Forum:Yet another skin change

Starting tomorrow, Wikia will roll out a new skin to all their wikis - including ours. At first, this new skin will be an option which you will have to enable in your preferences. However, it is scheduled to become the default skin in two weeks, with even the option to switch back to the current "Monaco" skin being removed another two weeks later (early November). You can learn more about the new skin, and see it in action on some test wikias already, here and here.

Now, as satisfying as it is to finally see Wikia staff convinced of the opinion about Monaco that we had all along, we will apparently have to assure them again that we really don't want some of the features that will come with the new skin. Some of them had already been declined by this community once, while others seem to be new, yet totally out of place on an "encyclopedia wiki" as ours. I will list these features below with the initial assumption that there's consensus to really not want them. Scream if you agree, and give reasons if you don't: -- Cid Highwind 12:28, October 5, 2010 (UTC)
 * Image attribution, where, to each thumbnail in the content area, the line "Added by USERNAME" is added. Reason: Inviting vanity edits as well as username vandalism.
 * Edit attribution, where, at the top of each article, the line "Edited # days ago by USERNAME" is added. Reason: Same as above.
 * "New photos" gallery, where, in the right-hand sidebar, new image uploads are listed as if they were part of a photo gallery. Reason: We don't have "photos", and for most images we upload, we claim fair use - which means they need to be used in some sort of "review context" and not on their own.
 * User blogs. Reason: we already considered them un-encyclopedic and not compatible with our mission statement of being a neutral encyclopedia.
 * Article comments, where apparently, comments are placed directly beneath an article instead of on a separate talk page. "Apparently", because the current explanations are somewhat unclear to me. Reason: we don't want to invite "comments", but we want to "talk" about the content of articles in a place that does not have to be read by everyone. We're an encyclopedia, not Facebook!
 * Achievements. Not really sure how they are supposed to work, but just assume the typical social-networking crap like "has edited # pages" or "has uploaded # images". Reason: More vanity edits just to get achievements and, as a consequence, more work for the rest of us to revert that crap.
 * Fixed width. A screen resolution of more than 1024px wide will lead to empty space to both sides of the content (Added: 22:43, October 7, 2010 (UTC))
 * Got some confirmations on a couple of things on the list here:
 * User blogs, Achievements, and Article comments are all optional and will not be turned on at MA according to Sannse. -- sulfur 15:48, October 6, 2010 (UTC)

Feature discussion
As a beta tester on this skin, the only thing I can do with a clear conscience is SCREAM! - 12:35, October 5, 2010 (UTC)


 * In terms of image attribution, 90%+ of the images we use are (as noted above) for fair use and copyright someone else (usually Paramount, Pocket Books, or IDW Publishing of late). The attribution on the article page suggests that the image is being "attributed" to a user rather than to the actual copyright holder.  This is a potential issue with the delicate copyright line that we are already currently walking. -- sulfur 12:38, October 5, 2010 (UTC)


 * I largely agree with Cid, to varying degrees. Clearly the image attribution is a problem, blogs are not appropriate for an encyclopedia, and article comments should not be on the same page as the article. 31dot 12:43, October 5, 2010 (UTC)


 * Note: Things that we have been told by Wikia staff about the new skin and customizations include:
 * Admins will not be allowed to change Wiki Activity to recent changes for all users, but you are welcome to change it for just yourself using your personal js page. The same is true for changing Follow to Watch.
 * Removing image attribution for everyone is against the Terms of Use. You're welcome to remove it through your own personal CSS, though.
 * As best I can tell, the first suggests that we cannot even customize the menu to be similar to the one we currently have on the Monaco skin on the left which includes "Search", "Random page", "Upload image", "Recent changes", "Watchlist", "Help", "Newest articles", "Special pages", and "What links here". -- sulfur 12:50, October 5, 2010 (UTC)

Comment by User:Archduk3 and 31dot moved to next section.


 * Re: Hosting alternative: I think a discussion about this could and should be kept on this page, for all to see as an at least potential alternative. I'd suggest to make it a separate section from this "feature discussion", though. Regarding new features and turning them off, I read somewhere on those blogs that at least we could request to disable image attribution. I'm definitely going to request disabling all the stuff, and we'll see where that gets us. -- Cid Highwind 13:42, October 5, 2010 (UTC)


 * From sannse's blog page:


 * "It’s not permitted to remove the right sidebar modules, blogs, and image attribution or add a banner that shifts the entire content area down the page, or alter the fixed width."


 * My reading of this is that the photo gallery Cid mentioned above can't be removed, either. Nor can we use our realworld or alternate universe banners at the top of the page any more. Not to mention the issues of the blogs and image attributions. Oh, and our js is still screwed up. :( -- Renegade54 14:10, October 5, 2010 (UTC)


 * My reading of that is a little different - our banners do not "shift content down the page" but just "rearrange content while keeping its overall position on the page fixed". As such, I'm going to assume that what we've done with our banners is perfectly in line with their new Terms of Use unless they come over to yell and shout at me. -- Cid Highwind 14:26, October 5, 2010 (UTC)


 * The new skin's horrible; I can hardly believe they're making it compulsory! In fact, I'd be very surprised if there's not a major backlash against this. It just makes me not want to edit any more. And surprise, surprise: the banner's don't even work! What a mess! --Defiant 16:14, October 6, 2010 (UTC)

That's because the js isn't working. When the js goes down, all the new skins features don't work, including things like the menus that have the history, move, protect, delete, links to, and recent changes "buttons". - 20:54, October 6, 2010 (UTC)


 * Well, they need to get our js working, then! --Defiant 22:49, October 6, 2010 (UTC)

Hosting away from Wikia?
In that case, what are our options for finding hosting elsewhere? Those terms of use clearly show that wikia is no longer interested in working with us to meet the needs of our community. Instead, it seems we now need to meet the needs of wikia. I simply don't think that wikia is the best choice for us any longer.

I do understand that "we" sold them the web address before I joined, but that doesn't seem like such a hard thing to work around. At the very least, we should consider all our options before taking some off the table.

If necessary, any such discussion could be moved to a different forum page, to keep this one on track, but as I see it, these two things are walking hand-in-hand.- 13:06, October 5, 2010 (UTC)


 * While skimming through some of the posts at Wikia, it seems that according to them even if a wiki leaves Wikia, a copy is left behind. So, even if we do host it somewhere else, and most of us follow it, it looks like it would still exist here for people to use. 31dot 13:39, October 5, 2010 (UTC)


 * The ads would also be more personalized to this site if we were to move, but I'm guessing you guys already know that! IMO, the downside of moving from wikia (both in this case and when I investigated the possibility of moving The X-Files wiki) is that a copy of the whole site still remains with wikia, no matter what. --Defiant 14:35, October 5, 2010 (UTC)


 * It is true that Wikia considers any attempt to leave Wikia a "fork" rather than a "move" - meaning that, yes, this wiki will stay as it is no matter what. However, if "social" is the new craze for Wikia, and all it values is page impressions and selling more ads anyway, I'm sure that this site with achievements and vanity edits, and another site with the current set of admins and policies, will become notably "different" soon enough.


 * A word of caution, though. In the past, Wikia hasn't really been above such action, and even went so far as to commandeer a wiki, removing all people in charge and handing it over to another set of admins. To avoid that from happening here, I'd like to pre-empt them and publicly state that I'm going to stay neutral in this matter and will continue to maintain this wiki. :) -- Cid Highwind 16:38, October 5, 2010 (UTC)
 * I don't want to leave, either- it doesn't help Star Trek fans and would be pointless since this site would still be here. But we should keep pressure on to ensure our concerns are addressed.31dot 00:09, October 6, 2010 (UTC)


 * I've always thought Wikia's attitude & behavior to any wiki that essentially even considers moving from them to be highly disgraceful and unprofessional, so I would definitely favor a move. I don't even see the need for such heavy-handed tactics; wouldn't simply encouraging wikis to stay be enough?! Anyway, what matters is what the community at large decides. So, in this case (as always), I'll ultimately support whatever the majority of us MA users decide. --Defiant 00:29, October 6, 2010 (UTC)

I'm not saying we should move right now, if ever, but in the interest of coinciding all options, we may as well find out the feasibility. I think the changes in the terms of use along with these new "features" may result in wikia breaking our copyright policy. In that case, the only two options I see are Memory Alpha going elsewhere or this site having a different terms of use. I don't want to have the site taken offline or the database locked over a lawsuit, and while I'm not sure if that's what would happen, I don't think anyone wants to find out. As far as I'm concerned the ball is still in wikia's court, but if wikia is unwilling to work with us on these matters, I'm for going elsewhere, but I would rather not. - 03:51, October 6, 2010 (UTC)
 * This has been discussed to no end several times before. The problem is memory-alpha.com is probably the best name and it's owned by wikia now. We would have to battle this site for search engine placement - which is very hard to do. While I would approve such a move - it's just not feasible. &mdash; Morder (talk) 04:04, October 6, 2010 (UTC)
 * Have the copyright concerns been discussed with Wikia's lawyers? I'd think that either the attribution changes are legally problematic — in which case, Wikia would presumably be as liable as its users — or they're legally OK, and all we're left with is a (not inconsiderable) aesthetic objection.  (Seriously, I hope they work the bugs currently visible on the Glee wiki's front page out before taking this "live" on other wikis.  It's hideous.) —Josiah Rowe 02:39, October 7, 2010 (UTC)

It's live already. - 03:00, October 7, 2010 (UTC)


 * I didn't realize last night that I was still on the old skin — the mess I was seeing on the Glee wiki was their new front page under Monaco. Now I'm on the new skin, and I see that the problems are different from what I thought they were.  That said, my question about contact with Wikia's lawyers still stands. —Josiah Rowe 21:44, October 7, 2010 (UTC)


 * I definitely believe that now is the right time to move, guys! I honestly don't know how we'll be able to survive the changeover to the new, shitty skin! Wikia's abused the rights of this wiki, regarding copyright policy. With enough users, it won't be too hard to win over this wiki's ranking in search engine placement. I support the move. Who's with me? --Defiant 02:14, October 12, 2010 (UTC)
 * I'm usually one to watch and observe debates like this, but I totally agree with Defiant on this one. Perhaps it is time to switch to a different host as Wikia clearly has no regard for the users of this (and perhaps other) wikis. The new skin is awful and an obvious attempt to try and win users over to the Facebook/Twitter/MySpace style social networking which just doesn't fit in with the whole encyclopaedia thing. Yeah, Facebook is great, Wikipedia is useful but when you mix the two together, it just doesn't work! So to clarify after my little rant here, yes, most definately for a change of host! -- Support -- --TrekFan Talk 16:54, October 13, 2010 (UTC)
 * I know that this issue seems to be dying down, but I really do believe we need to get off wikia before that becomes completely impossible. On Donkey Kong Wiki they began the process of transferring to an independent and its admins were promptly attacked by Wikia Sysops (see here: http://donkeykong.wikia.com/wiki/Forum:A_civil_fork). They eventually were able to get most of the way off to an independent coalition (niwanetwork.com) which is devoted to getting Nintendo Game wikis off wikia, but this shows what happens if you don't move or don't carefully plan a move, and also gives a possible (but rather costly) option. Maybe a sci-fi wiki association? I definitely support any move. --Jh9594

Wiki.org?
I say we move this and all other Wikias to Wiki.org. It's a hell of a lot nicer than Wikia, and they don't force changes on people.--FlareKitsu 18:15, October 24, 2010 (UTC)
 * And who are you? -- sulfur 18:56, October 24, 2010 (UTC)
 * A user with an obviously good idea. -- Lord Hyren 20:07, October 29, 2010 (UTC)
 * It's very suspicious when someone shows up for the first time and makes a suggestion the way that suggestion was made. -- sulfur 21:14, October 29, 2010 (UTC)
 * Sulfur, I completely agree with you. It does seem strange that he would just show up and suggest that - maybe a wiki.org admin/creator??. However, I have to agree with the idea of moving to other hosting for the reasons I have stated above. -- TrekFan Talk 22:58, October 29, 2010 (UTC)


 * FWIW, I think it might be a good idea to use a traditional host and then install MediaWiki onto it. That would give us full control over everything, including perhaps more relevant ads. It would also give us complete control of the underlying software and therefore allow us to choose which extensions to use, because a lot of what's installed doesn't apply to us. Also, we could implement an LCARS skin for a more authentic flavor.--Ipatrol 19:29, February 21, 2012 (UTC)


 * Addendum: You can close a wiki using Special:Contact/close-wiki. I assume they would recognize a host change as different than the usual abandon-adopt case. Since our license says that you agree to work with Memory Alpha and not Wikia. Also, because we use an NC license, you could probably get them to give the domain up by pointing out that Wikia is a for-profit entity and without the community that would be the only reason for keeping it. A little arm-twisting maybe, but it would be for the best.--Ipatrol 20:08, February 21, 2012 (UTC)


 * Given the wording on that page (If you feel this wiki is on a topic that no other users may be interested in) I think such a request would have very little chance of being approved, as no one could seriously argue that Star Trek is a subject that no one else is interested in. We have also been told in the past that total removal from the host is not possible, and other wikis that have switched hosts (like WOWpedia) were not allowed to remove their original site from this host.--31dot 21:14, February 21, 2012 (UTC)


 * I'd also suggest that further comment should take place in a new forum discussion, as this page has been archived(as indicated at the top)--31dot 21:16, February 21, 2012 (UTC)


 * You'd also have to get some of the users of this wiki to even be willing to explore other options, let alone actually consider them. So far, that hasn't happened, and I don't expect it would any time soon, there's just too much invested interest in getting "constantly kick[ed]...in the face". - 23:48, February 21, 2012 (UTC)

Skin changes/preference setting (resolved)
So MA still looks like before to me. I use chrome. When I go to preferences, I notice you can set your preferences for the "Monaco" skin, but it gives you other options too. So is this still going to be the case in the future? Can I always choose this current skin (monaco) or will everything *have* to be whatever the "new wikia look" is? Because with the new wikia look, there is now this black bar on the side of each article/page showing me recent changes and it makes everything look narrowed and just small and squeezed. And then the editing options and all the options on top such as "history", "move", "follow"...I cant find them. Anyway my question is if we can just stick to the current version in our preferences section even a month from now or if the new skin will have to be it. – Distantlycharmed 16:15, October 7, 2010 (UTC)
 * Monaco is being deleted on Nov 3. Gone.  You will be moved to the new skin automatically at that point in time. -- sulfur 16:20, October 7, 2010 (UTC)

Thanks. Damn. This new skin is annoying as hell. So what is all this concealing stuff people are doing above? Is that to preserve the monaco style? I dont like this shitty new skin at all. Looks like the wikia people seriously have nothing better to do than shit all over what's good and working. And why is there this black 8 inch bar on the side that takes up space for no apparent reason? – Distantlycharmed 16:26, October 7, 2010 (UTC)


 * What "black 8 inch bar"? Please describe in more detail, or upload a screenshot to this discussion. -- Cid Highwind 21:56, October 7, 2010 (UTC)

The ridiculous thing is that this picture I uploaded is not displaying right now. Maybe you guys can see it. But anyway this is a screenshot from the Tom Paris article. Notice how there is this black border/bar on the right that squeezes the article and makes it look very narrow? It is essentially only half the page displaying the text and pics etc to the left - the rest is just black, empty space or bordering of some kind. – Distantlycharmed 22:22, October 7, 2010 (UTC)
 * That's the new fixed width, wikia refuses to fully explain or budge on that, though I did get them to admit to selling the background for ad space on wikis before, and that they "might" do it again. - 22:31, October 7, 2010 (UTC)
 * Black? That's dark grey.  Is your monitor set very dark?  If so, that might explain why some of your images are having issues with the contrast and brightness being set too high. -- sulfur 22:46, October 7, 2010 (UTC)

Black, dark grey ... whatever. The first 2 inches are black and then the rest is dark grey. The point is that it is a dark border that narrows the width of the text - just like Duke recognized - and it just looks terrible. It is wasted space. That is because they decided that every freaking page should display on the right side the "Browse memory alpha" box, and "recent changes" or whatever, which stays on top but because it is there, takes away unnecessary space on the entire page, reducing the width to something so narrow that it just looks bad. I would hardly call this a "fixed" new width. It hasnt fixed anything. Every article is gonna look squeezed like that. – Distantlycharmed 22:58, October 7, 2010 (UTC)
 * Feel free to let wikia know about that, the only way it's going to change is if everyone complains about it. Apparently everyone in both betas weren't enough. - 23:05, October 7, 2010 (UTC)


 * you should change the width of your sidebars to 250px + 10px margin to the left, to fit it in the grid--Shisma

It has nothing to do with MY page settings, it is about their incompetent and crappy programming. – Distantlycharmed 20:11, October 8, 2010 (UTC)


 * OK. Swearing and name-calling aside (which should be located elsewhere, not in a section about individual problems and their solution), this seems to be resolved as far as possible. Right? -- Cid Highwind 10:45, October 10, 2010 (UTC)

Um, no. When i switch to the new skin and go to articles, they still look exactly the same as captured above in those pics. – Distantlycharmed 22:51, October 11, 2010 (UTC)
 * Well, if you want DC I could switch your new look view to something a little closer to the monaco skin. - 11:42, October 12, 2010 (UTC)

Theme Designer misplaced as "My Tool" (resolved: Wikia problem)
This is less a discussion and more a reminder to eventually let Wikia know: we've just had a problem with one of our admins changing the site-wide skin, because he assumed that a tool that is advertised as "My Tool" works for the individual user. That assumption is not unreasonable, and indicates bad UI design. -- Cid Highwind 09:54, October 11, 2010 (UTC)

Interwiki problems (resolved: Wikia problem)
Another reminder: Interwiki connections are shown at the bottom of each article, but currently do not work as links. That's a definite bug and will need to be fixed. -- Cid Highwind 21:01, October 11, 2010 (UTC)
 * This seems to be fixed. - 23:24, October 21, 2010 (UTC)

Mobile skin unreadable
All of a sudden, I guess coincident with this skin thing, MA is now virtually unreadable for me (a mobile user). The text is garbled all over the place, the text color is now light, light blue (cyan) on a white background. I've tried using the Monaco, MonoBook, and the Wikia skin (which I'd been using), but nothing helps.

Does anyone else have this problem? Can I change the body text color to something legible (such as black)? If so, how? MA looks ok if I'm not using the mobile format, but I can't easily read or edit pages that way.

How am I supposed to solve this? Is it even possible? Do I need to use a custom CSS? Wait and see if Wikia changes things? (Their site, in mobile format, looks fine: it appears only MA has been completely ruined!)

I can't tolerate losing access to my favorite Web site! What's going on?!

--Cepstrum 14:22, October 7, 2010 (UTC)

PS: after posting this, I can't even read what I wrote! The only legible text are links (colored in cyan). It seems regular text is white-on-white. I've looked at other Wikia wikis, and they don't have this problem. So why does MA suffer? If you can, please leave a note on my talk page: I don't think I'll be able to read this forum unless the font color changes from white to something else. Could it at least be light gray? I know the regular view of MA has white text on a black background, but in mobile viewing, it shows up as white on white. Even light gray would be better than nothing! Thanks.

--Cepstrum 14:29, October 7, 2010 (UTC)


 * I've added a text color change to black to your personal CSS file User:Cepstrum/wikia.css as a workaround. Let us know if that resolves the issue at least temporarily. We will have a more thorough look at mobile skin issues later. -- Cid Highwind 14:38, October 7, 2010 (UTC)

Dear Cid:

Thank you for trying to help! I assume that by editing my wikia.css you mean for me to choose the new Wikia skin. I tried that (cleared cache and all), but all the article text still appears invisible: all I can see are cyan-colored links. I wonder if that's because Wikia is using the Wikiaphone.css skin. Is it?

I've been trying over and over to alter my Monaco CSS to change the colors to dark gray. Unfortunately, it only takes effect on pages *not* automatically converted to the mobile skin (such as my presences page after I make a change and the initial load of the homepage — and this forum, which I'm able to read in non mobile form because I've edited it — upon making an edit you first see it without the mobile format.)

So I guess I'm locked out. Unless you're able to adjust my mobile skin, which I don't know if you can. It used to be called Wikiaphone.CSS. I'm not sure it's there, or, if it exists, where to get it to put on my username space for editing. Rats! And I've found the folks at Wikia don't answer my questions about the mobile skin for some reason.

I don't know why this is an issue: wikipedia looks fine (uses MediaWiki but not Wikia), and the other wikis look fine (such as the Muppet Wikia wiki, which they keep telling us to visit to "test" the new look.

I appreciate your help very much. If you can help me further, I'd be EXTREMELY grateful!

--Cepstrum 15:36, October 7, 2010 (UTC)

PS I can see your changes made a difference but only on the non-mobile version (which I get to see after making an edit).

I should add: I can only see the contents of this forum if I edit it (even if I'm not going to make changes. But the text editor is the only that's readable (besides the cyan-colored links on the white background). I don't get it: how is it that Wikia changes my skin to their mobile one and yet preserves just some of the features here (such as the white text)? They used to override ALL of MA's uniqueness for easy mobile viewing (such as black on white, browser-standard link colors). Hmmm!

I know this is a very low priority for the admins here, for most can access via a regular browser. But I can't. Rats. --Cepstrum 15:54, October 7, 2010 (UTC)

Dear Cid (and *all* mobile users):

After much trial-and-error, I've found a solution: create a "wikiaphone.css" page in your name space. Then Wikia will use parts of that to convert you to your mobile skin.

I'm not sure if this is the best/proper solution; but it works. I took MA's monaco.css, made the color changes, and found they show up in mobile viewing. The downside: CSS is not a markup language I know, and as is, what I've done isn't so great. But I'm going to go back to using MA's Monaco and trying to just change the colors correctly. Right now, I made everything so dark that it's hard to read. But at least there's hope: with some tweaking (or if someone who knows better can help), I should be able to get it to be legible again. Hooray! Thanks, Cid. I'm going to try using the Wikia.CSS you made for me. Maybe one day Wikia will fix this, but until then, I'm thinking this will work. --Cepstrum 16:45, October 7, 2010 (UTC)

Again, I know this is a low priority, but it'd be nice if a CSS expert could create a skin for mobile users. Thanks to your changes, Cid, I have black on white background. But this makes some sections unreadable (eg, front page, with dark on dark). In addition, the light colored text (yellow headings, cyan links) are a little hard to read. Not a big deal; I could probably customize it myself. But if you guys want a consistent theme "look/feel" for mobile users, it'd be nice to have a single mobile CSS. There are web sites that let you look at a page to see how a mobile user sees it. Not a big deal unless you want MA to look consistent for mobile users. --Cepstrum 16:56, October 7, 2010 (UTC)

After trial-and-error: I've found the bottom line:

Do not adjust your wikia.css. Do adjust your wikiaphone.css to have a body color of black.

On some pages, the mobile skin won't be applied. Thus, if you change the body text color in the wikia.css to black (or a dark color), you will be unable to read text on such non-mobile skinned pages. Wikia doesn't always change your skin to the mobile one, so do not change the wikia.css body text. --Cepstrum 12:29, October 8, 2010 (UTC)

"My tools"
Well, this new skin seems to have removed several of the links I use regularly, including "My contributions", "Watchlist" and "Recent changes". I eventually figured out that they can be added to "My tools" at the bottom of the page — but at the moment, clicking on "Edit My Tools" brings up an infobox with white-on-white text. I was able to read the text by highlighting it, but if this can be changed it should.

"My tools" doesn't seem to be working fully at the moment; the transition guide says that it should always contain links to "History" and "What links here", but it doesn't, and I can't seem to add them. Is this a Wikia problem, or is it something local?

Finally, is it possible to have a default set of tools for site members, so that other people who might want these formerly standard tools don't have to add them manually? I couldn't find anything about this in the transition guide. —Josiah Rowe 21:35, October 7, 2010 (UTC)


 * Formatting issue fixed. Can't comment on the rest, other than to say that I do have "History" and "What links here" (and am missing the rest, just like you). -- Cid Highwind 21:54, October 7, 2010 (UTC)
 * You have to add everything but History and What Links Here. I would suggest adding the Create a Page and Upload Photo options too, since they aren't on every page they should be. It wouldn't be too bad if you could populate the entire footer instead of just one menu, but wikia didn't even respond to that suggestion during the beta. - 22:08, October 7, 2010 (UTC)

On most pages, "Create a page" is available in the upper right-hand corner, under the search bar. It's just not there in the "Memory Alpha" namespace, for some reason.

"History" and "What links here" are on the menu for me too now. Thanks for fixing the formatting. —Josiah Rowe 02:13, October 8, 2010 (UTC)

PNG images and galleries (resolved: Wikia problem)
All PNG images are showing a light blue/white background when in a thumbnail or gallery. To make things worse, wide images, regardless of type, also show this blue/white background in a gallery if the image size is smaller than a certain amount (not sure where the line would be). The small image problem can be seen in the gallery on my user page, while Starfleet insignia or Assignment patch are good places to see the standard PNG problem. I reported both these problems during the beta and never got a response, so I'm not sure if it's on us or if wikia even knows about it. - 06:41, October 8, 2010 (UTC)

Background color problem fixed. Wide images being cut off is a wikia problem, so that fix should only take until 2011. - 18:31, October 26, 2010 (UTC)

Talk page edit problems
OK, maybe I'm just missing something. How exactly, in the new skin, is one supposed to edit a talk page like Talk:Great Material Continuum that doesn't have section headings? —Josiah Rowe 02:38, October 9, 2010 (UTC)
 * I believe it is where you see the "last edited by" bit. I think.  Maybe.  I'm not entirely certain. -- sulfur 02:48, October 9, 2010 (UTC)
 * Click the down arrow next to add topic. This brings up a drop down list including an option to edit the page as a whole. Not very intuitive though.– Cleanse ( talk 03:59, October 9, 2010 (UTC)
 * Think of this as further incentive to add section headers from the start. Also, the new skin kinda makes the Startdiscussion part of the Talkpage template redundant (and was done for the same reasons), so looking at that again might be a good idea. - 07:41, October 9, 2010 (UTC)

I agree that it makes sense to encourage headers from the beginning, but there are lots of pages where that didn't happen. Thanks, Cleanse, for the pointer. And Archduke, I agree that the new skin makes the Startdiscussion kinda pointless. —Josiah Rowe 22:44, October 9, 2010 (UTC)

Article titles when printing (resolved)
When I printed an article the title would be in black, i.e. the article Garos would have Garos in black letters. Now when I print the title comes out in a light brownish tan. Is this a problem on my end or memory alpha, and how can I fix it. Thanks for any help anyone can provide. -- Shamuttto 15:17, October 9, 2010 (UTC)
 * Can you preview a page before you print it? It could be that the page is printing the gold titles as is, instead of reverting everything to black, so if the other section headers are the same color that might be it. I wouldn't know why this would have changed though, assuming something did. - 09:27, October 10, 2010 (UTC)


 * Most probably, our changes to the skin are being'' applied to all different media although they should exclude "@media print". Trying to work on that... -- Cid Highwind 10:50, October 10, 2010 (UTC)


 * I've added a rather "hardcore" fix for this, forcing most page elements to be black-on-white when printing. This might need a more thorough fix later - but only after everything else regarding this skin is settled. Please reply whether you consider this resolved for the moment. -- Cid Highwind 11:06, October 10, 2010 (UTC)

Content text justified

 * See: MediaWiki talk:Wikia.css

Wiki Activity link
I see it was mentioned above that we can change Wiki Activity to recent changes in our personal js, but it doesn't explain how to do that. So, um... how do we do that? What's the needed code? --From Andoria with Love 10:21, October 15, 2010 (UTC)
 * That's something that has been talked about being put into an import CSS file too. Check out Cid's CSS as it might be in there already. -- sulfur 10:34, October 15, 2010 (UTC)

It doesn't seem to be. Really hope that can be added to the CSS file. Thanks for the response. --From Andoria with Love 10:50, October 15, 2010 (UTC)
 * For what it's worth, on a wiki I am an admin on (and pretty much the only member at the moment), I put recent changes as a part of the editable menu on the top (Where MA has Portals, Star Trek, Community, Policies and Guidelines). The drop down menus can apparently support up to seven items, maybe in Community (which only has six items), a link can be added in for recent changes? --Terran Officer 18:06, October 21, 2010 (UTC)

div element issue (resolved)
There seems to be an issue in the new Wikia skin which causes div HTML elements, such as the red notices seen in the image here, to break. For some reason, the first few lines in each notice are not centered but the the last line is; it should all be centered, as it is on my user page using the MonoBook skin. Not sure if this is an issue with the skin itself or the CSS file code, but I wanted to bring it up. Anyone know what's causing it and how to fix it? On a side note, that huge gap to the right of the text has GOT to go, by any means necessary. --From Andoria with Love 11:21, October 15, 2010 (UTC)
 * But that huge gap is where your ads will go! -- sulfur 11:37, October 15, 2010 (UTC)
 * Yeah, that 'gap' is for the ads to go in, that way they won't ruin the actual article. --Willy105 15:22, October 17, 2010 (UTC)
 * It seems to be doing that because Cid set the text to justified, if that's removed the text centers like it's suppose to, though I'm not sure why that would make a difference. There's a discussion going on about the change to justified text at MediaWiki talk:Wikia.css, since this seems like just another reason to not have the default be justified. - 23:33, October 18, 2010 (UTC)

Ah, I see, thanks. Yeah, if it's gonna mess things up like that, probably best not to have it set to justified. But that huge gaping ad space has got to go. Like most others, I have ads blocked on my computer, so we will just be seeing a big, ugly, gaping space between the text and the edge of the article. I don't know how, but it needs to go. --From Andoria with Love 20:13, October 19, 2010 (UTC)


 * To be honest, "messing up" is quite relative in that regard - as you will find in the discussion Archduk3 linked to, I believe that this change fixes more things than it messes up. Also, we do have notice div's with functioning centered text (see delete page, for example), so the fact it doesn't work on yours might be related to the use of and tags instead of their CSS-only counterparts. I'm on the run right now, but will try to change your div's to something that works tomorrow - unless someone else wants to have fun with it before. :) -- Cid Highwind 20:32, October 19, 2010 (UTC)
 * Shran, you might be interested in this if you don't want the dead space. - 23:46, October 19, 2010 (UTC)

Cid: Yeah, it is a very minor issue that I'm sure I can work around if I tried (removing, etc.). Still, if you could come up with a fix, that would be awesome. :) Archduk3: Thanks! It looks like you guys have been on this for a while. I hope something you come up with works. Good luck! :) --From Andoria with Love 02:41, October 20, 2010 (UTC)


 * Fixed in Wikia.css as of today. -- Cid Highwind 09:28, October 20, 2010 (UTC)

Thank you, good sir. Cheers! :-) --From Andoria with Love 12:43, October 20, 2010 (UTC)

Floating bottom toolbar broken (resolved)
This, too, is something out of our control, and Wikia has been made aware of it. It has been verified that neither our include of MediaWiki:Common.css nor any of our changes to MediaWiki:Wikia.css after 2010-10-10 are the problem - and it it did work as advertised during the whole week following that, breaking on 2010-10-18/19. -- Cid Highwind 09:32, October 20, 2010 (UTC)
 * This seems to be fixed now. —Josiah Rowe 04:18, October 21, 2010 (UTC)
 * sulfur found the problem and got wikia to fix it, so props are in order. - 05:36, October 21, 2010 (UTC)

My tools, part II
While I'm happy that Help:MyTools is finaly working, I think I've found at least one error in it. To get Special:NewFiles added it says to type "New photos", which doesn't work. To get this function in your tools you have to type "new photos on this wiki" instead. -- Capricorn 09:13, October 21, 2010 (UTC)
 * To be honest, 99% of that page is a straight cut and paste from Wikia's help file. I only removed the 3-4 items that don't exist on MA. -- sulfur 18:13, October 21, 2010 (UTC)
 * I've just discovered another problem with "My tools": when a page is protected (as Female Changeling is now), for some reason "History" doesn't show up in the "My tools" menu. Screenshot can be provided upon request, if that would be helpful. —Josiah Rowe 20:26, October 23, 2010 (UTC)
 * I've already asked this issue on wikia community forum, but it seems not yet answered. Busy? Gifhtalk23.10.2010 20:16 (UTC)
 * You can still get to the page history via recent changes, but I don't see any way to do it directly from the page itself. —Josiah Rowe 20:40, October 23, 2010 (UTC)
 * Report it using Special:Contact. -- sulfur 20:58, October 23, 2010 (UTC)
 * Done. —Josiah Rowe 03:42, October 24, 2010 (UTC)

Page History
So maybe I am just a tad stupid here, but if you are using the concealer, how are you supposed to be able to view the pages history? I can't seem to figure that out here on MA, or another wiki I used where I implemented this concealer, which is overall, pretty great. This is just another thing about the new skin that just irks me and drives me up the wall (like putting peoples name on images...bah). --Terran Officer 21:44, October 25, 2010 (UTC)
 * The page history is in the my tools menu, not where most people would look for it. - 21:50, October 25, 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, you see... that's just an example of a poor new design and code... urg, but thank you for answering, Archduk3, that helps a lot. --Terran Officer 22:05, October 25, 2010 (UTC)
 * We suggest you let wikia know, since there's nothing we can do about it, short of moving to a different host. Who knows, if enough people complain they might change it. -
 * Whether you let wikia know or not, is not going to make a difference. They made it very clear that they are not going to change things and that they also pretty much couldnt care less how frustrated users are or if they dont like the new layout. – Distantlycharmed 21:52, November 11, 2010 (UTC)

Anon sign-in notice
There seems to be a new "have you signed in notice" now when anons are editing. It's broken, so I'm guessing it's a wikia thing. - 01:50, October 24, 2010 (UTC)
 * Fixed. -- sulfur 12:17, October 24, 2010 (UTC)

Is monobook being removed?
Monobook is the best skin, imo. Simple and very usable. No wasted space. None of the useless and irrelevant wikia bs. Minimal ads; none in content. Is monobook being deleted with monaco? --bp 23:04, October 7, 2010 (UTC)
 * I hope to god not...I haven't used any other skin either. &mdash; Morder (talk) 23:42, October 7, 2010 (UTC)
 * The schedule does not mention removing Monobook, though I don't know if it is mentioned elsewhere in the vast number of postings there. I use it as well.--31dot 23:55, October 7, 2010 (UTC)
 * It has been confirmed to be staying for the time being due to its use on Uncyc. -- sulfur 00:14, October 8, 2010 (UTC)
 * I've never used anything other than Monobook, other than for testing. I sure hope they don't remove it as well... otherwise, I'll have to hack together another fix for at least my login... :( -- Renegade54 14:42, October 8, 2010 (UTC)


 * as the wikia powers-that-be have been monkeying with the sites overall code, I've found that my monobook option has been switched off on numerous occasions, without my consent, over the past six weeks or so. on one occasion it was not available for me to re-select in preferences for a day or so. I think they are trying to discourage it, but i keep switching back to it. -- Captain MKB 12:39, October 12, 2010 (UTC)


 * They're definitely trying to discourage it, I've gone to several wiki's that will not work/display properly in Monobook, which sucks because I really like (and prefer) monobook. It's the easiest to navigate, the code is easily learnable (when you figure out what is what), and actually surprisingly simplistic and obvious (again, when you get what is what).  The others... not so much, I've had to fiddle around with various code and trial and error over stuff that in Monobook can be done in three seconds, PITA, IMO.  Anyway, for your enjoyment MKB, I certainly hope that they keep Monobook on (and maybe at some point I'll be able to switch over again, but I digress...)--Terran Officer 18:10, October 21, 2010 (UTC)

Little help please
I must apologize if I have not put this in the right area... but i thought being this page the discussion (and I generally get better answers from you, more honest folks), I should just post here. I just surrendered my will and decided to check out this new... skin (what other choice will I have, yeah?), and... holy hell. Is it me, or is the font smaller, and where did the sidebar of links go?! Ya know, recent changes, and the like? Some stuff seems to be at the top... and I checked out the Dollhouse wiki (where I am an admin) and the sidebars within the content articles have lost their customization? Now, they're on the left side of the page, with no color, or borders, etc... I am a bit put out about their terms of service disallowing certain changes being made... I don't even know where to begin on certain things and how to color it (I could probably take the classes from this wiki's .css page, couldn't I?). To the point here though is, how can I fix the sidebars? What will it take to make a custom skin/colors for a wiki? Any sort of assistance that you folks could offer would be a great help (and honestly, I have no idea where I should begin, I feel like I should bitch to someone somewhere, but what good would it do? : Oh, another question, can you customize the search field? Like, instead of (I have severe issues with bright colors) bright white, can you tone it down to a grey or something? --Terran Officer 04:24, October 12, 2010 (UTC)
 * Well, the first question is do you know where the formatting is for your sidebars? If it's at Common.css like it is here, you can just copy the import line of our CSS to fix that. For some reason wikia has decided that the new skin will not use the common.css file by default, so you have to force it to. As far as coloring the wiki, you can start with the theme designer, which should be in the "my tools" menu on the footer. It's woefully over hyped, but is a good place to start. While you can change the color of the search box, I ran int some problems with that. I personally think the current one is just a placeholder, since the beta one was much more "fleshed out" and customizable, so that might be worth waiting on. - 09:09, October 12, 2010 (UTC)

Does the work in "My tools theme designer" display for everyone? And not just anyone can change those colors, can they? Yes the stuff for the sidebars is in common.css (and a weird thing to change on Wikia's part, it's like they're... well, moving towards making things less and less customizable). --Terran Officer 16:23, October 12, 2010 (UTC)


 * Yes. As stated above, the "Theme Designer" is an admin tool that works on the general layout of the wiki. Non-admin users can't access the tool, and admins will need to find another way if they want to change the layout just for themselves. :) As Archduk3 mentioned, if you are sure that there are no "dangerous" (as in "destroying the layout") CSS instructions in your Common.css, you can just @import it from Wikia.css. -- Cid Highwind 16:28, October 12, 2010 (UTC)

Adapting to the new Wikia
Since the new Wikia's sidebar is at the right for some reason, it causes a problem that the sidebar that we use for Episodes and such is now going to be at the center of the page, making all the text to be at the far left.

I propose making our sidebars go to the left, so that the text can be at the center, which will make it a lot easier to read. The Muppets Wiki did a similar adaptation, by taking advantage of the fixed size by making a sidebar that takes up the top of the article, so that the text starts below it instead of at it's side. --Willy105 19:57, October 14, 2010 (UTC)
 * We should be able to adapt wikia to us. Reading wikia's replies over at the WoWWiki when they started considering different hosting shows that wikia is bending on their terms of use changes already, and they are supposedly also working on the option to move the sidebars into the rail, so I see no need to change them anytime soon. - 21:31, October 14, 2010 (UTC)
 * Okay, I've been out of the loop for a couple of weeks, so I do not have the right to make any, well, informed judgements, so I'll do this from a user point of view....Most of the "new" features ãre in my modest opinion just a matter of getting used to, EXCEPT for the right "spacebar" spacing, which is so obviously a ploy to reserve space for future advertisements. I do see the need for WIKI to somehow generate income, however once this space is filled with VIAGRA ads and the like I do question the wisdom of it. The very big disadvantage of this ploy is the mayhem it creates with the lay-out of articles especially the more advanced galleries. Rearranging the lay-out due to making space for commercials, changes the whole character of some if not all the articles. I could live with that if one was not a registered member, layout was restored once logged-in, but now the ad-hoc rearrangement of pictures and galleries distort a lot of the articles in my modest opinion. I for one carefully placed the illustrations as they are an integral part of the articles, I wrote or edited...I fear that the whole wiki will become unreadable because of all them advertisements--Sennim 04:24, October 21, 2010 (UTC)
 * Actually, since the ads would always be on that one spot, it would actually keep the Wiki from being unreadable, unlike in the old skin, which the usual ad would seriously break the page. All those illustrations you made are a lot safer with the new skin, unlike how they were with the old one. --Willy105 23:18, October 21, 2010 (UTC)
 * I believe the complaint is more about the reduction in content area than anything else, which has caused havoc with some article layouts. - 23:21, October 21, 2010 (UTC)


 * I absolutely agree with everything Sennim said. I have not experienced any issues in terms of the Monaco layout and ads breaking pages as you describe, Willy105. The only issues I do see are with the new width. Unless we were all just hallucinating when we thought Monaco worked well. They said something about it fitting all monitor sizes and resolutions, which just sounds like a bad excuse. There is no reason aesthetics should be sacrificed to this degree. The articles look incoherent and the pages looks chaotic. – Distantlycharmed 22:22, October 29, 2010 (UTC)

Using the OLD CSS
Would it be possible to force use of the old skin by completely overriding the CSS of one of the ones that are being kept? I haven't been able to do it, and am instead rolling back to a slightly customized Monobook. — Commodore Sixty-Four (TALK) 07:45, October 24, 2010 (UTC)


 * No, because any skin does not only consist of the CSS code but also of a different page structure. CSS can be used to style the page structure that is being delivered - but if that itself changes, just applying "the other style" won't help much. -- Cid Highwind 10:55, October 24, 2010 (UTC)


 * How about somebody whipping up a Greasemonkey script? That would probably do the trick. LittleRedVixen 01:16, October 26, 2010 (UTC)


 * Then every user would have to install it to use Memory Alpha. Not exactly an optimal option. -- sulfur 01:20, October 26, 2010 (UTC)


 * No, just the people sufficiently irritated by the layout changes. Honestly, I think it would a far better option than a bodged CSS fix.  I just wish I had the scripting expertise to do it.  It's too bad that there isn't somewhere where folks could post a small bounty for a working Greasemonkey script that strips all the social media garbage and fixes the layout. I'd flip a buck into the pot. -- LittleRedVixen 20:16, October 26, 2010 (UTC)

I've just went back to MonoBook for now (just like I do on Wikipedia). I'm impressed at how well the banners and stuff were integrated. And I just find that there are too many steps and too much scrolling in the new layout. It also kinda fits my username--using an older looking style. — Commodore Sixty-Four (TALK) 05:12, November 4, 2010 (UTC)


 * Yeah, I cant find anything on the new layout and have to go through a maze to find just one lousy tab that was always available (and still should be) but now somehow disappeared. I honestly dont feel like even trying to deal with this new bullsh%t layout because some jerk high up at the corporate level decided they needed a higher profit margin or whatever next quarter, completely disregarding how their decisions will affect regular and loyal contributors. – Distantlycharmed 05:45, November 4, 2010 (UTC)

The new layout is terrible!

 * (moved from a separate forum post)

This is my first time posting on here and it seems overly complicated but i must get my point acrossed because the new layout is terrible.

Here is what Memory alpha was like before 

Very easy to read text took up the whole page and there wasn't a bunch of stuff on the page to distract you.

here is what it looks like now! 

Everything i circled in red needs to be gone. There are now massive blank spots on both sides of the page that could be used more efficiently like it was in the previous version. also everything else i have circled in red needs to be gone. all it dose is distract and it has nothing to do with the current article at hand. Imho if its not what you are searching for its USELESS.

I love memory alpha. i usually have several tabs open at once from this website but due to the way it is now i think im gonna stop coming here. and just use Wikipedia as it seems the person designing the layouts has no idea what they are doing.


 * Thanks for the comments. Please note that there's already a whole forum page dedicated to the skin change here - your comment will be merged with that page later. Also, please note that creating a username and logging in will not ease all but at least some of the problems with this new skin. -- Cid Highwind 20:39, October 24, 2010 (UTC)


 * I completely agree with you, new user :) Those bars on the side that just shrink the article pages for no apparent reason are really annoying and just so unnecessary. it's just bad designing. Period. The new layout in general is terrible and not very user-friendly at all, but they are not going to change that I am afraid. But they do seem to address individual issues, so I suggest you go to the talk page of User talk:Sannse - she is with wikia and one of the engineers who worked on the new layout as I understand it, and bring up the issue, just like you did here, so that they fix that - at least the width issue, which is what some other users have been complaining about as well. The Forum Cid talks above is good too, but from what I understand, no one there was able to fix the specific width issue (the areas you circled in your link), so your best bet just might be User:Sannse. Cheers. – Distantlycharmed 20:48, October 24, 2010 (UTC)


 * Just in case it wasn't clear from the comments above: the new layout was not the choice of the Memory Alpha community or administrators, but imposed on the wiki by Wikia, the hosting service. Wikia has a page about the new "skin" here, and is encouraging feedback from users here.  It would be great if you were to express your opinions to the Wikia bosses, who are the ones who can do something about it. —Josiah Rowe 03:01, October 25, 2010 (UTC)

Just to let you know i tried to delete this post after i realized that there were already several topic about it already. i guess it didn't work....
 * Blanking a page doesn't delete it, only admins have the power to delete pages. This is why we encourage people to check the forums before creating new topics. - 07:18, October 26, 2010 (UTC)


 * Also, I reverted the blanking because I think it is very important that not only the complaints of long-term participants but also (and especially) the complaints of otherwise "anonymous readers" are made public and taken into consideration when talking about this skin change. -- Cid Highwind 08:55, October 26, 2010 (UTC)


 * God ! I concur ! Please get this layout changed back to the original! My eyes burn with the sheer repulsiveness !

I would also like to add that I hate this new layout, I did revert back to the old one, but now that no longer works on this wikia and all the pages now show as blanks (except the tabs for article, discussion etc), so to post this I've had to logout, the best thing I liked about old wikia skin is that it DOES NOT look like the new wikipedia skin which I hate with a passion AfterMath

Does anyone from wikia actually read any of this?
Or is this just for us to commiserate about the new layout? I am asking because I hope we could actually bring all this to the attention of those in charge. – Distantlycharmed 22:16, October 29, 2010 (UTC)
 * Currently, we have been intentionally not bringing this discussion to their attention, but bringing up the individual issues directly along the way. -- sulfur 22:52, October 29, 2010 (UTC)

International issues of the New Look
Maybe, this post should have been in the International topics, but I rather put it here. Is it possible to have a summary of the whole things because I've read a bit, but don't always understand the whole technical debates.

MA-fr was in great progression since the previous months and we wanted to make a new vague of promotion over message boards, sites, facebook... for the 5 year (25/11/2005) but with this new ugly incomprehensible unpractical new look, we really are reluctant to communicate.

I didn't ask before, since I knew there were lots of job to be done on MA-en before carrying on international MA, but as Monaco is completely dead now (for me at least today), I rather ask if someone could bring changes to the other MA wikis. - From Cardassia with pain 19:25, November 4, 2010 (UTC)


 * Will do that now! :) -- Cid Highwind 19:45, November 4, 2010 (UTC)

Further problems
Hello, over the past while, I have been having problems while on this new version of Memory Alpha. For instance, when I try to search someting up in the search bar, the item appears behind all of the ads on this site, which makes it remarkably difficult when I am trying to find a particular image or article. Another issue is the history button on the different pages. For instance when I try to search the history on an image or an article, the history icon goes behind the image or the text, often times making it very, very difficult for me to get to the history of a page. Any help you can give would be great. Thanks. --Delta2373 11:59, November 15, 2010 (UTC)


 * Bug reports such as these are typically forwarded to Wikia by us - what they will need, though, is a precise description of the circumstances when this is happening, including the browser type/version you are using and perhaps a screenshot showing the problem (which can be uploaded to this site as a temporary image and will be removed after the problem has been reported). Can you provide this? -- Cid Highwind 12:42, November 15, 2010 (UTC)

I don't think I can provide a screenshot of the various problems I am having. The version of Memory Alpha I am using is the new one we are all using right now. --Delta2373 12:53, November 15, 2010 (UTC)


 * That may well be, but the problem you're reporting apparently hasn't been observed by anyone else, so there has to be some component that is specific to you - whether it's the type/version of your browser, the exact ad you are seeing, the page from which you are trying to access the search... for what it's worth, being logged on I don't even see any ads on most content pages. So, long story short, some more information is necessary to get this going. -- Cid Highwind 12:57, November 15, 2010 (UTC)

Actually, I mostly edit here on my Windows 7 laptop, but sometimes I do edit on my desktop computer, where I do not encounter these problems where the search items appear behind the ads and activity feed or the history icon appearing behind the text and the images. So, I'm not sure why there are malfunctions from me. --Delta2373 13:05, November 15, 2010 (UTC) OK, I have uploaded an image of my troubles here. --Delta2373 13:35, November 15, 2010 (UTC)


 * Report has been forwarded to Wikia. They will perhaps contact you here if they need further information (like the already requested type/version of your browser). -- Cid Highwind 13:47, November 15, 2010 (UTC)

The version of my browser is Mozilla/4.0. --Delta2373 13:51, November 15, 2010 (UTC)


 * Hey all, been monitoring this issue. We think we've found what the issue is on our end and our engineers are going to be hard at work in the next few days trying to get it fixed. --daNASCAT (Help Forum) (blog) 00:04, November 17, 2010 (UTC)

It doesn't work on my desktop or laptop. I've also tried looing at other wikis like Tamora Pierce's Tortall Wikia and it has the same problem. It's a real pain, but not so bad because I can find almost any page in Memory Alpha through links. Lt. Merete, 15:50 ET November 23, 2010

Workaround

 * 1) Copy the content of the box below
 * 2) Go to Special:MyPage/wikia.js
 * 3) Edit that page, paste the content, save.

$('.WikiaPagesOnWikiModule').remove; $('.WikiaActivityModule').remove; $('.LatestPhotosModule').remove; $('#WikiaSpotlightsModule').remove;

From then on, all elements of the "Rail" (except for the search box) will be removed from view. It's not as if anyone needs them, anyway. :) -- Cid Highwind 21:02, November 23, 2010 (UTC)

Image attribution
The image attribution feature seems to be working again. Was the concealing supposed to stop that?--31dot 16:30, December 6, 2010 (UTC)
 * The concealer is still blocking it for me. -- sulfur 16:34, December 6, 2010 (UTC)

Using a different browser now, and it's gone.--31dot 16:55, December 6, 2010 (UTC)

Edit counts/summary in colors
Why are all the edit counts/summaries in the "Recent Changes" section showing in colors? As in green for added content and red when stuff is removed? Is this part of the new layout or did anyone fiddle around with those? It is awful. The colors fade and are "too thin" and I can barely see them. What's going on? Oh and by the way the "ndash" doesnt work either and i cannot sign. – Distantlycharmed
 * New CSS with the Mediawiki upgrade. "ndash" doesn't work?  Works fine for me.  And I can sign just fine too. -- sulfur 16:19, January 25, 2011 (UTC)
 * I happen to like the idea of the colors, but we need brighter ones, as these are clearly for use on a white background. - 16:22, January 25, 2011 (UTC)

It is just weird in general. Like under "Featured Article Candidates" it reads "Extension:DynamicPageList (DPL), version 1.8.9 : WARNING: No results." It isnt a link or anything - it is juts text in bold reading that. And yes, the colors are unreadable on a black background. I dont use thew new layout. F*&k wikia with their stupid upgrades. Distantlycharmed 16:27, January 25, 2011 (UTC)
 * The DPL thing is an error that has been reported to Wikia. The MW upgrade is a good thing overall, just some CSS issues that we have to work out still. -- sulfur 16:34, January 25, 2011 (UTC)

Makeup for the new skin
With the new skin now being available, we've started to change it to "our" look&feel as much as possible. This includes good work by Archduk3 that gave us a head start on keeping a consistent style. Some problems momentarily remain, but will be fixed during the next few days. If you want to help out, please change to the new skin in your preferences, and let us know about page elements that are colored differently, or are otherwise unreadable.

On top of that, I created a "concealer" for the most ill-conceived elements of the new skin. Changes were made to the "Terms of Service" to forbid hiding various page elements in the site-wide standard skin. What is not forbidden, however, is to offer a re-use of my personal CSS files and to ask you to make some noise about it. So, if you want to join the party, see User:Cid Highwind/concealer.css (new location as of 18:30, October 14, 2010 (UTC): MediaWiki:Concealer.css) for instructions, add your name to the list below, and make sure to let others know as well. -- Cid Highwind 15:19, October 7, 2010 (UTC)


 * What does it mean "conceal"? – Distantlycharmed 16:45, October 7, 2010 (UTC)

"The most ill-conceived elements of the new skin" - many of which have been described in detail above. Namely: "image attribution", vanity "page edit attribution", "photo gallery module", the additional "spotlight module", the Facebook "like" button, undecipherable "no. of comments" speech bubble, and perhaps more in the future. -- Cid Highwind 16:54, October 7, 2010 (UTC)


 * Since you asked for miscolored/unreadable page elements, all the right-hand modules are pretty much unreadable (click image at right for an example). Also invisible (white on white) are the suggestions that come up when you type in the search bar, and the categories when you add them in the special category part of the edit window. —Josiah Rowe 03:07, October 8, 2010 (UTC)


 * Try them now. Don't forget to refresh. - 03:23, October 8, 2010 (UTC)


 * The right-hand modules, search suggestions and the (somewhat pointless) "Edited x minutes ago by y" bar are all better now, thanks. The (even more pointless) "number of talk page contributors" balloon is still unreadable, but that's no great loss.  The only problem I'm still seeing is in the edit window: if you're editing an entire page and you click on the "add category" field (between the main window and the summary field), any text you type (attempting to add a category) is white text on a very light grey background, though the suggestions that come up once you start typing are visible (black on white).  If it helps, I can upload an image of that too. —Josiah Rowe 03:48, October 8, 2010 (UTC)


 * Josiah - Please. I have the category select option disabled, so I'm not seeing that.
 * Cid - The concealer removes the talk page link in namespaces outside of the main one, since the only link is still the talk balloon. - 04:15, October 8, 2010 (UTC)


 * Screenshot of the "add category" field at right. —Josiah Rowe 05:01, October 8, 2010 (UTC)


 * Should be fixed now. - 05:41, October 8, 2010 (UTC)


 * Yep, it is. Thanks! —Josiah Rowe 06:32, October 8, 2010 (UTC)


 * Incidentally, I may well apply the concealer in a while, but I decided to give the new skin a chance, to see if any of the new features prove useful or grow on me (despite their apparent pointlessness), and so that I can see any formatting problems and report them here. —Josiah Rowe 16:06, October 8, 2010 (UTC)


 * So you guys are all computer programmers or something? While i understand the basic concept about concealing, I am not sure I understand what it means. I mean yes I do want the crappy new elements out, but how do I do that? I noticed people have copied and pasted some code on their userpages. So what does that mean? You'll notice my question is so basic level that it will probably not occur to any of you to go "that far down" to explain, but I'd appreciate it. How do you conceal? How do i practically remove all the bad elements the new skin brings with itself? I dont do programming and dont know C++ and codes or whatever, so you gotta imagine you are talking to a child when you tell me about this stuff :) – Distantlycharmed 20:17, October 8, 2010 (UTC)


 * Simply follow the instructions here. All you have to do is copy/paste that one line, and this is the most practical way to "remove" these new, poorly thought out features. - 21:45, October 8, 2010 (UTC)


 * What line? When I click on the page, I see something like "refresh your page" instructions for various browsers etc (like click control F5). But refresh after you do what? There is this box there that has a bunch of code or whatever instructions in it. How do I use that? Do i copy and paste that into my userpage? Forever? Until when? What happens to my userpage and its current content? See I told you, you need to go waaaay more basic than that :) – Distantlycharmed 00:07, October 9, 2010 (UTC)


 * Read the comments at the start of the code section. Reading is a good thing. -- sulfur 00:09, October 9, 2010 (UTC)


 * Ah you just couldnt do without an insult there now sulfur, could you? All those POV discussions really musta riled you up. Oh well. Thanks Duke for your help though - I appreciate it man. – Distantlycharmed 00:22, October 9, 2010 (UTC)

For what it's worth, the relevant line of code has been on your personal CSS page for quite a while now. I added it after you added yourself to the below list without doing anything else. To anyone else: let me know if the line "To use, simply add the following line to your personal CSS file located at User:USERNAME/wikia.css " is not explicit enough, and I can help you as well... -- Cid Highwind 09:12, October 9, 2010 (UTC)
 * Are you talking to me? What's a personal CSS page? How do i go to my css page? Oh man, you guys are literally talking in codes :) I was not exaggerating when I said I am clueless when it comes to computer/code related things. Let me ask you: so how is MA gonna look like to me after November 3? Just like it is now or the new look but with the "bad" attributes removed? – Distantlycharmed 22:47, October 11, 2010 (UTC)


 * Cid, how do you make the code importable? I got the whole code to work over at WoWWiki, but I want to make it importable like yours so I can throw the link up on those forums.  Perhaps if users across various wikis start using this thing, Wikia may (and that's a big "may," though I figure probably not) get the message about this new layout. Vund223 00:48, October 12, 2010 (UTC)


 * DC - Your CSS page: User:Distantlycharmed/wikia.css. You should be able to click here and change to the new look under the skin tab either now or shortly. It will have as much of the bad features removed as we can. Just remember what you see isn't what the general public will see, since they will still see all the things we removed with this.
 * Vund223 - Simply replacing the the current page title with the appropriate page title at the WoWWiki should do the trick, after copying the code to said page of course. EX: @import url("/index.php?title=Mediawiki/Concealer.css&ctype=text/css&action=raw") changes to @import url("/index.php?title=User:Vund223/concealer.css&ctype=text/css&action=raw") . Don't forget to give credit though, the part with the instructions can be change without messing up the rest, since you don't want to piss off the guy with the airship. ;) - 01:10, October 12, 2010 (UTC)
 * Thanks Archduk3. I thought that might be it, but that just seemed too simple.  Shows what I know.  And trust me, I was planning on giving credit - no way in hell I could have ever figured that out, and enough of the editors on WoWWiki know me well enough to know that.  That, and I wouldn't want the fury of the Highwind (or the Shera, depending on time period) descending on me. Vund223 01:29, October 12, 2010 (UTC)
 * My only problem with this is that the my tools section goes a bit odd. Could you try fixing it, and can i use it for another wiki (the medal of honor wiki)??? -  21:14, October 19, 2010 (UTC)
 * That's not the concealer as far as I know, but something wrong with the site in general, though only our site it seems. As for using it elsewhere, you should just be able to copy the code to your site, with a notation about where you got it, and everything should be cool. - 00:20, October 20, 2010 (UTC)

Yes, I'm concealing!

 * User:Cid Highwind
 * User:Archduk3
 * User:Sulfur
 * User:Cepstrum
 * User:Distantlycharmed
 * User:Renegade54
 * User:Jrofeta
 * User:Cleanse
 * User:Defiant
 * User:Vund223
 * User:Terran Officer
 * User:Gifh
 * User:Liberty0
 * User:Capricorn
 * User:CleverAndKnowsIt
 * User:Shran
 * User:TrekFan
 * User:CMDBob
 * User:Intricated
 * User:Heatedpete
 * User:FlyingSaucrDude
 * User:Commodore Sixty-Four
 * User:Delta2373
 * User:Gliese876
 * User:Philoust123 (MA-fr)
 * User:C-IMZADI-4 (MA-fr)

Changes to Monobook
Is it just me or have they gone and changed Monobook yet again? The "Recent Changes" list seems more spaced out and the "Edit" links are to the left of headings instead of the far right now. --| TrekFan Open a channel 14:06, April 7, 2011 (UTC)


 * It's not you, I see that as well.--31dot 14:40, April 7, 2011 (UTC)

Well it's awful. I keep going to the right of the page to edit a section. I don't think I'll ever get used to that. And I just noticed they've changed the look of the file pages aswell. I wish they wouldn't "fix" something that doesn't need fixing. The whole point of me using Monobook is to avoid the crappy changes they are making to the default skin. --| TrekFan Open a channel 18:08, April 7, 2011 (UTC)


 * Seems to be OK now.--31dot 00:51, April 8, 2011 (UTC)


 * Someone at Wikia informed me earlier today that their tech changes yesterday included some changes to the Wikia-wide CSS and JS that caused some issues with various CSS and JS files all over the place. Apparently it affected our Monobook data. -- sulfur 01:27, April 8, 2011 (UTC)

Well, at least it's back to normal now. Damn Wikia, always fiddling around... --| TrekFan Open a channel 01:53, April 8, 2011 (UTC)