Forum:New features!

Wikia - creating communities

Update: for performance reasons, the attribution feature has been removed until it is working better.

We have three new features on Wikia today!

• You can now embed YouTube videos on any page, simply by using <youtube>id</youtube>. For more see Help:YouTube
• All pages will now show a list of contributors in the page footer. You can remove inappropriate or vandal names. See Help:Attribution
• And all pages will also have a quick link for adding to digg and del.icio.us. A great way of promoting the best pages on Wikia. See Help:Footer links

Please let us know here of any issues or problems, and have fun! -- sannse (talk) 12:20, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

Can we have a page in the MediaWiki namespace where we list usernames that should not appear inside of the attribution? Because it's not a good use of editor time to add vandals names to a list of ones to remove on each important page, and searches would see it and that's just not right. Trying the code in Annonnotice and Sitenotice doesn't work. Could the ability to use youtube actually be extended to installing one of the extensions that allows for local flash files to be played? Because one of the banners on the site we document is a nice flash banner and it would fit in nicely on the article about the subject of that banner. Dantman (Talk) 12:40, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

Actually, we'd prefer the use of internal flash videos instead of external ones. Using ones from youtube makes it to easy for vandals to add videos to a page without it being found. If it was for internal flash files, then we could at least look through the file list and delete the impropper files and where they are linked to. Dantman (Talk) 12:59, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

This attribution thing may become an horrible pain in the ass. Imagine having to remove the attribution to an offensive username from an history page with hundreds of edits. As far as I know, the only way would be to delete the whole page, go to restore, and click on each one of the hundreds of valid versions. Imagine the vandal comes again with a new offensive username before you get to block his whole I.P range...--Rataube 13:10, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

That's great! Smiddle 13:44, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

I hate to be overly negative, but I really don't like this attributions feature. A while ago on Wookieepedia, we decided to delete userpages belonging to indefinitely blocked vandalism-only accounts in order to starve the repeat trolls behind them of attention. Now, there those names are again, at the bottom of every page they trolled on. I didn't mind it when they were only listed in the history pages, or on a special subpage of an article which wasn't indexed as part of the article itself — but now, in order to make the credits page on a heavily vandalized page useful by removing vandals from the list, we have to execute an extra step on each page they vandalize, either by editing the attributions list or deleting and restoring every vandalised page (and the latter, more complicated step is the only one which will actually prevent those terms from popping up in a search). This is too much work.

I recognize that this was probably done to help visibly credit the majority of good wiki editors who have helped make articles on their wiki useful and informative, but I think that the current implementation is more trouble than it's worth. Unless there's an easier way to remove offensive/troll usernames, I suggest that feature be removed until it can be reworked.

The other new features are interesting, though: thanks for adding them. —Silly Dan _(talk) 15:48, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

Maybe there could be a Special:Bureauoptions page that lets bureaucrats change settings like turning on and off those features. How 'bout that? – Smiddle 16:02, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

Admins can actually turn it off in the MediaWiki namespace, but I'd much rather find a way of improving what's there instead of turning it off since a lot of people have requested the attribution feature which is why we adapted this for Wikia. Perhaps showing just users with user pages or just users who aren't blocked would help with the issue of vandal names showing? We were aware of this issue which is why the <remove_credits> option was added, but I can see it's still a hassle, so I hope we can find a way around that and make this a more useful feature. Any suggested improvements are definitely welcome. Angela ^talk 16:22, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

Those would help. I'd prefer it be for users with userpages: it would agree with our policy that indefinitely blocked users lose access to userpages, while allowing us to continue crediting users who've been temporarily blocked. For that matter, usernames which have been permanently blocked after making useful contributions could have their userpages restored, and still be credited. —Silly Dan _(talk) 16:36, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

Yeh, showing only users who aren't blocked (including search results) would be great. I apologize for being overly negative before. I haven't digged into the other features but at a first site they seem cool.--Rataube 17:16, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

It would be good to collect examples of how the YouTube is being used, so please add links to Help:YouTube#Examples if you're making use of this feature. Angela ^talk 17:35, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

I'm getting an odd rendering error in IE7. See screenshot. It's happening on Wookieepedia and Central, so I don't think it's due to our title template kludge. Is it related to this upgrade, or just a totally unrelated coincidence? -- Darth Culator 17:46, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

One more thing, I would disable the atribution feature in project pages to avoid things like this.--Rataube 19:25, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

I can see that attribution is now disabled, for which I am kind of thankful. I am also thankful that I hadn't spent much time adding <remove_credits> tags to pages, as they are now showing on the page. I hope the other projects are getting along with this one as easily as we are... {{SUBST:Templ|User:WestonWyse/Sig}} 15:12, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

Why don't we create a username filter? It would censor bad usernames before they even get created. Holy #@$#! what a great idea! :)

Personally, I LOVE the attributions. Our site has had them for nearly 2 years with an incident. "Credit, where credit is due". That is what I always say!

--JamieHari 17:57, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

---

I found a topic about YouTube...It's from the Star Wars Wikia...

QUOTE (Sikon)

I think we should ban insertion of YouTube content here and furthermore ask Wikia to disable this feature (and possibly external images) on this wiki. What do you think?

QUOTE (StarNeptune replying to Sikon)

...what brought this on?

QUOTE (SFH in response to StarNeptune)

There was a guy last year who tried to link the various deaths of Separatist Council members to YouTube, but it was held to be illegal to show it on Wookieepedia. As for out of site pictures, they are usually used by vandals, so I'd vote yes on preventing them from being used.

QUOTE (Sikon replying to SFH)

Actually, I raised this issue because of the latest Wikia "feature" that allows YouTube video to be embedded into wiki pages.

QUOTE (Joker1138 telling the answer after Sikon)

Links on some things possibly but not embedded that would become to much, and inappropriate things could slip by, if only for a short time.

QUOTE (Silly Dan)

Like any feature on a wiki, this could be useful and could be used by trolls. However, unlike vandalizing the wiki by linking to inappropriate offsite images, a youtube link needs to (a) be clicked on by a user who wants to see it, and (b) can and will be taken down by youtube if the content is inappropriate (copyright violation, porn, what have you.) If we allow it, though, we'd need strict rules on use. For instance, we wouldn't want it in the middle of articles, and we would probably treat links to copyright infringing videos the same as text copied from the databank. But I kind of like being able to do this:

and can see it being useful somewhere. QUOTE (Me) Is this inapropriate to watch? I don't think so. QUOTE (Me Again) Whenever I try to play a YouTube video, it doesn't play, and instead gives me the "share" and "watch again" buttons. I try to click on "watch again" but it still won't play. Does anyone have the same problem? --SWME 16:34, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

Do they play properly if you actually go to YouTube? Is the problem only on Wikia? Angela ^talk 18:19, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

Well, I have a computer that plays them properly, so I don't know about the problem. But, has anyone tried to use the YouTube videos on Internet Explorer? I'm using Mozilla Firefox right now.--SWME 02:36, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

I've tried them with Firefox 1.5, IE 7 (and I think 6 too), and Opera 9. They played them OK for me -- sannse (talk) 12:48, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

YouTube videos work just fine with my Windows XP & IE7. But what about the problem that Darth Culator mentioned already - article, history, move etc. buttons are covering up the title and for example, in SW Fanon, I do not see much else except "my contributions" and "log out" on the upper hand of a page - so, I have to search my userpage everytime I want to go there.

Is there a solution for this? Thanks already. Peace. Out. Moff Phoenix _{(Mofference) (Don't feed the trolls)} File:Era-njo.png 13:56, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

Gets more spookier: when I had posted that question, tabs on SW Fanon started working! Strange this is! But they don't work for me in this central Wikia and I haven't checked other Wikias...ignore my question. Thanks! Peace. Out. Moff Phoenix _{(Mofference) (Don't feed the trolls)} File:Era-njo.png 14:04, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

The bug has been fixed, but you may need to refresh pages to clear any lingering views of this (Ctrl and F5). If anyone is still seeing problems please let us know -- sannse (talk) 16:43, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

Contents 1 YouTube 2 Social Bookmarking 3 Footer Links 4 Attribution

[edit] YouTube

This feature sounds very interesting, but my father was a bit worried about copyright violations when I told him about this. I had assumed beforehand that Wikia wouldn't do anything that would violate a copyright, so I took no notice until he pointed it out. I looked at a bunch of pages concerning YouTube and Wikia and all that, but I haven't fully figured out how to answer whether this feature can be freely used without impending lawsuits on Wikia. Are there copyrights of YouTube flashes that legally protect them from embedding them on other sites, such as a Wikia? C3PO the Dragon Slayer

Technically... YouTube is a video hosting site, they don't have any ownership over the content, and stuff that would be illegal shouldn't be uploaded there in the first place. Plus they fall similar to images in the fact that most uses for documentation can fall under Fair-use and Fair-dealing. Dantman (Talk) 02:13, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

You're telling me. A few things:

1. YouTube has some inappropriate videos.
2. Think about any copyright-violating videos.
3. This YouTube feature is too un-wiki-like. Also, videos are too un-encyclopedia-ish.

Does anyone agree with me?--SWME 18:11, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

Well, not all wikias are encyclopedias, so the second part of the third point isn't always relevant IMHO. -Afker 09:16, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

Ya, specifically a encyclopedia is defined as "a book or set of books containing articles on various topics, usually in alphabetical arrangement, covering all branches of knowledge or, less commonly, all aspects of one subject." so in that sence, even Wikia documenting places, events, stories, or sites could be considered Encyclopedias making even the Gaiapedia fall under that, and even we've found use for YouTube. Some people kindly uploaded to youtube some footage from Otakon 2006 and so we have the 3 segments of the Q&A at Gaiaonline.com's panel, and also 2 angles of the shown Teaser footage of the Battle System and have those displayed on 2 of our articles. They can be good as sources, and as visual representations of portions of articles. If they weren't entirely user driven we'd actually consider adding some of the Towns displays, or Guides that are shown on youtube, though unfortunately, those are either to fan based or unprofessional to add. And like said, inappropriate, and copyright infringing videos can be removed when asked because the site has a policy against it (And don't argue the difference between policy and what gets added, because Wikia is run on policy to) Dantman (Talk) 00:32, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Social Bookmarking

I think that the social bookmarking now enabled is a great idea, however why not add more as seen here? Lcarsdata (Talk) 17:32, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

I was a bit worried it would look like we're adding too many links if we added all of those. Do you think it would be ok or would it look a bit spammy to have a dozen links in the footer? Perhaps using icons instead of the text would look ok? Angela ^talk 07:30, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

How about some good ole interactive CSS. You know, a CSS Hover menu. Basicly there would be a Social Bookmarking icon there and hovering over it would bring up all the links for social bookmarking. Maybe even with Icons and Text. Though, I admit that in the real old IE4 hover menus don't work. But we already have css fixes for individual Browsers. We could just make the extreme few browsers that don't support that remove the Text, the hover capabilitys, and the css Effects and render it as a list of icons. Dantman (Talk) 20:25, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Footer Links

First, great new features. Second: I think the Digg and del.icio.us links should put the wikia page url in the forms once the links are clicked. --LordTBT File:Tbtico.jpg ^Talk! 07:33, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Attribution

I think that instead of the attribution feature, a link should just be made like this:

http://www.wikia.com/index.php?title={{FULLPAGENAMEE}}&action=credits

which would create a link to http://www.wikia.com/index.php?title=Forum:New_features!&action=credits. This would mean that you don't get a huge footer. --Leon:2323 | SMARTSIG: Apply now 20:46, 2 March 2007 (UTC)