User blog:Jasca Ducato/A review of Wikia's new look...
Right, as we all know, Wikia have developed new theme which will soon be rolled out and forced down upon all those who produly call themselves Wikia contributors… that's you and me folks. To quote Wikia themselves: "the new look is sleek, stylish, functional, and overall performs very well", bollocks. That's all I have to say. Now, before someone goes off and says I should give the new theme (I'll call it Oasis for simplicity) a fair chance, I'll have you know I've been using Oasis exclusively today, and after six hours I think I can adequatly provide a decent review of it as compared to Monaco and Monobook.
Now, the first thing you'll all notice is the bland white background and stupidly large amount of whitespace that exist, not only on either side of the page, but also spaced sporadically throughout the central area as well. In fact, as I write this blog, there is a large chunk of whitespace right next to this text box, completely blank, completely wasted, I even have the edit box set to widescreen editing and it's shrunken down to two-thirds of the width of the main page. Granted, nobody here has yet tried to create a more personalised theme, although after just a few minutes on Wikia's new ThemeDesigner, I can tell you it's something you'll want to give a miss. Not only is the designer, ironically, poorly designed, but it is also over simplistic and, to be honest, lacking in functionality.
Speaking of functionality, I have a dare for you. I dare you to try and find your followed pages, because I bloody well can't. Now, that strikes me as odd, considering they not only got rid of Monobook's watchlist which worked perfectly fine, but they've now made it next to impossible to find out what exactly is going on on this site; doesn't seem very functional to me. Antoher major issue for me is the edit box itself.
I am not afraid to admit that I have never, ever been a fan of Monaco's rich-text edit box, and if it were possible, I would automatically set my preferences to enter "source" mode everytime I edit, instead of having to manually click it. This issue still remains, and with the shrunken editing space and small text, the isssue has only gotten worse. Once again, not very functional, not at all. So, that's functionality shot down in blaze of, well, glory is a strong word. On to stye, now.
Style, or lack thereof, is a major issue for Oasis. I'm going to be bunching quite abit under the title of "style", but all's fair in love and war. As I've already mentioned, Wikia have basically squeezed our site into the central two-thirds of the main page, and an amazing amount of that space is also wasted; there's no sidebar (that's rather stupidly plastered at the top along with every other link imaginable, including those to Wikia's other sites), no easy navigation whatsoever. Granted, they have placed a search bar at the top of the page, which allows one to enter a page easily enough, but otherwise it's a nightmare. The text is far too small, and the pages are enlongated to unimaginable lengths (another result of squeezing the articles). Also, you'll notice that, whilst viewing an article, you can see the activity feed, photos and community spotlight along the right-hand side; fine, fair enough, gotta go somewhere… but what about the rest of the page? That little advertisement section only extends as far as the infobox, beyond that is that terrible whiteness of infinty.
Right, sleekness…… don't make me laugh.
This all said, I must say there are a few things Wikia has managed not to balls up. I've not had any lag issues so far, which was most definately an issue when I first moved over from Monobook to Monaco. Also, so far, it looks as if Oasis' coding hasn't messed up any of our templates. Quotes still work, so do reference lists; even our in-house templates, such as {{spoilerhd}}, continue to work and look perfect. Unfortunately, this was the case with Monaco; Wikia have not made any improvements, in these areas, as far as I can tell. For me, it's a simple case of "If it ain't broke, dont fuck it up and brake it", unfortunately, this is exactly what Wikia have done with Oasis.
This review is far from an exhaustive list of my views on the situation, but to be perfectly honest, just looking at this dreadful page is giving me a headache and so I want to finish this up quickly. Wikia can't use the excuse that they are oblivious to the negative reaction this move has garnered, because they're not. Several wikia sites have already moved from WIkia to an independant host. The Grand Theft Auto Wiki is one of these (they've moved here, for those who are curious), and as a result Wikia have actually banned several GTA Wiki administrators; Godwin's Law certainly came to mind here.
As a user here on the AC Wiki, both you and I are going to have to step back, and take a look at what we want to do with our future here. If Wikia go ahead and delete Monaco, forcing us onto either Oasis or Monobook, are we going to stay with Wikia, or move over?
To quote on of our favourite Assassins: "My dear sons, dark skies are rising over [us] and time is running low. The enemy is closer than I thought. Now, the final battle is about to unfold. Every man is mortal, every life bounds to an end but certain things will never change."