Forum:Videos are Here

As many of you have noticed, there seems to be a new sidebar that main wikia has added of Videos. The very same videos we've voted time and time again to remove from the wiki, but have never been truly deleted. I've heard of some users attempting to contact staff regarding them, but I haven't heard the results of any of those. Plus, I think we need to discuss this issue as a community. So here's a forum and a space to do just that. 20:27, June 13, 2014 (UTC)

Discussion
Personally, I believe in only two options:

1) Talk with staff to have all videos removed, along with any template, special pages, or any other feature involved with them from this wiki for good.

2) If removal is not possible, and wikia chooses to leave the videos and all the assorted features on, we need to suck it up, and put the videos to good use. Put them to use on articles. Because if we have this giant video sidebar, and none of the videos are connected in any way to our own articles, we're just hosting content we aren't even informing people about. To be clear, I don't want to open the floodgates for user-added videos, merely use the ones that staff chooses to add.

Option 2 sounds bad, but honestly, I think begrudgingly adding them to articles is much better than leaving them as a large, completely "unsupported" feature. 20:27, June 13, 2014 (UTC)

I messaged the staff. Here is their response on the chat. I emailed them two times since then, but their responses were essentially the same. The guy I talked to in the chat told me if there is enough opposition against the videos, they will probably change it back.

TL;DR: TELL THEM HOW MUCH YOU HATE THE VIDEOS 20:31, June 13, 2014 (UTC)

Dude, what are you expecting to get by discussing it? Nobody wants videos here, that's a fact, but you can't do anything about it so live with that. 20:55, June 13, 2014 (UTC)

Staw, since they were forced on us I haven't heard a single person say that videos are a good idea on this wiki. Keep protesting and it will eventually get the staff's attention. Learn for Enrik's example - even though his protests look pointless, he doesn't stop. (runs away before the revolutionary kills me)

21:16, June 13, 2014 (UTC)

Remove them. There's also no point in using them any articles even if they won't remove them. That would just pointlessly clutter articles. SeaTerror (talk) 01:39, June 14, 2014 (UTC)


 * You can remove 'em with css :/
 * I actually like 'em(I'm not against every change staff brings),we can make a good use of it.--

"Keep protesting and it will eventually get the staff's attention." "Remove them. There's also no point in using them any articles even if they won't remove them. That would just pointlessly clutter articles. "

You guys are misunderstanding something: It's not up to us. You think you can have a say on a feature that is active on 400.000 wikis? It's beta so in the future it will be possible to not have it on our wiki, but till then there's nothing we can do about it. Staff say that removing it with CSS site-wide is not allowed, as I expected so we can only live with it. You guys can always tell staff that you don't like it using Special:Contact/feedback, but that's all. 11:52, June 14, 2014 (UTC)

While we're on the topic of annoying and unwanted changes, we should also contact staff about the new visual editor that adds a bunch of spaces to the references every time someone uses it. I contacted them a few weeks ago but nothing happened. They might listen more if a bunch of us complain to them. 14:19, June 14, 2014 (UTC)

I talked to them about that, they have found the cause of the problem and they are trying to fix it. Here's the link: http://community.wikia.com/wiki/User_blog:Kirkburn/VisualEditor_-_the_past,_present_and_future?page=2#comm-685085 Hopefully, it will be fixed soon. 14:31, June 14, 2014 (UTC)

Good, because allowing videos in a wiki brings bad quality videos and fan made stuff that are not useful to our cause (Zeldapedia being the sole known exception). 15:34, June 14, 2014 (UTC)

I guess all we can do now is send more feedback about the videos and fix the template changes in every anon edit. 20:28, June 14, 2014 (UTC)

Discussion 2 - Full Episodes
So obviously, if anyone sent anything to staff, nothing was ever done about this. Now I see that the sidebar shows some very interesting videos: Full Episodes.

I think it's important to note that these videos are NOT hosted on our wiki, rather on Wikia Video.

Personally, I know they're probably region locked, and we don't really know which ones will be online when, but I think it could be useful to us to put the full episodes we do have into our articles. I bet most of you are against straight-up embedding them, so my preemptive compromise offer is that we just use external links to the Wikia Video.

Does everyone hate me now, or do some people actually want to start using these? 00:42, September 6, 2014 (UTC)

We want to get rid of them. Wikia is not supposed to be a video viewing site anyway so full episodes shouldn't be on here and I doubt they even have the legal rights to fully host them. SeaTerror (talk) 00:44, September 6, 2014 (UTC)

Those are not hosted by Wikia. Those are embedded versions of the Crunchyroll stream, which is therefore legal.

It's region restricted though, so keep it off the articles. Mr. Whatever (talk) 00:54, September 6, 2014 (UTC)

As already said, the video are not hosted anywhere on Wikia, they are hosted on third party websites Wikia has a partnership with, so they are also totally legit. The files can be added because the videos on Wikia Video are shared, and when you add one the file page will be created on this wiki too for maintenance purpose, that's all. You can think of the video module as the same as the spotlights, so it's not really something "on the wiki", but rather part of the interface. If you think it's annoying it's another matter, but I don't think that's so bad... I mean it stays in the right sidebar and that's all, if someone want to see a video, he will go on Wikia Video. What's annoying are the advertisements (which I don't care about since I use AdBlock), so I don't think the module is so intrusive.

On the matter of embedding the videos here, I'd actually like that if the videos weren't region-locked, but since they are, it's kinda pointless, although this is the English wiki and not the "international wiki" after all, hence it would still make sense. I wouldn't add any promotional, fan-made or random clip though, just the videos about the full episodes or other materials (episodes, movies, songs, ecc.). If you think about it, if we have a page about an episode, it would have perfect sense to have the actual episode on it since it's the actual subject of the article. To use another example, if shueisha would grant us the possibility to host the complete chapters, why wouldn't we do that? It's like having a library with only descriptions of the books and not the books themselves.

I'm in total agreement with Levi. I would like to clarify two things:


 * The videos should be added in a way that does not lessen the quality of the articles for those who can't watch the videos. They are bonus/additional content for articles, not content that can replace any information already on (or missing from) articles.


 * No user should be allowed to upload videos. We must only use the videos Wikia provides for us.

If we keep those two rules, I think that should cover most problems people have with videos in the first place. 14:56, September 6, 2014 (UTC)

Embedding videos to articles would lessen them since it would make the articles take longer to load than they already do. External links or nothing is the way to go. Besides why should we even have to do this in the first place? It's obvious nobody even contacted Wikia staff about videos since a staff member would have posted in here. SeaTerror (talk) 16:51, September 6, 2014 (UTC)

Embedding would not slow down anything. You seem to be the only one with problems loading pages.

What they'll actually do is make the articles uglier though, since those that are region-locked from the videos will be unable to view them. Mr. Whatever (talk) 19:59, September 6, 2014 (UTC)

This still needs resolution. I'd also like to add that if we do add them to the articles, we should add a small note that the anime is non-canon in many cases, and that we may use different name spellings from those used in the subtitles. 05:35, November 17, 2014 (UTC)

I agree with ST; Keep videos out of this wiki. 16:48, November 18, 2014 (UTC)

I agree with ST and Awa, just keep the videos out of the articles. 22:17, November 18, 2014 (UTC)

We will still need to contact staff to see if we can get rid of them completely. SeaTerror (talk) 22:29, November 18, 2014 (UTC)

I see videos on every wiki (or almost every), so it may virtually impossible to disable them, unless wiki-universal scale action is taken to shut down ALL videos from ALL wikis. I'm just guessing here. 05:53, November 21, 2014 (UTC)

I don't really understand the cons said here:
 * Make the articles slower to load. That's untrue and actually gif make articles slower to load because they play on load. It seems we love to use gifs here but everybody hates video, that's make no sense.
 * Make the article uglier. Although this is just a plain opinion, if adding an image does not, I can't see why a video does. Visually, they are both seen as thumbnails and if we talk about episodes, it's one video per page anyway.
 * Videos are not supposed to be here. Why? Is there a law that states what's supposed to be or not be here on a wiki? Videos where usually never used on wiki simply because they couldn't use them. As I stated before, if we are talking about the original source of the subject of our wiki, I think this is the fittest place where they should be. If shueisha granted us the possibility to host the One Piece volumes, I think we would be dumb to not do that. It's like having a library without the books, but only reviews of them. If we are discussing about which videos should be added, that's a whole different story.
 * To be honest, I didn't really read here any solid argument against them... it seems to me that people don't wants them simply because they were a bit "forced" and go out of their concept of traditional wiki.

1) No that's completely true especially on older computers. Flash still has to load the video itself which can cause problems.

2) Then it's your opinion that it won't.

3) One_Piece_Encyclopedia:Guidebook/Image_Guidelines you were saying? SeaTerror (talk) 18:06, November 21, 2014 (UTC)


 * 1) That's the same problem you will have with the ads, gif, images and JavaScripts. The video itself is not loaded until played, just a thumbnail (like an image) is loaded. Also with recent updates, page are loaded in LazyLoad, which means that multimedia elements (such images) are loaded separately from the page and when actually viewed. I still think that's a groundless statement and if that was a valid reason to not use videos, should videos not be used at all on any wiki or sites? Why is not that the case? If you have an old PC, that's honestly your problem. It's like IE6 users that won't have the same internet experience as firefox or chrome users, since most of the sites don't support old IE versions.
 * 2) It's not a matter that is mine or yours, but that it is an opinion. Hence is not an argument. Opinions still matters, but we should keep in mind when we are stating an opinion.
 * 3) I'm pretty sure that was referring to YouTube videos since that policy is older then Wikia videos. And still nobody is questioning that, so YouTube videos will still be a no-go. Nobody is also adding video, probably because that rule which I have forgotten. Policies are discussed, made and changed in forums and that's what we are doing now, otherwise going with that logic we couldn't change any pre-existing rule. So saying "we cannot change this rule, because this rule already exists" is not argument and quite dumb honestly. Though I fear then when people said "videos don't belong here" they were talking in general, hence my comment before.

I'm totally with Levi on this.

1) The episodes would only be added to episode pages, which are some of our smallest pages since we use few templates and images on them. I can't see them being a problem, especially with the computer SCIENCE that Levi just explained.

2) If they are implemented in a way that looks less than appealing, we can always change that. We have users who can manipulate code and change colors, add hide templates or whatever. If we're smart, we can make them show up in a way that doesn't look "ugly" to detractors.

3) We can agree to change rules, that's exactly why this forum exists. It's exactly why the whole "site changes" forum category exists. The old image guideline against videos can and should be changed to allow these videos, while still barring any user-added videos. 19:45, November 23, 2014 (UTC)

His computer "science" explanation basically came down to "get a better computer". So it is completely invalid. Videos in general are bad and have no place on this wiki. SeaTerror (talk) 19:54, November 23, 2014 (UTC)

ST, you are talking like you will have loading problem ONLY if we add videos. We are using on this wiki templates that are far more heavy to load. You won't have problems different that what you can have in a page with ads or any other site. I actually tested the difference on a sandbox: A whopping 0,09s of difference in page load, but since your PC is slower you can expect a 0,019% time increase. Definitely something unbearable. As I said, we are using templates that are far more heavy to load (those that use tons of parser functions).
 * Pagelaod without video: 4,79s
 * Pageload with video: 4,88s

So I went ahead and made an example of how an episode page would look with a video added. I stuck it at the bottom, threw in a note about how it's region locked, and used a hide template on the video too. I'm sure if we went ahead with adding more of them, someone with more skill than I have could make a pretty template that includes both the region lock note and hides the video.

Personally, I think it's not very intrusive to the article, and proves how little it adds to the loading time of the page. 18:49, January 1, 2015 (UTC)

Poll Discussion
Alright, I've had enough of waiting for this, the discussion is clearly dead with input from far too few users to decide anything. It's time for a poll.

Here's the pros/cons of adding full episodes.

Cons:
 * Content is region locked so that only North American readers can watch them.
 * Potentially ugly on pages. (though this can be fixed)
 * I don't actually know any other cons.

Pros:
 * Only full episodes that wikia gets will be allowed, no user uploaded videos will be allowed, keeping things basically the same in terms of our video policy.
 * Makes it far easier to check content in episode for editing, because video will be in the page. 72% of episode articles are stubs currently, this should help change that figure.
 * Will not affect load time of pages.
 * Using a hide template and note about region lock can keep episode articles looking the same for users who are outside North America. Videos will not replace any content for those users.
 * Hosting full episodes will increase the wiki's traffic, increasing user numbers as well.

So that's my argument. Let's just vote and get it over with.

Test poll is up, 1 week before poll starts. 2 weeks long. 03:14, January 16, 2015 (UTC)

Some thoughts regarding the Pros and Cons list: Also, we currently have no videos or video module, so we'd have to figure out how/if we can add them. In any case, they definitely aren't being forced upon us. 21:34, January 26, 2015 (UTC)
 * Another con (as expressed in the votes) is the fact that hosting full episodes isn't very encyclopedia-like and would make the wiki seem less professional.
 * "Will not affect load time of pages" and the hide template point are not pros; they're neutral. There's no benefit in things staying the same.
 * There's no proof or guarantee that full episodes would increase traffic, so I think "will" is a little too strong of a word.


 * Well, being an online source with nearly infinite storage isn't very encyclopedic either. If we can host a primary source without copyright issue, why not? It can only help our articles.
 * True it's not really a pro, but ST was arguing it was a Con, so I felt the need to add it preemptively.
 * There's no definite proof it will increase activity. But what do you want, a statistically sound study on our readership? I can't get that. What I did do was a mildly inefficient blog poll. It showed that 71% of the participants started watching the anime, while about 50% of them were editors here. So hosting videos might be good for getting readership. And let's not forget our already high google results, which are how most complete noobs will find us or any other streaming site. Will it lead to a measurable increase that I can predict? No. Will it probably lead to a substantial increase in a short time? Hell no. Will it lead to an increase in any form? Probably, actually.

And if we want a videos module, staff will help us. Why do you think they got the rights to the videos in the first place if this wiki wasn't supposed to find a use for them? And to be totally speculative, do you think our resistance to change helps staff want to show us off? I bet not. I've been throwing around the idea in my head of applying us for a Wikia Spotlight, I think it would be a waste because there's no way we're a stable enough community to cash in on it, and staff probably knows it. 22:35, January 27, 2015 (UTC)

Post Poll Discussion
So how long before this inevitably gets reopened?

16:50, February 7, 2015 (UTC)

Depends on how much the loss brews inside me. Though the forum rules say something like "at least 3 months, or after a significant change occurs that would cause the outcome to be different". Given the outcome of this, I think it would be foolish of me to attempt it with the same user pool, though. 17:09, February 7, 2015 (UTC)