User blog:Fall Out Wave/Sandbox on 27th!

As Patrik said on the previous wiki update, I'm part of the team now. So yeah, lots and lots of news this week, so let's just jump in without further ranting...


 * -|Merge News=

End of an Era
At long last, the Merge is completely over. The Diep.io Conception Wikia was closed today and the on DCoW have been transferred to users on DW. is currently being created to document DCoW’s history, staff, et cetera. Once that, the page, and the Fanon  tab are completed, the Merge will be  completely over. It has been a long, stressful time, but it is all but behind us.


 * -|Wiki Event News=

Upcoming Sandbox
Be sure to attend the upcoming on Friday, October 27th at 8 to 10 AM Eastern Time (UTC 12:00 - 14:00). Sandboxes consist of one hour of discussion time, followed by one hour of gaming in a chosen Diep.io server. If you have any specific ideas for discussion, be sure to place them ahead of time on the designated talk page.

Fanon Tournament Voting
's conception has won the Simple Boss Category in the Fanon Conception Tournament! Congratulations! Be sure to vote for your favorite tanks in the next and final category, Complex Bosses.

The case for changing three WikiFeatures — BIG
As mentioned two weeks ago, were broached as potentially being put into use, with mixed reactions. An example of the aesthetic upgrade can be seen here.  After that happened, more research was done into the feature itself and into our Wikia as a whole (specifically, viewing  data) and we learned some interesting things. One, enabling the galleries would not require effort on anyone’s part, they would simply work with the click of a button (& if desired, could be made to similar to the old design via ). Two, after looking at Quantcast data, we found that visitors to this Wiki are much more likely to be in the 18-24 age demographic, while most of our editors are in the 13-17 age demographic. This indicates that our largest viewer demographic is not engaging with our Community for some reason, our biggest audience does not engage. We set out trying to figure out why, and after asking around amongst some FANDOM volunteers, we found that several of them were put off by some of the user-interactions, namely those in comment sections & Off-Topic (which is closing eventually anyway).

Conclusion
In an attempt to appeal to the older demographic and increase edits, disabling Article Comments (not blog comments) & enabling anonymous editing (due to the lack of vandalism for over half a year, the security issues seem negligible) is being considered alongside the New Image Galleries. These changes can be undone with the click of a button, if it is found that they do not work for us, but doing so would have many benefits:
 * The New Galleries allow more images to be displayed at once in a prettier format.
 * Enabling anonymous editing would make it easier for new arrivals to join our community and edit (especially since users arriving now are already diep-dedicated)
 * Disabling Article Comments would remove the largest, most outward-facing, unregulated area of the Wikia without actually losing anything; they do not contribute to articles or to the Community, and will eventually replace them anyway.
 * Comments could still be made on blogs.
 * Comment traffic would no longer take away from Discussions or Forum, so more activity would occur there.
 * No one would need to use talk pages if they did not wish to.
 * The comments could be re-enabled anytime.
 * Everyone is still able to voice their opinion in any of these areas.
 * Therefore, there are no losses; only the benefit of no longer having off-putting comment sections that drive people away due to their unprofessionalism, which may invite new users to join.

Vote
For the above reasons, there will eventually be a Community-wide vote on each of the three features. Be sure to keep your eye out for it, and by all means, voice your opinions early in the Comments (which, on blogs if no where else, are typically quite good and appreciated).


 * -|Wiki Policy News=

Promotions

 * to.
 * -|Tech News=

BlogLink Updates
The script in use on this wiki has once again been rewritten by  to address several longstanding bugs and improve base functionality. Though most improvements will be fundamentally “under the hood” and largely invisible to most users, the addition of a new series of user configuration options will allow for more user-defined variability, enabling users to deactivate certain parts of the script at will. Head over to the for more details.

Halloween Theme Tweaks
has slightly tweaked the Halloween Theme. The changes include fixing the clashing bloglist and discussion module backgrounds and faulty button colors. Nobellion is also considering making a light version, since the current version can cause significant lag.

New Link Templates
Thanks to, we now have two new link templates: CA and S. The former can be used to easily link to , while the latter can be used for links to Special pages. Be sure to read the template documentation for those two templates!

New automated rights log
has been to make use of the  script and a  to produce a fully automated record of all user-rights changes made on the  in the past and any which are made in the future, in a format that is easier to digest than. Both the script and the stylesheet will only load on that page.

Staff Icon Change
The Diep-related Staff Icons have been replaced by the new icons used in chat. This makes sense, since instead of having two sets of icons, we now just have one.


 * -|FANDOM News=

Featured Videos being considered
are being considered for the ! This comes with several questions, such as: Voice your opinion for what you think is best way to proceed in the latest Community Vote thread!
 * Should we request a video at all?
 * If we do, should we have FANDOM make the script & then review it, or make it ourselves from scratch?
 * Which Admin should review the script (if FANDOM makes it for us) or write the script (if we make it ourselves)?
 * If the video turns out bad, should we try to get a better one if they improve later?


 * -|Opinion Polls=