Forum:Testing out Darwin

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Unless you have been living under a rock for the past few weeks, you have no doubt learned of Wikia's new initiative to improve the user experience: Project Darwin. If you haven't, it is essentially a new "evolution" for Wikia's user interface (skin), which is going to be rolled out in stages. The first stage implements a "fluid" layout which adjusts page size according to your monitor resolution - a big change from the current fixed-width pages of 1000px. It also adds a new tool for administrators - an editor for MediaWiki:Wikia.css which includes syntax highlighting and real-time error checking.

As members of the Community Council (essentially beta testers for Wikia's new features), Drkdragonz66 and I have both known about Project Darwin's release for a while. During that time, we have both expressed extreme interest in having Project Darwin tested here at the Call of Duty Wiki to Wikia staff. We believe that the changes it brings are a big step in the right direction for not only our editors, but all of our readers as well, and all of the feedback we can provide will be invaluable in making Darwin the best it can be. Thankfully, Wikia has offered to include us in the next batch of wikis to have it turned on for testing, which should happen in a few weeks - provided the community here is fine with it.

So, my question to every member of our community is: Are you ready to play an important role in the future of how Wikia looks by trying out Darwin? If your answer is yes, I can promise you that you're not making a mistake - this is going to bring some seriously awesome improvements to the wiki.

sactage ^(talk) 18:05, September 7, 2013 (UTC)

Examples

• A normal width page vs. a main page with Darwin enabled.
• Editing Wikia.css now vs. using Special:CSS in Darwin.
• Community Central, which has Darwin's fluid layout enabled.
• The Community Test Wiki, which also has Darwin enabled.
• The Darwin Wiki, which also has Darwin enabled.
• The original blog post announcing Darwin.

Discussion

The original blog post announcing Darwin. link doesn't work at the moment.

Crazy sam10 • Talk

18:07, September 7, 2013 (UTC) It's fixed now.

Crazy sam10 • Talk

18:13, September 7, 2013 (UTC)

Also I got Council rights while we were in San Francisco, how come I didn't hear anything about this?

Crazy sam10 • Talk

18:08, September 7, 2013 (UTC)

Fixed :p. As for your second question - I'll discuss that with you privately. sactage ^(talk) 18:14, September 7, 2013 (UTC)

Anyway, now for my proper analysis on this. CSS does over my head normally, so I have no opinion on it either way. But the width seems a bit unsettling to me. I have the biggest screen and the content to background ration feels nice, but on Darwin it just looks bloated, as if I've zoomed in too much. I personally feel that Darwin is a bit too much in your face. Another minor issue, the chat window looks broken, you can't scroll though the users that are in chat. Those my first impressions anyway, I'll add more as I see and read more into it.

Crazy sam10 • Talk

18:20, September 7, 2013 (UTC)

Actually, I'd like to know, will this change be mandatory, it will it simply be another way to view the Wiki? Since then we'll need to consider a lot more variables when we make things such as backgrounds.

Crazy sam10 • Talk

01:09, September 8, 2013 (UTC)

Speaking purely from a width perspective I'd say Darwin is a great improvement. The main reason I never switched to new Wikia format (or whatever they wish to call it) was because of the gigantic waste of space it introduced. Poketape ^Talk 22:47, September 7, 2013 (UTC)