Wiki of Westeros

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Wiki of Westeros
Wiki of Westeros
Use this page to discuss design and content changes to the main page.
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Updates leading to House of the Dragon

I've just archived all the discussion on this page from Season 6 through July 31, 2021. Starting over again with a clean slate leading in to House of the Dragon.--The Dragon Demands (talk) 19:24, 31 July 2021 (UTC)

Background color

I was looking at the other language wiki extensions, and saw that the German wiki uses a lighter shade of tan than we do, and the Ukrainian wiki an even lighter one. The original conceit we came up with is that "it's like reading a manuscript in-universe, so black text on tan". I now wonder if using a lighter shade of tan might increase the contrast with the black text and make it easier to read. So not changing the overall scheme, just trying a slightly lighter shade of "tan", I switched us to the same lighter shade that the Ukrainian wiki uses - to try it out and see if this is easier on the eyes.--The Dragon Demands (talk) 22:32, 31 July 2021 (UTC)

Main Page

From an older archived post by the Fandom Central admins, the analytics they have on what things people are most likely to click on the front page:

"Overall, the most popular section of the main page (as in, the most clicked/interacted with) is the character gallery. We've found this is true across a range of wikis. In terms of Game of Thrones Wiki, the next most interacted section is the episode guide. In total, these two sections account for around 20% of visitor clicks on the main page."

On top of this, in general, the longer the front page is, the less likely people are to read all of it: people rarely look very far down "The Fold" - beyond the first screenlength visible on a browser.

These are the most important layout design principles to keep in mind.

--The Dragon Demands (talk) 00:36, 1 August 2021 (UTC)

We'll leave out the Episodes section on the front page for now, like we had during the active airing seasons, but we'll add it back when House of the Dragon Season 1 starts.--The Dragon Demands (talk) 02:25, 2 August 2021 (UTC)

Analytics assessment

Internationalization

According to our Geolocation tools, measured over a 30 day period including the month of July 2021, the top ten countries we get readership from are:

  • USA - 46.2%
  • UK - 9.2%
  • India - 5.6%
  • Canada - 4.4%
  • Australia - 4.1%
  • Germany - 1.8%
  • Philippines - 1.7%
  • Mexico - 1.4%
  • Brazil - 1.3%
  • Sweden - 1.2%
  • All others - 23.1%

Obviously, there are alternate wikis in other languages, so native German or Spanish speakers would use those more established ones.

India and the Philippines surged into the top ten right after Season 7, as this was the point when the series became available on streaming platforms there. Before that they were nowhere near the top ten. Now India has surpassed Canada. Many people in these regions know English as a secondary language, there are no alternate GoT Wikis in Hindi or Tagalog.

There were analytics for which countries were discussing Game of Thrones Season 8 the most on social media platforms, based on hashtags and keywords used in different IP address locations. I have info for the top five on Twitter and Instagram, though the top 3 were actually the same for both: USA, Brazil, UK - in that order. Brazil has surpassed the UK itself in terms of online discussion about Game of Thrones. For Twitter, the fourth and fifth top countries were France and Spain. For Instagram, the fourth and fifth top countries were India and Germany.

Cross-reference with which countries were the top ten illegal downloaders for GoT by season:

  • Short version is that in Season 5, the top illegal downloaders were in descending order: Brazil, France, USA, Canada, UK, Russia, Australia, Italy, China, India
  • But by Season 7, the top illegal downloaders in descending order were: USA, UK, Germany, India, Indonesia, Philippines, Canada, France, Turkey, Vietnam – that's the top ten, followed by Australia, Russia, Netherlands, Brazil, Malaysia.
  • Lastly, we come to the illegal downloading rankings for the Season 8 premiere: India, China, USA, UK, Nigeria, Iran, Kenya, France, Canada, Australia.

Of course there's a direct correlation between when a region got a cheap, legal streaming service, and a drop in illegal downloading; it's more popular than ever in Brazil, but illegal downloads drastically dropped for Season 7, because that's when HBO finally introduced a legal streaming service in Latin America.

I run my own humble GoT themed YouTube channel, over 20K subscribers, and the national breakdowns are essentially the same - I even asked other major YouTube channels and they have similar numbers as well: the top five countries have consistently been USA, UK, Germany or Canada, then Australia...though recently India has been neck and neck with Australia. After that in descending order you've got Sweden, Netherlands, France, Poland, Brazil, Ireland, Italy, Spain, Philippines. Keeping in mind that this skews towards English-speaking countries, or countries where people know English as a second language.

Due to various historical factors, different European countries prefer dubs while others don't. Germany prefers dubs, while Sweden prefers subtitles. Indeed, "Scandinavia" as a whole might as well be treated as one big region, because combined all four nations loosely equal Germany in viewership - all four of the "HBO Nordic" countries. All four also have good education systems that stress English (which is another Germanic language and not too hard to learn). Similarly, the Netherlands doesn't like dubs either - English is widely known. Portugal is also a subtitles-only region (stemming from an early attempt to preserve the local language by not using foreign dubs). Italy did the opposite from Portugal; they didn't want anyone else handling their dubs, so they made sure to have their own dubbing industry to make sure to get the translation right.

The practical upshot of this is that most people from Scandinavia and the Netherlands already know English, and would read a wiki in English. Thus they fit into the same category as India and the Philippines, also Poland: "regions where a substantial number of people know English as a second language". Same goes for Africa, which is really the top 3 GDP countries in Africa: South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya. English as a second language.

But we don't have national borders online, only language zones. INCLUDING people who know English as a second language, a full 80% of the GoT audience from Wiki & YouTube fall into only FIVE language zones: English, Portuguese, Spanish, German, French. Or, if you want to go by "top five non-English languages", after French comes Italian.

Conclusion: these are the languages we must prioritize having foreign language wiki interlinks for.

In terms of size by article count, the non-English language versions of GoTWiki pretty much line up with that already, with a few exceptions. The French and Portuguese versions are a little smaller than expected...because they're so popular in those regions that there are already established book wikis. Meanwhile, Spanish and Chinese are drastically larger than we are...because they have one big combined wiki for books and TV series (we don't just treat the TV series as a footnote in a book article). In short, there are only TEN GoT-themed wikis that have over 1,000 articles (over 1,500...most of them over 2,000). Ten including English. The series just isn't that popular in Japan due to a bad streaming deal there, for example. These ten major wiki extensions, with article count, are:

  • English - 4,674
  • Spanish - 7,546 (a combined wiki for the books)
  • Portuguese - 1,598
  • German - 2,389
  • French - 1,983
  • Italian - 5,428 (combined wiki for the books)
  • Russian - 2,667
  • Polish - 2,032
  • Chinese - 5,360 (a combined wiki for the books)
  • Dutch - 5,365 (a combined wiki for the books)

A little surprising that the Dutch wiki is so active, though it is a combined TV/books wiki, and the Netherlands are one of the top ten by YouTube traffic.

Cross-reference this with the top ten countries we get visitors to GoTWiki from, by language:

  • English (primary or secondary): USA, UK, Canada, Australia, India, Philippines...probably lump Sweden in here too (the Swedish GoTWiki has only 350 articles)
  • German: Germany
  • Spanish: Mexico
  • Portuguese: Brazil

I've seen YouTube figures though: Brazil ranks high because it's one big country that speaks Portuguese, while much of the rest of Latin America speaks Spanish but is broken up into smaller countries, i.e. the viewership from Mexico, Argentina, Chile, and Peru put together would loosely equal Brazil, but they individually rank lower because they're divided up.

But all this loosely arrives at the same point: the most important, top five non-English extensions are "Spanish, Portuguese, German, French, Italian"...and after that still important ones are Dutch, Russian, Polish, Chinese.

We should try to make sure that all of the major articles have interlinks to these nine other languages, if they have pages for these things. Most of our top articles are for characters. For example, I just now took a quick glance at the bottom of the "Jon Snow" article for:

  • Deutsch
  • Espanol
  • Francais
  • Italiano
  • Nederlands
  • Polski
  • Portugues
  • Русский (Russian)
  • 中文 (Chinese)

And indeed, it has all nine of them. The "Rhaenyra Targaryen" article, in contrast, just now when I checked it, doesn't have links to Italian, Dutch, or Portuguese. So I went in and added the links to these under the Interwiki section at the bottom:

https://gameofthrones.fandom.com/wiki/Rhaenyra_Targaryen?diff=470105&oldid=467812

As it turns out, the Portuguese wiki doesn't have a Rhaenyra article yet (so I removed that), but there already were Italian and Dutch articles, which we simply hadn't been linking with before. Now it's fixed.

The goal of course isn't just to direct people away from our own articles :) but to make it a two-way street; now I go into the Italian and Dutch wikis and add links back to the English article, and so on.

This gets a little more complicated in some languages where names are spelled differently: "King's Landing" is called "Porto Real" in the official Portuguese translation, and wiki article as a result. But proper names for Characters are usually spelled exactly the same, and our top 30 or so articles are usually starring Character pages. Usually, though some names are translated to maintain wordplay, i.e. the official German name for "Jon Snow" is "Jon Schnee", and thus this is the title of his article on the German wiki. Still, this remains complicated in the two languages from the top ten that don't use the Latin alphabet: Russian and Chinese. That involves a bit more checking.

We should try to keep this up to date moving forward. Again, it doesn't need to be every article but pretty much common sense as to what are the most popular ones, the two dozen or so starring cast members like "Sansa Stark", "Cersei Lannister", etc. But this might shift during the House of the Dragon era and we should make sure we have two way interlinks for those going forward, across the top ten alternate language GoTWikis.--The Dragon Demands (talk) 23:07, 31 July 2021 (UTC)

Readership Analytics, and Desktop vs Mobile

I've been reading through the "Analytics" tool for Admins:

During the active airing seasons, Season 6 onwards, we'd average 1 million site hits a day. At our peak, we hit 9.1 million (Hodor death and beginning of Season 8). Currently, we're averaging 140,000 a day - improved from the lull in 2020, given that there's more House of the Dragon news floating around now that filming has started. The search size in the off-season is always a bit inaccurate due to smaller sample size, though put another way, the hype /casual readers of the active season are gone and those remaining are hardcore readership.

Analytics based on 30 day sample, the full month of July 2021:

A mere 25% of our readership actually views the wiki using a Desktop browser. The rest is mobile.

The specific Browsers people use - I THINK this is purely for those Desktop readers and not including "Safari" from iPhones: Chrome (50%), Safari (44%), Firefox (a mere 3%), "Other" (only 3%, including Microsoft Edge etc.) - or does this include mobile browsers?

Only 25% of our readership is from a recurring IP address; the other 75% come in from google search. This means that our most visited articles are pulling people in directly from google search, and are thus the major "access points" for the wiki: people are most likely to start reading the wiki not on the front page, but by reading the "Jon Snow" and "Daenerys Targaryen" articles, THEN branch out to other articles. So loosely speaking, about THREE out of FOUR visitors to the wiki are new readers who just googled a character name on their mobile phone.

There are two major conclusions from these analytics:

  • 1 - We need to focus on our two two dozen or so articles, to make sure they're the best ones and will hook people into staying to read other articles. Three-fourths of our readership will start by linking to "Daenerys Targaryen" or "Arya Stark" from google search, without even seeing our front page. Our top navigation should also focus on getting people to the most popular articles. While we could try to impose on them that the "Samwell Tarly" article is more important...if the "Margaery Tyrell" article is more popular by viewcount, given a choice between the two and limited spots on top navigation we should go with Margaery.----This is a principle I learned in Library Science courses at university: you can either present things based on abstract principles or needs-of-the-userbase. Dewey Decimal System, for example, is based on abstract categories, while the Library of Congress Subject Headings are more focused on needs of its specific userbase (i.e. there's an entire category devoted to just "United States History"....because it's for libraries in the United States, which would disproportionately have a lot more content in that field).
  • 2 - We need to make sure that at least these core two dozen or so articles display well in mobile platforms. In general, we also need to have a better mobile layout.

Currently...I myself and the regular crowd aren't very experienced with mobile viewing, but if you've checked it out, it's very nascent - all sorts of infoboxes and navigation don't display properly, etc. We're skewed because we all use Desktop browsers, because we write a lot of content. But for the great masses of the audience, they don't edit, they just read, and they use the mobile version...or lack thereof. Even I just never view the wiki on mobile that much.

Mobile extension is...a bit above my paygrade. Thankfully this is such an issue that the higher-ups at Fandom are aware of it, and a major site-wide upgrade is pending in a few months.

So we should focus on the most popular visited articles as high priority, almost a wiki within a wiki. I'll split that off into a separate subsection.--The Dragon Demands (talk) 23:35, 31 July 2021 (UTC)

It's also useful to cross-reference with Google Trends to see how much internet traffic there is in general (because the wiki is usually among the top one or two search results when people Google a name): https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?geo=US&q=game%20of%20thrones,house%20of%20the%20dragon

As you can see, in the past 12 months, we had two big bursts of Google searches: one in late December right after the first main characters were announced, Rhaenra/Alicent/Daemon (mostly focused on the well-known Matt Smith), then a second burst when we got all those spy photos and official promo videos from the start of filming in Cornwall, first week of May. In contrast, the second big casting wave which came in February, announcing Corlys, Rhaenys, etc., did not produce a significant surge in google searches - people who didn't already read the prequel novellas don't really know who they are. Not as big as "Doctor Who's Matt Smith joins Game of Thrones prequel" or "wow, first photos of the Game of Thrones prequel cast in full costume". If you go month by month there were of course smaller spikes whenever real news came out (i.e. when they cast Young Rhaenyra and Alicent in July), but those are the two big ones.--The Dragon Demands (talk) 23:36, 31 July 2021 (UTC)

Top Articles: Broken Windows vs Triage

Back in the early days, I'm talking Seasons 1 to 4, we aggressively focused on trying to make the wiki "perfect", to exactingly high standards. This gradually became impossible, and we'd end up in shouting matches with new editors over using the Oxford comma and proper formatting.

Eventually this proved to be untenable. I like to think that if Benioff & Weiss hadn't gone off the rails, with a hype fandom not focused on details, much of this wouldn't have happened. We were struggling with "I can't even verbalize how Sansa allegedly 'defeated' Littlefinger in Season 7", "why did the Sansa rape inexplicably happen?" etc., which ate up a lot more of our focus which in normal circumstances would have gone into just smoothing out the formatting and layout. When the show became incomprehensible that all fell apart. Even so...any large franchise will struggle with coordination, and we're a young one - look at how much work goes into maintaining the Star Wars and Star Trek Wikis, and they still have issues with coordination. Hundreds of editors all stepping over each other, Admins trying to enforce formatting.

In short, the old model where we were tearing our hair out trying to make sure everyone "dotted all their i's and crossed every t" fell apart. And I like to think it's because we've been in "crisis mode" ever since Benioff & Weiss went off book to launch into their own bizarre fanfic in 2015. We are in "crisis mode" now. Dealing with all the fallout of their bad writing.

The old model, aggressively trying to enforce every rule no matter how small onto the bursts of new users each new season, strictly enforcing every rule to try to rein them in and keep them in line, really wasn't working and the scale alone was impossible - given that we were already hamstrung by dealing with the fallout from Benioff & Weiss's antics. And I realize, the old model was essentially what's called the "Broken windows theory" of criminology: the idea is that if you let small visible crimes thrive, like graffiti or broken windows, it will lead people to take the law less seriously, and ultimately snowball into major crimes. But this theory came under a lot of pressure in that there really is not a casual link between the two: there's a link between graffiti and bank robberies? Or even if their is some loose link, isn't the root cause of robbery something like poverty? And how is an underfunded, over-stretched police force supposed to respond to every graffiti incident? To the point that they're actually taking officers away from dealing with the actual robberies?!

While I do want to "run a tight ship" eventually on a scale of years, at least at this point in time, in the wake of the disastrous second half of Game of Thrones, we are PHYSICALLY INCAPABLE of successfully enforcing a Broken Windows model. What good is it to strictly land on people about "you need to get the external link reference tag format properly capitalized"...when we're dealing with god-damned "Who is the rightful lord of Storm's End now?" (actual god-damned dialogue from Season 8).

We can't afford to struggle with questions of figuring out army numbers, or travel times between the Wall and King's Landing, or which specific character held a title at different points, when the writers themselves "Kinda Forgot" and didn't think it out. We cannot afford to spend time on these points, or on getting people to use proper link formatting, punctuation standards, etc. when we are officially in "crisis mode" on even the CORE articles like "Jon Snow" or "Daenerys Targaryen" desperately in need of a rewrite, or the "House Targaryen" page.

Therefore for the next few years at least, we can't worry about Broken Windows - we need to focus on the buildings in imminent danger of collapse.

In short, we need to switch to a "Triage" model. Prioritizing certain articles as a starting point, to focus our badly limited time and energy on.

How do we make this "cold calculus" of which to prioritize? Simple. Once again based on the principle of "needs of the user", as in library science, we focus on the most popular articles, based on the objective criteria of which ones are most visited. Because an article like "Jon Snow" is more important than sorting out "Harry Strickland" and our time is limited. Because most people find the wiki by googling the names of the top two dozen most popular characters.

I think of it...like...like establishing a gradually expanding "safe zone" in a disaster area. Like a zombie apocalypse. You gradually "reclaim" parts of a city by expanding outward in a circle, in planned expansion waves.

So the idea is we'll treat the top 30 or so articles as our top priority, almost a "wiki within a wiki", then once those are as good as they'll ever be, we expand to other articles. Because those core ones are the articles people read first. But much of this is just common sense. We need to prioritize.--The Dragon Demands (talk) 23:55, 31 July 2021 (UTC)

Most visited articles

The new Analytics page only covers the Top Ten for Most Visited Articles (mostly pulled in from Google Search) and for Top Internal Search Terms. I did, however, ask our Fandom Central contact User:KylaraE to look this up for us, and she found the Top 40 for both - based on the past 30 days' history, inclusive for the month of July 2021. Granted, this is the off-season, but most of it is common sense: with one or two exceptions they're all starring character articles, and if memory serves these were usually the top ones during Seasons 7 and 8:

Most visited articles:

The top search terms mostly match this (see below), but with a few extras, which round out these top 40 to a top 50 - listing them here as an addendum to the top 40 list so you can see it all in one frame:


Top search terms:

  1. jon snow
  2. the hound
  3. Stark
  4. The hound
  5. varys
  6. Map
  7. Jon snow
  8. Littlefinger
  9. Hodor
  10. Reed
  11. Varys
  12. gilly
  13. John snow
  14. map
  15. shae
  16. arya
  17. Blackfish
  18. osha
  19. Bolton
  20. gendry
  21. Night king
  22. Bronn
  23. Bran
  24. littlefinger
  25. Joffrey
  26. sansa
  27. Jamie Lannister
  28. Sam
  29. Ros
  30. Dragon
  31. dragons
  32. The mountain
  33. ros
  34. dorne
  35. House
  36. Houses
  37. john snow
  38. blackfish
  39. Jamie lannister
  40. Tyrell

We must focus on the Top 50 articles, a watchlist for the Admins, functioning basically as a core Wiki-Within-A-Wiki.

According to a Triage strategy, we need to focus on improving these articles. They're the main "access points" for most people visiting the wiki. If they're sloppy, people won't be encouraged to follow links off of those pages to branch off to other articles and become recurring readership. We should also make sure that our front page and top bar navigation helps people access these articles - someone who comes here after googling "Daenerys Targaryen" should be able to find "Jon Snow" in the top nav bar pretty easily. It very strongly affects who we put in the "Characters" dropdown navbox on the front page.

However, we also need to balance this with the needs of the expanding franchise, as House of the Dragon characters will become more important for new content.--The Dragon Demands (talk) 00:15, 1 August 2021 (UTC)

Some of the Top 40 articles are of course what I call "Spillover" from the most popular pages; I've seen the numbers, the top five articles like "Jon Snow" and "Daenerys Targaryen" get something like five times the page traffic of the next 30 articles (they're in the 100,000 range, while "Margaery Tyrell" etc. is in the 30,000 range). So the Jon and Daenerys pages are just so popular that other characters who appear prominently in their storylines, and thus get a lot of links in those big articles, pick up a lot of spillover readership - they ride that wave off of it. People come to read "Daenerys" and they link off that to "Drogo" - seven seasons after that character died.

The "spillover" ones I think are: Rhaegar Targaryen (THIRD highest article, just from linking off "Jon Snow" and "Daenerys"), Lyanna Stark, Drogo, Aerys II, Viserys III, (all these from Jon and Dany...Jeor Mormont is also often relatively high, largely just spillover from Daenerys)....and then Shae, long after she died, also probably just due to how prominently she's in much of the Tyrion article; I think "Jaqen H'ghar" might also be spillover from "Arya" (he hasn't appeared since Season 6). Bronn's a bit of Tyrion spillover, but he was at least IN Season 8.

But most of this is common sense: the core cast have always been "The core Stark family, the core Lannister family, plus Daenerys". Which means "Ned, Catelyn, and their seven household children" (including Jon and Theon), "Tywin Lannister, his three children, plus Joffrey" (Tommen gets sucked into that just due to being the figurehead king). By extension, "House" pages are loosely part of the "Characters" category, so we also include "House Stark", "House Lannister", and "House Targaryen".

After that we're focused on pretty logical major characters: Ramsay Bolton, Gregor and Sandor Clegane, Margaery Tyrell, Littlefinger, Varys, Stannis Baratheon, Melisandre, Gendry, Robert Baratheon, Oberyn Martell (always popular)...and some Stark loyalists like Hodor and Brienne of Tarth. And (ugh) the Night King...more than "White Walkers" which doesn't make the top 40.

Indeed, only TWO things in the top 40 aren't character pages (not including the front page): "Red Wedding" and "Seven Kingdoms".

We'll need to prioritize these...--The Dragon Demands (talk) 00:30, 1 August 2021 (UTC)

From the internal search terms: Gilly, Brynden "Blackfish" Tully, Osha, Ros (why is Ros so popular five seasons after her death?), and Dorne (literally the only one of the Seven Kingdoms searched by name is Dorne???). Keep in mind that only maybe 25% of people who read our articles actually use internal search; most come to the top 40 articles directly from google.--The Dragon Demands (talk) 00:33, 1 August 2021 (UTC)

Front Page Character Navbox

The front page character navbox needs to be updated because it's still based on "what was important in Season 8".

As I explained in the sections above, we need to shift to "character articles that are the most searched for" - by cross-referencing the most-read articles (which come straight from google) with top internally searched articles. Also before I tried to organize them by row ("Team Daenerys" was the second row)...but now we're trying to, loosely, go in descending order of popularity (thus Daenerys and Jon Snow go first and second, with the groupings a little more by ear as it gets to row 5...most of this is common sense; the Starks and Lannisters come first). Also the series is over now so it's not so much focused on Season 8 but the series as a whole...or rather, needs of the user, what the heck are people searching for now (thus adding back Ned Stark).

Turns out not many people actually want to read the pages for Euron, Qyburn, yara, Davos, Samwell, Tormund - Jorah's just spillover from Daenerys, similar for Grey Worm.

The new dropdown menu, still using a grid of five rows of five, will be:

  • Daenerys, Jon Snow, Sansa, Arya, Bran (Team Stark on the first row, all are already in the navbox)
  • Tywin, Cersei, Jaime, Tyrion, Joffrey (adding back Tywin and Joffrey, very popular articles people search for)
  • Ned, Robb, Theon, Margaery, Brienne (based on popularity)
  • Stannis, Melisandre, Varys, Littlefinger, Ramsay Bolton (prominent secondary faction leaders etc. all of which are in the top 40 articles people are searching for)
  • Gregor Clegane, Sandor Clegane, Gendry, Hodor, Missandei

--The Dragon Demands (talk) 16:27, 1 August 2021 (UTC)

The old properly squared portal images for Stannis and Hodor were deleted years ago, so I had to use placeholder ones.

Another issue is that in the long run, because this is archived for "the entire show as a whole" more than focused on Season 8 (even featuring still-popular characters who died many seasons ago)...we should probably use images for characters that are most "iconic" rather than "what they happened to be wearing in Season 8".

Admittedly that can be kind of arbitary...though the costumes in seasons 7 and 8 were widely criticized for being kind of drab...but overall, Cersei with long gold hair and a red dress is a lot more "iconic", Daenerys in her Seasons 3 to 4 blue riding dress is more "iconic", as are Margaery's Seasons 3 to 4 styles - we're trying to grab eyeballs. Seasons 3 to 4 were the big sweet spot when they had their most iconic looks. Bit more of an issue for the younger cast members of course. But there's a question of "do we show Gendry with shaved short hair from seasons 7 to 8 (because he was disguised) or his more iconic longer haired look?" Do we go with a tortured-looking Theon? Him as he appeared at first? Or the final season? (In that case I'd default to final season because it's not that different from his season 1 appearance).

Well, the quality of the images can be incrementally upgraded. The point was to adjust the character navbox - which according to analytics is THE most used part of the front page - to align it with the analytics for what are actually the most searched-for and read pages. We'll see how this impacts readership.--The Dragon Demands (talk) 16:59, 1 August 2021 (UTC)

Seven Kingdoms Navbox

We really need to update the artwork for some of the kingdoms in this - with the house sigils superimposed. We only introduced them after Season 3, so there never was one for the North with a Stark sigil, or the Riverlands with a Tully sigil. And of course, never a Crownlands one with a Targaryen sigil.

If we're going by "who controlled them by Seasons 7 and 8" the North of course needs an update to a Stark sigil, and Edmure Tully was in charge again by the end.

However...as part of an overall site redesign to enter into "multiple concurrent prequels set in different time periods"....I generally think we should go with "the sigil iconically/historically associated with it". Think of what would appear in The World of Ice & Fire sourcebook. In most cases this is the same, i.e. the Lannisters for the Westerlands stretching back to the Age of Heroes. But for the Reach...would it make sense to use a Gardener sigil? Or whatever (shudder) Bronn is using? (introduced only at the end of a divergent adaptation? I mean last episode?) It makes more sense to use the Tyrell rose sigil - it's what it's primarily associated with in the story as presented. It makes more sense for the upcoming House of the Dragon series and in general.

Similar to the Reach...we always had the Crownlands with Joffrey's "House Baratheon of King's Landing" sigil, which...historically, is a speck on history. And doesn't reflect the prequel eras. So I think we should superimpose a Targaryen sigil over that. Because they created it and it's historically associated with them.

So we need to update the stylized maps for that navbox to be a map of the North with a Stark sigil superimposed, a map of the Riverlands with a Tully sigil superimposed, and a map of the Crownlands with a Targaryen sigil superimposed.

https://gameofthrones.fandom.com/wiki/File:BarKL-Portal.jpg

I didn't make those images in the first place so I don't know how to do that, otherwise I'd do it myself.--The Dragon Demands (talk) 17:07, 1 August 2021 (UTC)

I agree that the main page should reflect the prequel era. Are the sigil images worth continuing with? Or might a new format be the way to go?... There aren't really any changes to which great house rules which kingdom during this time. Unless we just use the blacks and greens sigils to denote which region is loyal to who as the story unfolds?. - Xanderen signature 08:43, 2 August 2021 (UTC)
Well there aren't really changes to which great house rules which region that's the point; they're good images, just to have like a Westerlands map icon with a Lannister sigil over it (as we already have); but we'll go with which one is "historically associated" with each one/more "iconic" (Starks for North, Tully for Riverlands, Targaryen for Crownlands). Much like The World of Ice & Fire would. We won't update them based on which ones the blacks or greens "control" at a given time (too complicated due to shifting fronts in the war, and this is more about geography).--The Dragon Demands (talk) 21:34, 2 August 2021 (UTC)

Alrighty, on the principle of "de-emphasize Telltale content" I've removed Ironrath and Whitehill...while I was at it I took out entirely that second row for "the North" - there were only two entries in the remaining five entry row; Bear Island and Deepwood Motte. This didn't really justify the North being the only kingdom to have TWO rows. While mentioned in dialogue, we only actually see Bear Island and Deepwood Motte on-screen ONCE each.

In general, and this is more by feel, the idea is to put "recurring locations we see in live-action". The Riverlands, for example, has Riverrun, the Twins, Harrenhal, Inn at the Crossroads. MANY of the other regions had less than four major recurring locations we saw "on screen". The bottom four in particular, had to pad out to "four" by including mentioned locations or those that appeared in animation - generally trying to avoid that. Unless something is so important or mentioned so frequently it's worth an exception (case in point, White Harbor has been frequently mentioned since Season 1 as the port city in the North, so that sort of outweighs "Bear Island").

Obviously this will be updated as House of the Dragon introduces new locations - we'll cross that bridge when we get to it. Shouldn't be too many new locations early on, except Driftmark.--The Dragon Demands (talk) 21:51, 2 August 2021 (UTC)

I updated the Crownlands row: needed to add Driftmark, already have King's Landing and Dragonstone, so the choices to switch out were either Stokeworth (appears exactly once) or "Westeros" - which I used to pad it out to a full four entries. I did kind of want a link to "Westeros" as otherwise it doesn't really appear in any other frontpage dropdown menu...BUT it's so omnipresent , heavily linked to in so many other major locations, that I don't think it's worth keeping it there (given that it's sort of anachronistic to put it in the "Crownlands" section). So there we got. Provisional as House of the Dragon will require updates anyway.--The Dragon Demands (talk) 22:00, 2 August 2021 (UTC)

I've updated the icons for the Crownlands, North, and Riverlands. - Xanderen signature 08:54, 13 October 2021 (UTC)


https://gameofthrones.fandom.com/wiki/Template:Navigation/Seven_Kingdoms_of_Westeros?diff=prev&oldid=485118 Excellent work, ser! This has been on my mind.--The Dragon Demands (talk) 23:53, 13 October 2021 (UTC)

Telltale

Due to our decision to, if nothing else, de-emphasize Telltale video game content, I've removed that navbar from the front page. Also it was using up space.--The Dragon Demands (talk) 17:10, 1 August 2021 (UTC)

Current poll section

Since the poll feature is no longer supported, should that entire subsection be removed from the main page? — Darth Dracarys (talk) 22:52, 1 August 2021 (UTC)

...SHIT, it's no longer supported?! People love those, they're engaging.--The Dragon Demands (talk) 22:55, 1 August 2021 (UTC)

I know they're still available on the Discussions side of the wiki, but that main page poll section has been blank for quite a while. Quite unfortunate really. — Darth Dracarys (talk) 22:56, 1 August 2021 (UTC)

Alright it's gone now.--The Dragon Demands (talk) 23:22, 1 August 2021 (UTC)

Noble Houses navbox

Alrighty I've updated the Noble Houses navbox...well, provisionally, we'll update it again once we see who they cast in House of the Dragon Season 1.

To start with, I removed House Forrester and House Whitehill due to video game content removal, and replaced them with House Velaryon and House Hightower. No controversy there I think.

But as a placeholder for the moment to simplify things, I shortened the whole thing from five rows of five to four rows of five. Those extra five entries cluttered it a bit relative to their actual use; we never really saw the Royces together, nor did we really see Glovers and Florents on screen as a distinct group.

I did take out Baratheon of Dragonstone (Team Stannis) and Baratheon of King's Landing (Team Joffrey), as they're redundant by Season 8, not used in House of the Dragon, and their name is so long it kind of wrecks the template; easier to just have one "Baratheon" and people will find the branches off of those.

But like I said this is a placeholder, we'll update when we see who's been cast.--The Dragon Demands (talk) 23:25, 1 August 2021 (UTC)

I agree with this, and would extend it to the locations bar as well (remove Highpoint and Ironrath, and add Driftmark). I would also suggest that we reshuffle the order somewhat - putting Velaryon and Hightower up top. - Xanderen signature 08:43, 2 August 2021 (UTC)

Beyond Westeros

I've updated/streamlined the "Beyond Westeros" dropdown navbox on the front page, shortening it from four rows to three rows. I realized we need to focus on "needs of the user" more than objective criteria....that is, the front page is for new users who don't know what they're searching for so we need to focus on "ease of access" rather than a wall of obscure information. Same principle behind the character navbox; focus on what's most popular, and avoid making it too long or you'll lose them.

I mostly did this in reaction to losing "Westeros" from the Seven Kingdoms navbox (due to adding Driftmark), so I rearranged the top row to be the continents: Known World, Westeros, Essos, Sothoryos. At first I put Ib as last on the top row (it's very different, but too small to be a continent)...but then I realized given that it's never mentioned in live-action, might be better to put Summer Islands there - which ARE mentioned extensively, people know what they are. On top of that the debate over whether they're part of any continent (I lump them in with Sothoryos, much as Indonesia is sort of part of "Asia"...but I get the point that they're kind of equidistant from the three main contents). Well, based on more people searching for it, made more sense to put Summer Isles front and center.

As for ease of access / shortening from four to three rows, this was pretty much common sense: we had both Dothraki Sea and Vaes Dothrak which are a bit redundant, and not just "Slaver's Bay" but ALL THREE of the main cities...back in Season 4 this was sort of merited, post-Season 6 it wasn't really emphasized that much (to be honest the TV show barely distinguished Astapor and Yunkai from Season 4 onwards). So those four things got removed to free up a row of five, redundant.

The only one I removed which wasn't, strictly speaking, redundant was "Lhazar"...but unfortunately, while we even physically saw it in Season 1, based on "needs of the userbase" it just doesn't merit having it on the front page - weighed against the cost of adding another entire row, visually overwhelming new readership. If we had an empty slot to round out a row of five I'd add it but we don't. Otherwise we think of it as an extension of the Dothraki Sea or Slaver's Bay it's the borderlands. (shrug)

Thus the second row is Stepstones (important in HotD), Free Cities, Slaver's Bay, Valyria, Dothraki Sea. All important.

Third row is stuff that merits a nav icon but doesn't fit anywhere else, fringes of the map...well sort of. It's the leftovers: Qarth (whole season there), Naath, Ib, Yi Ti, Asshai. Yi Ti and Asshai are important if only mentioned regions (but new cartoon coming up...)...Naath I wanted to pair with the Summer Isles...at first I put Ib on the top row, then on the bottom row Summer Isles and Naath next to each other (and next to Sothoryos). Now I realize that sort of buries an important region like Summer Isles. Makes sense for Yi Ti and Asshai to go last, and Qarth is spillover from the second column. Naath and Ib are in the middle because they don't really fit anywhere else, and are a combination of notable enough to merit an icon / helps round out the third row.

Overall I think this is a more user-friendly design.--The Dragon Demands (talk) 00:11, 3 August 2021 (UTC)

Top Navbar

Alright, I think we've fixed up the front page as much as it can be the past few days, until HotD comes out; refined the drowndown menus, smoothed out the different elements like News and Contributions so it's squared off without being too long.

Now, on to the Top Navbar:

It has three tiers: Tier 1 is four elements, Tier 2 is seven elements, Tier 3 is ten elements. Fandom analytics have told us that most people only click on Tier 3, though that's probably skewed because there's more Tier 3 options.

One of the current four, "World", actually seems in pretty good shape as it is, because it's not sensitive to any one time period.

It makes sense to have one for "Game of Thrones" and one for "House of the Dragon". Trying to figure out what the fourth one is (room to grow for other prequels), for the moment the idea I've been running with is to use it for "Trending" or "In the News" articles, like a larger version of the front page Slider - whatever things come up in a most recent episode of HotD or in casting news, etc.

Regardless, right now let's focus on restructuring "Game of Thrones" into not just Season 8 or post-Season 8 but "archived"/finished mode. We have seven Tier 2 categories to play with. Currently it's divided between "Production, Season 8, Season 7, Season 6, "Previous Seasons", "Histories & Lore", and "Telltale Games".

Production is fine and remains, Telltale Games of course gets removed. Leaving five Tier 2 categories to play with.

Most people are looking for Character articles and Episode articles, and of the Episode ones, the overwhelming majority were only looking for the recent episodes from the past season. That's why the last version emphasized seasons 8, 7, and 6 by name - though to be honest I don't think people used 7 and 6 that much.

The point is that it is now mathematically impossible to list off every Game of Thrones episode in a single Tier 1 category and its sub-branches; 70 Tier 3 entries result from that, can't reach 73.

So people rarely search for more than specific episodes from "the most recent season" but season 8 is de-emphasized now (arguably Season 1 is just as important for rewatchers).

The common sense solution seems to be to no longer list individual episodes for Game of Thrones, it's beyond our capacity there, and for that matter most casual viewers don't know the specific names of episodes. Helped when we listed them off by number in there, but even so, it seems probable people will just look for the SEASON articles now, THEN look up a specific episode.

Thus all of the Tier 2 headers that were once devoted to individual seasons well now be only condensed into a SINGLE Tier 2 header "Seasons" or "Episodes by Season" (I think the latter is more eye-catching, people look for the word "Episodes"). So after the Tier 2 "Production" one, the next Tier 2 will be "Episodes by Season", with ten Tier 3 options, so we use 8 out of 10 of those to list off "Season 1" through "Season 8". Simple enough.

What to use the remaining two slots for? Histories & Lore is popular enough. I don't want to emphasize "Unaired Pilot" but might as well put it last...unless someone can think of a better entry?

Oh...rather than listing "Unaired Pilot" twice, how about we put it there, but remove it from "Production" to free up a slot for "Music" etc?

At any rate this frees up five other Tier 2 slots for "Game of Thrones", which as I said in sections above should be based on popular articles that casual readers come on here to search for, all Character articles. We hook them that way to turn them into returning readers. They come to the wiki by googling "Jon Snow", go directly to the Jon Snow page not the front page, but then they go "wow, there's a top navbar, it has a dropdown menu that also lists "Arya Stark" and then they go there. That's the strategy. So the Top 40 articles are all Character articles, and we should base them on what people are searching for; which unfortunately means Hodor takes precedence over Rickon Stark or even Renly Baratheon.--The Dragon Demands (talk) 14:03, 3 August 2021 (UTC)

So we'd have five Tier 2 lists, 10 entries each, under "Game of Thrones" to list the most popular character articles:

Most of this is pretty intuitive or common sense, largely based on the listing of "Top 40 articles and searched articles" that I posted in a section above. To start with, we've got Team Stark, Team Lannister, and Team Targaryen:

Team Stark: Ned Stark's wife and the seven children of his household

  • Ned Stark
  • Catelyn Stark (not in top 40 now but a prominent starring character in early seasons/rounds out the top ten)
  • Robb Stark
  • Sansa Stark
  • Arya Stark
  • Bran Stark
  • Jon Snow
  • Theon Greyjoy
  • Brynden Tully - "Blackfish" is actually a surprisingly popular search term even now, so he merits inclusion, and we might as well round out with Edmure to get the two prominent recurring Tullys, who are part of the overall Stark-Tully alliance.
  • Edmure Tully

Team Lannister:

  • Tywin Lannister
  • Cersei Lannister
  • Jaime Lannister
  • Tyrion Lannister
  • Joffrey Baratheon
  • Tommen Baratheon (Tommen is surprisingly still in the top 40 articles - he is the king, if only a figurehead king)

Then we fill the four remaining slots with "Lannister retainers and followers", all four of which are actually still in the top 40 most-read articles:

  • Bronn
  • Shae (I'm surprised this is still so popular, but she's more prominent than in the books, and might be spillover from "Tyrion" article)
  • Gregor Clegane
  • Sandor Clegane

Generally, though, "Team Stark" and "Team Lannister" pretty much write themselves based on those criteria of the top 40 articles. Gets slightly more difficult with Targaryen...and should it be "House Stark" and "House Targaryen"? "Team Targaryen"? "Team Daenerys"? "Team Daenerys Targaryen"?

Team Targaryen:

  • Daenerys Targaryen
  • Rhaegar Targaryen
  • Viserys III Targaryen
  • Aerys II Targaryen
  • Drogo
  • Jorah Mormont
  • Grey Worm
  • Missandei
  • Barristan Selmy
  • Dragons

I had to do this by feel a little more, by rounding it out with top 40 articles...most of which are top 40 in part because they get spillover from "Daenerys". But yeah, by that metric, "Drogo" and "Jorah" are prominent retainers...Missandei and Grey Worm not quite top 40 but still very prominent members of Team Daenerys...Aerys II and Viserys III (Vis is not top 40 but prominent in season 1 and need to round it out)...Rhaegar of course gets huge spillover from Jon Snow....but this all pretty much fell into place. Have to round it out with two final entries, so I put in "Barristan Selmy" as he's a prominent character in the first five seasons (even if not top 40 now)...the last one was a choice between Daario Naharis and "Dragons" (I couldn't list off all three dragons). Given that choice, the fact remains that one of the top 40 articles AND top search terms is "Dragons", so anyone reading the "Team Daenerys Targaryen" tab is probably more interested in clicking on "Dragons" than Daario.

Again, the top nav bar isn't for US, the regular readership who know what they're searching for. Think in terms of Library Science principles; the top Nav Bar is a tool for new readers who got here through google search and we need to hook them into staying by making the most popular articles easier to access (the idea being that if they stay and read the Dragons article, it's one step closer to training them to be regular, returning readers; but if "Daario" is listed and they're not as interested in that, they'll take one glance at the navbar and not even bother to click on it or read it).

The first 3 of the Tier 2's pretty much fell into these neat categories though.

For the remaining ones, I started with the list of "Top 40 most read articles" (all characters), then minus the 30 in the previous 3 lists, I was left with 20 articles. Then I tried to find a way to put them into two groups. They don't really fit into one "Team Baratheon" one (you MIGHT be able to stretch that with Robert, Stannis, Melisandre, Gendry, Brienne, Davos...but then you'd need four more.

Well, the best I could do was group them broadly into "Stark allies" then "Stark Enemies & Neutral" (it was that or just "A to Z" which is bad):

Stark allies:

  • Robert Baratheon
  • Stannis Baratheon
  • Melisandre
  • Gendry
  • Brienne of Tarth
  • Hodor
  • Osha
  • Samwell Tarly
  • Gilly
  • Oberyn Martell

(all of those are either top 40 or top searched; Sam and Gilly are both popular top 40 searched terms)

Enemies & Neutral:

  • Ramsay Bolton
  • Roose Bolton
  • Walder Frey
  • Night King
  • Euron Greyjoy
  • Margaery Tyrell
  • Littlefinger
  • Varys
  • Jaqen H'ghar
  • Ygritte? Tormund? High Sparrow? Davos?

I added Roose and Walder because they're prominent faction leaders (originally I fell slightly short of a full 20 entries), added Euron for the same reason.

The final entry was baffling though: I think we can narrow it down to a reasonably popular returning character...but on the whole, the High Sparrow was only in two seasons...and given a choice between Ygritte and Tormund, Tormund appears in many more seasons (he even lives to the end)...Tormund is in five seasons so if we had to pick one it's him over Ygritte. Then again, Davos Seaworth appears in seven out of eight seasons (even if they couldn't think of what to do with him after killing off Stannis other than glue him into Jon Snow's storyline, ugh). Still, a fairly popular character.

So I think the last slot is Tormund or Davos...I'm leaning towards Davos.

Unless of course we tried to cobble together "Baratheon" based on where characters started (Margaery being a grey area because she started with Renly then switched to Lannister, but then we'd have to add Renly?)

Wait let's see here...Robert, Stannis, Melisandre, Gendry, Brienne, Davos....nah even adding Renly and Margaery we'd only get to eight.

Okay new plan, move "Davos" from group 5 to group 4 (he's more of an ally)...then move someone to Enemy/Neutral. Two options are Melisandre or Oberyn Martell. Well Oberyn isn't a Stark ally as such but he's not exactly a Lannister one either. Melisandre follows her own agenda, but she's basically Team Stannis (and I wanted some vestige of "Team Baratheon" in there.

OR, different plan, we could deviate from the "Top 40 articles" slightly to indeed make a combined "Baratheon & Tyrell", by adding Renly and Margaery...then rounding out the other two spaces with Olenna and Loras. They really shorted Loras later on but prominent in early seasons. I'm a lot more happy with that because it sticks to the House breakdown format for the Tiers.

This would leave 13 entries: Hodor, Osha, Samwell Tarly, Gilly, Oberyn Martell, Ramsay Bolton, Roose Bolton, Walder Frey, Euron Greyjoy, Night King, Littlefinger, Varys, Jaqen H'ghar. 13 entries so we have to eliminate three. Well, Gilly is sort of redundant with Samwell (anyone looking for Gilly would click Samwell, and she's mentioned very prominently throughout his article, they overlap. Due to popularity, we can't remove Hodor, Ramsay, Littlefinger, Varys, Night King (though damn it, I want to remove Night King because it's a fake made-up clickbait non-character...the fact remains people search for it).

So that leaves...Osha, Samwell, Oberyn, Roose, Walder, Euron, Jaqen...need to eliminate two of them. Unfortunately, going to have to say Osha...she's among the top searched articles but not the top 40 read articles people get here from google with, and she links prominently off Hodor. Oberyn very popular. Roose and Walder are faction leaders even though...Roose sort of just faded into the background from Season 4 onwards (tells Ramsay not to harm Sansa in his own castle...then sort of just disappears in the Season 5 Winterfell storyline and pays no attention to it?!)....Euron ain't popular at all but he's a prominent villain leader from Season 6 onwards. Jaqen...isn't the most popular character - the 38th most read article out of 40 and I think much of that is just spillover from the "Arya" article. He gets an unfair boost from that. If nothing else he's redundant with Arya.

Yeah so thinking on it, functionally and with pragmatism, I think groups 4 and 5 should be:

Baratheon & Tyrell:

  • Robert Baratheon
  • Gendry Baratheon
  • Stannis Baratheon
  • Melisandre
  • Davos Seaworth
  • Renly Baratheon
  • Margaery Tyrell
  • Loras Tyrell
  • Olenna Tyrell
  • Brienne of Tarth

Allies & Enemies:

  • Ramsay Bolton
  • Roose Bolton
  • Walder Frey
  • Night King
  • Euron Greyjoy
  • Littlefinger
  • Varys
  • Samwell Tarly
  • Oberyn Martell
  • Hodor

That seems to work out.--The Dragon Demands (talk) 14:40, 3 August 2021 (UTC)

"The Future of Fandom": FandomDesktop

Everyone read this: https://community.fandom.com/wiki/The_Future_of_Fandom

Fandom is making its biggest updated in five years.

Most of this mission statement says a lot about "this is about the fans" but not many specifics...apparently the point is that they want the combined Fandom Wikia/Gamepedia plus video content and editorials stuff to all have better synergy. Building up the main "Fandom.com" website as a hub for news. Given how much mainstream news sites failed us I hope they do better (for example, that "Fandom.com" would be more willing to report on "what is the Snyder Cut" than news sites were in 2018).

Several takeaways:

  • Wikia rebranded to Fandom in October 2016: They didn't have a Marketing team at the time but do now, so at the time they didn't have things that go into a brand like "visual components; brand mission, vision, story, and promise"
    • Brands need to evolve alongside other changes in broader economic, consumer, and cultural trends"
    • "A powerful brand triggers memories, sparks emotional connections, inspires fans to take more actions on the site"
  • "Right now, brand awareness of Fandom with fans is very low" - most people just come to a page they found via a search engine and then leave (very true)
    • The top 50 articles are the "access points" and we should focus on them. As a watchlist, a wiki within a wiki. Make sure it's engaging enough that they read it and very well interlinked to other pages.
  • The new Fandom logline is "For the love of fans" and the updated logo is a heart (like the old one) now on fire, for "Fire & Passion"
  • The new Global Nav bar: Moved from the top side to the LEFT side of the screen. Analytic tools can actually measure specifically how many times each page element gets clicked on, and it turns out very few people click on the "Fandom" global bar, so they want to make it more prominent for cross-promotion. "Bright and memorable": bright yellow with larger icons to make it more eye-catching to new visitors, the kind who come to the "Daenerys Targaryen" and "Jon Snow" pages straight off of google search.
    • Mercifully, they know the bright eye-catching theme can be off-putting to logged-in editors, so you can disable it. You can select a bright theme or a dark theme. This affects the entire page background; for example, Wookieepedia shows a bright white background for the text and navbar, with a header of Coruscant during the day against a blue sky; the dark bar theme uses Coruscant at night. Change this by going to "My Preferences" then "Appearance" (or by using the quick access icon in the very upper right of the topbar, next to Recent Changes).

The Fandom tech team must have already set this up: our "Light Mode" pretty much looks like our legacy version, except that the sidebar is white instead of an eye-catching bright yellow. Color scheme is the same on our part of it. Slight difference is that the top of the page is now the Iron Throne...I'd rather they go with what we were doing, using the in-universe map of Westeros...or King's Landing...right now it's a zoomed-in version of the Iron Throne not even showing the whole object. We may need to work on that. UNLIKE the old version, the skin no longer has images along the sides, which is where the maps used to be for us.

"Light Mode" is by default what not logged-in users see. Therefore I recommend sticking with it because we're more concerned with how general viewership sees the pages.

I don't really use Dark Mode, but it's got a red on black Targaryen scheme, makes sense, and the top images is the Targaryen banner image from the House of the Dragon logo. Which is fine. Slight problem is that some of our navigation boxes don't display well in Dark Mode.

On the "Appearance" list you actually get to choose three factors, Light/Dark Mode and two other minor things:

  • It now features a "Right Rail" which provides a few tools also available elsewhere: "What Links Here" "Upload File" etc...also "Related Changes" - a more focused version of "Recent Wiki Activity" focused only on recent edits to pages that link to the page you're reading right now. Also lists "Recent Wiki Activity" with the top 3 changes (used to be top 5). The Right Rail is always there, but it's collapsible. By default it's set to "show"...I recommend leaving that instead of hiding it, because this is how not logged in viewers see the page:
    • The difference is that not logged in viewers see a list of "top 5 most popular pages" instead of the editing tools, but they cannot collapse the right rail. This affects image spacing and display/presentation for not logged in viewership, and we should try to see it as they do. Top 5 articles isn't very useful (actually top four, the first is a cross-promotion) because they're always the same, but I guess the old version displayed "Top 5 most recent changes" which was random and thus also not too useful.
  • There's a "Content Width" option, either "Default" or "Extended" - but I can see no appreciable difference between them. Either way, I'd highly recommend sticking with "Default", because while we the logged-in editors can choose these options, the overwhelming majority of site visitors aren't logged in and can't change that - we should focus on viewing the pages the same default way that they do (just removing the bright yellow Fandom sidebar). I mean, you don't want to write a page that looks okay in "extended width" mode, but which looks weird in default mode to not logged in readership (such as with image placement).

A new nice feature is also that in the upper left hand corner of the page, as you scroll down, there's an expandable "Contents" icon which you can use to bring up the Contents menu again from the top of the page to skip around between sections for ease of reading. Also, the top nav bar is now piinned to the top of the screen and follows down as you scroll down, so you're never without it.

More updates as we sort out other changes from Fandom Desktop in the coming week. --The Dragon Demands (talk) 15:41, 6 August 2021 (UTC)

Checklist of new things in FandomDesktop:

  • New Global Nav Bar at left, bright yellow to be eyecatching - logged in editors can disable this by going to My Settings-->Preferences and selecting Light Mode or Dark Mode. "Light Mode" is by default what not logged-in users see. I recommend Light Mode it pretty much looks like logged-out default mode, and we're focused on how the overwhelming majority of site readers experience it (who aren't logged in).
    • Actually, a quicker way to switch between Light and Dark mode is to click the new icon in the very upper right of the Top Nav Bar, next to Recent Changes - and yes, even not logged in readership can change it by clicking this (though it's Light Mode by default). The difference is that for not logged-in viewers, the Global Nav Bar on the left side will remain bright yellow in Light or Dark mode - but for logged in editors (under our current system) it's white in Light mode, red in Dark mode.
    • While you're in Preferences, there's two other display options: "Content Width" (default or extended) and "Right Rail" (show by default, or hide): I recommend just leaving both at their default settings, because again this is how the majority of not-logged in viewership will experience it.
  • No longer has wiki-skin images on the sides of the page; Light Mode uses a zoomed in closeup of the Iron Throne, we should try to get that replaced with better image like a map. -->Actually this is easily accessible in the "Theme Designer" under "Customize" on the Admin tool. Problem is I'm not good at making images with fades on the sides...
  • The Fandom-made video content which autoplays at the top of most articles is still there, though it minimizes if you scroll down. We're not contacted about those so we can't even do quality control for basic factual errors if they happen. This needs to be addressed.
  • As always, we need to figure out how to improve what things look like in Mobile...which beats the hell out of me...because three out of every four site visitors is viewing it on mobile. Right now none of the desktop skins work in there.

--The Dragon Demands (talk) 16:25, 6 August 2021 (UTC)

https://community.fandom.com/wiki/User_blog:MisterWoodhouse/Introducing_FandomDesktop,_the_new_look_and_feel_for_desktop_users

"Profile and Notifications. Early feedback we’ve gotten from members of the Community Council and attendees at Community Connect is that the profile and notifications menu being in the lower left with the new Global Vav is going to take a lot of getting used to and isn’t all that intuitive, given most sites do put those experiences at the top of the page. We have some exciting ideas on how to utilize this new global nav but need to make sure we get the basics right, so we'll continue iterating on it as needed."

I agree, it should go below the search icon (magnifying glass) but above the "Games" Icon. Right now, the "Start a Wiki" icon is ABOVE the one for having an account to make a wiki in the first place ! :) --The Dragon Demands (talk) 18:23, 6 August 2021 (UTC)

Other upcoming features they're working on include "revamping Admin Analytics" - which is great. As I said the updated mode of only seeing Top 10 Articles and Top 10 Internal Search Terms isn't very useful, we need more like the top 40 to 50 to be able to design a full navbar system.

https://community.fandom.com/wiki/User_blog:MisterWoodhouse/A_Deeper_Look_at_Creator_Tools_and_What%27s_Next Also said that they're working on the much requested Interactive Maps.--The Dragon Demands (talk) 21:24, 6 August 2021 (UTC)

There's also this useful guide to how the upgrade affects behind the scenes coding for navboxes, galleries, etc.: (which I don't really understand) https://community.fandom.com/wiki/Help:FandomDesktop_preparation_guide

--The Dragon Demands (talk) 21:49, 6 August 2021 (UTC)

FandomMobile

On the checklist of features we need I listed above, one of the ongoing tasks is "edit how the site looks on Mobile browsers" - because MOST of our readership, something like three out of four, views the site in a Mobile web browser (not even a Fandom App).

As it turns out, this is a frequent request from most Fandom Wikis to Community Central. While "FandomDesktop" is rolling out this weekend, they did acknowledge that a "FandomMobile" is a major project they're working on for the future:

It’s a design that will be further married with the FandomMobile skin, with a new Theme Designer that will eventually apply to mobile (finally bringing mobile theming to Fandom wikis - something Fandom users have asked to have for many, many years.)

https://community.fandom.com/wiki/User_blog:MisterWoodhouse/Introducing_FandomDesktop,_the_new_look_and_feel_for_desktop_users

So it's out of our hands for now.--The Dragon Demands (talk) 18:07, 6 August 2021 (UTC)

Headline font

As a test, I have used the new Theme Designer to change the font for the Headings - this ONLY affects Headings make with = signs, not body text font.

We now have five fonts to choose from; the default is "Rubik", which is what we've been using.

I changed it to "Inknut Antiqua" - the only one that has prominent Serifs. The others look like they're drawn on computers, the kind of thing that makes sense for a Star Trek Wiki or something. But the idea behind our visual style is "you're reading a parchment in an in-universe book", and it's a medieval Fantasy show, so it makes more sense to have an antique, serif font to make the Headers look fancier.

I wouldn't do this for the body text of course, it's a bit more difficult to read, but as one or two words in a section division header like "Background" and "Season 1" I think it will make the wiki look more "refined" and less "off the shelf".--The Dragon Demands (talk) 18:52, 6 August 2021 (UTC)

FandomDesktop: Conclusion

Things we need to do now:

  • We need to come up with a better header image for light mode; wider shot of the throneroom, maps, something.
  • Need to do a spotcheck of all navboxes in both light and dark mode (I've noticed that some don't display well in Dark Mode...but given a choice I'd rather go with ones that look good in default Light Mode).
  • If you're logged in and the new left side Global Nav bar is still bright yellow go into your settings and select "Light Mode" to set it to white. There's also a Dark Mode but Light is default.

Things to ask Fandom about:

  • Upcoming features not implemented yet include improved Admin analytics, a long-awaited FandomMobile for mobile browser display, and interactive maps. I'd ask about development on these but they're not released yet so not much to say.
  • It actually makes more sense for the Global Navbar's message and profile icon to be near the top, above "Games", as even Fandom has noted this is a widespread complaint.
  • We have zero communication on the autoplay Fandom videos at the top of certain pages, even for basic fact checks, and we don't even get told how many of these things there are or which ones exist. Some sort of feedback system for individual ones is needed ("hey, there's a typo in this one...").

--The Dragon Demands (talk) 21:39, 6 August 2021 (UTC)


Making a Greek Language Game of Thrones Wiki

Greetings! Native greek here. Since there is no official Greek extension to Game of Thrones wiki yet, I'm open to volunteer on doing so. I hope I get a reply soon, and hopefully get started. HBOmax will soon be available in Greece too, so many future House of the Dragon viewers will be interested in reading more of A Song of Ice and Fire lore in our language. —Preceding unsigned comment added by NikiStark01 (talkcontribs)

I've discussed this with the superiors at Fandom central.

You need to click "create" so you're credited as the "Founder" of the Greek wiki. We'll help by copying templates there after that.

Go to this page: https://community.fandom.com/wiki/Special:CreateNewWiki

It will ask you to name the wiki, for an address, and for a language.

For "Name" I don't know if you want to call it "Game of Thrones" (Wiki) or use Greek alphabet "Παιχνίδι των Θρόνων" (Wiki) - don't write "wiki" twice that's already in the page template.

For address, just type "GameOfThrones" all as one word with no spaces. The rest of the addrress is in the template already: "fandom.com"

There's a dropdown menu for languages, scroll down until you see the Greek one, "Ελληνικά", it's in there.

The resulting new wiki will have the address "GameOfThrones.fandom.com/el"

On the next page there are a few questions: "describe your wiki" ("A Greek language wiki devoted to the Game of Thrones franchise"), then there's a checkbox that asks "Is your wiki targeted at 13 year olds and under?" (it's not, so leave that blank), and "Choose a Hub" (just pick "TV" from the dropdown menu).

Show us when it's done. We'll copy-paste menu templates to help out. We'll ask superiors at Fandom to help with bigger stuff like the design, logos, etc. --The Dragon Demands (talk) 19:02, 26 March 2022 (UTC)

You don't actually need to make a full wiki on every topic. It's a garden, it grows over time. MOST of the English wiki's site traffic goes to the Top 50 pages, plus the episode guide (a recent episode gets very high views but we haven't had one in a long time).

So you should start small by focusing on making just the Top 50 articles, and only make a paragraph or two at first, in translation.

Almost all Top 50 articles are major characters, not locations or concepts, etc. Articles about noble Houses count as "Characters" ("House Stark") in a broad sense. The only non-character articles you really need to make are "Westeros" and "Essos". At least at first. Then of course that "The Seven Kingdoms" isn't exactly the same as "Westeros" - really just start off with a short page on "Westeros" that also stands for "Seven Kingdoms".

You will need to make articles for "Game of Thrones TV series" and "House of the Dragon", mostly by just copying casting information lists from the English version. The real work comes when you need to update an episode guide when the new season of House of the Dragon airs.

But the Top 50 articles are actually pretty much what you'd expect, the most prominent starring cast members from Game of Thrones. This will of course change when House of the Dragon comes out: we're already seeing a rise in viewership for starring cast members on that: "Rhaenyra", "Daemon", "Viserys", "Alicent".

But to start out with...click "create" on these Top 50 articles, and post just a single, one paragraph long basic description in each, translated into Greek. It will grow from there:

  • Daenerys Targaryen, Jon Snow, Sansa Stark, Arya Stark, Cersei Lannister, Ramsay Bolton, Cersei Lannister, Joffrey Baratheon, Theon Greyjoy, Tyrion Lannister, Bran Stark, Gregor Clegane, Margaery Tyrell, Jaime Lannister, Melisandre, Petyr "Littlefinger" Baelish, Jorah Mormont, Robb Stark, Eddard Stark, Lyanna Stark, Rhaegar Targaryen, Stannis Baratheon, Aerys II Targaryen, Gendry Baratheon, Sandor Clegane, Oberyn Martell, Tommen Baratheon, Bronn, Viserys III Targaryen, Hodor, Robert Baratheon, Brienne of Tarth, Tywin Lannister, Varys, Samwell Tarly
  • Westeros, Essos, King's Landing, Dragonstone, Winterfell
  • "House" pages for the nine Great Houses: "House Stark", "House Lannister", "House Targaryen", etc.
  • Basic paragraph long character descriptions for "Rhaenyra Targaryen", Daemon, Viserys I, Alicent.

At this point the "articles" are just short descriptions as you would see in a LIST (we call them "stubs"). The focus is on getting the pages set up and inter-linked, then it grows from there.


--The Dragon Demands (talk) 19:02, 26 March 2022 (UTC)

Dark mode

Why is the dark mode completely white now? —Potsk signature (talk) 14:38, 19 May 2022 (UTC)

Just checked both my dark mode and the theme designer, and it's the same as always for me. Is this still occurring for you? — Darth Dracarys (talk) 17:16, 19 May 2022 (UTC)
It was fixed a few minutes after I posted this. —Potsk signature (talk) 20:00, 19 May 2022 (UTC)

Viewership figures after second teaser trailer

It's been two weeks since the second "teaser-trailer" (more than a tease but not a full "trailer") but we're finally getting House of the Dragon articles in the top ten most visited pages, and staying there even two weeks later.

The top three pages are always Jon Snow, Daenerys Targaryen, then the main "Game of Thrones Wiki" page - I discount the main page from any "top ten". Next one after that is actually Rhaegar Targaryen...which I also discount, because it's just "spillover" from people reading the Jon Snow and Daenerys Targaryen pages, which prominently link to it.

Otherwise, the top ten articles have usually been:

  1. Jon Snow
  2. Daenerys Targaryen
  3. Sansa Stark
  4. Arya Stark
  5. Bran Stark
  6. Cersei Lannister
  7. Joffrey Baratheon
  8. Tyrion Lannister
  9. Ramsay Bolton

After the first teaser back in October, Daemon and Rhaenyra were in the top 10, but soon dropped out. Now Rhaenyra is back in the top ten (though Daemon is not) - probably because this trailer actually stated her name so prominently (a lot of people still call Daemon "Matt Smith" as they don't know his name).

After the first teaser "Daemon" was around number four, and "Rhaenyra" around number six - above Sansa Stark.

Now, "Rhaenyra Targaryen" is again above Sansa Stark but below Daenerys Targaryen, thus what I consider the third highest article (discounting the main page and Rhaegar).

Will be interesting to see how this shifts as each new trailer mentions characters by name in dialogue.--The Dragon Demands (talk) 20:11, 19 May 2022 (UTC)

Light mode

Am I the only one who thinks the light mode is too light? I much preferred the old color that looked more like aged paper. —Potsk signature (talk) 12:07, 21 June 2022 (UTC)

Feel free to play around with it.--The Dragon Demands (talk) 22:21, 21 June 2022 (UTC)

Oh I'm just a content moderator, not administrator. For some reason it still says "administrator" on my profile because I had the perms for a week to edit CSS back in March —Potsk signature (talk) 09:00, 22 June 2022 (UTC)
To be honest, I hadn't noticed... but yeah, you're right. I've put it back to the original colour. - Xanderen signature 12:40, 24 June 2022 (UTC)

Potential future rebranding

I noticed on HBO Max, they are now calling the TV universe of Game of Thrones "World of Westeros." With the possibility of several successor projects being greenlit, it soon won't do for the wiki logo to say "Game of Thrones & House of the Dragon Wiki," so the aforementioned title could be used in that event. —Potsk signature (talk) 09:08, 4 July 2022 (UTC)

Featured article

I feel like the featured article should be more front-and-center, rather than tucked away to the side. Also it should be changed every so often, maybe every other week; until it was changed to the Great Council it was sitting on the same article for years. —Potsk signature (talk) 22:14, 14 July 2022 (UTC)

Image display issue

Some of the images are being displayed as older versions for me - this is despite the files themselves not having been changed since I updated them a while back. The House Dayne article for instance displays this poorly made version of the image rather than the more recent revision which is cleaner and clearer, despite the file itself not having been reverted or altered after the updated version was uploaded. Images I've noticed displaying wrongly so far are the Dayne, Swann, Cerwyn, Euron, Swyft, Glover, Hornwood, Botley and Golden Company sigils.

Is this a problem on my end (I see it both on my computer and phone) or is this a more widespread problem affecting others as well? Pelledrine (talk) 19:37, 26 July 2022 (UTC)

It's not just on your end. I've brought this issue to our wiki representative, so I'm hoping this can be sorted out soon. —Potsk signature (talk) 20:26, 26 July 2022 (UTC)
Nice to hear. Just letting you know now that the Golden Company shield now for whatever reason displays correctly for me again (with the straightened spear) but that the others are still showing the older versions. Pelledrine (talk) 16:17, 27 July 2022 (UTC)
I noticed this a while ago, but thought I was imagining it... good to know I'm not going crazy. Same at my end, Golden Company is now correct but the others are still wrong. - Xanderen signature 06:47, 28 July 2022 (UTC)
I still have the image files of all of the wrongly displaying sigils (except for the Botley one) so I could try to upload them as all new files? On the other hand I have no idea how the Golden Company sigil fixed itself but that does suggest that the others can "turn back" too somehow? No idea what could be causing this. Pelledrine (talk) 12:14, 28 July 2022 (UTC)
Tried reuploading the Dayne and Euron sigils - they seem to display correctly now (and the older revisions also display correctly in the file history??). Pelledrine (talk) 17:54, 28 July 2022 (UTC)

House of the Dragon Top Pages

Fandom took note of this: https://www.fandom.com/articles/house-of-the-dragon-premiere-spoilers

Top pages to be prioritized are pretty much what you'd expect:

  • Rhaenyra
  • Daemon
  • Viserys I
  • Aemma Arryn
  • House Hightower

...why "House Hightower" but not "Alicent Hightower" or "Otto Hightower"? I think next week will emphasize the Velaryons more, though, we'll see if it shift's to Rhaenys's side then.--The Dragon Demands (talk) 02:15, 26 August 2022 (UTC)

Next/Previous episode

I think the navigation sub-section on the front page might make more sense if it displayed the most recent episode, not the next episode - next episode pages are mostly blank until they air. It's the most recent episode page that has all the new content in it.--The Dragon Demands (talk) 02:15, 26 August 2022 (UTC)

Characters

Now that the season is moving into what is effectively a "Part 2," should the character portal only contain characters from episodes 6-10 or should we just let the earlier characters (Aemma, Mellos, Craghas, Jaehaerys) stay? —Potsk signature (talk) 03:09, 24 September 2022 (UTC)

Personally I would focus on just the key players. I also toyed with the idea of bringing the character portal back, but having two for greens and blacks. Something to mull over for season two maybe? - Xanderen signature 09:05, 24 September 2022 (UTC)
Until now I've just been putting anyone who qualifies for an entry in the Official Guide there. Where do you draw the line for "key player"? —Potsk signature (talk) 11:51, 24 September 2022 (UTC)

Is it not premature to split the characters into "Greens" and "Blacks" (especially since those names have not yet been used on-screen)? I also think the alignment of Jason Lannister is a spoiler since he has not been overtly related to the Green faction yet. Kovahar22 (talk) 22:25, 26 September 2022 (UTC)

It's clear the factions have formed, so I don't think it's premature. You're right about Jason Lannister; I've moved him to "Other characters." —Potsk signature (talk) 00:19, 27 September 2022 (UTC)

Seasons 2 and 3 renewal news

I wrote up a little essay / news article in the forum to explain the confusion around the recent Seasons 2 & 3 news given in Deadline. Can someone please link to it in the front page "Recent News" feed? Or the popup news MediaWiki site notice? https://gameofthrones.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003707359

If the essay needs refinement please advise in the comments there.

But it seemed pretty straightforward even from the article itself: Season 2 has been expanded into Seasons 2 and 3, and a battle that was at the end of Season 2 was pushed back to Season 3 - that means "expansion". But the clickbait sites are all reporting this as "OMG, Season 2 was REDUCED in size!" - no, it's a Stranger Things Season 4 situation.

And to be honest, we were hoping for this. Need more time for the secondary characters; look at the backlash after they revealed in December that they cut Baela's one big scene of the year (from episode 10). --The Dragon Demands (talk) 15:22, 29 March 2023 (UTC)

I should refine what I wrote up quickly yesterday...--The Dragon Demands (talk) 13:09, 30 March 2023 (UTC)

I would advise against delving too deeply into the specifics of plot points for the second season in case of spoilers for those unfamiliar with the source material. — Darth Dracarys (talk) 13:12, 30 March 2023 (UTC)

Oh I was worried about that; all I said was "there's this battle at Rook's Rest and another called the Battle of the Gullet, and there was debate about which was the better stopping point" - I think that's generic enough.

Also the 24 hour edit lock has elapsed, see reply in the thread - I need the final bullet points deleted after I rewrote it.--The Dragon Demands (talk) 17:55, 30 March 2023 (UTC)

Targaryen Conquest

Should add a link to the Targaryen Conquest show stuff in the news feed. No need for an extensive writeup just link to Variety article.

Personally, I'm hoping for five seasons covering everything from Aegon's Landing to the fall of Maegor. And maybe "Season 1" works better as like a 3 hour movie at Lord of the Rings budget.--The Dragon Demands (talk) 04:30, 4 April 2023 (UTC)

Top Nav Bar - Merchandise

Hey, when "Game of Thrones" was taken out of the top navbar it also took out several production-related overview things....particularly, "Merchandise" is an overarching hub page covering all shows. Should probably add that back in....not sure where...for now, can someone put it in under "Trending" at Tier 2?

...Or should "Trending" be replaced with "Production", and used for various behind-the-scenes extra-universe links? Slot 1 of 7 is already on shows in the "World of Westeros"....the others are on Great Houses, Hightowers, Velaryons, but those are decently covered under "House of the Dragon"...maybe move the other Production stuff there? We don't have a top tier link to the "A Song of Ice and Fire" novels....the entire Musical themes and motifs page (I didn't work on that but others put much effort into it). Or maybe they could link to Production-related categories. What else is there? We've got leftover space in "Trending" might as well use it for "Production" related topics.--The Dragon Demands (talk) 18:57, 7 February 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for the update. ...though now I have the nagging feeling I'm forgetting something... --The Dragon Demands (talk) 23:50, 7 February 2024 (UTC)

Navbar Season 2 updates

I think the Tier 1 Navbar for "House of the Dragon" should be updated for Season 2. Current Tier 2's (limited to 7 links) are: Production, Seasons, Writers, Directors, Individuals, Cast, and Dragons.

"Production" already has 5 things...maybe add a link to the themes and musical leitmotifs article?

I think that by Wikipedia's example we might want to retitle "Seasons" as "Episodes".

At a certain point as the number of characters grows we'll have to drop some of the crew or shift them to "Production"....

In fact, maybe we should take out "World of Westeros" from "Production" to free up the sixth and seven spots for "Writers" and "Directors" UNDER Production.

Should probably update "Cast" to remove Paddy Considine, Graham McTavish not as prominent, and the younger Rhaenyra and Alicent? (though they are popular)...but this frees up 2 maybe 4 slots for the other younger actors playing Aegon II, Helaena, Jace, Baela (shrug) play around with this update.

That uses 3 of 7 Tier 1 categories: Production, Episodes, Cast.

"Dragons" should be updated only four are in it right now: Caraxes, Syrax, Vhagar, Meleys. Guess should add Sunfyre, Moondancer, Vermax, Seasmoke (that's eight)...Vermithor and Arrax or Vermithor and Silverwing?

This leaves us

We'd split "Characters" into Blacks and Greens ("Individuals" never sat well with me, as it could refer to fictional characters or cast members). But let's see now:

  • Blacks
    • Rhaenyra
    • Daemon
    • Corlys
    • Rhaenys
    • Jace
    • Baela
    • Rhaena
    • Cregan Stark
    • Jeyne Arryn
    • Mysaria?
  • Greens
    • Alicent Hightower
    • Otto Hightower
    • Aegon II Targaryen
    • Aemond
    • Helaena
    • Daeron?
    • Criston Cole
    • Larys Strong
    • Tyland Lannister
    • Jason Lannister

....of course that leaves us a seventh category...I guess we'd lump it in as "Others" or "Allies"?

  • Addam of Hull
  • Alyn of Hull
  • Hugh Hammer
  • Ulf
  • Alys Rivers
  • Simon Strong
  • Maester Orwyle
  • Maester Gerardys?

(something like that)


Also the pop-up site-wide announcement hasn't been updated since the official trailer came out, needs to be updated weekly to the new episode page.

--The Dragon Demands (talk) 20:24, 25 June 2024 (UTC)

(the popup has since been updated)--The Dragon Demands (talk) 15:41, 27 June 2024 (UTC)