Admin Forum:"Did you know that?" section

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Recently I realised that on my wiki there are many pages with some very interesting content, but are not really popular. That's mainly because they present some nice tricks/tips/advices and overally: facts about what wiki is about (in-game world in my case)... but how will someone know about this tips and tricks? Their coolnes lies mainly in the fact that hardly anyone knows them, so people wont seek for them ( Famous: "Why haven't you told me?" - "Because you didn't ask" ).

So I have idea on telling it to people so that they wont have to ask x) Namely: "Did you know that..." section visible on each page that could show nice tips and provide users with links to the pages to read more about it.

In my opinion it would highly increase the time people spend on wikias and such thing can raise the interest in the topic and may attract potential visitors as well. And of course finding uncommon information about the wiki thread (game/movie/history/town/programming or anything else) would be much easier (as the info will find you :P)

What do you think? Maybe there is a way to do it even without Wikia Staff help (In javascript to implement?)

Please comment

Look outside the box. What you see?
~Seraskus 14:31, February 16, 2012 (UTC)

Technically that is possible. You could create a special category "Tips" and then request a random page from that category with AJAX.

From where I'm sitting the bigger question is: Where and how do you want to display those tips on your pages? Keep in mind that the Terms of Use put certain (albeit vague) limits on manipulations of the page layout. If you want to show the tips in the content area, you are most likely on the safe side. But if you want to show them in the top area or the right rail you better ask Wikia staff for their opinion! -- Pecoes 11:34, February 26, 2012 (UTC)

Simple way to get them on more pages is to add a navbox to the bottom of your wikis articles (could even be every page) which has links to all these obscure pages. You could keep them static or swap them say once a month. (using a navbox is just a handy way of transcluding some content into another article, that contains it and allows it to be collapsed etc. )

You can just create a page called say "Hand tips" or "Did you know" and just add it like a template to the page {{:handy tips}} if in an article page or {{Example}} if is in the template namespace - this {[tl|example}} template here on community displays as :-

Instead of the message shown it can be a collection of wikilinks or images etc. which link to other articles.

The system already adds 3 related pages that are based on the categories under the "Read more" section which appears above the categories list when the article is viewed by users.

-   BulldozerD11   talk    contribs    email   18:01, February 27, 2012 (UTC)

I think what he had in mind was to drag a few bits and pieces of those pages that are not the obvious next choice and not on the list of most viewed pages to the fore. Very much like the loading screens in games that try to alert the players to features the game testers frequently missed. -- Pecoes 18:11, February 27, 2012 (UTC)