Forum:A new Wikia tour

Wikia - creating communities

The Wikia tour is now pretty old and very few wikis have joined in recent years. There are also bugs with the way it uses shared templates as they no longer work in the same way as they did when this was created.

Is anyone interested in creating a new Wikia tour system? I'd love to hear some ideas on what it should include.

I was thinking that the tour should include more about Wikia in general, such as what new features are available, where to find help, how to start a new wiki, the best ways to communicate with other Wikians, and how to browse wikis by topic, rather than the current small list of random wikis.

What would you like to see in the tour? Angela (talk)

It sounds like a good idea, but what will happen to the tours of the smaller wikis? The most recent addition was the tour I created for Elder Scrolls Fanon, which took a lot of work. --Michaeldsuarez ^{(Talk) (Deeds)} 03:03, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

It's up to each wiki to decide what sort of tour is useful to them, so don't worry about the Elder Scrolls Fanon one disappearing! I think the old style could be improved without losing the hard work people have put into making them. Mostly I was thinking of ways we could make a new tour for the Central Wikia. Angela (talk) 21:15, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

I'm quite amenable to seeing a new one for Central, but I like the old sort, for individual wikis. And it works if you import/copy the template to your own wiki (though the instructions hadn't caught up with that last time I looked). Until a new version is in place, I would like the old one to continue to be available and with the instructions still here. Robin Patterson 09:39, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Building the tour should enhance the technology offerings

[edit] Give the tour -- and eat the dog food as you go. And, serve up new flavors.

I'd love to build a tour chapter about Wiki and utilize Blip.TV as a way to deliver the video. The Blip.TV service was used for a tour segment a couple of months ago. The Blip.TV stream / player was able to be put into the page as some type of embed. But, the code acrobatics is very hard to understand for most wiki editors. It isn't nearly as straight forward and easy as the tage for YouTube.

So, my advice, is make a Blip.TV tag work just like the one for YouTube works, then I'll be happy to upload a tour of wikia.

And, as you make new tour chapters -- it would be good to do so with an eye on the new features or power tips that are being rolled out with the technology infrastructure among all the wikis.

Rauterkus 12:41, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

Sounds a fun idea. I'll see what I can do about getting a Blip.TV tag implemented. Angela (talk) 05:51, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Traditional tours should still be an option

Angela said "It's up to each wiki to decide what sort of tour is useful to them". I think she went too far (doubtless with more life-changing matters on her mind) in redirecting some of the Central Tour because some of the other pages, including the instructions, have been redirected too (by someone else), thus removing the choice. If "the old style could be improved", people may need the instructions to improve existing tours, never mind creating new ones. Interestingly, fr.wikia.com is in the process of translating the tour; I'm not sure whether that is greatly affected, but a quick look suggested to me that there might be problems, and having the originals disappear would compound problems.

I'm restoring as far as I can see is necessary, with the last tour redirected to Scratchpad's tour instead of the non-existent Central tour.

Robin Patterson 05:48, 2 December 2008 (UTC)