but I am going to see if I can find any useful resources for working with the wiki skin.

The plan would then be to make the sidebar, top and bottom match the forum sidebar and top, including using some of the Nasmith art. The body would of course be left untextured, just as on the forum, but bringing the colours more in line with what's used on the forum.

If anyone's got links to resources for working with the wiki skin, that'd be very useful.

[mor2]

Few points that I hope that would be taken into consideration:
1. I would really appreciate the wikipidea familiar and easy to the eyes Vector skin as an alternative option.
2. Please consider a more easy to the eyes colour scheme. Obviously, I am not as skilled as you or have your expertise in this, but I have experimented alot with various options in stylish and usually they grew very old on me very fast and/or hurt my eyes.

IMO the forum scheme simply doesnt work for the wiki, because the Wiki is a huge chunk of unstructured white space in the middle, so its hard to make it work. http://i41.tinypic.com/faww9k.jpg since you cant use many of the tricks. Btw, at the moment this the skin I am working with http://i44.tinypic.com/20tnek3.jpg,

3. When designing the interface please dont forget to take into account infobox, navbars and images, this is a big part of the wiki.(I have changed the infoboxes and navbars sometime ago, to allow some better customization with css)
4. I understand the reason to use the same theme over all of westeros, but please adapt it to fit the wiki better. like last time the logo thing I asked for, it showed exactly the same thing, only createf less dead space above, please keep functionality inmind before anything else.(Btw the forum scheme is a little diffident from the westros).

5. if you can make some art design for the main page/portals or help us with some art direction it would be a bonus.

[Ran]

We'll certainly keep in mind readability and the features of the wiki that have to stay as they are. But consistency of color schemes and design elements are important to us and, we think, would be beneficial in promoting more intra-site traffic. Right now the wiki sticks out as a bit of a sore thumb, which can be off-putting, all the great work already put into it not withstanding.

In any case, it'll take some time for us to get up to speed with editing CSS and the like, and we'll probably work on a privately available skin for awhile first before making it public. Obviously, as Mediawiki allows experienced users to pretty much make it look as they please, changes are really aimed more at the general public rather than at those who are regular users and contributors... and maybe for those users, those who actually have proper accounts, we could perhaps come up with some optional skin that'd be beneficial for those whose primary use of the wiki is as contributors and editors.

On a related note, another thing I've wanted to do is discover if there are any usability-related extensions we should have installed to make things work better for our editors and readers. Is there anything that's common on Wikipedia and such that we're lacking that would encourage participation?

[mor2]

I think think that you can achieve more intra site traffic by linking to the forum from the navigation panel(like our other sister projects do i.e. Community portal and Community forum) and you can add a banner on the main page.(which I wanted todo but when I made that crude work, I had nothing else to pair it with), since at the moment you have nothing that links from the wiki here.

On the list of features, I think that the left panel is overloaded, I have a good guess why you moved the search bar there, but I feel that the original vector skin location is more appropriate, it make better use of space and is more consistent with wikipidea. Also the new social "connect with us" it's a nice take on the social icon in westeros style, but IMO it take a lot of space, hiding useful information to users(language links) and editors(the tools), how about something like that http://i44.tinypic.com/rigg94.jpg it's the same, look good and takes less space, thus more functional.

On the the Color scheme, I understand you reason, however I'll be forever biased toward useful, light, clean designs with only two bright colors that make my eyes rest.. but this is more of my personal preference and not the scope of this thread.

Anyway this my opinion, I hope some other would share their thoughts as well.

[Scafloc]

I think that an option to go directly from the wiki to forum would be a very good idea.

It would also be nice if there was something going from the forum to the wiki. I don't mean the option wiki which goes to the main page. But for instance when you have a discussion about Catelyn on the forum and in the discussion there is the option to go directly to the Catelyn page on the wiki.I know you can add a link in a post but that is something you have to do yourself and most people wil not think about this.

Also I have the impression that in the new skin you removed the Recent Changes. If you choose this option the wiki goes to the main page.

[Scafloc]

Recent changes is again recent changes but the api has been turned off:

MediaWiki API is not enabled for this site. Add the following line to your LocalSettings.php
$wgEnableAPI=true;
Is it possible to turn it on again?

[Scafloc]

Is it possible to enable the api?

[Ran]

Oh, sorry, forgot about it. We turned it off last weekend when the server was dying horribly, in a bid to reduce the load, but I think it looks like it'll be safe to put it back up. If the server starts struggling today, we may have to shut it off again -- the api gets a surprising number of hits -- but that'd just be for Sunday and Monday, I guess, when traffic is at its peak.

Back on now.

Edited by Ran, 15 April 2012 - 06:18 AM.

[Datepalm]

Oh, god, I thought this was about skinning. Like, Theon. Maybe some exciting new capability in the MUD or something. Going to the corner now.

[Ran]

I'm pretty sure there are some games that have a skill for skinning. Not, fortunately, ours!

[Ran]

Erk, Recent Changes is broken? That's probably related to the web server we're using. I shall look into it.

ETA: Huh. It works for me... Still an issue, scafloc?

Edited by Ran, 15 April 2012 - 06:38 AM.

[Scafloc]

The text "Recent Changes" on the left side of the screen linked to Main Page. But it you typed "http://awoiaf.wester...l:RecentChanges" in the Url it worked so it was not a big problem. And it was solved the same or the next day.

The api works again. Thanks!
I use to get info from the wiki (mostly interlinks) and for some automatic edits.
The links with the French wiki are almost all done. There are still a number of links to be made to the russian and chinese wiki (and especially the other way around) but I am still struggling how to escape the Chinese and Russian characters. It is not the same on every wiki api and some technical issues

Edited by Scafloc, 15 April 2012 - 02:26 PM.

[Ran]

Okay, that was probably when we were moving over to lighttpd as our web server. For awhile, wiki links weren't quite working because URL rewrites rules for lighttpd are different than Apache and some things weren't correct. We took care of those over time.

[Jon Mark Selmy]

Datepalm, on 15 April 2012 - 06:25 AM, said:

Oh, god, I thought this was about skinning. Like, Theon. Maybe some exciting new capability in the MUD or something. Going to the corner now.

You just stole my joke, sir. I'd say: I think you should ask the Boltons. They seem to know a thing or two about it.

[Ser Ash the Red]

I thing that skining the wiki to look more like the Forum is a good idea. While I do not know much about skining the wiki It appears that it should not be that dificult since the ipbwiki extention claims to do that. you may need to update that extension so that it works better with the version of wikimedia we use.

[mor2]

A quick thought, maybe you can set parchment background for the infoboxes, making it look like something like this http://i49.tinypic.com/fdg1fq.jpg (just not "orangey" parchment)

[Scafloc]

I browsed through some of the extensions at http://www.mediawiki...ed_on_Wikimedia
To be honest I don't know what to make of most but the ability to add a poll would be nice. They are using it currently on wikipedia to get a bit of feedback about the quality of the articles.
Also it would be nice to let the wiki software send a message to new users. As Mor pointed out this extension may be of help for that: http://www.mediawiki...:NewUserMessage

My personal favourite would be to be the option to have svg files on the wiki. Especially for the coat of arms and maps that would be very helpfull. Because the coa's do not have a square shape they are difficult to edit without "filling up" the space between coa and a square. As I understand there is no extension needed for it but it needs some configuration as described here: http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/SVG

[mor2]

I checked before and there a quite few article rating extension, an option that I would very much appreciate, we need more feedback. However, I have doubts as to those extensions effectiveness. The NewUserMessage extension can be nice, InputBox can be useful for a few pages at the communit/help section and GeeQuBox can be useful for viewing images. The "google" map extension, is still my personal favourite, but it needs to be configured and without the option to test it we need someone who have experience with it.

Edit:
Management: NewUserMessage, InputBox.
Poll AJAX_Poll for editors.(its was the simplest one out of the ~3 working extensions in the poll extensions category).
Rating a simple example AjaxRatingScript a mroe complex example ArticleFeedback.
Viewing aid GeeQuBox, to avoid people who just want to see a larger version of the image, getting confused with all the data of the Image page. (example of use Gallery).

Also the Share this thingy at the bottom of the articles, iirc it has a statistic option, if so please check if it was used once and if not please remove it.

Edited by mor2, 01 May 2012 - 04:27 AM.

[Ran]

Okay, will look at those.

What more configuration does the Google Maps extension need?

[mor2]

You know that little thing to would make it work   since what I sent didnt work.

Edited by mor2, 01 May 2012 - 07:34 AM.