Hello. On the 14th of February, Fandom will be removing the Top 10 List feature from our wikis.
The removal of the feature will mean that existing Top 10 Lists will be deleted from your communities and be irretrievable. Last week, I shared this news with communities who have at least 10 lists, to give them extra time to decide if/how to move any lists to some other space on their wikis. I am also posting here to ensure that everyone is aware of the change and given some time to make a decision about keeping or removing the content.
Any time we consider removing a feature, we have to look at how widely it's being used and if that justifies the cost of fixing and maintaining it. In this case, Top 10 Lists are not widely used by our wikis, with only a couple thousand being created in the five years we’ve had this feature. That may sound like a lot, but consider that Fandom has over 340,000 communities. Additionally, many of the special features Top 10 Lists had, such as voting, ranking, and the list creation form, were prone to breaking due to older coding standards and would not have been easy to modernize considering the uniqueness of the feature.
We decided we would rather invest our time and resources into newer content tools and repairing tools that can be more widely used. I’ll be happy to answer any questions you may have about this decision.
Are there any plans for a similar new feature like this? What sorts of newer content tools are these resources being directed to? What tools might get focus for repairing?
I'm saddened to see the feature removed. The biggest problem I had with them was the fact you could add more than ten choices to a list (how is it a Top 10 list then?). The lists, however, are more of an advantage over other means like polls considering you could add addition choices when you needed without resetting the vote. I say the lack of use may have came down to less discoverability (ie. not linked to as some other features are).
The question left is what will replace the feature? I don't know of anything now that can do so.
I honestly really don't see the point in this. Top 10 lists aren't used much. And? A feature not being used much makes it unique. If every Wiki used the same thing, it would get boring and repetitive.
To answer the most common question - there is not a direct replacement for Top Ten Lists nor is there a feature planned. Some communities were using them as psuedo-polls. For those communities, I have pointed out the <pollsnack hash="" /> tag (for Pollsnack.com) and <polldaddy id="" /> tag (for Polldaddy.com) options if the basic Polls feature does not do the job.
Top 10 Lists were also designed prior to Forum and Discussions and most of the original content in this feature seems to have more naturally wound up being discussed in those spaces.
If there is a specific use case you would like advice or clarity about, please link it and I will happily look at it.
Good decision by Fandom. If anything, they can just make a polling feature in Discussions in the future. In fact, the whole poll system could use renovations. I love the Google Forms extension. Very handy.
I guess I'll ask the other questions again, in case I'm not being ignored (the answer to the first question was not unexpected):
What sorts of newer content tools are these resources being directed to? What tools might get focus for repairing?
It would be nice for Top 10 users to explain what made it so uniquely cool, so maybe a future project could have at least part of that cool feature. From what I remember, the UI to build a Top 10 List was pretty easy to use and didn't require coding, so less chance of fumble finger killing it.
Webkinz Mania wrote: I love the Google Forms extension. Very handy.
If only they documented it, lol.
It's nice seeing some more old extensions getting removed. I never used Top 10 Lists myself, and I doubt I'd ever need them. Guess it's time to move onto new features you hopefully don't abandon.
Sad to see another feature go, even though it was really buggy and never worked properly for me anyway. That being said, however, into what kinds of "newer content tools and repairing tools" do you plan to invest your "time and resources" now?
Fandyllic wrote: It would be nice for Top 10 users to explain what made it so uniquely cool, so maybe a future project could have at least part of that cool feature.
For me being able to edit the poll without affecting votes was a huge benefit (something the current poll tags fail at, recognize a spelling error weeks after posting the poll? Too bad, start over or leave it), plus adding images to polls made them more visual. While these subjects may be, and in some cases in addition to being, discussed in the Forum, they offered a more concise viewing of results within the Top 10 lists.
Perhaps there should be help pages for pollsnack and polldaddy tags if those are being suggested as alternatives. I've never heard of them and I'm sure others haven't either. Looked at pollsnack briefly, but after seeing I need an account decided not to (who would maintain the polls if I was no longer on a wiki or would it even be possible?). Not to mention I'm still wondering if polls can be edited after being created.
Despite arguments to the contrary there are not 340, 000 communities. The vast majority of the wiki's on Wikia are single page wiki's that were immediately abandoned and waste resources and time just keeping around. There are really only about 3-5000 active wiki's on Wikia. So if 2000 are using this feature, then that is actually a lot IMO and should be kept.
This seems like another decision that the staff did which is not a benefit to the communities. I request you reconsider this decision.
Wow. Fandom seems to be begging for abandonment, now.
As Reguyla stated, there are really only 3-5000 active wikis on this platform, with said number likely to decrease by a considerable amount as Discussions' complete replacement of forums draws ever closer.
Sure, the few times I've been asked if any feature should be added to a wiki, I ignored Top 10s, however, there seem to be a lot of people who are fans of the feature in question.
My eyes must be deceiving me. How can anyone want the Top 10 Lists feature to stay? When I found its existence, I thought it was out-of-place and a waste of space.
It is literally just as easy to create a forum thread like this, a blog post, or a Discussions post with a bullet list. For example, my top 10 favorite video games are:
Ace Combat
Sly Cooper
Need for Speed
...
I swear, anyone will take an excuse to swing at Fandom when they make a decision. This isn't like Wikia Maps, "Top 10" isn't a feature that needed to stick around. Just make a forum post or a blog post and you're good.
I swear, anyone will take an excuse to swing at Fandom when they make a decision. This isn't like Wikia Maps, "Top 10" isn't a feature that needed to stick around. Just make a forum post or a blog post and you're good.
That's if they actually keep Forums. But they've never once mentioned reconsidering the decision to sack them.
You seem to be looking at the Top 10 list as being strictly a personal feature. On the wiki I continued to use it personal lists weren't encouraged (were deleted) and items added to the lists were always monitored. For my use they were wiki-wide polls that were dynamic. A forum thread can't count votes efficiently, blog posts tend to get lost with time (in other words no additional benefit having them in the blog namespace, though it doesn't matter anyways because blogs don't offer the same functionality), and I'm pretty sure Discussions can't even make a poll (if I recall correctly Staff was considering a poll support, though I doubt it would provide the same functionality).
I'm not saying the feature was perfect, but it worked for what we were after. You may believe Maps was a great feature, others aren't going to.
@Schiffy: Forums aren't getting sacked. They said that all forum content will be converted into the Discussions feature when and ONLY when Discussions supports everything that Forum supports (markup, article topics, etc.). Discussions is still in beta, and Forums will not be converted until Discussions is more complete.
@DEmersonJMFM: It is no easier to lose a blog post than it is to lose a Top 10 list. Hell, as long as you link to them, you're golden. You can even do something like the Technical Updates blog list by creating Blog:Top 10 Lists. It's not that hard to create a "top 10 list" in plain text.
The difference I was trying to point out with Wikia Maps is that top 10 lists are easy to create in plain text whereas Maps actually needed real development on the backend to create. You can't create a map in plain text or with images easily, but you can easily make a top 10 list. I just started to make one a few posts above.
My problem with the Discussions is that as they stand, they only extend to articles. Many wikis, this included, use Forums to discuss the state of the wiki as a whole. Discussions need to be able to cover more than just "talking about an article among fans".
This isn't the forum thread to discuss problems with Discussions. If you have feedback on the feature (and you obviously do), you need to send it to Special:Contact/feedback.
To address a previous question - "What sorts of newer content tools are these resources being directed to? What tools might get focus for repairing?"
For newer content tools, it's not something I can go into many details about, either because talks about what we could do are high level and in the very early planning stages OR I don't want to commit one tool having one specific feature that it doesn't wind up ultimately having.
I will say that Discussions is indeed being actively designed to handle a lot of the social use cases Top 10 Lists did have for discussing rankings and there is more effort planned into adding options and flexibility in Discussions for these kind of conversations. Additionally, we have a team at Fandom whose sole purview it is to investigate and implement some radical contribution ideas and they've presented a few prototypes to Council that show some real promise and are targeted for development later this year.
As for what might get repaired - Our older and legacy features are maintained by an engineering group at Fandom called the Sustainment Team. They spend development cycles, what we call "sprints" here, to fix bugs on a feature and then move on to the next one in the next cycle. They did a bunch of work on Chat in December and are currently cleaning up some Message Wall/Forum architecture.
After looking at the analytics, we decided that fixing Top 10 Lists properly would take a number of these cycles, which is obviously stealing development time (at least a month) from any other legacy feature - Core MediaWiki improvements, staff tools, Search, etc., etc., After looking at the numbers and gauging user sentiment, we decided ultimately it would be in everyone's best interest if we went ahead and retired the tool as opposed to try to refactor it.
Reguyla wrote:
Despite arguments to the contrary there are not 340, 000 communities. The vast majority of the wiki's on Wikia are single page wiki's that were immediately abandoned and waste resources and time just keeping around. There are really only about 3-5000 active wiki's on Wikia.
SlyCooperFan1 wrote: It's not that hard to create a "top 10 list" in plain text.
Seems you still haven't realized the feature is more than a personal one. Not all uses of the Top 10 lists would work in plain text when applied to the scope of the entire community. A bulleted (numbered, etc) list is fine if you want to list your favorites, etc; the idea fails at a larger scale when you want a community's opinion (a text blog list would also fail to garner the same input as a poll feature).
The poll tag feature has limitations and the other two proposed poll tags rely on external sites with questionable maintenance issues. As DaNASCAT mentioned above, Discussions may take on this functionality, and if it does, great. I wouldn't, however, dismiss the benefits that the Top 10 lists had by equating them to simple plain text.
Honestly, I don't mind. Usually, when I make Top 10 Lists, I try to make them as detailed as is possible, but generally speaking, the interface is rather limiting at times. Thus, I normally just stick to mainspace pages with "Top 10" in their title.
Jamesb1 wrote:
Are you thinking of bringing out an updated version?
Probably not... from earlier post by DaNASCAT (I added the bold for emphasis):
DaNASCAT wrote:
Hello,
To answer the most common question - there is not a direct replacement for Top Ten Lists nor is there a feature planned. Some communities were using them as psuedo-polls. For those communities, I have pointed out the <pollsnack hash="" /> tag (for Pollsnack.com) and <polldaddy id="" /> tag (for Polldaddy.com) options if the basic Polls feature does not do the job.
Message Walls and Forum share a similar architecture. Also because it probably improved the page loading speed which maybe affects SEO. They seem to have finished with the reformat, though.
DEmersonJMFM wrote: I'm saddened to see the feature removed. The biggest problem I had with them was the fact you could add more than ten choices to a list (how is it a Top 10 list then?). The lists, however, are more of an advantage over other means like polls considering you could add addition choices when you needed without resetting the vote. I say the lack of use may have came down to less discoverability (ie. not linked to as some other features are).
The question left is what will replace the feature? I don't know of anything now that can do so.
If all you want is editable polls, you might be interested in my blog. It's unhandy, but maybe it can be translated into a template.
RobertATfm wrote:
We on the Beatles Wiki have a shedload of Top 10 lists, and we weren't notified.
It looks like you have six Top 10 lists - not exactly a shedload by anyone's standards. As mentioned in the first post, only communities with more than 10 lists were notified.
It would have been nice if Wikia had offered some guidance on a way to convert the data into a table replacement or something that looked similar more easily than... "figure something out".
I think this is not a bad idea to remove them. They are only sometimes used, as the only wiki that uses them that I know is The Simpsons Idea. That being said, they are better than polls in my opinion. But hey, polls are doing better and being used more than Top 10 Lists.Â
Reguyla wrote:
Despite arguments to the contrary there are not 340, 000 communities. The vast majority of the wiki's on Wikia are single page wiki's that were immediately abandoned and waste resources and time just keeping around. There are really only about 3-5000 active wiki's on Wikia.
Our community created a page for it [1] the problem is the changelog spamming, and now we vote on forum (by giving kudo) instead of top10 or built in poll function. RIP this plugin is fun, i will miss it. And hope it can give you time to fix more bugs make wikia better.
I don't agree with this one bit. Im an administrator on multiple wikis and we use top 10 to vote for featured videos and quotes. please take this into a bit more consideration before doing so
KockaAdmiralac wrote: They already removed it from the codebase, it is very doubtful they will readd it now. You already have numerous other options for polls.
Sawpog46 wrote: Can you just get rid of these and not Forums?
As much i wish the forums could stay, honestly, can't you face the fact they're being retired no matter what?
Why in Talos' name would I want to do that? The Forums are an excellent part of Wikia that bring users together and allow users to open their mind and express what they feel. Once they are gone, a huge chunk of practicality is gone.
JDLover12 wrote: No! Now how are the people at the Just Dance Wiki gonna be able to do Article Of The Month?!!
Polls.
You can't add stuff to a poll after it's been posted. If you do, it resets the vote count. That's why we use polls for the top 4 and top 10 lists for the nomination stage. We'll just have to do it the old fashioned way: counting nominations manually.
Although this seems bad, i assume it is best for the future of fandom and its communities. So go ahead and do it, i am still gonna support the decision.
The removal's cool for me because of the bugs, but polls need some new love for the people who used Top 10 lists. Perhaps a Poll namespace and editor, Discussions integration as above, fresh new visual styling and even only allowing one vote per IP. There's many options that can be done with it so that people can use it to work for them after Top 10 Lists go.
I noticed that the Top 10 Lists could have filled the niche of repeated mainpage polls like the One Piece Encyclopedia does here better by having embedding support. Top 10 Lists were still editable, had their own namespace and also had media integration. Polls often involve say, characters, but don't allow links to their articles in the option text.
I have to agree. Polls are no better than Top 10 lists, they have limitations that should be addressed now that there's only one option (sorry, I don't see relying on external sites as an appropriate long-term solution - unless polls are being kicked to the curb too). Minus my poll styling, they look quite bad on my laptop (partially the fault of the touchScreen.scss styling that Fandom still hasn't updated). I forgot that polls don't allow for links either.
Out of curiosity, what were the bugs? I can't recall anything specific.
Boldmouse2 wrote:
Why remove Top 10s anyhow, the real wast of K'bs-per-sec' are the hundresd of abandoned 1 page wikis.
This has nothing to do with site load times. Please read the original post: "We would rather invest our time and resources into newer content tools and repairing tools that can be more widely used."
Boldmouse2 wrote:
Why remove Top 10s anyhow, the real wast of K'bs-per-sec' are the hundresd of abandoned 1 page wikis.
This has nothing to do with site load times. Please read the original post: "We would rather invest our time and resources into newer content tools and repairing tools that can be more widely used."
I hope this shows everyone that the Wikia staff do what they want and don't care one bit what any of us editors, admins or site creators want. They never discussed this and although they keep trying to minimize by saying only a couple thousand sites use this feature, a couple thousand sites is a lot AND it's some of the largest and most active sites on Wikia/Fandom.
I respect they have to make changes and remove unused code and tools, but they should be discussing this type of change with the communities first.
Reguyla wrote:
I hope this shows everyone that the Wikia staff do what they want and don't care one bit what any of us editors, admins or site creators want. They never discussed this and although they keep trying to minimize by saying only a couple thousand sites use this feature, a couple thousand sites is a lot AND it's some of the largest and most active sites on Wikia/Fandom.
I respect they have to make changes and remove unused code and tools, but they should be discussing this type of change with the communities first.
Reguyla wrote: I hope this shows everyone that the Wikia staff do what they want and don't care one bit what any of us editors, admins or site creators want. They never discussed this and although they keep trying to minimize by saying only a couple thousand sites use this feature, a couple thousand sites is a lot AND it's some of the largest and most active sites on Wikia/Fandom.
I respect they have to make changes and remove unused code and tools, but they should be discussing this type of change with the communities first.
Reguyla wrote:
I hope this shows everyone that the Wikia staff do what they want and don't care one bit what any of us editors, admins or site creators want. They never discussed this and although they keep trying to minimize by saying only a couple thousand sites use this feature, a couple thousand sites is a lot AND it's some of the largest and most active sites on Wikia/Fandom.
I respect they have to make changes and remove unused code and tools, but they should be discussing this type of change with the communities first.
The original post makes it appear that this feature is only in use on a tiny minority of wikis. However, as others have pointed out, most wikis are created, have between one and a dozen pages added, then fizzle out (whether because they're spam or vanity wikis, or simply because it turns out there's not very much interest in their subject), hence what features those wikis use or don't use is of little if any relevance. Meanwhile, the Top 10 List feature is used by an estimated 20%–60% of actually-active and growing wikis, so removing it will have a huge impact.
Thanks for the head's up. If anyone has a better suggestion, please let me know before the changes take effect, but for now, I've taken a screenshot of the Top 10 list, and attempt to make it look like a Top 10 list, even though it'll just be identified as a regular page, and as it's only going to be a screenshot, not the real thing, it will only be for archival purposes only.
I respect they have to make changes and remove unused code and tools, but they should be discussing this type of change with the communities first.
I saw this news on multiple wikis a week back, personally delivered by DaNASCAT to ensure the community has time to migrate the lists. Also as stated in the original post. So the change was definitely discussed.
not a lot of people used it. the removal shouldn't be a big deal. just chill out
Actually A LOT of people used it. The original post to the contrary isn't honest. In fact the majority of the largest and most active wiki's do use it.
I respect they have to make changes and remove unused code and tools, but they should be discussing this type of change with the communities first.
I saw this news on multiple wikis a week back, personally delivered by DaNASCAT to ensure the community has time to migrate the lists. Also as stated in the original post. So the change was definitely discussed.
Meanwhile, the Top 10 List feature is used by an estimated 20%–60% of actually-active and growing wikis, so removing it will have a huge impact.
Where is this statistic from? A percentage error of 20% out of such a large sample suggests an absolute lack of systematic rigour in obtaining it.
Yes, they notified the communities it was being removed...without discussion or asking the about it and using frankly dishonest statements about how many used it. There are NOT 300, 000+ active wiki's on Fandom. There are far less than that and a lot of the largest and most active use this feature.
What I am saying is that the Wikia folks should be working "with" the communities as a team, not demanding that they drop features they are using because the Wikia staff doesn't want to maintain it anymore and would rather spend all their time on doing the stuff they want to do and that they perceive as more interesting.
And for what its Worth Speed I like you. I have always enjoyed chatting with you but honestly you always find a way to side with the Wikia folks no matter how bad the decisions.
w:c:wipeout:Top 10 list:Most Popular Team and w:c:beatles:Top 10 list:Best Songs. It is seen from that and the help page that they could do more and be more interactive than polls. Still, I tested it on a random wiki and it repeated the poll description in the article. There's some visual issues too - it placed vote buttons in one half-width column and squashed files of a certain width.
Speedit wrote: Still, I tested it on a random wiki and it repeated the poll description in the article. There's some visual issues too - it placed vote buttons in one half-width column and squashed files of a certain width.
I'm confused by what you mean by the first sentence. Are you referring to the optional description about the list? As for the vote buttons, do they really need a larger space?
Squashed files? List choices could have an image with a width of your choosing (I believe up to the width of the choice box) or a height (not both apparently). Here's an example of images that appear squashed on purpose by having a fixed height, or smaller width.
Here's one of my favorite Top 10 lists, something a poll can't do and something that wouldn't look nice on a forum thread. This was a feature that was more unique for wikis that decided to use it (in the same nature as Maps).
Here's a great example of a potential poll that works better as a Top 10 list given the visual support.
DaNASCAT wrote: Hello. On the 14th of February, Fandom will be removing the Top 10 List feature from our wikis.
The removal of the feature will mean that existing Top 10 Lists will be deleted from your communities and be irretrievable. Last week, I shared this news with communities who have at least 10 lists, to give them extra time to decide if/how to move any lists to some other space on their wikis. I am also posting here to ensure that everyone is aware of the change and given some time to make a decision about keeping or removing the content.
Any time we consider removing a feature, we have to look at how widely it's being used and if that justifies the cost of fixing and maintaining it. In this case, Top 10 Lists are not widely used by our wikis, with only a couple thousand being created in the five years we’ve had this feature. That may sound like a lot, but consider that Fandom has over 340,000 communities. Additionally, many of the special features Top 10 Lists had, such as voting, ranking, and the list creation form, were prone to breaking due to older coding standards and would not have been easy to modernize considering the uniqueness of the feature.
We decided we would rather invest our time and resources into newer content tools and repairing tools that can be more widely used. I’ll be happy to answer any questions you may have about this decision.
No, really, I'm using it for my wiki... PLEASE KEEP IT. Note: not mad.
DEmersonJMFM wrote: I'm confused by what you mean by the first sentence. Are you referring to the optional description about the list? As for the vote buttons, do they really need a larger space?
Squashed files? List choices could have an image with a width of your choosing (I believe up to the width of the choice box) or a height (not both apparently). Here's an example of images that appear squashed on purpose by having a fixed height, or smaller width.
Here's one of my favorite Top 10 lists, something a poll can't do and something that wouldn't look nice on a forum thread. This was a feature that was more unique for wikis that decided to use it (in the same nature as Maps).
Here's a great example of a potential poll that works better as a Top 10 list given the visual support.
Yes, the optional description. Also, I saw some strange behaviour with the image. But I'm not too sure.
Woah, those lists are well-promoted and look really good. There's room for polls to step up in that direction and get more functionality.
I didn't realize that it was possible to change the widths of files on my own, nice. And for what it's worth, it takes a couple seconds for polls to be votable.
DEmersonJMFM wrote: I'm confused by what you mean by the first sentence. Are you referring to the optional description about the list? As for the vote buttons, do they really need a larger space?
Squashed files? List choices could have an image with a width of your choosing (I believe up to the width of the choice box) or a height (not both apparently). Here's an example of images that appear squashed on purpose by having a fixed height, or smaller width.
Here's one of my favorite Top 10 lists, something a poll can't do and something that wouldn't look nice on a forum thread. This was a feature that was more unique for wikis that decided to use it (in the same nature as Maps).
Here's a great example of a potential poll that works better as a Top 10 list given the visual support.
Yes, the optional description. Also, I saw some strange behaviour with the image. But I'm not too sure.
Woah, those lists are well-promoted and look really good. There's room for polls to step up in that direction and get more functionality.
I didn't realize that it was possible to change the widths of files on my own, nice. And for what it's worth, it takes a couple seconds for polls to be votable.
You mean this? Oh. I enabled it for I think my new Amazinger Battle Creatures wiki...
Speedit wrote: Woah, those lists are well-promoted and look really good. There's room for polls to step up in that direction and get more functionality.
Thank you. Some of these lists have been on the wiki since the feature was first released and have been linked to from the home page and wiki navigation for the last two or three years after I edited them to look even better. I don't like to see wiki history being removed in such a disgraceful manner. I may take screenshots of the more important polls and archive them? Haven't decided. Went ahead and created a single file of the five most voted Top 10 lists.
Considering the potential work on a Discussions poll, I doubt any time's going to be spent into improving the tag.
I am going to go ahead and shut down this thread. It does appear the communication goal has been completed. We understand removing a feature is never popular. However, I think it's best I stress a few things to correct some incorrect assertions others have made on this thread.
Yes, Fandom has 340,000+ communities, many of which are small and rarely edited. However, wikis that are simply created and never/barely ever edited are automatically closed to help with our storage and scale capabilities. To imply that the vast majority of our wikis are just one page, empty wikis is incorrect.
To imply that 20-60% of our most active communities use this feature is incorrect. Approximately 150 wikis across all language groups had an all-time total of 10 lists or more and still had the feature enabled on their wikis. I personally communicated with most of these wikis (others helped me with the remainder) - only two of them implied to me they would attempt to save the content. More might have, but at no point did I feel significant pushback from any of the on-wiki communication I did.
In January 2017, in our database, I see only 33 lists in total were created on Fandom. While every edit is important, it is essential to use data-driven information to make decisions.
