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Discussion about the wiki's UCP update, and other important information

Something akin to the old recent wiki activity page would be nice, but quite low priority.

A list of all the pages I follow/watch would be immensely appreciated. I checked that very often to see the pages I created/worked on to pick out characters for examples/matches/edits.

For blogs to display the number of total comments rather than just the number of comment threads. Right now it's the latter which makes checking for blog evaluations much more annoying. If you don't quite get what I mean, in this screenshot it shows my blog as having two comments, while it used to show it having 17 comments, as it had that many replies in two comment chains. Since calc members often leave follow-up evaluations in replies, this makes it more difficult to know when members have commented further.

There used to be a category intersection page located at this URL. It would show a list of pages that share the categories you listed. This was very useful for verse-wide revisions, i.e. you could find all the characters in a verse that are tier 1 if that rating's being changed for all of them. This will make certain revisions harder to apply, by making us more likely to miss pages that need to be changed.
 
Never mind. It seems like the Dev wiki are likely not responsible for the Category Intersection page.

You should contact Fandom about it instead.
 
Thanks for pointing that out, this page seems like a good replacement for the old "Followed Pages" list.

How should I contact Fandom about it? I've never made such a feature request before.
 
Well, I suppose that I could contact them about the category intersection page. It would be my third UCP-related complaint message today though.
 
Jesus ****, the Wiki keeps degenerating by every update the Owners (whatever group that's doing this) are trying to implement.

How nice of them!!!
 
Should we do a new News and Announcements thread to talk about the new changes? There's a number of things to criticize that need to be listed.
 
Yeah, I feel like at least letting people know what they can do to help get around some of the issues, and/or politely requesting Fandom for some changes, will at least be beneficial imho.
 
Well, Ant said above that he'll talk to NoGround about trying to implement it since you need Admin rights to do so. It's not a guarantee it'll work since they mention on the dev wiki that it's not working on some wikis atm.
 
Eficiente said:
Should we do a new News and Announcements thread to talk about the new changes? There's a number of things to criticize that need to be listed.
Click to expand...
Well, I originally intended to let this thread be the one in which we talked about the changes in question, and it is already highlighted.

Is this not enough?
 
Anyway, I have received a reply from Fandom about the Category Intersection feature. As you can see, I need help from technically adept people to find a good replacement via the provided link.

-----

Hello.

It is me again.

A member of my community just informed me about that the Category Intersection tool has stopped working.


It was extremely useful when doing research for content revisions and other purposes when we needed easy lists of relevant pages for various purposes, so I would greatly appreciate if it could be activated again.

Thanks in advance for any help.

-----

Heya,

Unfortunately, this feature is not available on the new platform - it was very old, in eternal barely-beta, and never directly supported. Sorry about that!

However, if you find an appropriate alternative on https://www.mediawiki.org, it may be something we can look into adding in the future!

Best regards

-----
 
Colonel_Krukov said:
Well, Ant said above that he'll talk to NoGround about trying to implement it since you need Admin rights to do so. It's not a guarantee it'll work since they mention on the dev wiki that it's not working on some wikis atm.
Click to expand...
I think that page editing and blog or message wall comments are now separate features, no matter what we do, so I do not think that it would help.

However, as I mentioned above, this link seems to give access to the same type of filtering as I personally used when patrolling edits before the UCP was implemented:

 
If you wish, I could try to find the time to write an overview of the problems that I remember with the UCP, what Fandom has told me about them, and which ones that we can do something about on our own, but it could take a while, as I am currently extremely busy with other work.
 
Well, it would be nice to figure what we can do as a wiki to improve things and make life easier for users, but if you're already busy, don't worry about it for now.
 
So allow me to explain a bit.

Why did Fandom update the site to UCP?

Couple of reasons, tbh.
First is that Gamepedia and Fandom where working on different versions, and in the long run, it was not realistic or feasible to keep this.

Second is that, as Antvasima said, Fandom's version of editing software was over a decade old and could no longer be updated due to branching so far off of MediaWiki Foundation's current engine build that we needed to rewrite everything from the ground up.

Most of the style changes you are seeing are WikiMedia's current software, not Fandom's.

Almost the entire length of update time has been making sure that wikis can update to the latest version of WikiMedia's latest update with as few errors as possible. Issues will happen, but if you cannot fix them on your own please contact me. Solutions for many update hiccups already exist.

I understand your frustration, but saying "**** Fandom" when a big reason why this new forum exists is due in part to support for this community from Fandom directly kinda hurts.

Anyway, change is rough. But our choice was either to stagnate and die or overhaul everything. Not much of a choice, to be honest.

I will continue to watch this thread for reported issues and offer solutions when I am more able (on phone now).
 
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I'm still fine with saying a bit of "**** Fandom". While an update of the software was unavoidable, there were many deliberate avoidable design decisions made along the way. While new software was needed instead of the Forums, a more identical replacement could have been built from the ground up rather than Discussions. Discussions did not need to become a mandatory feature that's impossible for us to disable, requiring additional moderation. Custom role displays (i.e. calc group, image helper) did not have to be removed, dev time was not allocated to implement them again. Dev time was not allocated to recreating something similar to the old recent wiki activity page. Dev time was and apparently will not be allocated to reimplementing category intersection. A design decision was made to display the number of comment threads rather than the total number of comments on blog posts, etc for the vast majority of complaints leveled here that aren't mere bugs/delays...

While things were surely done this way because of Fandom having different priorities; that is the issue. The frustration from the overarching company having priorities that differ from the community.
 
It is possible get an approximation of the RecentActivity feature back, as I've added it onto a few wikis. It won't replace RecentChanges, but at least it will be there for people who want it.
 
Also, it seems that there are problems with pages that are longer by not having space between the explanation on the "Techniques and Abilities" section even if in the source code there is. It's not for the entire section on some profiles (some have no space, some have a bit, some have it than normal text then again no space). At the same time, if you stay too much on the page it will give an error saying that the page can't be previewed.

When you modify the source to create the space between lines, using just one "<br>" won't work and twice using it will work but the space created will be larger than normal.

All actions on the wiki take longer than usual, all of them.
 
Seconding what Zara and Agnaa said. Also, apologies if it was already answered, but if I got it right the old message walls will come back after a while? In all wikis affected by this change (since my message walls in other wikis of fandom also got nuked....) ?
 
Agnaa said:
Custom role displays (i.e. calc group, image helper) did not have to be removed, dev time was not allocated to implement them again.
Click to expand...
@AKM sama asked the Dev wiki team for help with the customised userpage tags, and they have developed an alternative that AKM implemented earlier today.
 
Damage3245 said:
It is possible get an approximation of the RecentActivity feature back, as I've added it onto a few wikis. It won't replace RecentChanges, but at least it will be there for people who want it.
Click to expand...
Any interest in this?
 
Agnaa said:
I'm still fine with saying a bit of "**** Fandom". While an update of the software was unavoidable, there were many deliberate avoidable design decisions made along the way. While new software was needed instead of the Forums, a more identical replacement could have been built from the ground up rather than Discussions. Discussions did not need to become a mandatory feature that's impossible for us to disable, requiring additional moderation. Custom role displays (i.e. calc group, image helper) did not have to be removed, dev time was not allocated to implement them again. Dev time was not allocated to recreating something similar to the old recent wiki activity page. Dev time was and apparently will not be allocated to reimplementing category intersection. A design decision was made to display the number of comment threads rather than the total number of comments on blog posts, etc for the vast majority of complaints leveled here that aren't mere bugs/delays...

While things were surely done this way because of Fandom having different priorities; that is the issue. The frustration from the overarching company having priorities that differ from the community.
Click to expand...
Last part:
Bound to happen when community needs are different for each particular wiki. VS Battles Wiki is an extremely specific case of not being in the majority for many features.

Regarding Custom Role Displays, that was never a default feature and was always an imported custom script created by the volunteers on Developer's Wiki, which is not Staff. Meaning Fandom had nothing to do with that script not working anymore besides fixing up spaghetti code that made a lot of weird JavaScript work when it shouldn't. The extension was not removed, simply that the original script was having issues when ported over to UCP. There is a large list of scripts on this link where you can check the progress of extensions. Some of them are still being worked on and not stable.

Also, the ImportJS page needs to be recached, which was done earlier I assume when AKM Sama was working with the Devs on getting the colored roles working again.

Category Intersection is something I can't give a solid answer for, but I can guess: not utilized on 95%+ of Fandom. Hell, I have never had to use it and only just looked it up. I can see why it would be useful, but if it wasn't included and there is no possibility of it coming back, that likely means that MediaWiki removed and stopped supporting this feature.

Actually I just looked into it, and Category Intersection has long been replaced by Dynamic Page Lists (DPL) for several years now. This extension is not turned on for VS Battles, but we can consider turning it on once you guys look into it and fully understand how it works. It is a bit different, but not by much.

Regarding Wiki Activity, I can only say that while it was better in terms of visuals, in terms of actual information and processing large amounts of edits and accessing quicklinks to differences and history, it was not. It was a beginner's tool and no where near as useful as RecentChanges once you get used to it. You are welcome to add the script extension from Developer's Wiki if you want, but it has been moved from a default supported feature to a feature supported by the volunteers on Dev Wiki.

I don't have an answer for the blog posts complaint. I will bring it up with someone who is working on UI for UCP and that's the best I can do, tbh.

Regarding Discussions: I believe way back when that Discussions was added in order to increase visibility of the community so that the wiki would show up on the iOS and Android App. Removal of Discussions means removal from the App. VS Battles Wiki already has extremely poor SEO and is held aloft in part by this and now a community has developed around Discussions, so removal of it would leave a large portion of your community isolated. Whether or not you agree that they are a part of VS Battles is different from how Fandom sees it. To Fandom, both the Forums and the Discussions boards are a part of the same community, and we will not neglect Discussions. This is in part why I have been active there and making sure it is turned from the cesspool it used to be into something more coherent.

Anyway, that's all my statements regarding Agnaa's concerns.
 
Damage3245:

I think that it would likely not be an improvement to the wiki activity section layout compared to the link that I previded above, and a Fandom staff member told me that they will try to program/create a more easily overviewed and organised layout to the social activity section.
 
@Antvasima; as I said, it wouldn't be a replacement for what is currently there. It'd be an alternative option - like how we had the old wiki activity page.

If not though, that's fine.
 
NoGround said:
Actually I just looked into it, and Category Intersection has long been replaced by Dynamic Page Lists (DPL) for several years now. This extension is not turned on for VS Battles, but we can consider turning it on once you guys look into it and fully understand how it works. It is a bit different, but not by much.
Click to expand...
This seems very useful. Should I inform Kirkburn about it in our current email correspondence, or would you be able to implement it yourself?
 
Damage3245 said:
As I said, it wouldn't be a replacement for what is currently there. It'd be an alternative option - like how we had the old wiki activity page.

If not though, that's fine.
Click to expand...
Can you please explain how this differs from the layout of the page that I linked to earlier? I haven't had the time to investigate this issue.
 
Antvasima said:
Damage3245:

I think that it would likely not be an improvement to the wiki activity section layout compared to the link that I previded above, and a Fandom staff member told me that they will try to program/create a more easily overviewed and organised layout to the social activity section.
Click to expand...
Regarding Social Activity tab, I can confirm that Filters will be available down the line for this and more.

I'll look into it myself and confirm that DPL is okay to use. It can break easily so you do need to be somewhat careful with it.
 
Listing my issues
vuihHXX.png

1. The space we got to edit is beyond tiny. The useless "FANDOM GAMES MOVIES TV VIDEO WIKIS Search Start a Wiki" bar is still there, nobody uses most of the things there and it's outright insulting to always give the option to start a wiki right there all the time. Once I describe my change I don't want to see wrote there all the time until being done. The thing below also shouldn't be there. Things being under the CC-BY-SA is neat and all but that has no reason to occupy space.

2. The space to edit is even smaller than that, if you write somewhere that isn't on top of everything everything just rolls it on top. That's like when writing on a paper being always forced to grab it and lift it up at the height of your eyes, you can't see the things above if you feel like it while writing, you need to actively stop writing and see that, not to mention that to adopt a new position slows things down.

3. There're some glitches. You just can't click to write in the space between paragraphs, you need to click in the last part of the paragraph above or the first of the one below and then go down or up respectively. It also sometimes writes or deletes things in the sentence above or below the one where you are while treating it as if it was the one where you are, or something like that.

It's annoying and all, but it also saved me some work I did when I quitted the tab I was using and returned to it after a while to have it reloaded, so, you win some you lose some. But I do hope for all that to be fixed and to feel just as comfortable when editing as I was before.
 
Last edited:
Antvasima said:
Can you please explain how this differs from the layout of the page that I linked to earlier? I haven't had the time to investigate this issue.
Click to expand...

Here is an example of it in use on another wiki.

It displays whenever categories, images or templates have been added to a page. It displays a list of each individual change instead of a summary of changes per page (like 3x changes by a user, 2x changes by other user).
 
I am well aware of vsbw's niche feature requirements compared to other wikis. I know that we deviate greatly from the usual functions, but being aware of the reason for the misses doesn't make them less of a shame. But I am glad that most of my initial concerns have been remedied or are in the process of being remedied.

irt Custom Role Displays, fair enough, and a replacement has been found and implemented.

irt Category Intersection, that Dynamic Page Lists seems like the perfect replacement for it, so good stuff there.

irt Wiki Activity, it was certainly a beginners tool. I always had used RecentChanges when I actually wanted to look through a wide swath of changes, as the compacted format helped a lot with that, but Wiki Activity was easier on the eyes for following my watched pages which tended to not need information packed as densely. As I pointed out before this ranks really low on my list of priorities (and it seems like Damage has found an adequate replacement for it).

irt Blog Comments, thanks for forwarding that.

irt Discussions. I am aware that removal of Discussions means removal from the App, but I cannot fathom any reason why that is anything but a limitation invented by Fandom. There is nothing in the iOS/Android dev guidelines that requires that type of Discussion feature to be included in apps. The community and SEO stuff is all fine and good, but in the past that was instead held up by the Forums. Yes yes, I know that the codebase was out of date, but the replacement in the new codebase did not have to be Discussions, it could have been a more fully-featured replacement that actually suited our needs as a replacement.

I obviously don't consider this expletive-worthy on my end, but I don't like seeing the narrative that the Discussions stuff is all an unavoidable consequence of going to a new codebase. It's a result of intentional decisions that had their own justifications that are misaligned with our needs. (From my guess, prioritizing mobile userbase and a design more akin to many popular and up-and-coming social media sites, rather than the more fully-featured set old and new forums have). And that's a shame.
 
Eficiente said:
Listing my issues
1. The space we got to edit is beyond tiny. The useless "FANDOM GAMES MOVIES TV VIDEO WIKIS Search Start a Wiki" bar is still there, nobody uses most of the things there and it's outright insulting to always give the option to start a wiki right there all the time. Once I describe my change I don't want to see wrote there all the time until being done. The thing below also shouldn't be there. Things being under the CC-BY-SA is neat and all but that has no reason to occupy space.

2. The space to edit is even smaller than that, if you write somewhere that isn't on top of everything everything just roll it on top. That's like when writing on a paper being always forced to grab it and lift it up at the height of your eyes, you can't see the things above if you feel like it while writing, you need to actively stop writing and see that, not to mention that to adopt a new position slows things down.

3. There's some glitches. You just can't click to write in the space between paragraphs, you need to click in the last part of the paragraph above or the first of the one below and then go down or up respectively. It also sometimes writes or deletes things in the sentence above or below the one where you are while treating it as if it was the one where you are, or something like that.

It's annoying and all, but it also saved me some work I did when I quitted the tab I was using and returned to it after a while to have it reloaded, so, you win some you lose some. But I do hope for all that to be fixed and to feel just as comfortable when editing as I was before.
Click to expand...
I don't know what you mean by tiny. What device are you editing on, what is the resolution, what browser? This could be many factors. I for one am having none of those issues and identifying device compatibility issues is important.

CC-BY-SA is a license that we must display because technically all content you put on Fandom falls under this license. Removal of it reduces clarity of legality of using and submitting content on Fandom, so there is definitely a reason for it to occupy space. It is Fandom covering legal bases.

Regarding issue #3, this is a known bug being worked on.

I'm also pretty sure there is a script on the Developer's Wiki that removes the top bar if you care to look for it and apply it.
 
Damage3245:

Okay, but that seems far less inefficient if somebody wants to get a more organised overview.
 
Antvasima said:
Damage3245:

Okay, but that seems far less inefficient if somebody wants to get a more organised overview.
Click to expand...
Difference of perspective I guess. I'm more used to the RecentActivity layout so I can understand why somebody else wouldn't want to use it.
 
Agnaa said:
There is nothing in the iOS/Android dev guidelines that requires that type of Discussion feature to be included in apps.
Click to expand...
Well... ummmm.... Discussions is literally the main part of the App. It holds the entire thing together. Wiki content is actually secondary there on it.
TBH I'm not trying to defend Discussions, only saying that you have had it for a while now and it won't be removed so might as well make the best of it. Discussions is, in my honest opinion, not well structured, utilized, or properly maintained.

Since it won't be removed (enforced by powers higher than me) we just gotta deal with it. No point in complaining further, and that's why I'm in there so often trying to turn it into something useful.
 
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