Cary wrote: ... monobook is getting old ... and it's marginally relevant to Wikimedia Commons ... so similar to many of the projects that it's not ... easy to tell that you've moved from one wiki to another ... But not all of us are good at designing skins ... how do we change it while upsetting the least amount of people? I propose ... a contest to come up with a new, more exciting monobook.css ... -C
Peter Blaise responds: I know this is a "commons" discussion list, so my contribution in this thread is specious, but where else should we discuss this ... and you started it! So...
Although I agree with much of your observations, I disagree with your conclusions.
I suggest that we instead design a new MediaWiki front end to allow the look and feel and function of any MediaWiki element to be customized USING MediaWiki directly through the same interface everyone else uses.
... instead of having to search for and find and hand edit *.css, *.js, *.ini, *.conf, *.php and so on files. I say, do all that programming ONCE, and do it INSIDE a new version of the MediaWiki distribution program. Then let sysops/admins tweak everything to their heart's content from within the MediaWiki program without having to become OS/MySQL/PHP/CSS/and-so-on programming nerds (with NO documentation skills, apparently?!?). You want the commons blue? Make it blue from WITHIN MediaWiki, rather than hand coding a new *.css!
I hope my 2 cents catches someone's imagination. I'm not up to either task - customizing MediaWiki using the current resources as a one-off design, nor programming such a modern interface enhancement tool as an upgrade included into MediaWiki. I just want one. And the people I'm trying to get to adopt MediaWiki would really appreciate it.
That said, keeping everything as "Wikipedia" as possible makes training and experience with one transferable to any other. "Have you seen Wikipedia?" "Yes." "Well, then, THIS is the exactly same. Dive in and enjoy!" Works for me.
In other words, I'm reframing the challenge: rather than adding yet another one-off skin, why not design a "skin designer" and incorporate it right into MediaWiki?
;-) -- Peter Blaise
On 15/06/07, Monahon, Peter B. Peter.Monahon@uspto.gov wrote:
Cary wrote: ... monobook is getting old ... and it's marginally relevant to Wikimedia Commons ... so similar to many of the projects that it's not ... easy to tell that you've moved from one wiki to another ... But not all of us are good at designing skins ... how do we change it while upsetting the least amount of people? I propose ... a contest to come up with a new, more exciting monobook.css ... -C
Peter Blaise responds: I know this is a "commons" discussion list, so my contribution in this thread is specious, but where else should we discuss this ... and you started it! So...
Although I agree with much of your observations, I disagree with your conclusions.
I suggest that we instead design a new MediaWiki front end to allow the look and feel and function of any MediaWiki element to be customized USING MediaWiki directly through the same interface everyone else uses.
... instead of having to search for and find and hand edit *.css, *.js, *.ini, *.conf, *.php and so on files. I say, do all that programming ONCE, and do it INSIDE a new version of the MediaWiki distribution program. Then let sysops/admins tweak everything to their heart's content from within the MediaWiki program without having to become OS/MySQL/PHP/CSS/and-so-on programming nerds (with NO documentation skills, apparently?!?). You want the commons blue? Make it blue from WITHIN MediaWiki, rather than hand coding a new *.css!
I hope my 2 cents catches someone's imagination. I'm not up to either task - customizing MediaWiki using the current resources as a one-off design, nor programming such a modern interface enhancement tool as an upgrade included into MediaWiki. I just want one. And the people I'm trying to get to adopt MediaWiki would really appreciate it.
That said, keeping everything as "Wikipedia" as possible makes training and experience with one transferable to any other. "Have you seen Wikipedia?" "Yes." "Well, then, THIS is the exactly same. Dive in and enjoy!" Works for me.
In other words, I'm reframing the challenge: rather than adding yet another one-off skin, why not design a "skin designer" and incorporate it right into MediaWiki?
;-) -- Peter Blaise
Commons-l mailing list Commons-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/commons-l
This idea is very interesting, I can already imagine what this could look like - I am forwarding this to the wikitech-l mailing list so that the people involved in that can also add their ideas. No doubt this would require some nifty JavaScript though.
On 15/06/07, Monahon, Peter B. Peter.Monahon@uspto.gov wrote:
Cary wrote: ... monobook is getting old ... and it's marginally relevant to Wikimedia Commons ... so similar to many of the projects that it's not ... easy to tell that you've moved from one wiki to another ... But not all of us are good at designing skins ... how do we change it while upsetting the least amount of people? I propose ... a contest to come up with a new, more exciting monobook.css ... -C
One interesting thing that the Wikimedia brand survey [1] threw up in my mind, was the use of the MediaWiki skin within Wikimedia projects.
The problem is that the interface skin used by WMF projects is also the default skin in the MediaWiki software. This means that there are thousands of wikis out there that look exactly like Wikipedia et al. How is anyone (even an experienced user) supposed to realise that WikiTravel [2] is not a WMF project when it looks exactly like one? I think that the strongest thing we could do to reinforce the brand is to create a new skin that is used by WMF projects _and_only_ WMF projects, which is copyrighted/trademarked (if that is possible) and which is not included as part of the MediaWiki code.
Rather than allowing WMF projects to start customising the skin to make them all look different, they should have a WMF skin that makes them all identifiably _related_ (though not necessarily _identical_) and which clearly separates them from the thousands of other unrelated projects that also use monobook.
- Mark Clements (HappyDog)
[1] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_brand_survey [2] http://www.wikitravel.org/
The problem is that the interface skin used by WMF projects is also the default skin in the MediaWiki software. This means that there are thousands of wikis out there that look exactly like Wikipedia et al. How is anyone (even an experienced user) supposed to realise that WikiTravel [2] is not a WMF project when it looks exactly like one? I think that the strongest thing we could do to reinforce the brand is to create a new skin that is used by WMF projects _and_only_ WMF projects, which is copyrighted/trademarked (if that is possible) and which is not included as part of the MediaWiki code.
One of the most common objections to Wikia's new skins is that they don't look like Wikipedia. To many people wiki=wikipedia and they don't understand why a wiki would not look like that. It's not only an issue of design, but of branding. People associate the monobook skin with a professional, neutral site and they want their wiki to have that same branding.
Angela
On 6/16/07, Angela beesley@gmail.com wrote:
The problem is that the interface skin used by WMF projects is also the default skin in the MediaWiki software. This means that there are thousands of wikis out there that look exactly like Wikipedia et al. How is anyone (even an experienced user) supposed to realise that WikiTravel [2] is not a WMF project when it looks exactly like one? I think that the strongest thing we could do to reinforce the brand is to create a new skin that is used by WMF projects _and_only_ WMF projects, which is copyrighted/trademarked (if that is possible) and which is not included as part of the MediaWiki code.
One of the most common objections to Wikia's new skins is that they don't look like Wikipedia. To many people wiki=wikipedia and they don't understand why a wiki would not look like that. It's not only an issue of design, but of branding. People associate the monobook skin with a professional, neutral site and they want their wiki to have that same branding.
Angela
Commons is not a wiki.
Given commons very different role from classic wiki projects I don't see quite the same level of problems with using a different style.