fanlore | Entries tagged with announcements

It was helpfully pointed out to us that the new skin has severe accessibility issues when changing the font size. We're sorry we missed it during our initial testing phase. For the moment we've reverted to the default Vector design until we get this fixed - which we hope will be soon, but could be in a few days.

Thanks to everyone who reported bugs so far! We are working hard to resolve them. Once the changes slow down or by next week we'll make a list of known bugs and some features.

aethel

Dear Fanlore editors and readers,

Finally, after months of work, the MediaWiki upgrade is ready to go live! It is scheduled for Saturday, November 24, at 22:00 UTC. (What time is it where I am?) If everything goes according to plan, there should be no downtime, but you will not be able to edit Fanlore for a short time.

Why the upgrade?
MediaWiki is the software Fanlore and many other wikis, including Wikipedia, are built on. Until now Fanlore was using version 1.15, which is woefully out of date, so we are switching to 1.19. Upgrading will allow us to, for example, install new extensions to better fight spam on the site. For more information about different versions of MediaWiki, you can go here.

Why the new skin?
With the new mediawiki version, we decided to switch our default skin from WordPress to Vector. The WordPress skin is no longer under active development and wasn't meant for this MediaWiki version. Continuing to use it would have meant extensive fixes now and in the future, and we decided against it.

Instead, Natalie (from the OTW's Webmasters committee) and Qem (an AO3 tag wrangler) have very kindly volunteered to customize the CSS to recreate an approximation of Fanlore's old WordPress skin. You will see a few differences: the sections in the sidebar are now collapsible, wikilinks are no longer bolded by default, and the talk page link appears on the left side of the screen. Let us know if anything is broken with the new skin.

To save ourselves much effort, we are only supporting our default skin at this time. It's possible to use a different one, but the formatting might be strange.

Other Changes?
We have removed the bugtracker extension (also no longer supported) and OpenID support.

Problems?
If you discover any bugs or issues, please let us know!

Many Thanks
to Emufarmers, the Systems Committee, astirya, Natalie, and Qem

awils1

Fanlore, at long last, has a Twitter! You can find our informal news updates at

fanlore_news. Feel free to tweet at us your concerns, thoughts, and suggestions -- we'll do our best to reply!

For those of you uninterested in Twitter, fear not: all important updates will proceed through direct email and this Dreamwidth community, as well as being mentioned on the Main Page of the wiki itself. Also, we hope to embed the Twitter feed neatly on the Main Page in the future, if technically possible.

Current Mood: accomplished

helkalantto

Do you edit Fanlore or would you like to do so? Now is the time to learn how. The OTW's Wiki-committee will host an introductory chat to editing Fanlore. The chat is aimed at both current and new editors.

The chat will be held on Saturday May 28 at 4 a.m. UTC (what time is it in my timezone?) in OTW's public chatroom on Campfire. The chatroom can be accessed at https://fanarchive.campfirenow.com/e79cc

Fanlore, a fandom wiki, is devoted to preserving the history of transformative fanworks and the fandoms from which they have arisen.

rbarenblat

We’ve got exciting news: Fanlore is out of beta!

What does this mean? It doesn’t mean that the wiki is “complete” — we’re not sure a wiki is ever complete. (There will always be more to record and remember.) But it does mean that we’re moving into a new phase of our existence.

The Wiki Committee has spent the last two years tinkering with the wiki, drafting policies and FAQ materials, and doing our best to create a structure in which those who want to record the unique histories of transformative fanworks and the fandoms out of which they emerge can do that recording. We think we’ve reached a point where the wiki works fairly well, which means that now we can fling open the doors and encourage more fans to participate in documenting the things they want to remember.

We look forward to continuing to polish and improve the way the wiki works — hopefully with help from all of you who have been a part of the wiki from the beginning, and from those who are just joining us now. If you contributed to the wiki once upon a time, but fell out of the habit, we hope you’ll come back; if you’ve been meaning to contribute, now’s a great time to start. Tell the world! Bring your friends! Fanlore is officially open for business, not in a beta capacity, but for real.