User blog:Awesomeknight/How to fix Brickimedia

From Brickipedia, the LEGO Wiki

3

Hear ye, hear ye!

Brickimedia barely has any new users. Most users are from when Brickipedia was finally going to become independent. And even at that, barely any of our users are active. This might be controversial, but this is why I think this place is deserted. The social functions on this site are broken. Now I know, this is not a social site, and its main function is to be an encyclopedia. But the social features are what made lego.wiki.com such a big hit! There were tons of comments on blogs, new faces all the time, etc. None of the blogs get any comments nowadays. Also with chat, more people were there. Chat barely has anyone in the present. You come on there and it's silence for hours! Most people are on Skype or something rather than here, which I do not understand at all... Our solution to this is: Fix the social system. Make blogs more easy to find. On blogs, have there be a thing for popular blogs. And the thing for all the blogs a user has made needs to be its own page. And chat needs its own visual thing showing all the users currently on. I know, we should focus on editing, but doing this would help make this site thrive again...

--Knight

Comments (69)

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Anonymous user #1

120 months ago

Score 0

One/two word(s): YouTube.

We have the account, and as I see it, most people/groups get attention via that. I am using YouTube, and I can feel that the more I post videos the more attention I get. I sometimes link to Brickimedia, but if only I do it I can see that it wouldn't help. So I think if we want more users, we should do these things:

Livestreams

Reviews and News

I think it would help. We have to to basically link to this place everywhere and leave traces to it!

c:

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ToaMeikoHonorable Brickipedian

120 months ago

Score 0

A lot of our readers prefer text/image reviews over video reviews, so I'd rather not start doing that. As for livestreams, it's been talked about, but a lot of our users aren't comfortable using video/audio which takes away some of the appeal. Plus, it's hard to coordinate something like that when we're all in different timezones and are only available at certain times of day.

In general it'd be hard to boast our articles via YouTube, which is really what we need to be doing. However, our Twitter has been helping us out a lot and engaging users of our site and LEGO fans in general.

Soupperson1Legendary Brickipedian

120 months ago

Score 0

I do think news is a logical option for the YouTube account like what BrickUltra does.

The live stream would only have like two users actually streaming themselves viva audio, most users will show up to comment I assume.

The video reviews would be kinda weird to dive into as the rest of our reviews wouldn't be relevant. And there be no point in the review subsite.

BrickFilms could be an option as long as we watermark it.

Anonymous user #1

120 months ago

Score 0

@Meiko, not everyone have Twitter though (Not YouTube either, but it's kinda easier for people :-P). :-/

Anonymous user #1

120 months ago

Score 0

@Meiko, not everyone have Twitter though (Not YouTube either, but it's kinda easier for people :-P). :-/

Anonymous user #1

120 months ago

Score 0

@Meiko, not everyone have Twitter though (Not YouTube either, but it's kinda easier for people :-P). :-/

Anonymous user #1

120 months ago

Score 0

@Meiko, not everyone have Twitter though (Not YouTube either, but it's kinda easier for people :-P). :-/

Anonymous user #1

120 months ago

Score 0

@Meiko, not everyone have Twitter though (Not YouTube either, but it's kinda easier for people :-P). :-/

Anonymous user #1

120 months ago

Score 0

@Meiko, not everyone have Twitter though (Not YouTube either, but it's kinda easier for people :-P). :-/

Anonymous user #1

120 months ago

Score 0

@Meiko, not everyone have Twitter though (Not YouTube either, but it's kinda easier for people :-P). :-/

Anonymous user #1

120 months ago

Score 0

@Meiko, not everyone have Twitter though (Not YouTube either, but it's kinda easier for people :-P). :-/

Anonymous user #1

120 months ago

Score 0

@Meiko, not everyone have Twitter though (Not YouTube either, but it's kinda easier for people :-P). :-/

Anonymous user #1

120 months ago

Score 0

@Meiko, not everyone have Twitter though (Not YouTube either, but it's kinda easier for people :-P). :-/

Anonymous user #1

120 months ago

Score 0

@Meiko, not everyone have Twitter though (Not YouTube either, but it's kinda easier for people :-P). :-/

Soupperson1Legendary Brickipedian

120 months ago

Score 1

To expand on Sibo's point: A lot of younger kids (viewers we need) don't have twitter but they do watch YouTube

Anonymous user #1

120 months ago

Score 0

Le ^ xP

Anonymous user #1

120 months ago

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Le ^ xP

Anonymous user #1

120 months ago

Score 0

Le ^ xP

Anonymous user #1

120 months ago

Score 0

Le ^ xP

Anonymous user #1

120 months ago

Score 0

Le ^ xP

Anonymous user #1

120 months ago

Score 0

Le ^ xP

Anonymous user #1

120 months ago

Score 0

Le ^ xP

Anonymous user #1

120 months ago

Score 0

Le ^ xP

Anonymous user #1

120 months ago

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Le ^ xP

Anonymous user #1

120 months ago

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Le ^ xP

Anonymous user #1

120 months ago

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Le ^ xP

ToaMeikoHonorable Brickipedian

120 months ago

Score 0

That's not really what I was saying. We're not trying to cater to non-Twitter users on Twitter, that's obvious. :)

1999bugAmateur

120 months ago

Score 0

I think YouTube would be helpful, but I'm not sure what kind of content would be appropriate. I know that the Custom BIONICLE Wiki's YouTube channel got so popular that they broke away from the site entirely, so I guess there's potential behind it.

AwesomeknightBricktastic

120 months ago

Score 0

Whoa. That's a lot of comments. (I

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AwesomeknightBricktastic

120 months ago

Score 0

Anyways, I'll just say one last thing: why not fix the blog system? What harm would it do? I could be wrong about it keeping users in. But we should still try. As Nova said, it could happen. We just need to make a blog hub and that

Blogs by Awesomeknight/How to fix Brickimedia

thing on user blog:examplename automatically. (And maybe a create blog button as well. Maybe also have a button on the main profile that shows that page. And maybe have the blog hub linked on every blog.) It looks like many of the things might not take a lot of work, but I'm not an expert. Also, if any of this is done, we should do it after we fix all of the issues we're experiencing now. And as for the chat: it's fine. We can't do anything to fix how it works to get more people on.

Soupperson1Legendary Brickipedian

120 months ago

Score 0

But it would take a lot of time which we could be putting into more important projects

ToaMeikoHonorable Brickipedian

120 months ago

Score 1

As Soupperson said, there's nothing wrong with fixing/changing it. All it requires is time and effort, and unfortunately the people who would put in that effort (whether it be Nova doing it with SMW, or me or NXT doing it in the extension itself) are either too busy to do such a thing to the blog system, or would just rather dedicate their time to articles and content improvement. If you want to step up and actually mock-up such a page that could save us some time and maybe we'd be able to apply such changes.

AwesomeknightBricktastic

120 months ago

Score 0

Fair enough. I can see your reasoning on that point.

Soupperson1Legendary Brickipedian

120 months ago

Score 1

The biggest problem is the community is it's aging (I'm a woman (in Latin American terms) in March :P) and there's no one else to help out with the site, in edit terms. I don't think talking on chat or commenting on blogs would fix that. People can't find blogs easily and they be more likely to edit before chat.

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CJCBricktastic

120 months ago

Score 0

"Brickimedia barely has any new users" - I haven't seen the stats, so can't comment on the accuracy of the hypothesis, but lets take the idea instead that you personally see less users. Fine. But this depends on how we are defining users - just because they don't hang out in chat for a few hours a day, doesn't mean they aren't users. I'd count readers as users too. Either way, I don't see a correlation between fixing the wiki and getting new users, as I'll no doubt get to further on.

"Most users are from when Brickipedia was finally going to become independent" - this happens with most splits for the first year or so they split.

"And even at that, barely any of our users are active" - Well. Lol. For active in terms of editing, its because everyone expects the editing to be done by the admins, who have been doing it for years and have, you know, lives too. As for blogs, well, we too could have lots of crap blogs, but I'd rather we didn't. When we have things worth commenting on, we get comments. As for chat, well, people are always there, but no one has anything worth talking about.

"But the social features are what made lego.wiki.com such a big hit!" - Well, it was still quite big before blogs even existed.

"There were tons of comments on blogs, new faces all the time, etc." - How many of the new faces stayed? How many of the comments were comments that were useful to discussion, hell, how many of the blogs were actually content-void in-of-themselves.

"Also with chat, more people were there" - No. That hasn't changed. Sure, it fluctuates a lot, but usually there are a few times a week where around 10 people are there. Just none of them are talking. Currently Brickia averages about 1 person on chat a day, yet they are still attracting users (the argument this blog assumes), so clearly numbers in chat aren't the be-all-or-end-all.

"You come on there and it's silence for hours!" - Then talk.

"Most people are on Skype or something rather than here" - Not true.

I feel there is a conflation here between Brickia having more users due to social features (even when we there) and Brickia having more users due to its advantages - i.e., top of Google and visitors are more likely to already have an account due to shared login system. Even then, note that Brickia had more blog comments before Wikia disabled anonymous contributions. Is there a problem with making blogs more visible? No. Is there a problem with fixing that chat sidebar that no longer works? No. Is it going to make everything magically active? No. Are people going to flock from miles around? No.

Our big issue with the whole move was, as I warned, that it was hard - people had to do stuff. But a lot of users just assumed it would be easy as Meiko hitting a button and everything appearing here, and suddenly all new users would come here and edit for us like at Brickia. The real problem Brickipedia has is apathy, which results in a bi-annual blog about how someone should do something and fix it (like your last one about how doomed we are when Nova and Meiko got into a hissy back in July). The issue of apathy goes deeper than just users, it goes into the point that users who want to help don't know how, and those that do know don't/can't do. I don't want to moan at people who are here and don't do editing or whatnot - after all, I hardly find the time, as I only open chat in the background while doing work. I'm not saying that everyone should constantly edit, but I don't know, try and fit in a couple a day. Make it a New Year's Resolution or something.

The point being, just doing these things isn't some magic fix that will suddenly give us a hundred new users.

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Soupperson1Legendary Brickipedian

120 months ago

Score 0

We have 20k viewers less then wikia currently has, we do have 2k though which is a pretty reasonable ammount

Soupperson1Legendary Brickipedian

120 months ago

Score 0

I think admins should be doing at least some constructive editing (no offense) as that's one of the reasons why they were picked as admins. A ton of our admins are inactive though :P

"How many of the new faces stayed?" Your right :P Were all stuck here until your wives and my husband bans us from this site :P I think we all stayed for a reason though and I don't think any of us can think of why we joined in the first place :P I think most of us current users will stay and manage the site throughout the rest of our lives (we're all such sados :P) but I think well do it because we care for this site and it's chat loving community who don't talk.

I do love your idea of us all editing a few times a day as it would give us a feeling of solidarity and it would make us closer as a site/family. Also it would give us views

ToaMeikoHonorable Brickipedian

120 months ago

Score 0

@Soupperson1: Yes, our views are nothing compared to Brickia's, but that shouldn't be expected. First you have their users and Wikia users coming in from other wikis. We can't change that traffic much at all except for the periodic user you see join here saying "I'm so and so from Wikia". Then you have people coming in from Google searches, who likely will often visit our site next, or visited our site beforehand, depending on where we are in search rankings. For some 2015 LEGO queries, we're actually before Wikia in search results. The more time passes that we can get our search positions ahead of Brickia's, the more incoming search traffic we'll have. All we need is people creating and editing content for new products, or else we stand no chance of it appearing in Google. Then you have the many people who go to Brickia knowingly but have no idea of the new site. There's little we can do about that kind of traffic because Wikia screwed us over the second time we moved, not allowing us to do the one thing the forking policy allows that actually helps a fork.

Our overall number of visitors is on average a steady incline though, so I wouldn't be worried. We haven't even passed our 1 year mark on this new site yet, so we shouldn't be expecting huge Wikia-like numbers yet.

CJCBricktastic

120 months ago

Score 1

I wasn't saying admins shouldn't edit, I'm saying it shouldn't be expected that they'll do it just because they are admins, which seems to be a view certain users both now and in the past have had - that they can sit in chat, while someone else will do the editing as its "their job".

Soupperson1Legendary Brickipedian

120 months ago

Score -3

It is technailly their job, but users still shouldn't rely on them.

CJCBricktastic

120 months ago

Score 3

Ain't no one paying me.

ToaMeikoHonorable Brickipedian

120 months ago

Score 2

A responsibility isn't a job. Yes, admins have a responsibility to edit, but every user does. That's why they're users here, because this is a wiki that is built and survives on its community (both admins and non-admins) editing.

Brikkyy13Outstanding Brickipedian

120 months ago

Score 0

I have one word to get more users: Advertising.

Why don't we take some of that budget and start using google advertising or something?

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Soupperson1Legendary Brickipedian

120 months ago

Score 0

The problem with advertising besides the cost is we would be advertising brickipedia which would lead some users to wikia

Brikkyy13Outstanding Brickipedian

120 months ago

Score 0

Not if we do the ad right! :D

ToaMeikoHonorable Brickipedian

120 months ago

Score 1

I've thought about it several times but I'd be worried just to buy some ads without any research. Google ads might not be the smartest place for us to advertise necessarily. There are more direct ways we could get to the LEGO community, whether it be we contact other LEGO sites about adding an ad for us where we pay them some monthly amount, or if it's something where we buy an ad space in an issue of BrickJournal magazine, or something else. I don't have much experience in advertising.

Soupperson1Legendary Brickipedian

120 months ago

Score 1

I think what's breaking the site is the lack of decent edits, Vector has outdone himself but we rarely get other editors trying to stop c4s ect.

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Brikkyy13Outstanding Brickipedian

120 months ago

Score 1

I really want to do stuff like that, but I don't really have much time. When I do have time I always go straight to the no infobox image category and try to empty it by finding pics, but I haven't done it recently.

Soupperson1Legendary Brickipedian

120 months ago

Score 2

We need more female users, I don't know if it fix the site but I'm tired of being smurfette :P

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ToaMeikoHonorable Brickipedian

120 months ago

Score -1

Another thing I'll add is we don't necessarily need to get new users to succeed. Yes, we should be getting new users (and we are at a decent-enough pace), but that's not necessary. All that's necessary is for the existing users to contribute to the site. We have more than enough "active" users to make this site do fine, though only a small handful are doing anything to work towards that as it is right now.

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BerrybrickLegendary Brickipedian

120 months ago

Score -1

Okay, I'd like to start seeing you edit more then. >_>

Look, I know that I'm being a jerk, and I will go away for a few hours (and not only because it is late) but really....

ToaMeikoHonorable Brickipedian

120 months ago

Score 0

I'm sorry if I'm not editing enough to satisfy you...? I'm busy with other things and edit when I have time. My time on this site is spent more-so on editing than it is in chat, so if that's not enough then there's nothing more I can do.

ToaMeikoHonorable Brickipedian

120 months ago

Score 0

All I'm saying is right now we have over 40 "active" users from the past 30 days. Add to that the users who haven't contributed but do come to the site regularly (whether for chat, or just reading), and we've got more users than it takes to run a community like this. So if all these people continue or begin to contribute, we're doing fine and have a "complete" community. More users can join over time like they always have, but we'll keep going forward with what we currently have. We're getting an average of 1000-2000 edits a week. That's plenty in my opinion, I don't think we should be saying our activity is a problem.

Looking at this entire issue in retrospect, I'm coming to the conclusion that our expectations are skewed by what we remember from Wikia. This site is not going to have activity that looks like Wikia's. We honestly don't want that because at Wikia it was too much to moderate (look at all the junk files that get uploaded and the number of old or unfinished policies that were left lying around). Wikia also has a bunch of random kids coming in from Google in the forums. Our forums aren't as active as they were when we were on Wikia, but do we want them to be if it entails getting all the chaotic speculation and whatnot you see in the forums on Brickia now? And even if we're getting new users here who don't stay, the same was the case at Wikia. Only a few users since I joined, which includes our time at Wikia, can I remember staying around for a long period of time, some of which joined after the move, such as LK901 or Vector Prime (was a member of Brickia but didn't contribute regularly). These are my observations and what I've stated in previous comments are my ideas. I never challenged anyone on claims they weren't meeting my expectations, I'd prefer you don't make such challenges against me.

1999bugAmateur

120 months ago

Score 0

I don't think our problem has anything to do with the "social system."

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AwesomeknightBricktastic

120 months ago

Score 0

It's hard for us to keep our new users hooked into it, though.

ToaMeikoHonorable Brickipedian

120 months ago

Score 0

That doesn't relate to the social system, that relates to the fact that we don't introduce new users to the community or to how we do things, thus they leave because nobody "includes" them in the community.

1999bugAmateur

120 months ago

Score 0

What about all of the other wikis that lack this stuff? They're doing fine. Heck, Wikia didn't even have a live chat until a few years ago and Brickia was still doing great back then.

ToaMeikoHonorable Brickipedian

120 months ago

Score 0

Yeah, plenty of wikis do fine without it. Mostly because their community actively contributes to articles, and especially gives their input on forums regularly which many users who sit in our chat don't do. They don't always get new users rapidly coming in like Wikia wikis (especially larger ones) do, but the members they do have are all active in some way or another in building the site's content. The same was the case when we were at Wikia— many people would take the time to voice their opinions on talk pages and forums, whereas now I only see a few of us (most of whom tend to be admins) doing that.

ToaMeikoHonorable Brickipedian

120 months ago

Score 1

Two things:

The social features are not what made lego.wikia.com a big hit. As a matter of fact, the progressive implementation of social features by Wikia over the 8 years we were on Wikia were the most criticized parts of the site for most of that time. What made it a big hit was it's one of the oldest and most complete reference to LEGO sets, figures, etc, second to http://brickset.com. It's often the first result on Google searches for most LEGO-related queries, which is what made the site popular, and it got those search rankings because of its age and lack of competition, making people repeatedly visit and share the site for its content, not its social features.
Comments on blogs are dependent on the blog's content. Most blogs have very little room for comment, therefore they don't get many comments. You'll notice Brickipedia news articles get plenty of comments if it's an interesting story. There's no concern as far as comments on blogs go.
Silence in chat is dependent on people like you. Wikia chat was exactly the same many times a day, many days a week. Someone needs to start a conversation, and yes there are plenty of people present in chat. If as many people were making edits as there are people in chat, then we wouldn't have to be encouraging you all to edit.
There already is a feature that shows users currently in chat. It was implemented in December 2013 (gerrit:104525).

Your concerns aren't applicable to current statistics because they're comparing our site's current status with your memories of the old site that weren't the case most of the time. I think if you want the site to succeed you should stop focusing on socializing and more-so contributing— or even better, socialize about contributing like most other successful wikis do rather than talking about Shrek, playing Cards Against Humanity, or about how much they hate Wikia. The problem I see is that almost 100% of the socializing that is happening is unrelated to the site. A good way to change that would be to do more in the primary areas of the site (e.g. in articles and in policy forums) and maybe that would give you some stuff to talk about in chat and in blogs that is actually relevant to the community and the site.

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BerrybrickLegendary Brickipedian

120 months ago

Score 1

Though I'm not a large fan of CAH being linked to in public chat, stale Wikia jokes (though I may do that every once upon a time), and above all: the Shrek references, you can't possibly think people would actually talk about policy in chat?

The social features...we went back and forth on those all the time. You're probably right when you say they are the most hated (I'm not sure what else that could be, probably not even ads). Yes, the content is what attracts visitors, but if they aren't going to edit, then they aren't going to stay. It's pretty much the only way you can have an actual community and not worker drones. I'm half expecting you to reply and state that that is exactly what you want, but I can't get behind that for all the problems I have with activity.

I can't agree with the blog thing either, at least not entirely. Yeah, if a blog's content is awful, it isn't going to get any comments, the same as always, but I really don't feel like even semi-interesting ones get any activity these days. Well, yours does, but it's been linked to in the site message and about a dozen times on chat over the last few days, but you know. \_O_/

(Also, on a side note, the function that shows users in chat never seems to work right for me. It'll say that I'm in chat, when I haven't been since the previous day, among saying that users are in chat when they are not. I don't think it is my skin, either, because DeepSea and Refreshed yield the same results. Maybe my browser?)

AwesomeknightBricktastic

120 months ago

Score 1

1. Yes, it's not what originally made it a hit. And it's not what drove people here. But it's what kept them there. Sure, people complained about it, but mostly old users. 2. Not really. Blogs are hard to navigate. News blogs, which are easy to navigate are dependent on the story, but not non-news ones. 3. I think you might be right on this. 4. Oh, sorry. Maybe it's just not on DeepSea anymore. If it's on refreshed, ignore that part. 5. I barely do CAH things anymore. And Shrek comments are only once in a while. And I NEVER mention hating Wikia.

6. Thanks for commenting, even if I partly disagree with you. This is a discussion that needs to happen.

ToaMeikoHonorable Brickipedian

120 months ago

Score 3

@Berrybrick: Frankly, many wikis establish evergrowing communities without the use of any social features besides talk pages. Wikia is one of the only "social" wiki farms out there, and many wikis that aren't part of a farm don't even have many social features. It's not true that if a user comes to the site through a search and does make an edit that they won't stay— in fact, if they find us in the search, and we're a site that meets what they were looking for, they'll sign up. I see people come to our site or our IRC channel stating how they were looking for a LEGO fan community to be a part of since they're just getting back into the hobby or something. As a recent example, Eraclito signed up for this very reason and he's currently in chat at the time I post this comment. Something I have noticed is people getting driven off shortly after they join. I don't know if something we're doing is causing that or if it's just how the chips fall, but it seems to be common in new users who join chat and there's some irrelevant, non-LEGO related conversation going on at the time. Most-likely these new users were expecting to walk into a LEGO chat and start a conversation but didn't feel they could get a word in. That's my hypothesis.

(Also lol at my original post saying "two things" and then listing four)

BerrybrickLegendary Brickipedian

120 months ago

Score 0

But we don't have one of those communities. And frankly, I think that if you knew how to get one, we would have had it by now....

BerrybrickLegendary Brickipedian

120 months ago

Score 0

(I did only read the first half of that comment because your other one bothered me, but I do agree with the second half. Conversation about LEGO is not conversation about policy. I think that would be just as likely to be a turn off for new users, if not old ones.)

ToaMeikoHonorable Brickipedian

120 months ago

Score 1

Chat shouldn't be conversation about policy (or at least not entirely). However the forums should be where policy is discussed, and only a fraction of the community reads or responds to forum topics unfortunately. It's primarily admins who voice their opinions, which isn't bad, it's just that there are plenty of active non-admins who just aren't reading the forums as would be encouraged of them.

And to be clear I'm not saying chat should only be conversation about LEGO. I just feel when a user comes in (even myself sometimes) looking to converse about LEGO, it is often overshadowed by people doing other things unrelated to the site or to LEGO. Not that that's entirely bad either since everyone should be free to talk about whatever, it's just that I believe honest conversations get overshadowed more often than they should, which could be a cause of us losing new users from time to time.

CJCBricktastic

120 months ago

Score 1

@Whoever, I haven't followed this chain properly - It is clearly possible to grow a community without a chat, since, you know, we had one before chat. But, since chat, its been impossible to remove chat without risking losing the current chat-loving community.

Soupperson1Legendary Brickipedian

120 months ago

Score 1

Everyone would go in a frenzy if we removed chat even though we never try to talk in it :P

NovaHawkLegendary Brickipedian

120 months ago

Score 4

"And the thing for all the blogs a user has made needs to be its own page." - You can make a page called User blog:<insert name here>, and stick in {{BlogListing}}. Not automatic like before, I know, but still it's something.

"And chat needs its own visual thing showing all the users currently on." - doesn't it already have a sidebar?

I'll try to make a blog homepage sometime, maybe using a combination of new blogs, number of votes and number of comments. And I still think we should have a "create blog" link in the sidebar.

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AwesomeknightBricktastic

120 months ago

Score 0

Thanks, that Bloglisting thing helped a lot. It'd be good if that template was in Customs as well, though.

BerrybrickLegendary Brickipedian

120 months ago

Score 2

I can add it there later.

ToaMeikoHonorable Brickipedian

120 months ago

Score 2

@NovaHawk: Is it possible to make {{BlogListing}} automatically placed on pages in the User blog namespace even if the page doesn't exist, similarly to how {{ReviewPage}} is automatically placed on Review pages that haven't been created? It would need to be made where it only appears on the uncreated base page and not on any sub pages, and only display if subpages exist, but I feel like that might be something you could engineer using Semantic MediaWiki.

NovaHawkLegendary Brickipedian

120 months ago

Score 0

Not sure about that, but possibly. I think Jag and/or NXT actually set that up (I know I didn't have a part in it). But the thing is, if we did it that way, wouldn't the any links to blog listings show up as redlinks, meaning people wouldn't click them?

ToaMeikoHonorable Brickipedian

120 months ago

Score 0

I think all you need to do is add something to MediaWiki:noarticletext but I may be wrong. I haven't tried. :P And that's true about redlinks... I have 3 ideas for that:

Ignore the redlink problem, but still include the link to a user's blog "portal" on their SocialProfile header so it's accessible if someone were to look for it
Make the noarticletext page include a category on blog portals and have a bot periodically go and create the page with {{BlogListing}} for pages in that category that exist (this involves programming something, which I'm not sure we'd be able to get anyone to do)
Create a ticket on Wikimedia Phabricator to have the blog portal thing be implemented into Extension:BlogPage upstream. This would involve including some of our other mods to BlogPage we had, such as where it created the page with the user's name as a prefix (like on Wikia), because you've probably noticed blogs aren't doing that anymore since the update.

Option 3 is most favorable but could also take the longest to implement (or could take a short amount of time, you never know).

UltrasonicNXTThinking With Bricks

120 months ago

Score 1

There was a chat sidebar module, but during my recent inactivity it seems to have disappeared. If I have some more spare time I'll look into the blog page thing.

NBP3.0Brick Master

120 months ago

Score 0

Hey, that's me. :D

CJCBricktastic

120 months ago

Score 0

@NBP - serious comment?

SuperSithLordNovice

120 months ago

Score 2

I agree. The social functions are what brought me to Brickia (before Brickimedia).

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BerrybrickLegendary Brickipedian

120 months ago

Score 4

Our chat seems more populated than Brickia's ever is, at least when I've seen it.

I do agree about blogs though.

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AwesomeknightBricktastic

120 months ago

Score 0

Yes, but chat used to be more populated. Before Brickimedia Skype Admin Chat.

BerrybrickLegendary Brickipedian

120 months ago

Score 2

That's a thing? Why am I not a part of that? :P

NovaHawkLegendary Brickipedian

120 months ago

Score 3

^ (not that I use Skype, but I've never heard of it)

AwesomeknightBricktastic

120 months ago

Score 0

Exactly, you two. It's like a clique on the wiki.

ToaMeikoHonorable Brickipedian

120 months ago

Score 2

There is no Brickimedia/Brickipedia Admin Skype Chat to my knowledge. The only chats on Skype I know of are the Brickimedia Skype Group which is a few Brickimedia users and a few other people in the LEGO community, and then the Brickimedia Technical Department Group, which is just some of the sysadmins. Neither are more active than our on-site chat.

Soupperson1Legendary Brickipedian

120 months ago

Score 0

Chat may be populated but there's few conversations

CJCBricktastic

120 months ago

Score 0

Pretty sure you just made "Brickimedia Admin Skype Chat" up, as the only current admin who uses Skype more than once a year (hi) is Meiko, and I doubt he sits and talks to himself.

Soupperson1Legendary Brickipedian

120 months ago

Score 0

If there was even a admin skype chat I'm sure if you asked politely they would let you in. Also most admins wont reveal there names let alone there faces so I don't see how it would make sense if they were all stealing the sites traction.

AwesomeknightBricktastic

120 months ago

Score 0

Oh, and I think you should see the avatar of the user on the top of the blog alongside their name.

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ToaMeikoHonorable Brickipedian

120 months ago

Score 2

This was something that's been present for many months, and was only removed recently because of the recent MediaWiki update. It will be re-implemented as my blog post suggests.

AwesomeknightBricktastic

120 months ago

Score 0

Ah. Thanks.

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