Thread:Godofcyanide/@comment-9605025-20191112221327

Hey GoC. In my email, I said I would make a thread on your wall with some info to get you up to speed on what's going on; so here it is. I don't remember exactly when each thing happened so it is possible that some of this you already know about "from way back then". Also, a lot has happened so I might forget some things.

Big Picture - Wikia
Show/Hide Not necessarily in chronological order leyendas-de-transformadores.fandom.com). I am probably forgetting a few things but I can post them as I remember them. Also, I haven't provided any links to additional information since I don't know if you even care about any of this. If you do, let me know and I can provide some more information and/or links to additional information.
 * 1) Attemps to be more mobile-friendly
 * 2) *Introduction (and removal) of community apps. These are mobile apps for individual communities available on iOS and Android. They were only given to communities that met certain criteria.
 * 3) *Introduction of the FANDOM app. Similar to the community apps but all in one app.
 * 4) *Introduction of mobile skin and mobile-only homepage
 * 5) *Introduction of portable infoboxes. This is a Wikia-made XML-like language for infoboxes that allows Wikia to render infoboxes differently but predictably depending on the device.
 * 6) *Replacement of Forum with Discussions/Community Feed. More on this in a different section.
 * 7) Reactions to new legislation (EU's GDPR)
 * 8) *Those from EU countries can have their accounts closed AND anonymized.
 * 9) *Removal of all skins aside from mobile (mercury) and primary desktop (oasis).
 * 10) **This has also prompted a change to how site CSS works. A lot of previously available stylsheets are no longer used.
 * 11) Introduction of UserRenameTool
 * 12) *Automated account rename script that users can initiate on their own.
 * 13) *Still limites to one rename per account (including pre-tool renames).
 * 14) *Although not officially announced, circumstances suggest that this was a reason for changing how threaded discussion features work.
 * 15) **Wikia ran a script across the entire farm renaming every single thread comment (i.e. posts like this one).
 * 16) Replacement of Semantic MediaWiki with DynamicPageList. More on this in a different section.
 * 17) Introduction of interwiki search page
 * 18) Rework of internal search algorithm
 * 19) Reactions to security threats
 * 20) *Further restrictions on permitted HTML
 * 21) *System messages are now not editable by default. Only whitelisted messages can be edited.
 * 22) Branding
 * 23) *Effort for uniform branding has resulting in stricture customization rules.
 * 24) *Renamed from Wikia to FANDOM
 * 25) *Domain split from wikia.com to fandom.com and wikia.org
 * 26) Other wiki platforms
 * 27) *Answer wikis have been discontinued
 * 28) *Introduction and discontinuation of Community Builder wikis
 * 29) Merger with Curse Media. Wikia now runs this wiki farm and the Gamepedia wiki farm.
 * 30) Change in hadnling of non-English wikis
 * 31) *Each non-English wiki used to be either a subdomain (ex. es.transformers-legends.fandom.com) or its own domain (
 * 1) *Each non-English wiki is now part of the Egnlish domain (ex. transformers-legends.fandom.com/es).
 * 2) *There have also been some corresponding changes to how things such as the image database work.
 * 3) Anouncement of the Unified Community Platform project.
 * 4) *Essentially a complete overhaul of Wikia's old, outdated, and unmaintainable current platform to a more recent version of MediaWiki. This will supposedly also make the FANDOM and Gamepedia platforms identical (or nearly so) as well as merge the FANDOM and Gamepedia user databases.
 * 5) *Still in planning
 * 6) *Will take advantage of new built-in mobile features
 * 7) *Will allow for use of new/updated MediaWiki extensions
 * 8) Introduction of Special:Analytics and Special:Insights in addition to the older maintainance-related pages
 * 9) Forum highlight feature replaced with Announcements feature
 * 10) Introduction of new editors
 * 11) *VisualEditor for articles
 * 12) *InfoboxBuilder for portable infobox templates
 * 13) Changes to various links in local navigation header

Our Wiki
Wiki participation fell in about 3 stages. There was the post-game-closure-announcement drop, the post-game-closure drop, and then the final drop a few months after that. Beyond that, it was mostly just me and Casualkirk; who hasn't been around in a while now. Given that, changes on the wiki have been beyond slow as there are few of us and there doesn't seem to be much urgency in the tasks. That being said, Casualkirk and I still wanted to eventually get the wiki into a better state. Here is a list of some of the initial tasks. I think that is most of it. Like I said, between the low number of participants and the sharp drop in viewers, progress on these tasks has been more than sluggish. However, with the large changed happening to the platform as a whole, here are two additional tasks that need completion. Due to the disconintued support for Semantic MediaWiki (and, by dependency, edits forms) I had to make some custom JS to replicate previous edit button behavior. I took the opportunity to add an "Create with Form" button as well. Unfortunately, none of that will matter if we aren't allowed to keep Semantic MediaWiki when the new platform rolls out. With regards to converting Forum, I am looking into the only other alternative, wiki-style forums. Unfortunately, Wikia is not providing a script for converting from Forum to wiki-style forums. I am working with someone on Community Central to try had create a script for it. Converting to wiki-style forums will allow us to keep the wikitext versions of the Forum posts. To this end, I have also created the necessary wiki-style forum "boards" as well as made some useful modifications to the out-of-the-box templates used for wiki-style forums. The wiki-style forum equivalent to Special:Forum is Forum:Index. Wiki-style forums are technically still "archived" on our wiki but as admins we can still make edits. As for Discussions, I haven't had it enabled yet. 
 * 1) Enforce standardized naming conventions for both pages and files
 * 2) Deal with duplicate card names
 * 3) Update the Cyberdex
 * 4) *I ended up designing a whole new layout because loading 300+ tabs all at once (with 9 images per tab) isn't fiendly to most devices.
 * 5) Clean-up redirects
 * 6) Take note of (and eventually fix) suspicious activity on the wiki and/or questional card data
 * 1) Converting our use of Semantic MediaWiki to DynamicPageList.
 * 2) *Converting all of our card list pages.
 * 3) *Losing the use of Special:Ask which, according to Special:Analytics, is one of the currently most-viewed pages.
 * 4) *Losing the use of edit forms.
 * 5) **Hopefully, Wikia will be able to add the DPL version of edit forms once the new platform is ready.
 * 6) *It seems that certain aspects of this extension have already stopped working. For example, Special:WantedPages is showing old links that used to be on the cardlist pages but no longer are.
 * 7) *Wikis that already had Semantic MediaWiki were allowed to keep it but support is no longer provided.
 * 8) *It is not clear if Semntaic MediaWiki will be carried over to the new platform.
 * 9) Preparing for the replacement of Forum with Discussions/Community Feed
 * 10) *Discussions/Community Feed is a mobile-friendly discussion feature that new wikis have instead of Forum.
 * 11) *Wikis that already have Forum can voluntarily convert to/enable Discussions.
 * 12) *Wikia will begin forcing conversion mid-January.
 * 13) *Conversion is automatic but Discussions supports only text, basic formatting (i.e. italics and bold), a new poll feature, and images from a separate image database.
 * 14) *Discussions does not support wikitext and is, for all intents and purposes, completely disconnected from the actual wiki.
 * 15) *Converted content will have a final HTML rendering made.
 * 16) **Still no guarentee it will come out right.
 * 17) **Further editing is possible but will likely ruin the posts even more.
 * 18) *See here for a recent discussion (there are many more) regarding the transition.