User talk:Tennessee Ernie Ford/Archive 06

No longer contributing to Wikia after 20 October 2010
This section will not be archived on or about 19 October 2010; it will be left to help explain my lack of presence and why the rest of the page will remain empty.

Wikia's new direction is taking it away from core support of community-edited, encyclopedic bodies of knowledge (wikis) and moving it a new direction of social networking. They could have chosen to implement this for all new and opting-in existing sites. Instead they have chosen to impose their concept of wiki community on the rest of us. Since I have only limited time to volunteer, I see no reason to spend any of it supporting their top-down approach to hosting consensus-driven sites. The changes might be good for some wikis, but not for this one.

(Added later)

Wikia could have approached us early to say, ''look, we have to re-brand and standardize. It's just unrealistic for a business to continue functioning in this way. We realize these changes will produce a hardship on you, and we can't help that. What we can do, however, is to offer you short-term dedicated help to adapt your wiki to take full advantage''. Instead, our 100% volunteer staff has to figure out the impact on our own, second guess which features to adapt, which to force to fit, what to risk leaving alone. In the end, it's just less work to move to someplace where we have more control and/or our hosts depend on our success to flourish.

More importantly, Wikia has shown no particular enthusiasm for GuildWiki and therefore, I see no reason why we should feel any loyalty at all to remaining here. &mdash;Tennessee Ernie Ford ( TEF ) 22:12, October 4, 2010 (UTC)
 * I am also of this opinion, I have "loyalty" to the GuildWiki community, but I shall not be supporting Wikia (by editing their wikis, or affiliating myself with them). --  Random Time  22:15, October 4, 2010 (UTC)

Flattery will get you everywhere
This section will not be archived on or about 19 October 2010; it will be left to help explain my lack of presence and why the rest of the page will remain empty.

Re this. I thought your quote summed up my feelings quite succinctly. It's not awful, it's the principle that we're slaving away voluntarily and they're trying to squeeze profit out of it at our expense. Although if it's a problem I can remove it. Gboyers talk 07:20, October 5, 2010 (UTC)


 * I'm glad it was useful to you, I just had no idea anyone besides us Guild Wikians were looking :-) I wonder if all the groups thinking to move could work together to leverage more support from some potential host. Where are you guys thinking of going? &mdash;Tennessee Ernie Ford ( TEF ) 07:30, October 5, 2010 (UTC)

We've arranged to host ourselves, with the assistance of a large GTA fansite. This gives us complete control over everything, something we lack now. We might need some adverts to pay for the hosting, but they would be sensitive, and nowhere near as obtrusive as the Wikia adverts. I toyed with the idea of helping host other wikis, but if Wikia need that much money to run, we probably would too, and then we'd essentially be back where we are now. Gboyers talk 08:50, October 6, 2010 (UTC)


 * Awesome! And I agree: you're in the business of providing a good knowledge base for GTA; figuring out how to host other wikis isn't (at the moment) sensible.


 * However, Wikia's cash needs are different; they aren't trying to just host wikis anymore (and that's partly why they need to make more money). There are lots of hosting farms, a fair number of various sorts of wiki farms and they would like to create something that probably doesn't exist yet. In fact, it might end up being very cool, but it's not wiki hosting. Which is what GWiki needs, as well as GTA wiki etc.


 * Thanks for letting me know how you guys are doing. Good luck! &mdash;Tennessee Ernie Ford ( TEF ) 09:37, October 6, 2010 (UTC)

Active discussions
This section will be archived on or about 19 October 2010.

Archiving active discussions is a bad habit. If you dislike having it on your talkpage, the proper thing would be to ask the participants to move it elsewhere. I know there's been precedent for trying to end discussions by archiving them, but it never earned the people who did it much respect. -- ◄mendel► 20:46, October 9, 2010 (UTC)
 * I myself am not too sure why you wanted the discussion ended, TEF. Watsup? [[Image:Felix_Omni_Signature.png]] 06:42, October 10, 2010 (UTC)
 * The purple elephant martians in his head told him to.--Łô√ë [[Image:Gigathrash_sig_G.jpg|Roar.]]îğá†ħŕášħ is hosting a Card Creation Contest! 07:06, October 10, 2010 (UTC)
 * I have a pretty good idea why, since TEF sent me two emails that allow me to make inferences. Ask me on irc. -- ◄mendel► 07:15, October 10, 2010 (UTC)


 * Actually, Mendel, the topic of the email has nothing to do with it. I've been consistently archiving everything every few days; I want people to get used to there being nothing here. (The two exceptions relate directly to my reasons for leaving.) It didn't occur to me that it would be controversial. How this translates to my having a habit of of archiving active discussions, I'm not sure; I barely have a habit of archiving at all. The habit I do have is of removing my popcorn out of the frying pan/microwave too soon. I got overly anxious about cleaning up and I forgot the purpose of a talk page; I was hasty to remove the last thread.


 * I wish you wouldn't jump to conclusions. Worse, even if you were right (and I was archiving in a misguided attempt to end a conversation), what reaction did you think would be reasonable for me to have after your post? It's accusatory. It's gratuitously critical. It presumes a nefarious motive. It leaves little room for me to maneuver and almost no way of saving face. If you were correct in your assumption, it almost begs me to become defensive in response, which I doubt was your intention.


 * What was wrong with assuming good faith and simply asking me to revert myself? For example, "TEF: did you mean to end this discussion? I thought it was productive and not ready to be retired. Could you restore it, please?" &mdash;Tennessee Ernie Ford ( TEF ) 09:23, October 10, 2010 (UTC)


 * "Oh, have I done that twice now? You've got a point, I'll try to stop doing that in the future. I didn't intend to end the discussion, I thought it was finished." Or discuss.
 * Your last edit was similarly soon, that's why I'm cautioning you against acquiring this as a habit. To read me to say that you already have it and consciously practice it is bad faith on your part. The fact that you didn't archive everything (well, your self-statement wouldn't be expected to have been) coupled with your emails led me to think a reason likely; by no means a firm conclusion; and that's how I phrased it. I'm telling you how others will view your action, even not knowing the emails, because of past precedent; and you won't be able to defend yourself against this impression if it is wrong because you don't know it exists. So I voiced it. (I was under the impression this has been brought up with you before, but now that I'm looking for it, I can't find anywhere, so I'm probably mistaken about this.)
 * What would I have been accusing you of? Of wanting a discussion on your talkpage to end? That's perfectly legitimate, and in fact I imply it is by suggesting a way to achieve this. -- ◄mendel► 12:44, October 10, 2010 (UTC)


 * "Archiving active discussions is a bad habit." That sure sounds like you're accusing Ernie of already having that habit, I wouldn't call it a bad-faith assumption on his part.  However, you are right about the impression that Ernie's action gave - the discussion was far from being archive-ready, yet he archived it without any specific reason.  Still, you really need to stop being so harshly critical of people.  &mdash;Dr Ishmael Diablo_the_chicken.gif 16:07, October 10, 2010 (UTC)


 * (1) The tone of a post can be accusatory without the post itself being an accusation. (2) Twice hardly makes a habit and since no examples were linked, the originating post gives a darker impression than is accurate. (3) Rather than defending my honor, you called attention to the very actions that you say might give others cause for concern. (4) You ascribed a negative motivation to my actions in writing, "I know there's been precedent for trying to end discussions by archiving them..." (5) You presumed a deeper motivation for wrong behavior by interpreting the archiving through the color emails no one else has seen; at best, that's somewhat paternalistic (as if I couldn't explain this myself) and at worst, it cements the impression you said that you wanted to avoid people having (as it provides a reason for inappropriate actions).


 * I'm not saying your own motivation was bad. I am saying that your execution missed the boat. I can't respond with "oh, have I done this twice now" because you didn't actually say, "hey, TEF, you've done this twice now;" your post implies that it's a bigger issue than two occurrences.


 * You have asked many times for people to let you know when you write something that rubs folks the wrong way. I'm trying to do so now. Obviously, since I am upset about the original post above, I might be doing a poor job of it. The key point is that one can be critical without criticizing. The originating post emphasizes the negatives and depends on interpretation of actions. Again, what was wrong with asking me if that was what I intended? If you really think it's necessary to go into detail as to how it might come across, then it would be really helpful if you made it plain that you didn't have that impression yourself.


 * Unfortunately, your action in moving the post (rather than reverting or asking me to revert) makes it seem like you really did think I was trying to force an end the conversation. (Coincidentally, the moved conversation has had no new posts; I don't know if that means it really was over or if people lost track of it, even though those participating follow both your talk and mine.)


 * In case it got lost in the above:
 * I have not ever, I do not now, and I will not ever attempt to end a conversation by archiving it (or even by moving it w/o proper bread-crumb trails).
 * I will not be so hasty in archiving conversations (regardless of whether my motives are pure).


 * I apologize for any confusion caused by my hastiness. It really didn't occur to me that peeps were still interested in the convo (and, of course, it should have &mdash; I forget that my losing interest in it doesn't mean that others have, too.) &mdash;Tennessee Ernie Ford ( TEF ) 19:01, October 12, 2010 (UTC)
 * Join me, TEF, in never archiving again, and together we shall spit in the collective eyes of archives and rule the wiki as father and son. --Macros 19:53, October 12, 2010 (UTC)
 * ^Move to support. Arnout aka The Emperors Angel 20:07, October 12, 2010 (UTC)
 * Must. Not. Give. In. To. Dark Side.


 * (But: Their. Light. Sabers. Are. Much. Cooler.) &mdash;Tennessee Ernie Ford ( TEF ) 20:09, October 12, 2010 (UTC)
 * Join the Dark Side! I know you want red glow sticks :) – User Balistic Pve sig.pngalistic 22:39, 12 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Thank you for your feedback. My initial post was intended to be ambiguous, but I see it's not come across as such. I must work on that. Aside: The ambiguity (when it works) has 4 modes: the matching ones are "good faith editor responds to good-faith criticism" and "bad-faith editor responds to bad-faith warning"; the two non-matching ones are "bad-faith editor responds to good-faith criticism", which is not really a problem if they got the message, and "good-faith editor responds to bad-faith warning", which happened here and tends to cause disruption. I prefer to keep replying ambiguously to ambiguous actions; to me, AGF means "allow good faith", not the stronger assume. I can see how people's problems with that attitude might stem from the desire to decide, rather than act in uncertainty.
 * My own take is that I should have focused on the effect of your action, rather than thinking about possible intentions; that would have allowed me to phrase an unambiguous message and leave the intention issue unresolved: When I wanted to reply to the Forks and knives? section, it was already gone, leaving me at a loss where to place my reply. I finally opted for copying the whole conversation over to my talk. I was wondering whether you wanted that conversation or closed, or not longer be involved with it. I'd be happier if you checked that talkpage sections have been inactive for at least a few days before archiving them. -- ◄mendel► 10:40, October 13, 2010 (UTC)


 * Or... you could simply ask, "Why did you archive section X? I didn't think we were done discussing it yet."  No need to bury your actual point under a crapton of extraneous verbiage.  &mdash;Dr Ishmael Diablo_the_chicken.gif 13:10, October 13, 2010 (UTC)

analysis
This section will be archived on or about 19 October 2010.

You've compiled an excellent analysis of our weaknesses and strengths on your userpage. -- ◄mendel► 00:25, October 15, 2010 (UTC)
 * Thank you. &mdash;Tennessee Ernie Ford ( TEF ) 00:30, October 15, 2010 (UTC)

Pro-active archiving
This section will not be archived on or about 19 October 2010; it will be left to help explain my lack of presence and why the rest of the page will remain empty.

I am not leaving GWiki, but, as noted above, I feel my contributions are now ultimately in service of Wikia's new direction. And, unfortunately, Wikia's new direction does not work to our benefit.

Accordingly, sections on this page will be aggressively archived on or about 19 October 2010 (unless otherwise noted). After that, if you want to engage me in a conversation, send me an email or contact me at the official wiki (at least until GWiki moves to new digs). I apologize in advance for any inconvenience this might cause. &mdash;Tennessee Ernie Ford ( TEF ) 01:16, October 17, 2010 (UTC)

Key editors
I wrote elsewhere: ''We have no "key" editors. There are no keys. All editors are equal, barring ability. Please don't suggest otherwise.'' I'd like to somewhat contradict myself and tell you that you are, of course, one of our key editors.

You are a key editor because you do things, lots of them, and you do them right most of the time.

That's not what my point was about, though. I'd be hard pressed to define a line what makes an editor "key" or not; and I wouldn't even presume to be able to decide if a budding editor is "key-in-waiting" or not. So while we definitely do have key editors (e.g. you), making that distinction serves no practical purpose (except maybe to compliment people on their value for our wiki). Thank you! -- ◄mendel► 05:36, October 19, 2010 (UTC)


 * Thank you. And especially thank you for taking the time to say so :-)


 * "Key editor" was a dumb phrase to use. What I was trying to get across was that, if there's a root cause of a problem affecting dozens (or 100s) of pages, it makes more sense for one person to try to tackle fixing the css than to have lots of people apply individual solutions to individual pages. I couldn't figure out a way to get that across quickly, so used a short-hand ("key editor") hoping someone would fix the phrasing. That was the practical distinction which got lost b/c I was hasty in putting something together. &mdash;Tennessee Ernie Ford ( TEF ) 07:11, October 19, 2010 (UTC)
 * I do that all the time. Try to get the basic point across, and let someone who is more eloquent get the phrasing just right. Actually, TEF, you're usually the one that cleans up after me :P --Macros 07:40, October 19, 2010 (UTC)
 * You have always been and will be a great inspiration to me. You are one of the few true editors that guild wars has. [[File:User Ariyen sig icon.gif]]riyen 08:15, October 19, 2010 (UTC)

Post-fork (move?) clean-up
(Possibly should be moved to a project-page for clean-up.)


 * Ah, ok. Well, it is probably a good idea to organize the post-fork cleanup. What needs to be done will depend on how much the remaining community decides to re-invent the wiki; and if it is unclear whether problems can be addressed via site css, page editing, or not at all, maybe a better method of organizing this effort is needed (e.g. a page/forum where problem types and solutions are listed and discussed). Even "key editors" have to get organized somehow. ;) -- ◄mendel► 12:22, October 19, 2010 (UTC)


 * Here's a good place to start - everything in Category:Skill type quick references. &mdash;Dr Ishmael Diablo_the_chicken.gif 12:36, October 19, 2010 (UTC)
 * Well, that probably calls for rewriting the templates that display the tables. -- ◄mendel► 12:47, October 19, 2010 (UTC)


 * Well, duh. o.O &mdash;Dr Ishmael Diablo_the_chicken.gif 12:57, October 19, 2010 (UTC)
 * So, put the problem tag on the template page? ;-P -- ◄mendel► 13:06, October 19, 2010 (UTC)


 * That wouldn't really be noticeable, and it leaves the QR pages without any indication that the layout issues have been noted. Meh, I don't really care anyway. :P  &mdash;Dr Ishmael Diablo_the_chicken.gif 13:22, October 19, 2010 (UTC)
 * Sure it's noticeable if you put it on the header template for the QR tables so that it gets transcluded. -- ◄mendel► 13:48, October 19, 2010 (UTC)


 * I think a general site notice is better for things that are systemic, like the QR tables. Henchmen are always going to see the site notice (at least once), so that covers anything that looks ycch under Oasis. (or whatever it's called) should be applied sparingly.


 * I also worry about someone editing a page (template) to look good in Oasis, without checking to see how it looks in Monobook (or even Monaco). &mdash;Tennessee Ernie Ford ( TEF ) 17:21, October 19, 2010 (UTC)
 * The latter is going to happen anyhow as editors are using the new skin. One type of problem might be floating boxes lining up fine with the fixed width, and this layout breaking with more horizontal space available (want to guess when Wikia is going to up the 1024 pixel limit? in two years? three? or drop the few pixels that make the pages have a horizontal scrollbar at 1024px resolution?). -- ◄mendel► 17:33, October 19, 2010 (UTC)


 * Yes, it's going to happen, but can we do anything to reduce the rate at which it does? (This was one of my motivations in tagging pages, so that people would realize it wasn't the page, it was a systemic problem with an addressable root cause, i.e. the page might not have to be edited at all.)


 * Incidentally, is there any way that the css/js could tell which skin is being displayed, and adjust the look of a class/html-tag/etc accordingly? Is that more trouble than it's worth? &mdash;Tennessee Ernie Ford ( TEF ) 17:40, October 19, 2010 (UTC)
 * What we can do is set monobook to fixed width, but that'd be bad.
 * CSS is simple, Monobook loads MediaWiki:common.css and MediaWiki:monobook.css, while Oasis only loads MediaWiki:wikia.css. I think it is similar with the JavaScript; and at any rate, the skin is listed as a class on the body tag, IIRC. -- ◄mendel► 18:07, October 19, 2010 (UTC)


 * &lt;body> classes :  and   ;   for NWL (strange, they insisted at one point that "Oasis" was only one theme for the "Wikia" skin) ; and even though it's going away,   for Monaco.  &mdash;Dr Ishmael Diablo_the_chicken.gif 18:18, October 19, 2010 (UTC)


 * Clearly, there's little point in trying to make Monobook look like Oasis (why maintain two skins with the same things borked?). But: is there any value in making things like class="stdt" assume fixed width in Oasis, but variable width in Monobook? This won't solve the issue for tables with lots of columns, but it will help things look better for lots of other articles.


 * Another thought that I had: set things up so that we can display tables on a page without any of this wiki's toolbars/navbars, i.e. something like the pop-up for images that Wikia added some time ago. So, you go to an article that has a large table, you click on an icon ("show full-size) and it takes you to a new page (or new window?) which displays just the table (and, o/c, anything that GW@Wikia is required to display by the EULA). &mdash;Tennessee Ernie Ford ( TEF ) 18:31, October 19, 2010 (UTC)