Talk: Wikia Poker

My opinion

I guess we're not exactly "voting", being consensus-based rather than majority-based, but I want to be on record as saying: The new home page looks great. Thanks for your work on it, Mark. - PhilipR 17:38, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

I'm not sure what really consitutes a majority on a Wiki, but I concur that the new homepage is great looking. Thanks for all your work, Mark. SheridanCat 23:21, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, guys. I'm pretty happy with it too. I'm glad you like it! MarkT 19:28, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

Portals

I've only sorta started to develop this thought, but what do y'all think about having a series of maybe 5-20 "portals" for different audiences? I started, but just barely started, to put something at Beginners and SSNL. My thinking is that MicroLimitLibrary certain should be one (possibly moved-plus-redired to Micro-limits, but it's been going so well I don't want to interfere). I guess I started Project:Community Portal a long time ago with the same idea too, so maybe it should somehow be broken up or something. My thinking is that we could draw on the full range of formatting, such as we have on the front page, and make various nice-looking points-of-entry for users of corresponding interests/skill levels.

But as you see I haven't pushed it far on my own, so I wanted to throw out the idea for discussion....

Cheers, PhilipR 00:22, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

I like the idea. I really love the look of the main page lately, and I thank you guys for making that happen. Do you then envision the main page being a Portal of Portals with links to the various entry points? SheridanCat 14:57, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

Something like that, yeah. A month or two ago I broke the link from the front page to the Beginners FAQ thinking I would develop a portal, but I haven't really done much with it. - PhilipR 03:38, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

I kind of like the portal idea; it might be a nice rearrangement/extension of the current home page. I tried to organize the home page around general topics, but it's hard when the desired set of links varies dramatically depending on the target audience (or even the audience's mood at the moment). If, instead, we set it up as "What are you trying to do?" or even "Are you a beginner, intermediate, or advanced" it might help. I don't think we can have too many of the portals, though, since it can rapidly get confusing as to which one people would want: if you'd like information on bluffing in Omaha, do I look under "Strategies", "Omaha", "Intermediate", "Advanced", or some other heading? And the usefulness of a portal is diminshed if I first have to decide which portal I'd like. MarkT 21:38, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia discussion

Probably overdue....

Honestly, I don't care for the attitude. Wikipedia is often a useful tool, but I don't think it needs to be the only wiki in the world, and I don't think it's infallible. The superior attitude and judgement, I can live without. Furthermore, I find their current poker content pretty lame. I think we can do much more with this wiki than just be an encyclopedia. SheridanCat 14:14, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

Also, I'm guessing they would consider the casino/cardroom listings to be spam. SheridanCat 14:15, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, I'm definitely not big on the arrogance. Frankly knowing that it's such a breeding ground for that attitude makes me wonder whether Wikipedia is more trouble than it's worth.

That said, there are some topics that they legitimately should cover within its scope. If people want to merge in content from here to there (subject to the GFDL) and link instead of repeating that should be fine. Outside of some basic bios and high-level articles I don't really think there's that much overlap, and as much as I value non-repetition in principle that reception there has really soured me on the idea of collaboration. But who knows, maybe in consensus there good judgment will win out over the squeakiest wheel getting the grease? - PhilipR 15:10, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

Agreed on all points. 64.236.128.14 20:11, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

That was me. SheridanCat 20:11, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

I agree as well. If I find free time (ha!) I may contribute some to their pages, since I agree that they're fairly weak. But I just don't see that much overlap today. I wonder how they'd feel about links on Wikipedia pointing to here? There are a few obvious candidates, like their poor listing of California Casinos, which should be supplanted by ours. Well, maybe some day I'll log in to Wikipedia and at least add a link or two over to here, but I don't think it's worth collaborating formally when that one rude guy has set himself up as de facto arbiter. MarkT 21:26, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

I agree also. Why doesn't someone just import all the Poker pages from Wikipedia to here? The GFDL allows it. I was tempted to fix errors in the Poker pages on Wikipedia, but didn't because I'm also disgusted with that site. Fsk 16:23, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

Video Poker

BTW, would someone mind if I created a section on Video Poker? I'm particularly interested in discussing All American Poker and 9/6.

I don't have an objection except that many people confuse video poker with the real thing. As long as you're pretty clear that VP is a poker-derived game, not considered by most poker players to be a real poker variant, I don't mind. But that's just one opinion; I'm eager to hear what consensus is. - PhilipR 17:17, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

I'm also cool with that. VP can be a EV+ game, which is where I sort of draw the line. SheridanCat 20:03, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

Consensus seems to be positive. I went ahead and created a front page link for you, and a page listing other poker-derived games. Feel free to go for broke on the video poker page! MarkT 09:45, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

Wikia Spotlight

You might have noticed a new feature called Wikia Spotlight above the ads. We are featuring eight wikis here to see whether this is useful in bringing in new users. PokerWiki is one of the first ones to be shown in this feature, and I'd appreciate your feedback at Wikia:Forum:Wikia Spotlight about whether you think this is useful, and whether it has brought any new users to your wiki. The eight wikis we're trying this with first are World Wikia, Marvel Universe, Halopedia, Cell Phone Enthusiasts, iPod, PokerWiki, The Film Guide, and RuneScapeWiki. Angela (talk) 14:00, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, Angela - we're honored! We'll keep an eye out to see if it increases traffic and contributions. Personally, I noticed the spotlight section almost as soon as it appeared and found it interesting. I even followed the link to the Marvel wiki out of curiosity, but couldn't figure out where I might contribute, so I didn't follow through. I guess it was a little too specialized for me (a general comics wiki I'd be able to contribute to a lot, but I'm not knowledgeable enough in Marvels specifically to help out). MarkT 02:56, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

There is a general Comics wiki as well. :) Angela (talk) 08:47, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

Internet Gambling Act

I don't see how we can avoid it... it's the number one topic in the poker world right now. It's probably one of the top reasons people would look up a poker wiki. So I made it a headline and wrote the article. Comments? MarkT 08:47, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

I agree that we can't really avoid it. I think the article you've written looks good Mark. However, I thought online gambling in Nevada was NOT legal. Otherwise, it's informative enough. We just need to keep it updated as things change. Also, probably a link to the 2+2 legislation forum would be a good idea. I'll add that.

Thanks for pointing out my Nevada mistake; I've removed Nevada and put in New Jersey instead, who as far as I can tell allows it. I'll try to keep it up to date as things change. MarkT 08:04, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

Other languages?

this Wiki is bether than all other sources. :P Is there interest to translate it to other languages like français oder Deutsch?

That would be a great idea if there are any people interested in writing about Poker in those languages. Just fill in a wiki request form to make a new language version of this wiki. Angela ^talk 08:15, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

I would hope to set up a similar source in Polish with the Contribution of the forum.pokerzysta.pl, which is a pretty active Polish poker forum. However the link above is not working, is there any other way I can start a "branch" of poker.wikia.com in a different language? thanks

Try this request form instead - it appears they changed the name of their request form recently. I think, to use it, you request to start "poker.wikia.com" in language Polski, and they do the rest. MarkT 07:23, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

Links to wikipedia

This wiki should be linked to the poker page on wikipedia as it is hard to find.

Agreed 100%, but I've found the self-appointed poker maintainers at Wikipedia to be extremely hard to deal with when I've sought to collaborate (see above on this talk page). One editor in particular lets it be known at every opportunity that he considers this a worthless pile of commercial pro-Two Plus Two spam. Everyone's entitled to be bold, and in theory the shrill and opinionated are not entitled to any more votes than the meek and subtle. (That's in theory; in practice the shrill always win the day at Wikipedia.) If you want to go make an edit to bring this to people's attention then I'll certainly back you up on any votes. Regards, PhilipR 07:40, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

Main page layout update

Hullo! I am Kirkburn, your friendly local Wikia Gaming Helper!

Hopefully you have read about the skin and ad changes at Wikia's New Style on Central Wikia. If not, I hope you'll have a look.

One of the changes is a block of two ads on each main page. It's possible that they won't always show up, but to ensure your main page continues to work properly when they do, you need to update your main page column formatting code with new column tags.

I have drafted a main page using the new tags on User:Kirkburn/Dev which I hope you can take a look at - feel free to make a copy and edit it. Though the layout may seem restrictive at first, there really is a fair amount you can do with them - for example see these customized main pages - Muppet Wiki, WoWWiki, FFXIclopedia. You may want to chat with your wiki community about what direction to take with a new main page.

If you encounter any problems with the new tags, please let us know.

My apologies for any inconvenience these changes bring.
Thank you for your time, Kirkburn (talk) 15:15, 22 August 2008 (UTC)

I have switched to the new layout, and added a few extra things - enjoy! Kirkburn (talk) 12:27, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

Homepage Changes

I've tweaked some aspects of the homepage and am eager to hear some feedback from the community. I don't think it would be a terrible idea to archive this talk page as it appears quite old, however I'll let somebody else do that if they agree with me. Feel free to nominate new articles for featured article status here and I can make the change. We can also have a separate image (currently both image and article are set to Brandi Hawbaker). Pokers 18:55, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

(Back after a long hiatus of a few months): Welcome! Always happy to discuss things, and I like contributing content, though I've been too busy at work the past few months to spend much time on the wiki.

The "wagon wheel" things aren't wagon wheels, they're chips (the ubiquitous "Dice" style of chip), since I was using poker-themed imagery. Sorry you don't like them; I'm not married to them and am open to anything else. They've somehow gotten scaled strangely in the last few updates, though, so now they look kind of crappy. Unscaled, I thought they looked fine.

I'm not sure Brandi Hawbaker is an appropriate front page article, but I don't feel strongly about it. I know that you are more interested in the people of poker, and I'm more interested in the places, so we'll have a natural amount of friction there. But, for example, a "did Brandi Hawbaker get murdered" story isn't as interesting to me, front-page-wise, as even a "Steve Brecher" article, since he just won the Shooting Star, or some such.

With regard to front-page layout in general, it could use a freshening, but I'm not a web designer. I'm merely a competent content author. Do you have any suggestions?

Incidentally, I'm going to go through and clean up some of the spam/assassination junk that's been appearing (e.g. the Doug Lee vandalism). I'm also hoping to be adding more poker room info as I'm getting ready to go on a poker vacation next week.

MarkT 22:03, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

Hi Mark! Welcome back! I haven't done much research or or writing on 'places' in poker but I read about them and visit them a lot, so I do find them quite interesting. Maybe we can alternate between a person of interest and a place of interest-or have one of each on the front page. For Brandi I just want to change things up but that has been there for awhile and could be replaced. If you have the ability to edit the main page feel free to do so, as with anything else. I think some activity and change going on is much better than just leaving things alone. :) Pokers 10:37, 28 March 2009 (UTC)