The Future of Monobook on FANDOM

The Oasis skin has been terrible since its first incarnation. Give us a better Monobook alternative if you won't commit the resources needed to make it GDPR-compliant.

Why is Monobook "violating" GDPR? This is a load of horse shit. At least give us a viable alternative that isn't infested by this "Fandom" crap all over the page. I don't need to be linked to some clickbaity crap about DC comics while browsing the Hey Arnold wiki. Give us the Vector skin or something to remove the bar.

You will also remove Monobook from Uncyclopedia-related projects?

What's the EXACT technical reason for ditching Monobook, because based on what it does I am not immediately seeing where it's doing something that 'non-compliant' (Question is prompted by potentially filing a ticket on the WMF phabricator in relation to the core Mediawiki package.)?

In any case Monobook is ancient (with a number of WMF based Mediawiki installs using the Vector skin instead.)

Like the above, I'm interested in the specifics of this. Monobook is obviously old compared to Vector and hasn't received any updates since mw1.19. Nonetheless, I'm confused how something that presents information in a different layout is in violation of the new law when many of the features of monobook are present in Oasis in one form or another.

My question: What will happen to styles and scripts applied to MediaWiki:Common.css and MediaWiki:Common.js???

Should just make monobook the only skin, Oasis is terrible and TOS makes it impossible to modify to something actually workable.

Interesting. I don't see why Monobook would be less GDPR-compliant than Oasis', specially since Monobook has zero social tools (which means zero or almost-zero privacy concerns compared to Oasis').

FANDOOM has a lot of reasons to ditch monobook, being ads and its maintainability probably the most important ones. But GDPR? Come on

This, however, no longer affects me, since I don't edit here anymore :)

Good luck!

I'm also interested in knowing how a specific MediaWiki skin is somehow violating privacy laws in ways that the obnoxious ad-ridden default skin isn't

e: Wikipedia / Wikimedia don't seem to be changing or removing Monobook despite their privacy policy having been last updated in 2014, so I'm really having trouble understanding this decision.

Could you at least say why?

There are two primary ways in which Monobook could not be made compliant:

1. The data tracking used in Monobook is not compliant with the GDPR regulations.

2. The technical systems that were set up to make FANDOM GDPR-compliant are based on the default skin, and we would have to build duplicate versions of those systems specific to Monobook and then run those systems in parallel with one another.

Please keep in mind that FANDOM forked from MediaWiki in summer 2016, meaning that while MediaWiki remains a core component of our site's architecture, our code is constantly evolving and diverging from "vanilla" MediaWiki. We have additional needs - advertising partners, additional features, caching requirements - that are drastically different than a basic MediaWiki site. As such, we could not simply adopt whatever changes the Wikimedia Foundation will do to support their skins. We would have had to build the framework to fit our own needs.

This same rationale means that no alternative will be offered to replace Monobook. Any other MediaWiki skin, such as Vector, would have had the same GDPR issues on our network.

We are looking at consolidating the custom CSS/JS files now that we will only have the default FANDOM (Oasis) skin. We will update the community when that happens, but we do not anticipate communities needing to do any changes manually at this time.

Monobook will be removed as the default skin from the small number of communities that were using that skin as such. It will be removed on May 25th, the same date as it will be removed as a personal preference.

So you want people to stick with an ad-riddled garbage dump of a default skin? Do you know how much people hate FANDOM's annoying clickbait? This reeks of "we're not removing this because it violates GDPR, we're removing this because we only want FANDOM to be the focus and Wikia comes second and we're desperate to get clicks off people"

TL;DR

We don't want to do it

#DontRemoveMonobook

In all seriousness, why remove Monobook, just because of some *bad word* law? I don't see the point at all.

If you want to remove Monobook, how about making an alternative skin for it, like putting Vector instead of Monobook?

@Zeether77 - At least 2 other sites I've had TOS updates from, now have a page asking me which ad providers I want to share 'activity data' with. Naturally I opted out of sharing with a vast number of ad-provider names I didn't recognise :). The advertising has to be on Wikia, as it's the business model which funds Fandom/Wikia, so ...

Just FYI that I've written w:c:dev:PseudoMonobook, which gives Oasis a sidebar.

For the technically-inclined, exactly which data tracking are you referring to? I'm not aware of any such behavior in *any* of the stock MediaWiki skins, unless this is something Fandom has inserted themselves for the purpose of displaying ads, etc...

I’ve only really used Oasis, but it does feel a bit unfair to Monobook users to cut support for the skin when it’s perfectly possible to keep it compliant with GDPR. How difficult would it actually be to keep the two versions running? I feel like this change will push away many long-standing users who have always edited with Monobook more than anything else.

Is your extension compatible with the core Oasis skin changes that were mentioned? Also there should be a preference option for the positioning for where the 'sidebar' goes... be it left,right or top.

It makes Oasis look like Monobook, so yeah.

We use data tracking for analytics and advertising purposes - as outlined in our Privacy Policy and our Terms of Use. As mentioned in the general GDPR thread, those policies will change as well with this law's rollout and you will receive emails and notifications regarding those changes.

Frankly I'm supprised this hasn't been done sooner. I've always used monobook and I'll be sad to see it go but it has been here for a long time where other companies would have cut support for it ages ago.

I'm sure wikia has the stats on who uses monobook and that was used to form the decision. If I were them I'd weigh that against the estimated time a project like this would take, bearing in mind that the skin may need to be worked on again in the future. Honestly the reason it's been here this far is probably because something like this hasn't come up before now

Thank you for this, this actually makes Oasis usable.

But the thing is we now have to convince everyone working on a Wikia to add this. Or am I getting something wrong?

It would be as simple as removing your tracking code from your already forked monobook code :)

Uncyclopedia is a Wikipedia's parody, so they should be able to use similar skin. Should they trying to move outside FANDOM? Will you remove/redirect uncyclopedia.wikia.com after that?

Help:Personal CSS and JS

Uncyclopedia already forked before, and they didn't removed the leftovers, nor allowed linking to the fork. This is how things go usually here. And frankly, those users that decided not to fork were already warned that something like this would happen sooner or later, which was the main reason to fork.

If you want to remove Monobook, give us an alternative. Simple. Oasis is some kind of cruel joke.

I don't know how this situation will be handled, but in the past, when a wiki wanted to migrate out of Wikia, they were only allowed to fork. Which in simple terms can be described as copy-pasting the wiki into a new place, and just existing two versions of the same wiki updating independently from each other after that moment.

Oh, really? I wrote it from the perspective of the polish version of Uncyclopedia, which isn't forked yet. From this perspective, removing MB is no sense.

Oasis is some kind of cruel joke... as my english skills ;)

It was not about Wikia “allowing” forks. It was about Wikia waging a full scale SEO war every time a wiki moved to a stand-alone installation. See Touhou Wiki and WoWwiki as the most triumphant examples of this.

Thanks, didn't know this was a thing. At least this makes stuff pretty clean.

I would guess that just updating the Monobook to be GDPR-compliant would be easier. So the answer to that is probably not.

I'm not sure if this has been done (or not done in this case) on purpose, but TimmyQuivy, when leaving a note in the Sitenotice of the uncyclopedia wikis, is not updating the MediaWiki:Sitenotice id, despite me sending him a reminder about that before his last edit on that wiki. This means the sitenotice will remain hidden for those users that already dismissed it.

For those that don't know, changes to "MediaWiki:Sitenotice id" cause the sitenotice to appear again for those users that have dismissed it.

Truthfully, it's been a long time since we touched Sitenotice, so the id element was not discussed in the quick communication plan we created. Administrators are free to bump the ID if they feel the need to.

Gotta have more ad clicks!!

What`s about Uncyclopedia-like projects? Like Nonsensopedia? (poland)

But Wikipedia uses what appears to be the same layout, so would Wikipedia have to completely alter their layout?

Edit: If there is code that tracks people that violates those terms then just simply remove some of it.

In simple words: no Monobook for anyone. Uncyclopedias will be on Oasis.

No. Wikimedia and Wikia are different things.

I'm very aware of that.

^ Wikipedia uses Vector, which is kinda similar to Monobook.

I hope this means more work can go into improving the end-user and administrator experiences on wikis, now that there won't be a secondary skin competing for maintenance.

In that case why not just use MediaWiki's dozens of built-in rendering/UI hooks to do the same thing without having to directly modify every available skin? That's literally what they're there for.

Because I doubt MediaWiki has sophisticated performance and/or analytics tracking baked in, of course. Said hooks haven't cut it for a long time, considering the social tools and ad stuff in particular. FANDOM's using SOA to simplify their architecture instead.

This is dumb. I hate the Oasis/Wikia/whatever it's called skin. It loads slower on mobile devices and looks ugly. I always use the "Monobook" skin because it's leaner and resembles Wikipedia more.

dont kill Monobook skin or i will vandalize all user pages on this wiki

as a warning shot i vandalized my own user page now

A garbage excuse to use a garbage skin.

I don't think vandalizing people's pages is a good idea, no matter your reasons.

WikiDex is joining as another example of this.

Honestly, this wasn't that unexpected. I've heard rumors about this since a few months ago and if the numbers I've heard floating around are correct, then it's indeed no surprise that the skin is being removed. However, like always, Wikia somehow manages to screw up the announcement, upsetting the max amount of people. As I see it, there are two scenarios here:

1. Monobook is actually in violation of GDPR. Fixing it up to speed would be an undue burden on the technical team. I'll give it a 10% probability. For one, Monobook is only used by logged-in users so they're not served advertisements at all. One would think this would reduce the complexity of any tracking. I'm also pretty sure that fixing this wouldn't be rocket science, no matter how complicated you portray it to be. Then again, considering bugs that appear simple take quite literally years to fix, I wouldn't be surprised if the technical team consists of one person whose job is to create the maximum amount of new buzzy features before abandoning them. Even if this was the case, GDPR didn't strike like lightning from the sky - 5 days heads-up is absolutely unacceptable. Disgraceful. Almost like you wanted to avoid flak.

2. Monobook isn't in violation of GDPR. Wikia has probably been looking for an excuse to get rid of Monobook for ages, and GDPR happened to come around just perfectly. I'm honestly not sure if this is the better of the two options, but considering Wikia's track record, it sounds more likely than option number 1. In either case, you're lying to us.

This probably reads very salty and bitter. But that's exactly what I am. This is yet another move in unintentedly disenfranchising veteran power users. But then again, as a monopoly in the niche, there are zero repercussions. However, all good things must come to an end and when the time comes for Wikia to be replaced by a competitor, I'll be there and say "I told you so." Cheers and have a great day.

The fact FANDOM did not choose to disclose this until now, with only a few days left for Monobook users (such as myself), without providing an alternative, all the while making the Oasis skin look more and more unbearable to use shows how little they care for more traditional wikis. I've always used Monobook and found ways to use it optimally even when it was no longer supported by FANDOM. Now that there will soon be no other choice but the default skin, I'm at a crossroads on whether I should continue using FANDOM as an editor or not. This latest decision is giving more reasons for me and my community to migrate to an alternative wiki farm service.

After all I don't see how Monobook is violation of GDPR and then I'm agree with Ciencia and Xd1358. But if it should be removed why don't repleaced it with Vector skin? It couldn't be very bad after all. I also often used Monobook as well, so this could be pretty sad for Monobook users such as myself anyway.

Inciclopedia admins are happy about this decision and having 4 days for the logistics :)

I knew I should have expected this... but if that hack provided northward isn't adequate (I haven't gotten it to work on the wiki I use most), I will have to stop using all Wikia wikis, including the one I admin (where I'm the only active admin AFAICT). Oasis doesn't play nice with my disability (it's just got a lot going on and a lot of options hidden in dropdowns... stuff you couldn't fix without overhauling the whole skin), and in the past it hasn't played nice with my computer, either. (I've had it disabled so long I don't know how it plays now.) Without a usable alternative, I am completely unable to work through my editing duties long-term.

Four days is not enough time. It's often (though weirdly less as of late) that I get exasperated with your handling of Monobook issues, but it's actually rather rare that I get openly, publicly exasperated. I'm appalled.

(Extra note: This is petty, but I'm extra upset it's getting removed on my birthday. XP)

Is it being replaced by another skin, or will Oasis be the only one?

According to what's been said throughout the thread, "anything that could work like Monobook would have the same problems" (which... really doesn't make sense to me but whatever).

So no, it'll just be Oasis.

As the senior editor (old timer) on Uncyclopedia at Wikia this removal of the monobook skin is terrible news without a viable replacement. I like that we are given three days notice for this change! I checked Uncyclopedia in the other Wikia skins - it looks ghastly. Also by abandoning the look of Wikipedia, Uncyclopedia will now look no different from any other Fandom site here. I hope there is another solution to this otherwise it looks like people being forced to abandon a skin that has worked well enough for 15 years. Think again! 

As an add. Uncyclopedia has a default skin (different from Monobook). Is that going as well?? 

Shame.

...Hmm, actually, is it possible to geo-restrict a skin? Since GDPR is an EU regulation, why not just restrict EU users from using Monobook the way you can notify them about cookies?

I understand that's probably way too difficult. (EDIT: And considering the slightly-higher-understanding I think I just gained via reading, it might not be compliant anyway.) I just wanted to get the idea out of my head and "on paper".

After reading all of today’s comments, I want to address some of the questions and concerns being addressed by multiple people with one larger reply.

Skin architecture changes are required as part of GDPR - The way that the site and the default skin were architectured prior to this week were not GDPR-compliant. As a result, we had to make changes specifically relating to analytics tracking systems, ad-related cookies, and username/profile display. This includes the Oasis skin, Mobile skin, Discussions, Apps, etc which are all built using our Service Oriented Architecture and systems that have been significantly modernized since Monobook stopped being supported. Monobook, as it exists on FANDOM, is not maintained within those systems.

The Engineering Cost of Maintaining Monobook Is Subsequently Too High - As such, Monobook’s removal is not because it was the only skin that needed (it wasn’t), but rather the technical cost of updating it now and the maintenance requirements of keeping it updated later were unsupportable given that it is outside the realms of our current Service-Oriented Architecture. Our Engineering team has been working around the clock in recent weeks to update multiple parts of the site to handle the requirements of this new law.

Our Monobook Is Not the Same As Vanilla Monobook - There has been a misperception in this thread that Monobook works fine elsewhere so it should work fine here on FANDOM. While we have tried to keep Monobook close to the vanilla skin found in a basic MediaWiki installation, we have had to do multiple changes to the base format in order to serve our business purposes. This is the same reason we can not offer an alternative skin like Vector. It likewise would need additional work (and long-term support) to make usable on our network.

We Have Made (And Delivered) A Long-Term Improvement To Our Default Skin - Throughout the last year, we've highlighted multiple changes to the default skin to address persistent user concerns over the skin in its previous iterations. On desktop this resulted in a 30% decrease in the advertisements per-page, 46% decrease in page load times, and a redesign in page headers. You can read more about the entire process here. Some of the complaints we've heard about the default skin on this thread are based on perceptions developed years ago in initial rollout of the skin. We are an iterative company - we have Engineering and Product team dedicated specifically to improving the skin. It will continue to improve in certain areas as long as we have feedback and analytics we can use to measure performance.

I never understood the love of Monobook. I'm not a huge fan of Oasis, but I've never found the arguments in favor of Monobook to be compelling and I still don't.

That said, the whole reason for this change is the fork from trunk MediaWiki. It was probably mistake then and is looking like an even bigger mistake as time goes on.

"We've mutilated MediaWiki so badly that in the interest of continuing to optimally Monetize® your FANDOM® Content®, we had to jettison what was supposed to be a purely cosmetic and quality-of-life option so that it wouldn't suddenly be illegally invasive, and we're also announcing this literally 3-4 days in advance. Have fun!"

Your long term improvements probably have increased the speed as far as I can tell through short term occasional uses (much like how I bet you'll eventually get to adding useful features like highlighting and text formatting to Discussions so that argument against Discussions won't be valid). But I do still stand by my own mention about my disability still not playing nice with it, because that is based on its current architecture and I don't need to hang around in the skin for 20 minutes straight to be sure.

I do want to add that while I have a sentimental attachment to Monobook in specific (it was my first skin, over on Wikipedia), my anger is largely at losing usability I find in that skin that I (personally, this won't be everyone's story) hit barriers to in Oasis and that there's only four days' notice for it. I would be just as angry if we were losing something like Vector... even though I really don't like Vector.

Tim, that's an awful lot of words to say that your overlord bosses at FANDOM basically want to ruin the user experience for all of us. Anyone want to see if there's a way to set up an alternative wiki site with the ability to migrate from here so nobody should have to bother with clickbait?

I understand the reasons behind the decision and accept that this probably had to be done. But the communication policy has been extremely poor. Two years were the deadline given by the EU to meet the GDPR, and we get notified of this decision 4 days before it's effective.

No time to adapt our templates, infoboxes and other content that was designed with Monobook in mind and that might not fit with the Oasis skin. It is evident that now the deadline is imminent and cannot be delayed, but there was really margin to advance such a relevant decision.

This service is not just the engineers and the company behind it, which makes a lot and we're grateful for the efforts, it's also the content creators that put effort every day in making useful and entertaining content. This people is also doing efforts to adapt the content and the designs to the platform, and they also need their time to make sure everything will work properly for such a big change. Definitely not something that we should be warned about 4 days in advance, knowing that there was much more time to get it ready.

We'll cope with it, but I do have to express my disappointment with the communication regarding this issue.

Citrusellaeditswikis, I'm genuinely sorry to hear about this issue with user experience on our site. If you're comfortable sharing, we'd certainly like to understand about what disabilities you are facing and discuss what we can do to help mitigate them, if you reach out to us so we can protect your privacy. We do try to make our site as accessible to people as possible, as evidenced by our work a few months ago to improve the user experience for those with colorblindness. Unfortunately, without getting feedback from individuals with accessibility needs, we have a hard time understanding what additional measures we can take.

In the meanwhile, a free, no-ads hosting service (which I'm not mentioning because we have too much freedom of speech) based on the latest version of MediaWiki, and which offers at least 5 different skins including both Mobobook and Vector, is noticing users the following:

Due to the GDPR, we will have to enable CookieWarning on all sites. Starting on the 25 May 2018 we will enable this extension globally.

That's it. They must be wizards.

I see two things happening here that have happened every time a big change happens on FANDOM:

1. Old-timers who are absolutely resistant to change cannot cope with a single pixel being out of place from what they were used to 10 years ago. This needs to change; some of the users in this thread need to grow up and stop assuming everything coming out of corporate is a lie. There are many modifications people can make to the colors, images, and layout on Oasis through Special:ThemeDesigner. Someone said "I just looked at our wiki in Oasis and it looks terrible"... well yeah, that's because you never bothered to work on it. Figures were provided months ago that indicated LESS THAN 1% of all people using FANDOM use the Monobook skin. Even if it wasn't for GDPR, this was inevitable at some point and you guys need to accept that fact. You've had many, many years to join the rest of us who are working with FANDOM to improve Oasis with our feedback and our designs.
2. FANDOM has no idea how to make an announcement or to prepare its volunteer administrators with enough time to meet certain demands. This needs to change; FANDOM Staff (I'm talking to the people behind Tim, not only Tim himself), you have got to realize that giving your users LESS THAN A WEEK to match your announcement is appalling and absurd. There are many templates to fix; there's a lot of CSS and JS code modifications to port over in some cases; infoboxes render completely differently; there's a whole host of different MediaWiki messages that the admins have to get accustomed to now; they need to design a new wordmark; and that's not even touching any of the articles that have been written and coded with Monobook in mind. You guys should have realized that you didn't have the resources to update Monobook to comply with GDPR months ago, according to Timmy talking about updating Oasis, etc. to comply. I highly doubt the decision to retire Monobook was finalized one week ago. Wake up and realize that your wiki admins are volunteers with personal lives, jobs, school, and more. You need to give these guys way more time than this to adapt. Five days is horrific.

FYI TimmyQuivy is just the messenger... Most likely, he was somewhat blindsided also, just less than the rest of us. So, please try to keep that in mind.

Fandom upper management, who hide behind their good spokespeople like TimmyQuivy and Kirkburn, are the real culprits. It would be nice to get a message from them every once in a while.

Completely agree with SlyCooperFan1 and Fandyllic .

By parts: it's very likely that the only remaining communities using Monobook are mostly Uncyclopedia projects for the fact they try to imitate the Wikipedia look and feel, as we're the most reluctant ones to this change as it would break part of our fun, but I do understand business is business. Completely agree on the part that the administrators should have been warned with more time, as I already expressed in my comment. And finally, definitely someone responsible on this decision should at least receive this feedback and take it into notice for the next time they decide to make decisions unilaterally and give no margin of response to the community.

The issues in 2013 were about content warnings, not skins. 

...Can I give Fandyllic's message more than one kudos? XP

It's just a bit too busy and has a lot of stuff organized/laid out in ways I need to spend far too much time trying to follow (i.e. inside dropdowns (like, such that I have trouble finding the option I need even though I know which dropdown it's in and have gone into that dropdown three times already), etc.) in order to get anything done. I hadn't "officially" gone through an avenue like that both because I really am pretty open about how my disability affects things like this (even if I'm private about other things related to my disability :P) and also because (other than the fact that before now, Monobook worked out for me) I really didn't think you guys could make changes to the skin that would work for that kind of thing without... basically redesigning the whole skin. *shrug* (I can't even think of personal CSS changes I could try to make past that thing someone did upthread. Which I'm still having trouble getting to work, hmm. May need to ask someone about that past what I've already asked, too. 0_o)

I'll think about going through the contact page, though. I feel like that was suggested to me once upon a time, but it either didn't result in changes or it was suggested to me but I forgot to actually do it. XP

I also want to talk about the amount of communication time given before Monobook’s retirement. For most site changes we aim to give a few weeks of lead time whenever possible, even if the feature is unsupported like Monobook. But given that this is not a normal feature retirement and is based around active development regarding a law that has a firm deadline for compliance (this Friday), it’s a decision that came down to the wire.

While this law’s deadline has been in place for a while, its practical legal implementations and nuances have been debated and refined by companies across the globe over the last few months. As such, industry-wide, most of the legwork has been done in recent weeks because additional clarity has been provided. That’s why web users are continuing to see privacy policy update emails being sent from websites even now, and will continue to throughout this week.

At FANDOM, with our legal and technical questions addressed, we’ve worked in the last few months to ensure that we are compliant. We’ve had a prioritized list of tasks that needed to be done in order to ensure full site compliance. As we’ve gone through those tasks, we’ve tried to find ways to make our instance of Monobook compliant in a way that didn’t require a Herculean effort to begin supporting Monobook as part of our services architecture. As time went on, and more and more tasks were added to ensure that we are compliant and with deadlines fast approaching, it became clear that it was not possible to do that. Once that became clear, we made the decision late last week to retire Monobook as our only realistic path forward.

With the decision being recent, overall GDPR communication being written, and translations needed for internationalization purposes, today was the earliest day we could practically announce this decision to the community as a whole. This is an unusual circumstance, and thus it stands to reason that the communication strategy is a bit out of the norm, but it was announced as soon as we could announce it.

Well, yeah, because they won't let you set monobook as default for a wiki. It's not exactly a fair comparison.

Hinting at contentious internal deliberations does admins no good, unfortunately.

If Fandom knew a possible outcome of deliberations would be removing the Monobook skin, it should have been announced as soon as that was known, which I suspect was at least a month ago. Also, Monobook should have been official deprecated soon after the fork from MediaWiki trunk with a warning that it would be removed for reasons other than GDPR, which there are plenty.

We don't announce "maybes" that could end up resulting in nothing. That creates anxiety about a change that might not end up happening. We only announce feature changes when decisions are final, and the decision was final as of last week.

I'm afraid that's not going to happen.

I'm afraid that's what they did. They would have told you sooner, had they known sooner.

So, which set of CSS/JS will be supported once Monobook gets removed?

• Common.js and Common.css
• Wikia.js and Wikia.css
• Common.js and Wikia.css

? Also, are you planning an update to the Ace editor in the near future? Editing code pages is going to be literally impossible through mobile.

Also, when are we going to get more news about all the changes Wikia had to make to be GDPR-compliant or is there already an announcement I missed?

They shared some information in a forum post earlier.

That would all make sense, if the current strategy created less anxiety... I'm not sure you can present evidence that Fandom's strategy shows that. You merely created intense anxiety at a different time.

I feel for admins who committed a bunch of time to make their Monobook skin work as good as possible. This is pretty big screw.

For now, all those combination should work fine. Two years ago or so we enabled Common.css to apply to the default skin for all wikis that don't use Wikia.css and enabled that configuration upon request. We will look at further consolidation as we move forward.

Yes, the Ace Code Editor is a priority once the GDPR engineering work is complete.

You really think we're stupid, don't you?

Who?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v6cn0mLJVZY

If it's about tracking code, then you can just import the original Monobook from MediaWiki-WMF, which doesn't include tracking code.

Was there any point in posting that?

I mean, it's a little blunt, but that person's not the first person to express feelings in this thread.

What are you saying?

Yes well, that's how I felt when I'd just put together some CSS to make threaded forums blend in better with the rest of the wiki, only to discover that Wikia was announcing that threaded forums would one day be replaced with Discussions.

From my summation of that video with my sound off, I was trying to suggest that person had an emotional point to posting that, even if they didn't have a logical one.

I've been using MonoBook before Oasis, when it was the default skin to WIkipedia. I have always prefered using it.

I can't properly describe how angry I am at this news that won't make me banned for vulgar behavior.

The very least replace it with an appropriate replacement such as Vector skin.

Their excuse is that any skin that could replicate Monobook would present them the same logistical needs that they don't want to have to put in work/time/money to meet.

Then don't remove MonoBook! Why is it regarded wrong NOW and not the 13 years they've been using it? This is bullcrud! I've been browsing wiki's with MonoBook longer than Wikia itself! (Technically true given Wikipedia was the go to encyclopedia of culture at the time.)

MonoBook was originally Wikipedia's skin, so why not replace it with Vector now?

Because the regulation going into effect Friday is new, and the tracking they want to have in the skin isn't allowed in its current form under that law for citizens of the EU and they don't want to invest in updating it.

That's why it's wrong now, but it could be made un-wrong but they don't want to spend the time or money to do it.

Dammit EU this is why we're brexiting! So we don't have to put up with this crud pressed on everybody else!

And if FANDOM doesn't want to invest effort into appealing to it's older audience then is that the kind of directive the community needs? It's unfair to expect everyone to take change without considering if they even want to.

Heck I'm not saying they should make a replacement from scratch, just adapt Wikipedia's Vector skin. The fact MonoBook was based on wikipedia's old skin is what gave it it's charm.

In fact if it wasn't for Wikipedia we probably never would had Wikia to begin with.

Well, it certainly wouldn't be MediaWiki based considering the history of Mediawiki. ;D

Oh, piss off you Europhobic git… Is that why you are Ready Brek-ing? Nothing to do with your xenophobia & desire to chase magical unicorns…

The reality is the new laws are a good thing & GDPR will apply even to the precious isolated UK. As it relates to any company that operates in the EU, which Wikia certainly does.

Stop having such a hissy fit over someone trying to finally give us some control over our data. Or is that 'taking back control' in a way you dislike?

Regarding this thread's original post... The reality is if it does not comply with the policies on not tracking people… That is your fault not the EU’s & to pass on the blame lazily to said organisation is pathetic. You are playing the game morons like Boris Johnson do. It is smegging pathetic of you Wikia & you know it.

well this thread has taken a turn

As much as it bugs me that the Monobook skin is being discontinued, the EU is definitely not to blame! The new GDPR regulation is an overall good thing, and will finally allow people some level of control over their information (despite what the tracking/advertising companies may think…) online.

Calm down people, this has pretty much nothing to do with EU regulations because I know of wiki farms that will comply to the new regulations without killing Monobook/Vector. Wikia just chose to give up on wikis that are not fit to their business model, too bad such wikis were started on Wikia because it used the same software and skin of Wikipedia. That's the point.

...isn't that worse than EU regulations?

I mean, it would mean Wikia are just lying shits that only wants to push their own, advertisement-laden skin onto everyone of their users and doesn't care about any other skin but their own one, and that they only kept Monobook for so long because they couldn't find any petty, shitty reason to remove it.

Ads. Its ads aren't up-to-date, and updating it would require either removing them or tons of work. And you would rather delete the whole thing than serve it without ads. Even though the only people who can switch it on for their own use are people who were told the ads would go away when they signed up.

For context, Monobook isn't even my preference. I just use it because since Monaco disappeared it's been the only choice left that isn't complete garbage.

For me, there are 2 issues with this:

• There are bugs that exist in Oasis but don't exist in Monobook, such as the code editor misdisplaying the cursor location.
• This eliminates choices for the user. We had 2 desktop skins, and now we only have one.

These warnings you implant into Wikia webs are containing an invalid link. :/

I do get it. Wikia-Fandom is a business and a change of name and ownership (see wikipedia's entry for the details) and they want maximise profits etc. I don't know or understand the tech stuff required to make a techinical judgement but the default wikia skin is off putting to me. Also, as the current top active admin at Uncyclopedia - a website that has been active since 2005 - this change if it goes ahead without any tweaks will break the 'look' of the site as an imitation of Wikipedia. To be charitable to the people here, perhaps they hadn't fully understood the law change from the EU and then only realised it would affect their business here. 

Man things have just steadily taken bad turns, and seemingly right when I decided to get back into editing. While I often view things in Oasis just so I know what others will see on my wiki, editing in Monobook was just so much easier and streamlined. Just another thing to push me away :/

I enjoy editing in the "code" of Monobook as well. I'm more used to it.

I just realized this thread is titled "The future of Monobook". I mean, lol.

Personally, I don't use Monobook, but this seems to be a slap in the face to those who do.

Hahah...Do we have a choice? It's the Henry Ford joke...every colour available..in black. 

No, it's nothing to do with our over-stocked hospitals, more immigration than our country can handle, country's own laws be messed with to compensate for EUs interest, places pressed with changes in culture that they are not ready for or the fact that when the Union itself can't budget that all countries have to chip in even if it's inconveniant for their own economy, nothing to do with that. But if it makes you feel any better you can call it "xenophobia" for putting the needs of your own people first if others are showing up just to bum off immigration benefits then by all means, It's cruel to turn away people who need sanctuary but if the said sanctuary is already full then it'll perhaps do more harm than good to let the needy in. My country chose brexit because of the more harm than good EU posed for Britain. Brexit was years a go and EU still haven't let us go. Some countries are just impractical to welcome in half the world. Britain is smaller than Japan and the japanese are barely struggling with overpopulation. Sure Britain once haan empire that took up 2/3 of the world until "Wind of Change" when Britain realised it was more trouble than it worth.

Also, GDPR is a EU regulation (EU) 2016/679 which to sum it up "If you want us to protect your data, you must abide by our Internet feng shui" in which data is monitored, collected and controlled for the safety of the people. Being a regulation, not a directive, means EU can enforce it without the need for national governments to pass.

The GDPR link in original post is not working for me so I have to read Wikipedia's article on it. I'll admit I can't get my head around most of the jargon but by the sound of it it sounds like it mostly emphasizing "control and monitoring of personal information" which honestly sounds less like a privilege if you ask me.

I mean it's suppose to give users freedom and protection of their essential data online, in yet it is regulated that national governments must abide with and Wikia can't be bothered to make MonoBook acceptable for it. My bias and affection for MonoBook totally asside thats a few red flags for me.

As much as I didn't use Monobook that often, it's very sad to see it go. And I can definitely see why everyone disagrees with the change.

As a bureaucrat of the french version of uncyclopedia (la désencyclopédie) I share your concern : how could we still exist with a so different appearance ? The "Wikipedia-looking" aspect is the core of our community, and all of this give us only four days to say goodbye, without any possibilty to keep our identity.

What really sucks is that you can't apply wiki-wide edits to your Oasis skin to make it more Monobook-like without violating the TOS. Because then your wiki identity is sort of gone twice-over. :(

Try out c:dev:PseudoMonobook. It makes Oasis resemble to Monobook. However, it is for personal use only.

Misspelled. It's PseudoMonobook. Also, it isn't supposed to be used wiki-wide.

It'd be easier to say you don't want to support two skins and that you're trying 'encourage' people to switch to Oasis.

I couldn't even load the page linking to this GDPR claim.

I edited that myself before you said that.

As pointed out here, that's because a lot of want to access it. It's not a FANDOM page.

Talk about verbose…The hospitals are not ‘overstocked’. There is not more immigration than we can handle & the majority of it comes from outside of the EU. Our laws are not messed with, we make them alongside our pals across Europe. “Changes in culture” Do you mean people living here of a skin colour you dislike because of your prejudices? It makes me feel better to call you what you are… Why are you not happy to own it? “…our people…” Talk about supremacism… Why not give us the Generation Identity pitch now?

The union handles its budget fine. The misery comes from policy spewed by folks like you, it is Westminster that cares not for anything but itself, not Brussels. Wut? We should not care for those fleeing war, because hell… Look how 'full' the Shetland Islands are. Nope. It is a thing we have an exempt from with EU policies, we take hardly any refugees due to people like you.

Your country… Who said you owned it? It is going to upset you but I was born here & in England. :O Lawl, article 50 process son, of which we had a big role in crafting. :P

I will take your word for it that it was ‘a go’, which sounds like Engrish from Japan. :P Or rather Gammonsville, Question Time Audience Town. Ha-ha, winds of change… Did it do much for the so-called Windrush Generation? These who got on boats to help rebuild Britain, after the wars caused by the very nationalism you spew? Nah, the country deports its own citizens, that is how smegging lovely it is.

My biggest problem with you is this... You & I, are not worse or better than anyone else in the world. It is bit-ish exceptionalism. What Ready Brek is about, is taking our ball home & saying, “I am not going to play anymore, as I am too special.”

Your precious newspeak word is bollocks & not going to happen, keep Britain in Europe! What matters are people, not countries or flags, woe betide you your life must be shite to have loyalty to them over people.

Why has this thread derailed into a politics platform? Let's try to keep the subject on-topic, people. If you must argue, do it elsewhere.

Exactly. How did we move from Monobook's removal into politics in the first place?

It is due to the My Little Pony avatar banging on about why he was Ready Brek-ing. Not to mention that Wikia is blaming the EU for something which is its own fault. They refuse to rewrite the Monobook skin & take out all the nastiness from it, then point the finger at the EU. Not unlike many people in Britain do about anything that ever goes wrong.

I have said my piece though & it is enough, challenging the rise of hate matters more than staying on topic sometimes.

It has gone off topic. While me and Lift disagree on EU by our own perspectives, I agree with Lift on one thing, why can't FANDOM be bothered to fix MonoBook for it? Granted perhaps a quarter or so users prefer MonoBook (I dunno the wiki databases to check) but it still a popular skin for some that Wikia kept since it's roots.

What further upsets me about it is how abrupt Wikia are about this. Not even a month or a fornight to mull it over, just three days.

Regardless how we feel about EU, can't FANDOM just fix it?

^ Actually, only 250-500 users have it as their preferred skin, and there's pretty like 15 of these users complaining to the staff about this.

Honestly, FANDOM could've just used a better alternative for Monobook: Vector, which is the skin Wikipedia is currently using.

I will admit, thats less that I thought given I imagine Wikia with millions of users (not including non-registered guests who just browse the articles.) But I understood I was part of the minority but still appreciated Wikia chose to keep the skin for all these years when they could of gone "New is better, old is gone."

And while I would miss MonoBook, a replacement skin based on MonoBook like vector would be apprecated.

You're overselling it. Last figures (admittedly from 2015) were more like one percent or less. The number of wikis that use Monobook as a standard is about 15 (no percentage), I think mostly Uncyclopedia variants. From a purely business standpoint, they'd lose money if they had to allocate hours to reactivate support and then update the BTS stuff, and then continue support. It would suck away resources for minimal to no gain.

They dropped support ages ago, it was inevitable that they'd drop the whole thing eventually. Could've used an earlier warning, but it's water under the bridge now.

Mystic Monkey, the policy has an extremely short time to come into compliance. Staff simply didn't have enough time to make both desktop skins compliant. Monobook was actually scheduled to die later this year. Given that there wasn't enough time to update a skin they don't make money off of, Staff simply decided to sunset it. I'm sad Monobook is dying, but I can understand why it happened.

In summary, they couldn't fix it because there wasn't enough time to fix something that was going to be deleted anyway.

It couldn't be selectable only the Default Wikia skin, but also an alternative, I guess. An alternative version that could be stay near as Monobook. I mean a skin like this as I hardly think that Wikia still want to support Monaco skin again. :-/

I don't mean to oversell it, I was aware MonoBook users are the minority, though suprised less than I figured.

But I still don't understand why MonoBook can't be twiddled to be compliance with this GDPR bullcrud? They don't have to make MonoBook covered in adverts or all the bells and whistles that Oasis have, just make it acceptable for GDPR.

It is extremely, unfairly short. I know MonoBook is old and dated but I figured Wikia found it harmless to stay. The only "damage" I see it doing to FANDOMs interest is that 200 so people are not putting up with as much adverts with the other million users. If people want to live in the stone age, let them, it's nice to know those people can join the modern age when they feel ready.

If it has something to do with coding is it really too much for FANDOM to have one guy just twiddle MonoBooks skin coding to be acceptable to GDPR and leave it at that?

Yikes! I guess I am so used to looking at Uncyclopedia without links to malware (like MacKeeper), this comes as a shock. I will be happy to create articles that bite off the nose, hands, feet anything else that comes in handy to deter advertisers. 

I'm not sure that's accurate. I'm pretty sure I count more than 15 individuals in this thread alone upset with the decision, for various reasons from the petty to the political to the pertinent. XP

I know about it (I finally managed to get it to work late last night). I was specifically addressing the post immediately preceding mine which seemed to be describing a wiki which presumably was one with Monobook allowed as default.

Wikia fails to communicate once again :( It's just so pathetic to see

It's an ingrained habit from the wise ones in San Francisco. We're all FAN-DOOMED!!

Indeed. We should all follow WikiDex's example and call it FANDOOM to differentiate it from all the actual good Fandoms out there stained by this corrupted company's presense.

You're welcome to Uncyclopedia to create an article about the evils of Fandoom. 

http://uncyclopedia.wikia.com/wiki/Wikia or https://en.uncyclopedia.co/wiki/Wikia will do nicely.

T

Aha, I am aware there is an article in existence. An updated one the talks about Fandoom would be interesting. 

Marquii wrote:

It's definitely GDPR, it's in no way related to this...

This is actually nothing new, although rather infrequent, based on my experience.

Yes because someone else was using that [link] to express their feelings towards this post. I'm only the messenger.

Oasis is UNUSABLE. Half the width of my screen is wasted with white space and a "trending" garbage column, and there's the "fan feed" garbage to the bottom. Hell, even when I stretch the window across two monitors, it makes no difference, all I get is more white space. No matter what, it's like I'm using a 15" screen from the 90s. It's absolutely insane!

Try c:dev:FullWidthOasis, and adding the following in your global.css page:

.rail-module.premium-recirculation-rail,
#mixed-content-footer {
    display: none;
}

Thanks, Leafy, but:

>it is not allowed to be used wiki-wide

Therefore it is not a solution.

I know. That's why you need to add both codes to your personal stylesheet.

There is no solution to doing it wiki-wide, but hey, at least you'll view the modifications in your personal view.

I don't want to fix things just for me. I want everyone who views my wiki to have a decent user experience. The default theme is a mess in the most elementary ways, it's like no one tested its readability with anything beyond a paragraph of lorem ipsum.

I guess one would have to tell everyone to individually apply the script fix.

Unfortunately, this can't be done without violating the customization policy. Sorry, but it's the truth. The truth hurts.

You could always just pin a message to the front page with instructions on how to set up the fix, if you really want more users doing it. I believe Wookieepedia has had something like this about Monobook on their front page until recently.

They will have to edit MediaWiki:Sitenotice id in that case.

It should be noted though, that some people prefer to read to read texts that don't stretch most of the width of a monitor. Others would want the text to occupy as much space as possible. Neither is wrong though, it's a preference.

Is someone else considering to leave Wikia for good? My community is.

(this is not actyally a reply to Atvelonis , it's just the damn editor spazzing again)

I finally am (though not solely because of this). Especially with several new features like the new header, discussions, trending articles, etc having little to no customization allowed and the invasive ads when I'm on my phone. Might as well move elsewhere before I grow my wiki anymore.

I find editing in Oasis somewhat confusing. Now I know how Liam Gallagher felt after he left the group! 

You'll get used to it, like so many of us got used to it years ago. The editing is still the same. Source mode still exists.

But the appearences between the skins aren't the same.

That doesn't alter the editing. The buttons are in different places, and it doesn't have a ton of technical links in plain view, but what you really need you can put in My Tools.

So we are talking about 250-500 users and 15 wikis??? And I guess these wikis are only the Uncyclopedia ones... Their purpose is to gain money from ads set in Uncyclopedia wikis too, but they decided to "kill" these wikis in order to do it.

-Does this have any meaning since everyone is happy with monobook? -Have you thought that Uncyclopedia wikis are going to lose thousands of readers due to your decision (and this means that a huge amount of money for Wikia is going to be lost too)???

The PseudoMonoBook skin removes those but I agree forcing everyone to use the FANDOOM default breaks the 'as like Wikipedia' look considerably. I can only go on my one and only visit to Wikia in 2013 when I asked them as regards their interest in Uncyclopedia as hosted at Wikia. The feedback then was strongly positive, even though some of the wilder idesa they had to somehow moneterise satire was off-base. I have tried looking at the site via a mobile app but that seems only to want you to click on a TV show wiki or something even less interesting. If I am wrong, please let me know.  Regards WEEVIL-FANDOOM, part of the answer for what has happened may be to do with a corporate investor. You can see the details at Wikipedia. 

Wikia is not happy with Monobook. Even Wikipedia is not happy with Monobook, that's why they have Vector. It was nice 10 years ago, but just doesn't fit in the modern landscape of web design anymore. Ads are only a part of that. They were always plans to sunset it sooner than later. Times change, and as a website, you've got to change with it. Monobook was created before the smartphone, and now, about half of views, if not more, is through a phone or tablet.

I don't know about the readership on Uncyclopedia, or the ad revenue. I don't think they break it down on a per-wiki basis, so it's impossible to tell. The bean counters probably took it into account in their calculations and decided it wasn't worth the extra work. This isn't as simple as simply doing one tiny little thing. It'd be a substantial increase in workload, for something that's past its prime and can't deal with the main infrastructure demands.

It's a done deal now. They thought it over. No amount of complaining will make them reconsider.

I think this directive will still follow all websites that have collected personal data. You will have to be given the option if connecting from an EU country whether to accept cookies or not. One other problem with forking off as I have experienced is that your data has now disappeared into someone else's private server. Who knows how secure that is! Ask Hillary. 

That's interesting. Is Wikipedia thinking of a skin change as well? 

Why doesn't that sit on the 'welcome page' as in MonoBook? I have found that a very useful tool in the past.

You'd have to ask them. They have Vector now.

As explained several times above, it's not about the Monobook (or Wikia's fork of it) skin itself. It's about the added workload for a product that's on the chopping block anyway.

Henry 'Doctor' Fandoom-Ford. I presume?  

I only have a BA degree, sorry. Also, I'm not a antisemite.

I was actually referring to Ford's claim that you could have a car in any colour as long as it was black. I also have a BA as well. Snap!

Well, Monobook has no ads, so they can't earn money from it directly. FANDOM earns money from views on mobile and Oasis.

I looked this up after first seeing this thread the other day. I'm a Monobook user on Wikipedia. The English Wikipedia has no plans that I can find to retire any skins (I'd imagine they'd have provided warning, like a sitenotice or something).

The only discussions I can find about it that are accessible from links on the English Wikipedia are on the policy Village Pump in April which links to the February 2018 MediaWiki mailing list, which contains a thread of messages on the topic.

Other related things to Wikimedia as a whole:

• Phabricator: MediaWiki and GDPR
• Phabricator: How does the GDPR affect Wikimedia sites and Wikibase instances?
• Another Phabricator issue that references a lot of other issues
• This 53-minute YouTube video

I can't find anything involving changing or retiring skins of any type; I'm pretty sure Wikia's issue is they don't want to have to run parallel tracking systems or something. Which I'm still mad about. Just less outwardly now.

Yes, that was specifically said to be the reason for retiring Monobook.

I think you nailed it. However, the newer MediaWiki engine may have been preparing for GDPR long ago, so they really don't need to do anything. And if that's the case, Wikia can't get that benefit due to the fork, so it may still be an issue.

How do i delete my Fandom account?

Special:CloseMyAccount

That's just closing. Actual deleting is what the Right to be forgotten in this legislation is about. I'm not sure if there'll be a different flow for that, but either way, it won't be available until after friday.

I hope you'll improve it... yet I distrust you...

Should I stay on Fandom?

or should I abandon it?

I'd say stick around until at least Saturday. Maybe try a mitigating script like PseudoMonobook mentioned upthread. Then you'll know exactly how you feel about any changes rather than trying to decide preemptively.

And if you really love Monobook... edit-a-thon time so you can spend a lot of time with it during its last legs and improve wikis at the same time?

People treat Oasis like its some sort of disease. It's not the end of the world. Pretty much everyone except you can cope with it, so you will probably too. It's not difficult at all.

Just make sure to look in the preferences, there's a button to turn off most ads.

That doesn't give me more horizontal space. Many wikis NEED that horizontal space because their content is presented in columns or tables.

Heck, I myself have tangible issues with Oasis at its core functionality and I'm still making an effort to try. I don't understand preemptively closing your account over this, whether you're worried for a serious reason or a petty one.

I'd like to remove or shrink some things I don't use (and maybe get more horizontal space) but I'll probably end up, like, forking my own PseudoMonobook-like CSS thing to do that kind of stuff or something.

Do you need to present content in columns or tables? Wikia's been urging people to rethink tables for some time now.

LyricWiki uses columns for lyrics translations. Example.

/v/'s Recommended Games uses tables for, well, everything. Example.

You can see both look perfect with Monobook, but a total mess otherwise - unless you reduce the text size a lot.

How do random visitors to LyricWiki function, though? It must get traffic from people who don't change the skin.

LyricWiki is perfectly readable in Oasis. The overall design choices in terms of main page are somewhat old fashioned, but it's still proportioned properly.

But on mobile, the page you linked is completely botched. It just shows the translation title, you have to tilt to landscape to see the rest. And tables kills the dropdowns so you can't see the actual content. Horizontal design, especially with content in a table, is BAD.

Using columns and tables may look fine on Monobook, but it is mobile unfriendly and could have also be done with floating divs.

I always edited stuff with Oasis and it looked pretty easy so... I'm just going with the flow and this is stupid by me