> So everyone can share the pain, here is advance notice of what
> Wikia are planning for the Vim Tips wikihttp://vim.wikia.com/
>
> Wikia have several large wikis (much larger than ours), with
> often young participants. Wikia want to boost kiddie
> participation, which leads to more page views on wikia.com (they
> don't care which wiki, so long as it's at wikia.com), and longer
> visits. More page views and longer visits lead to much greater
> advert revenue.
>
> Wikia will switch all wikis to a new "Wikia" skin on November 3.
> Other skins will NOT be possible (any preference settings will
> be ignored).
>
> The new skin features:
> - FIXED WIDTH article content of 660 pixels.
> - No sidebar on left.
> - New 300 pixel wide sidebar on right with gee-whiz crap.
> - Bar at top to encourage visits to other wikis.
> - Floating bar at bottom ("Share" etc).
> - Silly "edit section" buttons and some other nonsense.
> - Probably more I don't know about.
>
> The font size is much smaller than previously to compensate for
> the 660-pixel fixed content width.
>
> The good news is that not-logged-in users used to see a 300x250
> pixel advert block at a random place in the article. That advert
> will now be at the top of the new right-hand sidebar.
>
> Some non-info is here:http://community.wikia.com/wiki/The_new_lookhttp://community.wikia.com/wiki/Blog:Wikia_Staff_Blog
>
> There is a lot of community dissent, and people from several
> wikis are talking about moving to another hosting service.
> However, Wikia know that such talk is largely hot air because
> hosting that is free and reliable and supported is hard to find.
> Also, Wikia will retain any existing content causing tremendous
> confusion for readers (which is the "official" wiki?), and the
> new site would have a hopeless Google ranking, probably forever.
>
> John
I mostly agree that the changes look annoying, but I kind of like the
sound of 2 changes coming along with the bundle:
1. Space in the side bar to showcase new pages (one of the biggest
complaints I keep seeing about the wiki is that new pages are not
shown as obviously as they were on the old tips site)
2. "My Tools" floating button at the bottom, where you can bookmark
various commonly-used parts of the wiki. Granted, I could get this
same feature with normal browser bookmarks, but maybe it will turn out
useful.
I am starting to wonder if we'll be getting new skins forced on us
every few months from here on out. It sure seems like that's been the
pattern so far.
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