Hi all!
When you look at any article, on the right are three boxes: Recent Wiki Activity, Featured, and Photos. This blog post will cover the Photos and Featured Videos part of the right side.
Photos[]
This section is particularly bothersome and serves no helpful purpose - it simply shows the most recently uploaded pictures.
This isn't helpful. Furthermore, when a game is released, if someone uploads the ending as an image, it is exposed for everyone to see. Don't want to see it? Well, there isn't any way to shield yourself from it other than not looking at it. But then, that's hard. The fact is, the Photos box is not helpful, it is bothersome, and it's "Add a photo" button is superseded by the regular editor "Add a photo" button - if you want to add a picture, you can go edit a page and click the "Add a photo" button.
So as you can see, the photo box isn't helpful, and all it contains is content superseded by other content. Mind you, the only way to see the most recently uploaded pictures is by the Recent Changes, but then, seeing all the recently uploaded pictures isn't content that is going to break the wiki.
And also, if you want to see all the recently uploaded pictures, you can use the Recent Changes, as it allows for you to see everything happening across the wiki. So what I'm asking is this - do you think the Photos box should be removed?
If I get enough support and the go-ahead to ask, I'll ask the Wikia Staff if they can remove it. If they say no, well, it does not get removed.
Featured Videos[]
Some time ago, Emitewiki2 asked for the featured videos module to be added to the Nitrome Wiki. Well, it was, but he didn't seek approval for this addition from the other Nitrome Wiki users. It was allowed to stay because it didn't harm anyone.
Well, it turns out the Featured Video tends to display the endings of Nitrome games as the first three videos. This isn't helpful, especially since it's hard to look away from this. The Featured Videos module does not present anything that is not already assigned to other places - you can see all the videos on the Nitrome Wiki by going to a Video's page and clicking the category "Video", or you can click the "Video" link from the top of the navigation bar.
Adding a video can be done through the regular Wikia editor. Furthermore, there really isn't any reason to use the provided link on the module, and when you upload a video, you intend to use it. However, if you upload a video this way, you will likely find it hard to insert this video into a page.
Although it allows you to look at all videos on a page, all the videos on a page are already presented in an easy to use way, while the featured video module present them out of order. Along with this, the added videos generally do not have any relation to the article you're viewing. So the reason I want to disable this function is because:
- Buttons on it are already superseded
- If you are viewing a page without any videos on it, it displays default videos, which, run around a 90% chance of not being related at all to what you are reading about
- Videos are in no particular order, if there are lots of videos on that page
- Videos containing spoiling content may be shown on this module, and usually are
- Does not provide anything helpful, but rather, provides unhelpful consequences
So you see, the Featured Videos module does not aid the wiki, but rather hinders it.