videos, page headers and other Andromeda-driven updates on the wiki

as people may or may not know, we have been working behind the scenes with Fandom staff in anticipation for Mass Effect: Andromeda. here's the PSA on what's been happening, and your comments are actually solicited for research purposes.

Eden Prime 50kya - 4 the Empire — pic unrelated

videos[]

on selected andromeda topics you'll see some vids on top of the article (distinct from the video ads - turn off your adblocker if nothing's loading). normally the wiki doesn't allow videos due to quality issues, but these are the in-universe briefings or trailers, approved by the publisher, or Fandom's self-made intro videos. also they're hosted on a different section of fandom's servers (not here).

i also have some things to say on the changes, so i'm putting my opinions in these boxes. the vids often load slowly in my experience and can be significant resource hogs - mind you, i have a ton of tabs open at any given time

new front page[]

the front page hasn't been updated in forever, and i just did not have the time to redesign it myself, so this is actually the first thing we requested collaboration on. shoutout to the dragon age wiki for the ~~rip-off~~ inspiration, and thanks to User:JoePlay for setting the devwork up and User:Pinkachu for setting everything up in the first place.

as part of Fandom's agreement with EA, the front page is required to look like that for a few weeks or so after ME:A's release. i'm not inclined to change it significantly afterward either, apart from maintenance edits.

super walkthrough[]

another item borne from the collab, Mass Effect: Andromeda Super Walkthrough is a one-stop page directed at new players.

new page headers[]

coincidentally enough, new page headers were unveiled for testing when ME:A gets released in europe and elsewhere. the new headers aren't available yet to most other wikis and we're one of those chosen for testing and user response. feedback is definitely requested, so comment away below.

as of this writing, i'm still looking for the button where we can change the header image. not that i would change it immediately, it's more of a "good to know" thing.

for logged-in users, i also think the recent wiki activity button beside the create page one should point to Special:RecentChanges instead. Special:WikiActivity is already listed under the explore heading and already visible to both anons and users, so i see no need for redundancy.

also, what happened to subpage nav? there's no one-click action anymore if you want to get back to the parent page, like Characters and Characters/Mass Effect: Andromeda etc

new navigation bar[]

it's time we archived the old and make way for the new, hence User:Teugene and i mashed random keys on our keyboards and laid out a preliminary grouping of links for the navigation bar. andromeda gets one heading to itself while the shepard trilogy items are all in one level 1 heading. subject to change as more and more people finish MEA.

portable infobox template migration[]

portable infoboxes have been around for quite a while, and again i never found the time to apply almost all of them on the wiki. User:FishTank converted most of the most-used templates to the new markup while Teugene provided some fine-tuning.