MediaWiki talk:Sidebar

The sidebar seems to act somewhat weird. From time to time, it just shows as the default version (with no useful links whatsoever), and stays like that for a couple of minutes or so, even though MediaWiki:Sidebar itself looks perfectly fine. That's probably some weird MediaWiki bug (or maybe the database got desynchronized or corrupted?), but I thought I'd make you guys aware of that, in case you haven't already noticed. --KFYatek 14:24, 8 May 2011 (UTC)

I noticed that as well, but I thought it was page and not time-based. Than again, that'd probably be even more awkward... --BrickBreak 14:25, 8 May 2011 (UTC)

Tiro Finale

Note, I would not include Tiro Finale as a separate game. It was designed as a promo game for the PSP game. --randomanon 09:23, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

Hmm, I think it make sense to put on a sidebar because it's a game with separate goal from PSP one, what do you think? --0x99 09:27, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

Nevermind, it doesn't even works. (/facepalm) --0x99 09:30, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

It really is a sub game to it because it borrows much of the same content from the PSP game. The difference being is the PSP game is an RPG dungeon with VN elements and Tiro Finale is a simple mini-game app where you attack and defeat witches. They even have it so you play Tiro Finale to unlock content related to the PSP game. That's why we've kept it on the same page. I'd also suggest adding (PSP) to Portable as many people call it that. --randomanon 09:34, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

Now that I say it, we may end up putting Tiro Finale on a separate subpage, linking to the Portable (PSP) main page, because of space issues. I suspect the PSP game will have a big expansion in content soon once the game's out. --randomanon 09:38, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

I'm thinking of reorganizing stuffs into Portals since we have more non-anime stuff more than when we started. (more on that later) --0x99 09:54, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

I think the sidebar should simply be a list of pages that cover official games, not counting subpages. (What about the web browser mmo?) Once an English patch is out, the PSP game will probably need subpages split off. Shorter entries like the iP application could fit on a misc. games/apps page, but a games portal would deal with that. "Portal" is pretty vague, but does this mean, for example, Characters gets split up, "X in the game/manga/movie" gets pulled out of X's main character page, and each portal would have a characters page containing all of and only the medium specific stuff? KM 10:32, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

Ah, completely forgot about Online. Adding it. For more info on portal stuff, see Talk:Main Page#Wiki reorganization --0x99 10:38, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

Comments on Re-Org

I'll be frank. I really really x1000 prefer the old sidebar navigation. It wasn't perfect but I could find things much much easier. The new one just doesn't make sense to me at all. The main thing is I want access to the anime links wherever I am surfing on the site. I'm resorting to doing searches or going constantly back to the main page to refer to "episode 10" or "characters." Why things like "Glossary" and "Events" have direct links from the sidebar, I don't understand, nor does "Contents" grouping or selections chosen for it make sense to me. Again, I really prefer to see manga and games separated and not glomped into one "Series" category.

If you want simple and short, here's what I'd like to see:

• Anime, with at a minimum, sublinks to episodes and characters subpages. On another note, I don't think you need to separate characters from witches for the anime. It's fine to separate by medium but it's inconvenient to have them separated from one another for the anime. I like to see the full list of them together.
• Manga category. Sublinks to each manga is optional. If space is premium, it's not necessary to list out all three. Although I'd rather see sublinks dropped out of Community or Toolbox or "Random Page" (do we really need that?) instead.
• Official Games category. Again, sublinks are optional for space.
• I want a direct link back to Products. The grouping header to me doesn't matter, but Documents and Materials belong with it. I'm fine if you put them back into one link "Documents" if space is an issue.
• I think you can drop things like Glossary, Notes or Runes and instead link Madoka Magica Articles and add those links to that page. To me, a comprehensive page like this makes sense to link on a sidebar, and is more useful than three separate links to individual pages. Plus it conserves space.

When navigating this site, because there's so much content, it really helps to have a useful sidebar. At the moment, as well as I know the site, it's become onerous to get to where I want. Please, if you don't agree with my suggestions, at least change it back to the old one. I'd be much happier with that then it is currently. At least in the interim, until you finalize what you want to change.

Let me give you an example of what I'm talking about. Let's say I'm somewhere on the site and I want to find the anime page for Gisela. In the past, I could click on the "Character" sidebar then click on "Gisela"...two clicks. Now, I have to click on the main page, then "Characters", then "Madoka Magica witches", then "Gisela"...four clicks. It's why I end up using search. I don't think I should have to go through all that to get to a major page.

I also don't like that everything is being presented as though it's the same level as the anime. I understand recent traffic may favor something other than the anime, but the anime is still the focal point of the fanbase, e.g. the anime is the basis of everything in the franchise, and each spin-off game or manga isn't so important that it should be linked at the same level. I myself created the Mobage page for example, but I don't think it ought to be treated on par with the anime. Plus, we're going to get movies and probably keep getting new manga, games and other spin-off material, so it'll be unwieldy if each gets its own link/portal whatever. It makes the most sense to me and offers flexibility to have the following categories:

• Anime (which will be its own distinct category and only added to if there's a season 2 etc.),
• Anime Movies (3 of them, we can add later or we know enough to start a page for it now),
• Manga (3 at the moment),
• Official Games (3 at the moment).

Then other categories as they make sense, like:

• Supporting Materials (things like Documents, Merchandise, Products would go under here)
• Community (things like articles, theories, events, fanworks and threads would go under here).
• Toolbox as currently listed

This is what makes the most intuitive sense to me and how I for one personally use the site. --randomanon 11:16, 28 March 2012 (UTC)

I'm on a train and probably won't be able to proper reply to this until later today, but given sidebar is now collapsible (i.e. no more space constraint) how would you reorganize it? (I think you can only expand-by-default the first one. I disabled it because it led to disappearing sidebar prior to MW1.18 upgrade. Let's see if it happens again.) Content reorganization is not only about traffic pattern and I agree that Madoka is still the focal point of the fanbase, some content do live on its own now, so it no longer make sense to keep them under the anime. It's easier to manage what is canon and what is not this way too (will add later) --0x99 11:41, 28 March 2012 (UTC)