Forum:Inclusionism and a new idea

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Our deletionist policies and harsh tagging is out of control. We need to really chill out. Our rankings go down the harsher our policies and requirements are. I've just met the second person that mentioned that they were turned off from contributing due to the harsh tagging and deletionist policies.

Also, on the irc channel a great idea was put forth - UnWire. Like UnNews mini-blurbs. However, the greatest value of this would be for RSS feeds, so we need to make sure we can produce a feed that retains people (and there's no better way than getting into people's RSS reader lists). We also could do it for UnNews, but it wouldn't work as well since there is no meta data for UnNews articles that could make them suitable for RSS.

So, what do you think? Dawg.gif » Brig Sir Dawg | t | v | c » 23:56, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

RSS is good... could just use Template:Recent right? Also UnNews could use the Recent UnNews Thing. Finally, I have always been turned off by deletionism myself, as have several other admins I've talked to.--<<Bradmonogram.png>> 00:00, 28 September 2006 (UTC)
Indeed, plus our tags are so big and ugly... I think they should be modified. HOMESTAR ME!!! TURTLE ME!!! t o m p k i n s  blah. ﺞوﻦ וףה ՃՄ ண்ஸ ފއހ วอฏม +տ trade websites 00:07, 28 September 2006 (UTC) 00:07, 28 September 2006 (UTC)
Look, maybe my opinion isn't worth much on this subject, and I'm clearly not one of these guys who checks the new article list every five minutes for things to NRV... as you should all know well enough, I reckon. But who are these people who are being "turned off"? And how do we know they're not precisely the sort of people we want to turn off? I mean, if you're referring to people like that guy "Josquius" from Wikipedia, I'd say just ignore people like that. They're a distraction, and I'm only saying that because I don't feel like insulting him by saying how I really feel about people of that sort. They just want to make you feel bad for having "wronged" them, when in fact they probably never even tried to produce anything of quality here, and are just refusing to believe that any of that failure could possibly be due to their lack of talent, lack of effort, or lack of a sense of humor. Wikipedia is chock full of people like that. Best to just ignore them, in my opinion. As Rcmurphy once said, humor is serious business. We have standards to maintain here! Which reminds me, I think it's time to clean up those fake God quotes again.  c • > • cunwapquc? 03:03, 28 September 2006 (UTC)
I'm talking about multiple people I've met in person that were/are good writers and were hurt by it. It puts a human face on it, and our troubles on this front have caused us to lose potential good writers. Some are frightened before they even try to write an article. This is a bad thing, imho. We should be looking for sustainable growth and we should be not only welcoming, but also helpful and understanding to n00bs. It's one of the many things we've lost. If it wasn't for Splarka, I wouldn't have stuck around.
While I agree that it is serious business, I also believe that many people don't get a chance to become proficient due to the hostility. Some of us don't fight against all odds, some need a little help, and jokes don't always have to be huge articles. Sadly, we have a hard time with this, and it is hurting us. When a full article written by someone skilled with MediaWiki gets an expand tagging 30 seconds after they write their article, something is wrong. Dawg.gif » Brig Sir Dawg | t | v | c » 03:16, 28 September 2006 (UTC)
I'm definitely against deletionism (I only ask for the deletion of really, really, REALLY bad articles), however, I'm no inclusionist. We do need to have a line set (which should pretty much be common sense; no overused outisde memes; no obviously bad crap; and most importantly NO SHOCK HUMOR). People who try shouldn't have to be rediculed. I remember when my first article was deleted, and I would have been turned away from Uncyc had I not gotten to know the style around here. I since wrote two articles (that are still under development) and improved a two sentence NRV article to something similar in length. However, I AM against template spamming (but not against their gradual expansion), bad use of Russian Reversal jokes, Ballmer jokes, and Kanye West jokes (although personally I think they should be expanded back to what they were at before their massive spamming). That's my main concern. Mass spamming should be no excuse for a mega-purge. When purges happen, some funny content may actually be removed. I'm not for removing our pro-deletionist stance, I just want us to be a little more aware of what exactly we are deleting and if the joke fits. If it fits even in the slightest, it should stay. Crazyswordsman...With SAVINGS!!!! (T/C) 03:24, 28 September 2006 (UTC)
Just would like to add something here... I think about half - if not more - of the really good writers on this site started with an article, that frankly, was a piece of shit. Maybe, it didn't get deleted, but it probably should have. I think that there are enough people that take these warnings as insults, that we should maybe just loosen up a bit a help them improve what they've already got, instead of deleting it. HOMESTAR ME!!! TURTLE ME!!! t o m p k i n s  blah. ﺞوﻦ וףה ՃՄ ண்ஸ ފއހ วอฏม +տ trade websites 21:58, 28 September 2006 (UTC) 21:58, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

Even inclusionists have our limits. I think we all agree on some basic limits: no shock humor, nothing that singles someone out especially for ridicule (ie stalking), no slandanity. Poor quality, however, I don't like it just being labeled "worthless" and deleted... I DO think this costs us writers. If I hadn't been able to eventually get something kept (no matter how bad), I would've gotten frustrated and left very early.--<<Bradmonogram.png>> 03:44, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

Obviously, I agree with you and Crazyswordman above. Dawg.gif » Brig Sir Dawg | t | v | c » 04:10, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

Most of the stuff that's deleted is absolutely deserving of being tossed. That being said, the process maybe is too harsh. When I read the things I qvfd and NRV, I don't think "Gee, there's a lot of potential here.", I think "Great, some tosser wrote another unfunny stub." I don't really know what else to do but NRV an article like that. I mean, I could stub it, ugly it, expand tag it, etc., but we all know what would happen then: it would sit in its category:stub until the next Forest Fire Week. I think what really needs to be done is some sort of organization of efforts to fix up old articles. Create a page dedicated to that, that pulls together all the Maintence tags, allows for collaborations, etc. Something to organize all the efforts, because as it is now, it's nearly impossible to feel like you're solving anything be expanding a short article. It's just one of 18,000, and really it's just a lot easier to tag it for deletion and move on. There are two ways to improve the overall quality of the site: delete all bad shit or make more good shit. It just so happens that the first one is a lot easier. That's the problem, really. It takes a lot of effort to expand an article, to take ideas that aren't your own (that you might not even think are that good) and turn it into something decent. And you don't get any praise for it, or any thanks. So when I feel some obligation to help Uncyc, I don't go around fixing old articles (because I'm lazy), but instead patrol Recent Changes and just work to delete shit (because it's easy and it makes me feel important.) So basically, I've just rambled on and added nothing important. But whatever, I think the issue's important even if I'm not. --Sir ENeGMA (talk) GUN WotM PLS 13:44, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

I agree it's easier to delete than fix up articles. Actually I agree with most of what you said. I think the whole site needs to be made more of a group effort, we should organise teams of users and assign them swathes of articles, to create hilariously funny series like the Jesi Corp or the Legion of Hitlers, except funnier. Each team would be led by proven writers, proven image-makers. Then they could war with each other, with the rest of the site keeping score and making notes. Then again, what am I saying? I already proposed this idea, didn't I, and it was shot down like an Italian fighter pilot. I guess people are happier slogging away alone. Freemorpheme.gif 21:30, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

n00bs perspective:

The system now is geared to allowing anyone to create/edit any article, so naturally you are going to have crap. And with a large amount of crap, babies are going to be thrown out with the bath water. Unless you put a filter at the beginning of the system, you will have to resign yourself to constantly cleaning up messes.

A solution might be something like setting up a stricter signing up protocol, where you are not allowed to edit until you submit a test article that is rated above a certain limit by admins, this will add an attractive exclusivity, and value, to being a contributor. On the test article you could have a comments section, feeding the newcomer a vibe he/she can grab onto sooner than the current set up.

The tags at the top of articles are distracting and ugly and all over the place.

- 72px-Sig.GIF 13:05, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

In fact, perhaps a rating system would work across the board. It could determine popularity and gage reaction, fall below a certain level, and its cut. I offer my very first article, http://uncyclopedia.org/wiki/The_best_thing_ever, as a trial for this. Its not great, has potential. So on its "discussion page" if you would like to leave a rating of 1-5 with a comment on it, I'll change it accordingly and we'll see if it gets better. - 72px-Sig.GIF 13:18, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

Your idea could work but it would be easier if people just followed the advice at Uncyclopedia:How To Get Started Editing. At a certain point, writing quality is a sink or swim endeavor, and if people aren't willing to follow a few simple steps about how to keep drafts and unfinished work off of the main space until it's completed, I think it's a little unfair for them to ask for help finishing or improving what they wrote. It'd be nice if we could have a discussion panel with every contributor here and help them with their writing, but the reality is that uncyclopedia is not our job, and we really don't have the ability to do that as a matter of site policy. Talent has to be developed with time, effort and that involves making mistakes. The advice at Uncyclopedia:How To Get Started Editing deals adquately, in my opinion, with the issue of how to create and learn here without requiring significant effort or changes on anyone's part. I respectfully submit that if everyone simply followed the advice in that article, we wouldn't even be having this discussion now. Not that that's a bad thing in and of itself, but I do think we're revisiting an area here that's already been more than adequately addressed by the HowTo article. --Hrodulf 17:03, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

You will find that simply asking them to go there and read it will not be enough - you have to ask yourself if its working or not. I just felt when I signed up that it was too easy, there was no incentive to write well. The machine is not geared well and there is a weak link in its chain.

Captain Obvious says: "If Uncyc is getting worse, as some comments suggest, then you need to stop it from getting worse and gear it so it starts getting better!"

- 72px-Sig.GIF 18:01, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

This is like trying to cure malaria in a population. You can educate all you want, but it won't work if the population won't listen and insists on taking long works in swampy areas late at night.
Making Uncyclopedia better is the responsibility of the n00bs as well as us somewhat less-n00bish users. If there's been perfectly good rational advice showing how to avoid all of these issues, and actually learn something from the process, and people don't bother to read it, I'm not responsible for that.
You're right, there is a weak link in the chain; people who are too lazy to read. Again, not my problem. Uncyclopedia is not my job, neither is "fixing" a problem caused by people who don't want to change their behavior, or listen to anybody else's opinion.
--Hrodulf 23:28, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

Fair enough. - 72px-Sig.GIF 10:06, 21 October 2006 (UTC)

Just throwing out a few ideas

Well now, these are all good points. The fact is, we absolutely should be helping n00bz more, but that means putting forth the effort, taking their needs more seriously, not jumping all over their initial attempts (assuming they're at least trying), making some attempt to not just ignore them (which is likely to be even harder), and rewarding not only them, but the people who help them, with whatever we can come up with - awards, phony rank insignia, whatever. Also, being helpful to n00bz should be just as important an indicator of admin-worthiness as the ability to find and tag crappy articles, if not more so. But that doesn't mean we should stop deleting crap, even on sight if it's obviously that bad. On the other hand, you're absolutely right that 30 seconds is waaay too soon, even for a two-line stub... I'd give articles at least 45 seconds, maybe even a whole minute in some cases...

Okay, that was a joke. Personally, I'd be all in favor of an 8-hour no-tag grace period for all new articles, unless they're obviously vanityshite, blatantly lifted, or meant primarily to jack with the site or piss people off in clearly unfunny ways. Would that help? Add that to the Lowly Lackey/Maintenance Worker of the Month award, and maybe try to slant the UotM award more towards n00b-helping (and let a non-admin win once in a while), and I think we'd be well on our way to n00b-friendliness again! Also, Dawg, I think you were spot-on a few days ago when you wrote in that we're not giving our fellow users enough general-purpose DAP around here, at least not like we used to. One of us might set up a nice handy list of general-purpose DAP templates for use in thanking, commending, applauding, and otherwise being nice to each other. And encourage people to make their "personal thank-you" templates more general-purpose, too... The more the merrier, IMO.  c • > • cunwapquc? 04:24, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

Don't give the n00bs bannination, give them flowers!
I've been working on this issue on and off over the last few months, and the most useful thing I came up with to deal with the problem was Uncyclopedia:How To Get Started Editing. That was probably a step in the right direction, and I'm glad I got some help with how to make it better.
In terms of helping n00bs make better contributions, I think that aside from promoting the HowTo guide, the best thing would be to start up a "Tourist Campaign of Welcome and Amiability" for uncyclopedia, modeled after the 1965 French campaign to the same effect, which has had a brilliant success rate: the French of today love foreigners in their country, especially Americans, whom they love the most!
Just trying to make a point that maybe we don't need to revamp a lot of templates and procedure that will end up getting changed eventually with time anyway as people get bored of the way they are now; to address this issue, maybe all it takes is to be a bit more patient with the n00bs, and when in doubt, to read To Get Started Editing#A_few_words_about_personality_conflicts a few words about personality conflicts.
--Hrodulf 13:36, 28 September 2006 (UTC)
Hrodulf, don't get me wrong - you've done stellar work on these n00b-help pages of yours, and I think they're extremely, uh, helpful - but only to the people who actually read them. I still suspect Dawg is referring mostly to experienced Wiki people, and if anything, those people are going to be less likely to do so - in other words, more likely to assume that the culture here is just like Wikipedia's, and therefore more likely to get pissed off when their mini-stubs are whacked at birth... The point is that additional verbiage only gets you so far - what we need are changes in behavior, and if we have to impose a few new rules to nudge those changes along, or even force them outright, then so be it. I'm hoping we won't have to impose new rules, but the 8-hour no-tag grace period would probably be seen as one. So, I'd also suggest that for the first 30 days, failure to heed the "8-hour rule" should be a non-bannable offense, even for repeat occurrences. (Within reason, of course!)  c • > • cunwapquc? 00:22, 29 September 2006 (UTC)
Changes in 'behavior' are exactly what I'm advocating! Rather than writing more articles, coming up with new procedures and/or tags, we need to have a more enlightened attitude towards new users who need time to learn how this place works, and how to find their unique comic niche in it. Very few people are talented at doing everything that goes on here. For example, I'm pretty crappy at article writing, but my unnews work has gotten better lately. People just need time to settle in and figure out what they're good at, and if this place is right for them. And they aren't getting an opportunity to do that if people jump down their throat for not being as witty as the Marx Brothers combined with Johnny Carson in their first post.
If we want to grow and improve, we need to change the culture, not a few tags and guidelines. That's what I've been saying all along, really. --Hrodulf 14:09, 29 September 2006 (UTC)
Most of these n00bz are children who want to write vanity pages, so I say use Child Psychology on them. --2nd_Lt Orion Blastar (talk) 16:08, 28 September 2006 (UTC)


The site seems to be withering away in the past few months. VFA doesn't get so many articles posted anymore. Nobody maintains "On this day" other than me and the guy who does the images (thank you, image guy!). "Did you know" hasn't changed in ages. Featured picture submissions seem to be down. When was the last reskin done? I agree that the culture of the site is probably the problem. If it doesn't change, and soon, then I think the best days of this site may be in its past.
(1)Deletionism has gone too far. I think Forest Fire Week- which I was in favor of at the time- might have been where things started to go downhill for this site. Yes, we got rid of a lot of real crap. The quality of the average article is significantly better. The problem is that we seem to have lost a lot of people in the process. Sometimes we forget that just because you're a bad writer, doesn't mean you're a bad person, and that you could become a better writer. I remember being really pissed when my U2 Special Edition iPod article was huffed- it was lengthy and I did a graphic and everything, and maybe it wasn't the cleverest joke in the world to have a spy-plane shaped MP3 player, but I spent a lot of time and effort and it was better than 80% of the stuff at the time. That was really discouraging, and I'm sure we've lost talented humorists because of similar incidents. I'm sure I've been part of the problem at points. Basically, I think we need to focus more on creating, preserving, and featuring good articles, and less on deleting the bad ones.
(2)We don't always treat people with respect here. This site is very unfriendly towards new people. I mean the term "noobs" is not exactly an indication that we're willing to be welcoming and respectful towards new users. Sometimes our criticisms can be overly harsh, and people take that personally, and don't forget things like that quickly. Again, I've probably been part of the problem; lately I've tried to be respectful and constructive in my criticisms. I wonder if we need some kind of informal code of conduct- just some written suggestions on how to be a good member of the community and not an asshole.
(3)Arbitrary use of power by admins. Some of the admins have a history of being uptight dickheads. There are only a couple I'm thinking of, but I don't think they have any clue just how obnoxious they seem online, or how arbitrary the use of their ability to ban people looks. I mean, the BENSON thing was one of the funniest things to hit the site in ages, and he gets banned for typing in capital letters? WTF? I think some of these guys just have a stick up their asses and need to go get laid or something, or find a different place to power trip. I think we need the admins to be more accountable- right now, it looks to me like if a user gets in a disagreement with an admin, he could get banned just for the hell of it, and he'd have no way of doing anything about it.
Anyhow, this is my take on the situation InfiniteMonkey 18:24, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

Tags

Dawg suggested on the IRC channel that maybe we should tone down the NRV and maintenance tags. I did this a little bit. But maybe we need new tags. Someone else suggested getting rid of the bulky tags, and maybe it is time for a change. I have mocked up some alternates in my userspace and I include them below this post. -Quill.gifRev. Isra (talk) 07:11, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

New Expansion template:

{{User:Isra1337/AltTemplates/Expansion}}

Alright, well, there was no clear voice, so I decided to be all unilateral. This is now the current expansion tag.---Quill.gifRev. Isra (talk) 06:49, 29 September 2006 (UTC)
New NRV template:

{{User:Isra1337/AltTemplates/NRV}}

Is this some special secret IRC channel I've never visited? When I go to IRC all I hear is Diz and Olipro moaning. 80.229.160.127 07:42, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

You're just not coming in at the right time of day. Also, constructive conversation usually gets lost in the mix, what with all the random banter that gets thrown around. It's there, hidden... like an Easter Egg.--<<Bradmonogram.png>> 12:49, 28 September 2006 (UTC)
I don't think NRV needs to be excessively toned down, but I do think that it is overused. We may need a gentler intermediate "Some Redeeming Value" and clearer rules on when to use each tagging template. Right now it's the wild west with absolutely no consistency in tagging. You have to carefully check the history to verify what jackass idiot dolt brilliant contributor tagged the article, even before reading it, because certain people I won't name tag almost everything they see. While I appreciate the RC patrolling a lot, it does make it more difficult to do maintenance work and turns people off to contributing. Dawg.gif » Brig Sir Dawg | t | v | c » 13:26, 28 September 2006 (UTC)
I don't want to overstep my bounds, because I haven't really been around for quite a while, but I would oppose another level of tags because I am not really sure what it would accomplish. This would presumably be gentler than NRV but harsher than the fix/expand/cleanup/ugly tags. Question is this: what would this tag do? Would it just be NRV but worded nicer? Would we add one more time specificiation like 2 weeks? The problem with that is that most new articles that go a week without editing really are a lost cause, so either we really are committed to really deleting the article if it doesn't improve or we aren't. My suggestion is that we do one or both of two things 1) tone down all NRV tags so they can be seen more as a prompt than an insult, and/or 2) further restrict who can use NRV. ---Quill.gifRev. Isra (talk) 17:55, 28 September 2006 (UTC)
But even assuming we had a "Some Redeeming Value" tag, who's to say anything would be done with the articles. The problem isn't that we don't have the proper tags, the problem is that we don't have enough people with the impetus to do anything with the tags, and I absolutely include myself in this. I've worked on, maybe, a half dozen maintenence articles in my time here. It's very difficult to do and it isn't very fulfilling. I think this might go back to what you said about us needing to be more friendly and encouraging. But that's sort-of another problem. --Sir ENeGMA (talk) GUN WotM PLS 13:47, 28 September 2006 (UTC)
Well anonymous input is sometimes short, sometimes vandalism or just no effort of humor in whatever was put down. But, sometimes there are good ideas in the anonymous input, things that could probably be helped by us to get it in the right direction (Fisher Price?. Another prob of course is that humor is subjective, and anons may not like input that puts off what their article direction was. Helping articles is something nice, and makes everyone happy. Although as of late I've contributed to saving only one NRV.--Witt, Union leader.gif of Union member.gif UNion Entertain me* 14:20, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

Someone made this tag as a joke. Maybe we could put it to use?