GuildWiki talk:Community portal/Archive 21

Oasis reskin endangered?
&rarr; Moved to GuildWiki talk:Community Portal/Leaving Wikia

new wordmark
The Wikia helper w:User:Wagnike2 has changed our old wiki logo into a new wordmark for the new skin. Its baseline doesn't line up with the rest of text in the navbar, and I resent the change, which as far as I know occurred unasked and with no message to us before or after (and it lacks proper copyright attribution). I'd revert it in a flash if I wasn't afraid of getting into an edit war with Wikia staff. What do you think? -- ◄mendel► 15:54, October 13, 2010 (UTC)


 * Yeah, the navbar is bottom aligned, and with our icons and text, they extend below the "line" so any text will seem like it's offset up. We either need a new wordmark or need to make one for us. Possibly referring to "GuildWars@Wikia" --JonTheMon 16:05, October 13, 2010 (UTC)
 * Well, depends on whether we want it to be graphical. A text-only wordmark is easy to do, with a choice of several webfonts. -- ◄mendel► 16:09, October 13, 2010 (UTC)


 * I agree. Our current logo looks great in a square layout, but simply moving the text to the side looks horrible (not only due to the mismatched sizes between the icon and the text, but also because whoever did that didn't notice that their magic wand selected the shield's shadow along with the 'Wiki' text).  My first impression is that any sort of icon wouldn't work very well in the new "wordmark" space.  &mdash;Dr Ishmael Diablo_the_chicken.gif 16:18, October 13, 2010 (UTC)

Ok, I changed it back to text, choosing the "Fontin" font (there seems to be no way to get it to show Roman as in the screenshots). -- ◄mendel► 17:24, October 13, 2010 (UTC)


 * So I've been trying to switch to Oasis in order to see this wordmark in action, but for some reason the "New Wikia Look" seems to have been reverted to Monaco. (Seriously: I select NWL, save, then it shows me the Monaco skin, even though my radio button is still set on NWL.)  Is anyone else seeing this?  &mdash;Dr Ishmael Diablo_the_chicken.gif 18:17, October 13, 2010 (UTC)
 * Me! I've tried 3 different browsers across 2 computers (3 if you count repeated browsers) and i can't change my skin except to use ?useskin=oasis (yeah, I know it's supposed to be ?useskin=wikia, but that doesn't work for me). --JonTheMon 18:36, October 13, 2010 (UTC)
 * Confirmed. [[Image:Felix_Omni_Signature.png]] 18:43, October 13, 2010 (UTC)


 * Wonderful. So not only did Wikia bork up their old default skin yesterday, they have now borked up their new default skin today.  That is quite an accomplishment.  /applaud
 * So any bets on how long it'll be before they bork up Monobook? &mdash;Dr Ishmael Diablo_the_chicken.gif 19:05, October 13, 2010 (UTC)


 * I haev new skin again. --JonTheMon 20:26, October 13, 2010 (UTC)
 * Wikia have been borking their skins fairly regularly over the past month or two. Wasn't long since they last borked monobook. --  Random Time  20:33, October 13, 2010 (UTC)


 * Oh yeah. &mdash;Dr Ishmael Diablo_the_chicken.gif 20:48, October 13, 2010 (UTC)

Borked Monaco site notice
Shouldn't the site notice read,
 * "Recent updates by our hosting service have broken the Monaco skin. As a work-around to make pages legible, use your preferences to choose Monobook or Wikia."

(1) The current notice reads ambiguously, as if we might have done something to harm the beloved/maligned Monaco. (2) There are really only two choices for skins (or, at least, I only have two). (3) In theory, this is supposed to be temporary, right? &mdash;Tennessee Ernie Ford ( TEF ) 17:01, October 13, 2010 (UTC)
 * The issue's fixed now, anyway --  Random Time  17:07, October 13, 2010 (UTC)
 * What do you mean you only have two choices for skins? --JonTheMon 17:08, October 13, 2010 (UTC)


 * 1) Monobook
 * 2) Monobook
 * Duh --  Random Time  17:19, October 13, 2010 (UTC)


 * My choices are: New Wikia; Monaco; MonoBook. Since Monaco is borked, that leaves MonoBook and Wikia. (Practically speaking, as RT suggests, that leaves only MonoBook, since Wikia is almost as illegible on GWiki as the borked Monaco.) &mdash;Tennessee Ernie Ford ( TEF ) 17:36, October 13, 2010 (UTC)
 * The preferences link with &useskin=monobook was necessary because monaco was so broken that preferences was inaccessible without hunting down the phantom search box and typing in "Special:Preferences," and even then it was virtually unusable. The wording wasn't super important to me. [[Image:Felix_Omni_Signature.png]] 18:07, October 13, 2010 (UTC)

Oasis skin and the NC license
To the right, you see a screenshot of a random wiki page, with functionally similar areas colored. Not shown: Facebook connect icon for logged out users

The green content is what we have full control over; the white interface allows some tweaks, but not much. Red and orange is ad space (Wikia self-promotion counts as unpaid ad). Note that the ad space outnumbers the content; if you count the annoying Wikia mouseover, adspace outnumbers content and wiki interface combined.

CC BY-NC-SA is our license. Do you feel that this is still non-commercial content displayed by a commercial wiki host? Or is it an ad page attracting viewers by including noncommercial content? In other words: Are we using Wikia for noncommercial purposes, or is Wikia using our content for commercial purposes? -- ◄mendel► 11:11, October 17, 2010 (UTC)


 * Wikia (ab)uses us for commercial purposes while we contribute to their commercial success without payment. Or something like it.--[[Image:El Nazgir sig.png|Talkpage]]El_Nazgir 13:00, October 17, 2010 (UTC)


 * I don't know if you can really count the unpaid ads (especially the Facebook stuff) when questioning the commerciality; however, it's still scary that the paid adspace is 96% the size of the content space. I'd think that for a non-commercial site, you'd want your adspace to be no more than 25% of the content space, and that's probably a liberal estimate, even.  Example: Runes of Magic wiki@Curse.  The leaderboard banner is 728x90 pixels, or 65520 total.  With Monobook at 1024x768, the content space totals 423300 pixels.  The adspace is a mere 15.5% of the content space.  &mdash;Dr Ishmael Diablo_the_chicken.gif 13:31, October 17, 2010 (UTC)


 * Did anyone ever get ahold of Gil to ask how he thought the original agreement and his written promises meshed with Oasis and Wikia's new direction? I'm not expecting that he would agree to postpone/suspend/cancel Oasis for GW@Wikia, but maybe he would agree with other compromises (e.g. how much control current editors can have in determining GW@Wikia's evolution or whether we can have prominent links pointing to GWiki@tbd). Clearly, this presents a difficult situation for them, as they won't want to appear to set a precedent (even if our arrangement here is supposed to be different from other wikis). &mdash;Tennessee Ernie Ford ( TEF ) 07:31, October 19, 2010 (UTC)
 * Felix, do you want to tackle this one? -- ◄mendel► 12:16, October 19, 2010 (UTC)
 * I was barely active on GuildWiki when it first moved to Wikia- I think JediRogue is best suited to talk to Gil (I didn't even know of him before we started discussing moving), since she is the most senior bureaucrat. [[Image:Felix_Omni_Signature.png]] 09:49, October 20, 2010 (UTC)


 * You could have everyone that no longer supports Wikia ask for their revisions to be removed, at the very least, per each author's moral rights. If I'm reading this correctly, Wikia would be forced to hide every revision by any author that no longer wished their "works" to be associated with this wiki.
 * I could be wrong - haven't bothered to read the full legal license (assuming I could make sense of everything in it). -- Danny Goes Rogue 03:16, October 20, 2010 (UTC)

CC NC license terms
copied from GuildWiki_talk:Community_Portal/Leaving_Wikia

If you want something concrete to work with:

Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 2.0 §4.c You may not exercise any of the rights granted to You in Section 3 above in any manner that is primarily intended for or directed toward commercial advantage or private monetary compensation.

By preventing the dissemination of knowledge that the content of this wiki is available in another location, with the reasoning that we are "advertising a competitive site," they are directing the use of this wiki toward their immediate commercial advantage. &mdash;Dr Ishmael 04:29, October 19, 2010 (UTC)


 * Yeah, that's the crux - thanks for digging that quote up. It means that Wikia can't publish GuildWiki - it would be primarily for their own commercial advantage. So the deal used to be that we publish GuildWiki on Wikia, because we don't profit from it, and Wikia is just our agent, getting compensated by the ad revenue. However, if Wikia regulates starts to regulate what we can or cannot publish, then the publisher is really Wikia, and the copyright license is void. -- ◄mendel► 05:17, October 19, 2010 (UTC)


 * On the other hand, if Wikia effectively said, we don't care what the copyright license says, we're going to do what we want to do, what would happen to them? Even if it were a completely open and shut case that Wikia were in the wrong (which it isn't), how would it be enforced?  Quizzical 06:34, October 19, 2010 (UTC)
 * We could sue, presumably. [[Image:Felix_Omni_Signature.png]] 06:37, October 19, 2010 (UTC)
 * We could ask the EFF for advice. -- ◄mendel► 12:38, October 19, 2010 (UTC)
 * Also, any editor who thinks Wikia is infringing copyright could issue DMCA takedown notices for every page he/she ever touched (I or Dr Ishmael can run a script on the full page dump to find that out), arguing they're derivative works of contributions that are copyrighted under the CC BY-NC-SA license (best get legal advice first?!). -- ◄mendel► 09:45, October 20, 2010 (UTC)
 * You can issue DCMA takedowns regardless, then seek legal advice if Wikia refuses to comply. As far as perjury is concerned, clearly everyone here, besides perhaps a few people, are ignorant of whether or not these are legitimate DMCA violations. The only legal recourse that can be taken against frivolous DMCA notices requires that the copyright holder knowingly attempted to undermine proper usage. (You can't commit perjury if you don't know you're lying.) -- Danny Goes Rogue 23:42, October 24, 2010 (UTC)

PvXwiki situation
It seems that Wikia is demonstrating on PvXwiki that they're really running the show: the wiki had decided on a somewhat outlandish color scheme (anyone got a screenshot?) ; Wikia didn't like this and banned Karate Jesus, and then installed their gaming helper to run the wiki in place of the old bureaucrats. Obviously that was a corporate decision, not a community demand.

Since PvXwiki, being a fork of GuildWiki, has the same license we do, we can only infer that the same goes for us: Wikia is running GuildWiki, and we only owe the privilege of having our own chosen bureacrats and administrators to the fact that we managed to stay aligned with Wikia's business interests. The moment we would, for example, upload an animated gif as background image the fiction that we're in control could abruptly cease. -- ◄mendel► 09:45, October 20, 2010 (UTC)
 * "our own chosen bureaucrats"? Where was this choice made? --Rezyk 15:19, October 20, 2010 (UTC)
 * Here. Didn't you like the choices? :-P -- ◄mendel► 17:00, October 20, 2010 (UTC)
 * I don't like it sounding like it's been the community's choice. It brings up old feelings about the adminship structure similar to what you've been expressing about Wikia. I do like stuff like your recognition about how control can be fictional (depending on who gets to make the final decision). --Rezyk 18:06, October 20, 2010 (UTC)


 * The real point is: we (the 'crats and admins) are not being paid for this, we are volunteering our time to manage the wiki. Wikia staff are being paid for it, thus it becomes a commercial operation when paid employees are managing the wiki.  And we generally agree that that would constitute a breach of the wiki's license.  &mdash;Dr Ishmael Diablo_the_chicken.gif 18:28, October 20, 2010 (UTC)


 * And removing said volunteers and replacing them by paid personnel, the wiki goes commercial and everything released under creative commons has no more place for it there, right?--[[Image:El Nazgir sig.png|Talkpage]]El_Nazgir 20:57, October 20, 2010 (UTC)


 * Clarification@Naz: It's not Creative Commons in general (all Wikias use a CC license), it's the Non-Commercial clause in our specific license (and PvX's) that raises this issue. This may have been what you meant, but I want to make sure that no one else misinterprets it.  &mdash;Dr Ishmael Diablo_the_chicken.gif 21:03, October 20, 2010 (UTC)
 * They re-promoted our bcrats and re-promoted me on the basis that I leave after the fork. Sannse doesn't want me on Wikia anymore. Just be careful when you edit the theme. Apparently, you're allowed to make it pretty outlandish, but you can't make it look as if it were "intentionally driving away users". It's about their bottom line, and as we're experienced lately, they will take control of your wiki to prevent you from pulling from their ad dollars. Karate [[File:KJ for sig.png]] Jesus  03:13, 21 October 2010  (UTC)
 * Oh and File:The PvX that almost was.JPG, that's pretty awesome KJ. – User Balistic Pve sig.pngalistic 04:58, 21 October 2010 (UTC)
 * I'm happy to hear that PvXwiki has its bureaucrats back. I like that gif animation; it fits the "fighting builds" theme of PvXwiki well (and it's hard to find a good animation with less than 100 kB); the color scheme is memorable and sets the wiki apart from its off-Wikia copy. There is a slight problem with text readability, because the Theme Designer automatically chooses the text color (white or black), and I feel white text would have resulted in an overall better design (Redwall wiki somehow got this to work by choosing a different tone of red). You might want to file a bug report about that. -- ◄mendel► 09:40, October 21, 2010 (UTC)
 * My one complaint is, and this is heavily nitpicking here, but who posted the Example Page Title build? I mean, I'm no build guru, but I've tried it before and it is terrible.  I mean seriously terrible.  Like doesn't even work in RA terrible.  And to top off matters, someone posted the entire explanation for why this build doesn't fail in Latin.  LATIN.  I've seen better builds made by random skill generators the Example Page Title.  No respect at all for the decency of gaming these days.  Just throw anything at the peons and watch 'em deal with it.  It's like they didn't even care, or try it out before hand.  I seriously wonder what area Example Page Title was even designed for, because in all the areas I've been in where it is at least semi usable, I already have a one size fits all build that I designed for what I was already facing.  --Łô√ë [[Image:Gigathrash_sig_G.jpg|Roar.]]îğá†ħŕášħ is hosting a Card Creation Contest!  09:51, October 21, 2010 (UTC)
 * That's lorem ipsum, and it doesn't actually mean anything. It's just filler text. [[Image:Felix_Omni_Signature.png]] 10:04, October 21, 2010 (UTC)
 * I'm pretty sure Gigatrash was just joking. [[Image:OrgXSignature.jpg]] 10:41, October 21, 2010 (UTC)

Borked by new skin
I've created [renamed to , ◄mendel► 20:00, October 19, 2010 (UTC)] to post on pages that are adversely affected by changes to any skin (including and especially, the upcoming Oasis). The point is to make it easy for people to see that the community is aware of the issue and has plans to fix it (as opposed to leaving up something ugly without notification). I've set it up so that it should be generically useful.

(As usual, I've gotten lysdexic on which tags should go where, especially as I copied the template from .) &mdash;Tennessee Ernie Ford ( TEF ) 17:22, October 18, 2010 (UTC)

See also a list of the New Wikia Look skin problems encountered by concerned Final Fantasy Wiki editors. -- ◄mendel► 12:14, October 19, 2010 (UTC)

→ (Inserted by &mdash;Tennessee Ernie Ford ( TEF ) 19:45, October 19, 2010 (UTC)) The template is now called,, which is meant to be used specifically with pages affected by Oasis and that will need special attention, beyond the general updating of style sheets/templates/etc.


 * Forget layout issues - broken functionality is unforgivable.


 * Trying to open up "move" in a new tab using the "Edit" tab opens up both the edit and move pages.
 * "Suppress redirect" when making a move no longer available.
 * Magic words such as "New section link" and "Force toc" no longer work.
 * "Show changes" is no longer available in the edit window.
 * External links now look identical to internal ones.
 * Site notices only show up on the "Wiki Activity" page.
 * They really should've had a public beta for this thing before releasing it. OH WAIT...  &mdash;Dr Ishmael Diablo_the_chicken.gif 13:29, October 19, 2010 (UTC)

Hot diggety damn
As Jink put it, anyway. My phrasing was more like, "Holy effing sh!tmonkeys," but anyway. We're finally going to get the ability to form all-hero parties.

http://www.arena.net/blog/what-does-it-all-mean-john-stumme-discusses-war-in-kryta-survey-results

Along with other spiffy info about the continuing Guild Wars Beyond content.

&mdash;Dr Ishmael 21:51, October 18, 2010 (UTC)
 * Cue cries of "OMG GUILDWARS IS DEAD IT'S ALL SOLO NOW"

- - Troll --  Random Time  22:02, October 18, 2010 (UTC)
 * "And most important: New Mad King jokes for halloween!" Yeah, whohooo. Also, the zaishen outpost seems like a good idea. And WiK would have been much easier with a full hero party. But now we get to run 2 mesmers, discord and a prot monk! Wohoo! Arnout aka The Emperors Angel 07:13, October 19, 2010 (UTC)
 * GW has always been a single player game, there just finally acknowledging it now.--Łô√ë [[Image:Gigathrash_sig_G.jpg|Roar.]]îğá†ħŕášħ is hosting a Card Creation Contest! 07:20, October 19, 2010 (UTC)
 * All the more reason for me to come back. [[Image:OrgXSignature.jpg]] 18:05, October 19, 2010 (UTC)
 * I have no idea how Anet is gonna make 7 hero flags look good on the UI >.< but this will make playing gw much easier in all the places with low level henchies or no other humans :D 69.181.165.169 00:27, October 20, 2010 (UTC)


 * I wouldn't be surprised if they left it as-is, i.e. you only have individual control of heroes 1-3, while heroes 4-7 can only be controlled as a group. Or they make 4-7 bindable as hotkeys, but don't provide an interface button for them.  &mdash;Dr Ishmael Diablo_the_chicken.gif 00:53, October 20, 2010 (UTC)

Rebranding - looks good
&larr; Moved from GuildWiki talk:Community Portal/Leaving Wikia

I've noticed the rebranding of this site as guildwars@wikia &mdash; looks good on my tabs and elsewhere. (Leaving the icon to update.) It's good for people to start seeing GW@Wikia vs. GWiki. &mdash;Tennessee Ernie Ford ( TEF ) 00:54, October 19, 2010 (UTC)


 * NewLogo.png Did someone say icon? &mdash;Dr Ishmael Diablo_the_chicken.gif 01:17, October 19, 2010 (UTC)
 * /like :D – User Balistic Pve sig.pngalistic 01:26, 19 October 2010 (UTC)


 * Erm, I used icon non-technically. I meant the logo in the upper-left: it still reads "Guild Wiki" and I think that GW@Wikia should have to choose a different image. (Also, the website icon thingee that appears in the address bar. Be nice if GWiki's and GW@Wikia's favicon were distinct. &mdash;Tennessee Ernie Ford ( TEF ) 02:01, October 19, 2010 (UTC)


 * That's because I didn't upload this image directly there. I wasn't sure if anyone would like it or not.  It needs to go to File:Wiki.png to appear at the top left.  And I have no clue what to do for the favicon.  &mdash;Dr Ishmael Diablo_the_chicken.gif 02:06, October 19, 2010 (UTC)


 * Re: Logo. I think you should change it. GWiki and GW@Wikia should have distinct images/branding. Both sites can adapt later, after a move.


 * w:c:Help:Favicon → File:Favicon.ico &mdash;Tennessee Ernie Ford ( TEF ) 02:11, October 19, 2010 (UTC)


 * If you insist. Logo has been changed.
 * For the favicon, I mean I have no ideas of what to do for it. We could just replace it with the default Wikia one, but that would be lazy.  &mdash;Dr Ishmael Diablo_the_chicken.gif 02:18, October 19, 2010 (UTC)
 * Suggestion: Use the blue Wikia W with a black g superimposed on it? -- ◄mendel► 05:05, October 19, 2010 (UTC)
 * Ishy, it looks horrible. I am proud of you. &mdash;[[Image:MaySig.png]] Warw/Wick 17:08, October 19, 2010 (UTC)

Suggestion; ask them to rename to project namespace from GuildWiki to whatever you see fit. Tulip. 05:11, October 20, 2010 (UTC)

Sponsor Links


The link points to Special:AdSS:

Apart from the ethics of selling ads "across a wiki" while presumably exempting pages that have been sold individually, this is an open invitation to Gold Sellers and the likes; and I suspect that Wikia keeps communities from announcing their new sites via sitenotice etc. because they hope to sell them these "sponsorships" instead.

I never saw this announced on any staff blog or elsewhere. -- ◄mendel► 11:38, October 21, 2010 (UTC)

Major site changes: discussion overview
The GuildWiki community has decided upon some big changes:
 * to set up a copy (fork) of this wiki at curse.com to continue the traditional GuildWiki with the "old" skin
 * to explore the new direction Wikia is offering us on guildwars@wikia.

Because these are major changes, there has already been considerable discussion. These are the pages dedicated to this discussion: Feel free to extend the list if necessary. -- ◄mendel► 10:17, November 12, 2010 (UTC)
 * Project:Community_Portal/Leaving Wikia
 * Project talk:Community_Portal/Leaving Wikia
 * Project:Community Portal/Leaving Wikia/Letter to Wikia & talk
 * Forum:The future of GuildWars@Wikia
 * Project:Transition to Curse‎ & talk