Community and Pro
From the desk of pieterh
Via the this-is-the-toolbar-thread department, on 1247655460|%e %B %Y, %H:%M
Today we're rolling out a new release of Wikidot, aimed at reinforcing the Wikidot Community and making it clearer what you get when you upgrade to a pro account.
Today's release has two main changes:
- Free sites get to use forum signatures, full page history, "clone site" function, custom domains, favicons, and meta tags. Previously these were "pro" features that you had to pay for.
- Free sites now show the top and bottom Wikidot Community toolbars.
The deal is this: if you use Wikidot for free, your sites shows these toolbars, and you help the Wikidot Community by promoting Wikidot and its functionality to your users. And if you are a pro user, you can switch off those toolbars to get more space for your web page. You pay to get a non-Wikidot look and feel. Also, active pro sites will show on the bottom toolbar, so you get more traffic, thanks to free sites.
The top toolbar also acts like a "web ring": click on the Random site button and you jump to a random Wikidot site that also shows the toolbar. So showing the toolbar will bring you new visitors.
This seems like a fair deal. Pro users help by funding our work, and free users help by promoting pro sites. We had also thought of putting more advertising on free sites but you've told us, consistently, that you don't like this. And I'd really like to get all advertising off Wikidot so we can stick to a promise we once made, "no ads, ever". We were forced to break our heartfelt promise simply because to build and operate Wikidot costs money.
The toolbar model seems like a better deal for us all, except Google.
So, tell me what you think. Do you want the choice between these toolbars or advertising on your free sites? Do you like the idea of cross-promotion of Wikidot sites? Do you like getting all these Wikidot features for free?
Does this mean free sites will no longer be forced to run Google ads? I would rather have the toolbars than the ads.
My goal is to remove all ads from free sites, yes. This will be possible when/if the toolbars generate enough pro sales from people who wish to pay to not have the community branding on their wikis.
The Wikidot Blog | My other works
It never ceases to amaze me, this business strategy. "Lets make our product so annoying that people will buy it!" Did anyone seriously consider the long-term effects of this kind of mentality?
I am already researching other free wiki sites in order to migrate my content away from Wikidot. I appreciated the mentality Wikidot had when I first arrived, but now everything I appreciated has vanished and you're turning into the exact type of company I was trying to avoid.
Go ahead and suggest that I download the software and run my own wiki, but I have not the time, understanding, or money to host something of my own. You already put ugly advertisements on our sites, this latest move is just kicking us while we're already down.
I gotta agree with you, Jake. It's not a business strategy that I'd like to see used generally - eg. go to the hospital and be made so sick you pay for 'intensive care'…!
http://philosophical-investigations.wikidot.com/
(You can't even put your website in the box allocated to it on this board…)
Martin, your analogy doesn't seem to quite cover the wikidot method. Something more apt would be if you go to the hospital and don't want to pay (because,after all, who thinks their health is worth paying for?), you spend some time working off your care*. If hospital work isn't suited to you, you pay for your own care and be on your way.
* As you appear to think the bars are only there to make wikidot ugly for free users (to make you so sick you're willing to pay for intensive care), it's worth explaining how they can contribute to the wikidot ecosystem (how the bars can amount to working for your free care). For one, it makes pro accounts more valuable since the bottom bar on free sites drives more traffic to pro accounts than to free accounts (a lower karma floor to get featured) and traffic is a perk worth paying for to some, for another thing it makes it clearer than before how to get a new wikidot wiki for new users. Even free site creation acts as advertising for the whole wikidot product. Some of the new users will go pro, some will use adsense sharing, all will draw more people into the wikidotverse as they come via Google and other outlets to see the content created by each user.
Like the ethos behind this. I do think the toolbar is a little chunky though; seems to take a little too much attention away from my site.
Also, the WikiDot logo needs fixing: you'll see what I mean when you see it.
Thanks for the previously pro-only options though!
tHEdODGYmONKEY
Projects: Riki: the wiki for R | Have My CV .com | UrCheatz.com | Monodot-Template | Cocktails | Modern Warfare 2 Wiki
Seems to be a thing with MSIE. We're fixing that, thanks for the report.
This is a first version of the toolbar, we'll be adding stuff to it, making it more useful over time.
Glad you appreciate the extra features. I want every Wikidot user to be able to do everything with the product. We're only keeping a few features as pro, either because they're expensive to do (like SSL and web stats), or because they really remove all Wikidot branding (like custom website footer).
The Wikidot Blog | My other works
I have three questions:
1. Can this be a little more discrete? It is too big and it is as molesting as adds.
2. Can I have this removed if I put add for wikidot at my site but in aplace I determine?
3. Can I have this removed from my site with pro-lite account?
The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt. Bertrand Russell
Pro-Lite users can remove the toolbars, yes. Ad-sense works independently from this. Over time we'll adjust the look and feel of the toolbars.
The Wikidot Blog | My other works
A few suggestions to improve how it looks:
As mentioned above, the wikidot logo could do with "cleaning". Also, the facebook/twitter etc icons look clunky and pixelated too, could we have them smaller (or higher resolution images, if not)?
Does the "random site" link have to be quite so promenent? Large webring links are something I've not seen since the death of geocities, any chance we can opt-out of the web ring? Traffic from other wikis isn't going to do much, as my wiki is specific to the community of a single online game, who all already know its there.
Any chance we could control the background colour, to unify the banner more with site colour schemes?
At the moment, the banner looks a little cheap and cheerful and a bit behind the times, a few minor tweaks like this could help make it look far cleaner and more professional.
One thing we'd like to do, but this will happen later, is give pro users (pro-lite, pro, pro+) ways to customize the toolbar if they don't want to remove it: change the look & feel, replace the Wikidot logo with their own logo, add their own actions like Edit, Join, etc.
The Wikidot Blog | My other works
Shame that'll only be a pro-only option but understandably they'll want some perks! :-)
tHEdODGYmONKEY
Projects: Riki: the wiki for R | Have My CV .com | UrCheatz.com | Monodot-Template | Cocktails | Modern Warfare 2 Wiki
Pro lite has power over it. I checked the plans.
— Blog ~ Life's Handbook
As a Pro user, I like the sound of this. Being able to add links for people to join my site/wiki would be a useful addition to the toolbar. In fact, the one-step registration idea would be a good addition as well ;)
Registering for both Wikidot and the wiki/site/blog in question is a bit much - joining both in just 1-2 easy steps would be a lot more intuitive and prevent us from losing traffic to our wikis.
— Shane | Blog | CycloDS Revolution | Compatibility List | Want me to manage your next wiki? | XBL: leiger40
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It's to big and it screwed up my layout…
I don't like the way that is imposed on us. I would liked to have a choice… for example: " next month you need to pay to get no ads or you can leave wikidot if you don't want to pay."
Wikidot is cool but this… I was promoting it, but not any more, if you guys can change thing like this so easely without notice, whats next?
dissapointed! SORRY
@Steven, you do have several choices: show the toolbar (we'll make it nicer over time, this is a first version), upgrade to pro or pro-lite ($25 a year is really a small amount), or use a different service if you can find one that is as good as Wikidot.com. Whatever you decide, thanks for your feedback, it's useful.
The Wikidot Blog | My other works
Pieter, the problem is not in having (or not) the possibilities to chose, and if you reread Sttephens post, you'll see that he does not complain to this. The problem NOW, just as it was a problem earlier for putting adds at the top of all free sites is that you do not inform people about what you are going to do, and then only one day, they find their sites with something that shouldn't be there. I am not complaining now because I have already experienced this unpleasant surprise in March, just as Stehoen is experiencing it now, and I know that I cannot do anything about it, so I do not complain. But…
Let me give you a piece of a good advice:
Next time, send massive email to all owners of free sites saying that YOU ARE GOING to do something and giving them those options you are talking about. Send this email with a reasonable amount of time in advance, so the owners of free sites can think and get used to the idea of future different looks of their sites. In this way, you will not have so many negative reactions to changes as you were and are having to each cnahge in this direction you make. Prepare us for change, it hurts less when someone knows what is going to happen, than when you get a stroke by surprise.
The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt. Bertrand Russell
@Brunhilda: thanks the advice, this is what we'll do next time. I'd have used this blog but there are not many people watching it yet. We don't like to use mass mailings but we did actually send out a newsletter to all Wikidot users telling them of the change, today.
We have no plans to make any other changes that will affect how Wikidot sites look, except later to remove ads from free sites where they still appear. (Depending on whether pro upgrades replace ad income, or not.)
The Wikidot Blog | My other works
I didn't get any newsletter.
Mass mailing is not good when it comes to advertising, but if it comes to such crucial decisions it is more than welcome. Blogs and other type of info put here can be easily overlooked and missed, because not everyone visits with the same frequency Community forum and site. For example, I don't even know where to look for your blog even if I wanted to! E-mail is the safest way to be sure that everyone knows what they should know.
The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt. Bertrand Russell
Toolbar Toolbar Toolbar Toolbar Toolbar Toolbar
Ok, so you are putting this bulky thing across the top and bottom? I admit, I can tolerate this a lot better than the unprofessional Google ads, however, the toolbars are way to prominent and takes away a ton from the content and actual site. Especially on themes such as bloo where the bottom bar overruns out of the content area and looks really bad.
Do they really need to be so utterly gigantic?
Here is my suggestion:
For the top, perhaps have a slightly reduced wikidot logo link in the top left corner with a transparent bar. The content would have to be shifted down in order to not interfere with the header. This way, it is obvious that the site is hosted by wikidot, but it doesn't distract anyone coming in. To tell you the truth, that was the very first thing I noticed when I entered the site.
For the bottom, please don't put pictures. They are too big.
Toolbar Toolbar Toolbar Toolbar Toolbar Toolbar
— Blog ~ Life's Handbook
Thanks for all the feedback, this is really useful.
The Wikidot Blog | My other works
does this affect educational sites as well?
Yes, for now we consider educational sites to be "community" sites, even though they are private. That is, students will see the toolbars. We may change this policy later.
The Wikidot Blog | My other works
If students are seeing toolbars including the bottom one how are you ensuring the content of those linked sites is appropriate for children. I'm betting you're not.
@jeani, thanks for this very important question.
We did, in fact change the policy for educational sites, based on feedback from yourself and others. They no longer show the bottom toolbar. If you have sites that are public but which you would like to turn into private educational sites, please ask here.
What is also important to know:
Thanks,
Pieter
The Wikidot Blog | My other works
Another suggestion I'd put forward is to promote one of the pro sites in the top banner, in place of the web-ring, removing the enormous links and pictures at the bottom in the process.
Most people won't click a "random" link unless they're incredibly bored (effectively defeating the object of having the link as a means of driving cross-wiki traffic), but their interest might be grabbed by the description of another site's contents. If every wiki page visited had a link to a random specified wiki (with description/title), this has a better chance of driving the traffic you're looking for.
The screen-shots for the linked wikis don't seem to offer anything useful, because even at the size they are, there's no readable content. All you see in most cases is a mostly white and grey text "blur". It would probably make more sense to get rid of the screenshots, and show the wiki site icons instead, or offer pro sites the opportunity to upload a small promo graphic.
Also, the monstrous banner at the bottom is off the screen for the majority of my wiki pages, and beneath the obvious end of the "content" for the page, so I doubt many people will bother to scroll down that far. Keep it tight and small, and there's a better chance it'll end up showing on people's screens, and more people will end up reading it.
@Balthus: what browser are you using? In Chromium, on my little Eee1000, all the graphics look just fine. The toolbar is a little clunky but there's no pixelation and the site previews are very clear and I've actually found myself clicking on them quite often.
I like the idea of putting a pro site (one, or several links) at the top in place of the webring. That is neat. Maybe, also making the toolbar thinner and fixed in place (rather than scrolling).
This is a work in progress and thanks to everyone for their patience. Though we've been testing the toolbar for some weeks, it is hard to know the impact of these things before we release them.
What I've found so far, using the bottom toolbar on my own sites, is that it interferes with some custom CSS layouts, but the ability to explore unknown pro sites is really fun.
I'm going to start a new thread for CSS problems.
The Wikidot Blog | My other works
Looking into it, I suspect that the issue with the graphics is down to colour depth. I am on a low power thin terminal running vnc, and get an odd halo effect around all the icons against the gradient background, which is probably due to slight variations in the colours when the graphics were anti-aliased that is not evident at higher colour depth settings.
For comparison, the wikidot.com logo in the second "Blog" bar at the top of this page looks lovely and clean.
I have realised that it is only my site that the logo looks bad and this is because the top banner is using some of the same CSS as my site (header, I believe). Please change this. Check my site to understand what I mean.
I reckon if the banner was only about 20px high then this would look a lot more professional.
We'll check the site if you tell us what it is. Use this thread: http://blog.wikidot.com/blog:toolbar-display-problems
The Wikidot Blog | My other works
It is going to be fixed in a moment. Your CSS included padding on every 'a' element, which affected toolbar. We're going to make toolbar CSS resistant.
my blog
squarkDesign - grafika komputerowa
rTechnologies - strony www
1. I need always hoovering the mouse over it to understand what this is…!
- and I am NOT used to follow anything on facebook or twitter or other servcices - but I understand this cuold be useful for some visitors..
-ö means - is it not better ( or a mix perhaps) to show little explainable link like "Share on twitrer" ( what ever this means!)
2. The bottom bar images/Links are randomly selected too and shown ? Or are they subsets of "featured sites" ?
3. because it is forgotten here:
Service is my success. My webtips:www.blender.org, www.zusi.de (Demo-Video)
Wollen Sie Wikidot helfen im deutschen » Handbuch ?
@Helmuti,
The idea with these buttons is to make it easier for people to discuss (on Facebook, Twitter, etc.) random sites they find. They should make sense to anyone who uses those services.
The bottom sites are pro sites that are flagged as "active" (there is a karma calculation on sites now, which is not yet visible but which we use for this). So you should not see empty, or abandoned sites.
The Wikidot Blog | My other works
I have to admit, waking up to find out that my game's wiki had, as one of my users called them, "Hideous Ads" all over it wasn't the best way to start my day. Finding out that removing them is a pay feature ended up making it feel like the site (or more accurately the work my users have put into gathering and inputting information) was being held hostage as part of an extortion racket.
Anyway, I get where you're coming from and did move up to Pro-Lite. Wikidot has saved me at least $25 worth of headaches and server fees wrangling my own wiki and forum software, so I won't begrudge you that, I just wanted to share my perceptions on the rollout.
I'm not sure, really, what could have been done differently other than proactive communication and warnings. It was more surprise and perception than anything else.
Cheers!
Kinak
@Kinak,
I appreciate the feedback. This was my call: I felt that telling people in advance "we're going to put a toolbar on your sites, switch to pro and you won't see this" would create as much anxiety as just rolling out the change and dealing with the inevitable. It seems the changes have broken some custom CSS layouts, and we'll help fix those.
There won't be any more unpleasant surprises with Wikidot, only nice ones, from now on.
Thanks for upgrading, and thanks for using Wikidot.
The Wikidot Blog | My other works
Today actually carries two distinct changes on wikidot. One is, obviously, the new top banner. The other is imposing new changes on existing accounts (where is the grandfathering?). Even when you threw ads on free sites that hadn't enrolled in adsense, there was an opt-out. When you moved formerly free features onto the pro scheme, you didn't take them away from free sites that were currently using them.
The actual banner addition is less worrisome than the idea that terms and balance of features and burdens will change out from under those of us who started wikidot sites with a particular expectation set. It's kind of you to make the above quoted promise, but since the current setup breaks past wikidot promises and established practices, why should I believe this particular promise will stand?
I'm a strong supporter of wikidot in a large variety of contexts and I'm not trying to flame you or make threats or even whine. I really believe it's a fair question.
How do I dislike this? Let me count the ways.
Please take them down. Thanks for reconsidering.
I absolutely agree with David (about the doubt this creates in users' minds about what will happen NEXT) and Scottplan puts it all very elegantly too! I'd just add that Peter is an unconvincing witness. He just said above he 'tried to tell everyone in advance' mailout went out late tec tetc, then here he says his idea was to just do it and 'not worry anyone'. Ha!
But Peter and co. - the users are the people who make the content - not you or the free software. Wikidot has got a bad mindset - I know you work all day coding etc etc, but you still depend on al those 'volunteerrs' to generate the content, which brings in the page views. IIf anything Wikidot staff are in debt to the users. Asking us to give you extra money now is a bit mad!
I understand that changes need to be made and mistakes happen, so mine is a question about company policy rather than assailing anyone's character, just a request for a more formal assurance than a comment on a blog post, as well as a fleshing out of the reasoning behind this move that will help us all understand what Wikidot will and won't promise for the future, and what our balance of rewards and responsibilities will be going forward.
(EDIT: thank you very much for the edit).
@Docmartin: if there is an Internet somewhere where people can earn money from simple page views, please let me know. In the world we live in, page views just cost: bandwidth, servers, people.
The classic way to earn money from page views is to show adverts on all pages and earn money from click-throughs. Even then, advertising is unprofitable unless you have extremely popular sites. We could put ads on every single free Wikidot page, all the time. That seems a really terrible option.
Wikidot does however owe a great deal to our users. The community.wikidot.com site, for example, is a world of helpful, polite people and we really owe those guys a lot. More importantly, we owe all our users a stable, living, and long lasting service. This demands a sustainable way of making money, and it's just a fact of life that some people - with jobs and time - would rather complain than pay. C'est la vie. It seems a fair trade, if it lets us follow through on our commitment to providing a dependable service.
For those who really cannot afford a pro account but feel they deserve one, we're giving away five free Pro accounts.
The Wikidot Blog | My other works
Peter, the obvious example is the granddaddy Wiki itself - Wikipedia. The money flows in there through charitable donations, the CEO giving talks etc etc. BIG money too.
You are chasing a group of people who you can bet are mostly very poor/ unsalaredi etc etc for tiny bits of cash - which will have a knock-on effect on the vuture use of the wikidot 'farm'. You're losing people and you won't attract so many new ones. You said yourself that the aim was to make the pages unattractive (!) so the people who don't mind will be the people whose sites are not 'serious' - not for the wider audience out there.
Correct me if I'm wrong but all Wikidot are providing is a bit of disk space, which for a typical site is worth <5 zlotys a year, plus as you say the bandwidth, again <5 zlotys. The software is not yours, it is open source, so why should we pay for that? The modifications seem aimed only at making you all money, not at improving it. The support is appreciated, but honestly, so minimal, you can't expect much for that!
If you want to charege (as obviously you do) let's be frank. This is just because you want to be rich. How about making the charges for things like: including video or sound on the sites (high bandwidth)? Limiting the MB for the registed users more strictly. Paying for 'support'?
I've plugged Wikidot in the UK national press as a great resource in the past, so I'm not against you. But this action - damage the user sites to get increased subscriptions - is unethical and will rebound on you later.
The bar itself is not ready (it interfered with my layout) and I (read We, the users) are not ready for it. Give us some notice… maybe do a design competition, ask some oppinions first
please remove it for now
@Steven, sorry for the teething problems. I think your layout works now, right?
The Wikidot Blog | My other works
Yes, it works now. I did some changing myself also… what did you change? My CSS?
No, we made changes in our CSS structure.
my blog
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rTechnologies - strony www
I'd rather not have huge images on the bottom of the site. Perhaps give pro users the option to make a small banner to promote their wikidot page.
As well, I'm seeing a lot of pro-site ads in a language I can't read. I'm all for learning new things, but I'm not likely to learn Japanese so I can click on a random wikidot page. Perhaps you can set this up so that the pages displayed on the bottom are of the same language as the page they're being displayed on.
For the top bar? Smaller is better. Make it neater, more compact. I think someone mentioned about 20 pixels high. Take away that huge blue 'random site»' link, because on the Internets, clicking a 'random site' link is a lot like playing Russian Roulette, and not many people are likely to do it, even if Wikidot wouldn't let them down.
As people have stated before, it's extremely clunky, and it makes individual wikidot pages look unprofessional, where they weren't before. I understand the need to offer incentives for people who pay for the site, but this seems quite extreme for a first step.
Thank you for taking our suggestions into consideration.
CK
I will most probably be crucified for this.
I think that the way things were 24 hours ago was good. I think they cost for the Wikidot plans were really worth paying for, considering the features which weren't free.
But now there's hardly a reason to pay.
The only Pro feature I'd like to be free is the forum signatures, but the price of the ProLite plan is so small that it's practically free anyway.
I DO like the concept of promoting the community in Wikidot, and I DO like the top-bar. It's a nice compromise for free accounts, and I really like the "Random site" link.
But if there isn't ads from Google, would you be making enough money?
λ James Kanjo | blog | photos | contact
@James: IMO you're safe from drive-by crucifixion… :-)
All good questions. I personally did not like the 'crippleware' aspects of keeping some features away from users who were learning to use the product and perhaps not ready to commit as pro user.
Many users found that they were able to use Wikidot for free, without the pro features, but would in fact have been happy to upgrade to pro if there was a compelling reason. Not showing the community toolbar is meant to be a reason. We had also thought of simply putting ads on all free sites, but we don't like being crucified either.
It looks like next Tuesday's rant is going to be fun, though.
The Wikidot Blog | My other works
Regarding top bar:
How about making it around 25 pixels max? Because I'm not seeing a community toolbar - I'm seeing an advertisement.
Regarding bottom bar:
It's too huge. How about placing just links or even small pics - when a user hovers them the screenshot is enlarged. And use small fonts. This thing takes up around 30-35% of the browser space - and that's supposed to be called a toolbar?
Truth is, these toolbars are large and bulky, and makes every wiki affected by it look like some mediocre site done by a 13-year old on a Geocities account, regardless of design. The amount of pro features traded up for it, is simply not worth it. They're too huge, and is a distraction - taking the focus of the visitors away from the actual content.
I'm not really asking to remove these toolbars for free accounts, I'm simply asking to do it right.
this is a forum signature. really.
@Fereal, we hear you and are working on improvements.
The Wikidot Blog | My other works
I have to agree that the pictures on the bottom bar aren't very useful in terms of conveying what the random sites are about and/or providing me much reason to click on them. I do, however, like having the graphical element. If possible, I would suggest using a small snapshot of the wiki title alone as displayed on the header — maybe just a little smaller than the current pic size — so that the title can be read there instead of included as text. And then put the 'site description' for the caption. It's smaller and cleaner that way.
For the record, I have to echo everyone else that it was a jarring surprise to open my browser this morning and find the toolbar. My first thought was literally 'what the heck is that and how do I get rid of it' (because it completely and utterly clashed with the colorscheme of the site I was looking at). Advance notice would've been nice, but this is your service and I'm not yet a paying user, so I'm not terribly perturbed by its lack. Probably the only thing I would've liked is the opportunity to chip in two cents on the toolbar contents/layout/design — which is what I'm doing in the paragraph above anyway! So as far as I'm concerned, it works out.
Edit: I didn't receive any newsletter, either.
OH. I have another question.
If I pay for MY account, will I have the option to disable seeing toolbars on free sites? I could potentially live with that.
That's not the way it works now but this sounds like a good idea, so here's a deal: if you upgrade now, we'll make this happen. :-)
The Wikidot Blog | My other works
Very good idea. Once I get a bit of income later on this week, I'll move from Pro lite to Pro (normal) - if this happens :-)
— Shane | Blog | CycloDS Revolution | Compatibility List | Want me to manage your next wiki? | XBL: leiger40
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There could be some more layout options to, instead of a top - bottom, toolbar and advertisements, have right - left choices too.
Yes, I do know they are separate, but you should consider changing that now.
Consider offering different wikidot/user percentages and some ways of recognizing the contribution. For now you don't treat sites that contribute through adsense any different from non-contributing sites. I never mentioned this before now because I was happy to make the contribution under the old system—I even recommended a bigger cut for wikidot back when I first added adsense. Wikidot's burden and reward balance have now been changed, and a new perspective on Adsense is due as well.
Good luck with the changes.
I cannot remember which user was - the ingenieur of bangla desj wrote his thanks to wikidot - with the adsense he eraned more money than he ever had esarned before .
My question: will tihs adsense policy and possibilty be thrown away now?
Service is my success. My webtips:www.blender.org, www.zusi.de (Demo-Video)
Wollen Sie Wikidot helfen im deutschen » Handbuch ?
Pieter,
I realize the bottom line for any commercial enterprise is $$$, but you should consider that 'providing incentives to upgrade' and 'making the free service more annoying' do not always equate to the same thing. I probably would upgrade to pro if I had incentives to do so other than 'remove the ugly toolbars'; for now, $25 is simply far too much for me to want to pay just to acquire this one 'feature'.
Regards,
David.
I'd also like to voice that next time you make large, cosmetic changes to Wikidot, at least announce it beforehand. Like many others here, I reacted negatively when I saw it. An email would have been nice. Don't get me wrong, I don't mind promoting Wikidot, but you should have given us a chance to process or react to it before implementing it. Preferably, I would have wanted to pay for a pro account and never seen the toolbar. But now I'm given no choice.
Regarding the bottom toolbar. Will we be able to at least choose what websites appear at the bottom? If I am going to advertise other wikis, I'd want to advertise wikis that are somewhat related to my wiki. I don't want some random wiki in a language I can't read.
Also, how about adding a StumbleUpon icon to the toolbar?
—chris
@maharajah, there was in fact a newsletter sent out by email today, did you get it? I agree that it would have been better to inform free site owners in advance of this. Partly, we were just busy, partly I prefer to deliver changes first, explain them second (rather than end up promising things will arrive and then having to backtrack).
I'm also a StumbleUpon user, and glad you asked for that icon.
To everyone who has commented in this thread, thank you.
The Wikidot Blog | My other works
No newsletter received
— Shane | Blog | CycloDS Revolution | Compatibility List | Want me to manage your next wiki? | XBL: leiger40
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Actually all member should receive one… I'm already received that…
If you don't get it, maybe you should check your email inbox on the spam area… maybe…
FYI, I did receive the newsletter thursday afternoon. Email can be that way (slow).
Perhaps for the top bar, it would be great if anyone, even free users, could modify the background colors/images so that the bar fits the site. On some sites, the bar fits just fine, but on others it is bulky and annoying. It would be very much convenient if we could modify the bar to fit our theme rather than modify the theme to fit the bar. At least then, if anyone complains about the looks or something, he/she can change the bar to become a part of the theme.
— Blog ~ Life's Handbook
Yeah, alternatives to (or customization of) the GeoCities-era top bar would be nice. It looks really bad on 1024x768. If it were narrower, I might not even mind if it scrolled with the page. Ideally, I'd like to see it integrated into the title area and with the sharing options on a drop-down menu (Wikidot already supports embedding Addthis.com). Good luck developing it further.
I know it costs money to run something like wikidot and therefore I anyway don't really understand why people are offering such a service for free in the first place. And I understand that people taking up such free offers have to expect that it will end one day most likely over night. There is nothing such a free ride in this world. So it is not surprising that you have to find ways to convince people to pay after all for the originally 'free' service. But making it look like blackmail - we made your site look awful over night, so either pay or go somewhere else - isn't really creating any confidence in the wikidot service.
It's all really disappointing but anyway thanks for allowing free wikis not to look cheap at least until now.
Good luck for the future.
Gu
Now that I'm a paying customer, the only thing I'm worried about is your raising the price of Pro-lite accounts. That would be really irritating.
Fair enough :-) . Wikidot is a great service, and I hope you succeed in attracting more pro accounts.
However, the toolbar is too big. I hope you consider providing a simpler and thinner one, at least for logged in users :-) .
And I'm no fan of social buttons. They add a cartoonish look which may be inappropriate for some sites.
I suggest making the toolbar more useful by integrating other features too, like edit and logout and such.
off-topic: is there a way to watch only new content on the blog? I don't want to get notified for every comment posted here.
Thanks for the criticism, it's useful. Regarding watching, it's a good idea to be able to watch for new pages only, especially for things like blogs. I've added that to our issue tracker as a feature request.
The Wikidot Blog | My other works
I think the top bar will look better if the Wikidot logo image is centered, and the 'remarkable/new site' piece is moved left. This also groups the icons (wikidot and the social-networking stuff) more together, which helps make the whole thing more balanced in my opinion.
Qualifier: that may not be the case in themes where the wikisite title itself is centered. So it might be good to have a toggle for switching the Wikidot logo and the new-site box placement.
toolbar
It's a bit of a sloppy attempt but this sort of height would be perfect.
tHEdODGYmONKEY
Projects: Riki: the wiki for R | Have My CV .com | UrCheatz.com | Monodot-Template | Cocktails | Modern Warfare 2 Wiki
I find the new toolbars a little too big — could do with a 50% reduction in height (see the Dodgy Monkey's version for instance) without affecting your revenue increasing opportunity. As it stands, it is comparable in size to a typical top banner of most pages and thus interferes with page content.
Suresh Govindarajan
http://sgovindarajan.wikidot.com
Both toolbars look very bad, they're too big and not customisable. Digg is simply useless. My wiki is a colaborative wiki and I don't understand why according to toolbar i'm only (?) "builder" of my site?
After todays changes an old bottom toolbar says the same as top toolbar: "this wiki is hosted on Wikidot, etc." Why the same information twice? It's simply unlogical…
And again: what's the purpose of an additional button for creating new wiki? We already have one in lower part of each wiki… It should be fixed… Maybe that old stripe should be completely removed?
If you want to know how a good looking toolbar should look go to Blogger.com and take a closer look.
Aside from the pictures offering little useful information, which I commented on above, as I play around with the bottom toolbar I find that what bothers me the most about it isn't actually the display — it's the fact that I can't chain through subsequent sites! I can click on one but with every single site I've landed at there isn't a bottom-bar for it by which to turn up another 'possibly intriguing site' to check out. So when I (and presumably some other people) do use this tool, it's good for about one click; after that one, there's no 'next' step, which is counter-intuitive with the bottom bar's current look and feel.
Maybe do as some suggested and put one any-pro-site banner in the top-bar in place of the 'random site' link (for pro sites that want to be promoted and make themselves a site banner), and generate the bottom links from only sites which display the toolbars (maybe even both free and pro)? That gives more incentive for sites to have the toolbars (extra chances to be noticed over non-toolbar sites, plus including free sites gives them some opportunity to hook in new visitors too) and still promotes pro sites in general (because the top bar will be seen whenever any page is loaded, where the bottom bar has to be scrolled down for).
Just throwing my two cents in - I also hate the toolbars. I'd prefer them mostly at the bottom (perhaps where the old ads on free wikis were). That way the focus is on the wiki, and then users could see the running bar at the bottom. If not that, then a slimmer toolbar would suffice.
Fiat ars – pereat mundus.
Having both the toolbars and the ads at the same time is a bit egregious. I understand your logic in needing the toolbars to generate revenue to replace the ads first, but right now the wiki looks sort of overwhelmed with junk (and while the toolbar looks somewhat professional, the ads stick out, ruin formatting, and look really clunky—totally inexperienced. These ads are designed to appear on a white background).
To me this makes the wiki, and by extension, wikidot, look cheap. The kind of site that gives you viruses. The kind of site if I stumbled upon I'd quickly go somewhere else.
The reason I liked wikidot to begin with is because it gave the appearance of being a relatively stream-lined, trustworthy space. There's a lot of noise here now. Rather than bring more visitors/members to wikidot, all of this marketing could turn people away.
I totally agree with you. Showing both ads (happens when users come from a search engine and are not logged in) and toolbars on free wikis is not nice. This is temporary, hopefully within a week or two we'll be able to take down all the ads on free wikis. If we don't then we'll hide the toolbars when we show ads.
Thanks for pointing this out.
The Wikidot Blog | My other works
You seem to only be addressing sites you've added ads to. What about MAs who've enabled adsense and made it fit in their site? Will they get to chose whether and how to display the toolbars?
in case the admin has switched on the adsense on his site I would like to have the second STANDARD:
Service is my success. My webtips:www.blender.org, www.zusi.de (Demo-Video)
Wollen Sie Wikidot helfen im deutschen » Handbuch ?
I have just received the Newsletter. It did take a long, long time to come, though!
The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt. Bertrand Russell
Personally, I think I'd rather deal with the ads, but if the ugly and useless seeming bar must stay can it at least stay pinned to the top of the site and not do what it's doing, because it's annoying to look at.
Also, if you're going to keep it ugly and Right There in front of all of the eyeballs walking by you could at least make it interesting. The three things on it right now (createasite/social networking/random) are not at all anything that would catch my attention passing by.
It is ugly and eye catching though, and likely to get people to shell out for the pro accounts just to get rid of it.
With some CSS there is no toolbar for sure. I don't think they can make it stick.
B creative, I know how to fix it for now.
The aim is not to get rid of the toolbar but to help wikidot adapt and evolve it into something we can all use effectively whilst gaining wikidot the attention it deserves. Don't try to find ways around it; help them make it better.
tHEdODGYmONKEY
Projects: Riki: the wiki for R | Have My CV .com | UrCheatz.com | Monodot-Template | Cocktails | Modern Warfare 2 Wiki
The best reason to give the team to "delete your account" immediately is to break the Terms of Service ….it is forbidden to change anything in the "WD-driven" content ( CSS)
Service is my success. My webtips:www.blender.org, www.zusi.de (Demo-Video)
Wollen Sie Wikidot helfen im deutschen » Handbuch ?
I'm noting this for future press articles etc. about Wikis on the web and maybe (the way things look now) 'what went wrong with wikidot'. Just to clarify, it is wikidot policy to delete sites without notice?
@Docmartin: yes, we do delete some sites without notice: spam, porn, other illegal or highly offensive content.
Sites that are flagged by visitors as offensive (perhaps slanderous or malicious) are taken down if we judge the complaints to be accurate, and the owner asked to explain. Depending on the explanation, they come back up, or are deleted.
Sites which are flagged under the DMCA are taken down immediately but not deleted; there is a process for settling DMCA complaints and the site owner has the right of response.
Other contraventions of the ToS are handled appropriately. Does this answer your question?
(More likely, you're asking what the response would be to users who hide the toolbars using CSS. The answer is, we'll see, it depends.)
The Wikidot Blog | My other works
Well yes, I am thinking about that - and it could esaily happen by accident, especailly in tthe months to come.
Generally, this 'taking down sites first and asking questions later' seems to start from teh wrong point. If you thinkk you are offering 'professional' web hosting, then the sites must be treated as improtant and professional. Everyone deserves a chance to respond to a complaint/ accusation, no?
@Docmartin: maybe I was not clear.
Presumably you're not suggesting that we allow spam sites to exist while we contact the owners? You realize that spammers generally don't answer emails, right? They don't even exist as people, mostly they're small businesses that create spam sites for money, for other firms.
With respect to CSS exploits, our concern is to enforce the rules, fairly, for everyone. If one person pays for a pro account and other people use CSS to hide the toolbars, who is being cheated? Enforcing the rules means responding appropriately, not insanely. Asking the site owner to undo the hack. Fixing it ourselves. And if a site owner is not willing to observe the rules, and feels justified in cheating, then we'll take stronger action, such as removing the ability to make custom CSS on that site. That's about it, I don't see how this could lead to deleting a site.
Does this help?
For the record, we do sometimes delete sites, but it is never accidental. You'll notice that Wikidot is generally free of spam, porn, and otherwise offensive sites. This is actually a large part of our work, keeping the community free of unwanted content.
If you actually tried to run a wikifarm for a week, you'd realize that it's a lot more work than you can imagine.
The Wikidot Blog | My other works
Peter, that sounds reasonable. There is a world of difference between a site that is on the wikidot for years and maybe breaks some rule, and one that (like these spam sites) suddenly appears with no intention of doing anything other than exploiting/ abusing the system. My question was under what circumstances a site, let's say a 'star wars' one, with say a couple of hundred users, might suddenly be deleted! But you're reassuring me ('the community!) that doesn't happen.
You see, there is a loss of trust after all these recent events…
@Martin Cohen,
As you say, there is a world of difference between spam sites and communities where someone might make an error. We've had to deal with many thousands of problem sites over the last years, and you won't find a case where we got it wrong, afaics.
Note that Wikidot has always had a level of "annoyanceware", e.g. ads on free sites, for some users, and the footer. Site admins have always had the ability to try CSS exploits, and we've always had the choice of how to respond. It's not been a big problem.
The Wikidot Blog | My other works
I think it's because my CPU is terribly slow (1ghz pre-SSE instructions era), but anyways: my wiki is terribly laggy now, my PC struggles to display it, scrolling up and down is much slower now.
Sorry about this scrolling issue. We're looking into that. What browser are you using? I'm using Chrome on a slow netbook and it does not lag at all.
The Wikidot Blog | My other works
Lastest FireFox. Uhm…. just tested lasted Opera and seems that opera doesn't lag like FF.
Am using FF as well. This was the cpu spike I was commenting on before. If the toolbar is static then we won't have this problem! :-)
If you want to keep this dynamic toolbar: please incorporate the log-in/sign-up bar and/or edit bar.
tHEdODGYmONKEY
Projects: Riki: the wiki for R | Have My CV .com | UrCheatz.com | Monodot-Template | Cocktails | Modern Warfare 2 Wiki
It is only when smooth scrolling is selected. I've turned mine off for now to ease using Wikidot but I'd rather be able to turn it back on.
tHEdODGYmONKEY
Projects: Riki: the wiki for R | Have My CV .com | UrCheatz.com | Monodot-Template | Cocktails | Modern Warfare 2 Wiki