Forum:Is Uncyclopedia Completely Blind?

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...a charter, a goal, an aspiration? what is it? i ask 'cos wikipedia does (they do by default - an encyclopedia is defined while an uncyclopedia isn't and an uncyclopedia sorely requires a definition -- like right now?) so what is this animal? i find it, of late, to be simply a collection of vague titles - i hit "random page" and i hit it again - and i am returned titles, phrases, idioms, half phrases, half idioms, concatenations, some words that have no equivalent in any encyclopedia -- like, say, wikipedia -- and that are incomprehensible to most, save in an "in" way - where "in" stands for gungho america - to americans. wtf!!!! WTF!! i went to alexa and wasn't surprised to find that while wikipedia was ranked 17, uncyclopedia was ranked a proud 8,526 with a falling traffic since march '06.

knowledge can be paradox-ed but never successfully parodied <--- profound, profound!

what gives? -- mowgli 19:12, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

Yes, yes it does, by my schizoaffective disorder, Uncyclopedia has a vision and goals. The vision is to be funny and write funny articles with funny images in a parody of Encyclopedias out there. Using wit, satire, parody, sarcasm, dead-pan humor, random humor, dry humor, dark humor, and other methods to meet our goals of being funnier. Part of the vision is to delete articles and images that are crap, that is not up to the standards set in the how to be funny but not just stupid rules. The goals are to write quality articles and delete articles that lack quality. Uncyclopedia is like Wikipedia, only funnier, and we aren't afraid to make stuff up and not take a NPV unlike Wikipedia in order to promote our vision and meet our goals. Unlike ED, we refuse to use Goatse type images and links and other things like that which we really do not find funny, but annoying and stupid. --2nd_Lt Orion Blastar (talk) 19:57, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

If it DID have goals they would be top secret ones, known only by select members of the Cabal, if one existed. I wouldn't want to speculate as to what these goals may be, if they exist, but be assured only pain and suffering will come from your quest to find them. Pain and suffering. -- Sir Mhaille  (talk to me)

lol, but how about unclepedia delete ALL titles (with their sorry articles) that don't have {{wikipedia}}. everything needs a structure - especially absurdity. -- mowgli 20:07, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

Uncleptopedia? Where did you steal that name from? -- Sir Mhaille  (talk to me)

"Be funny and not just stupid" is the goal. But I do think that the fact that we're labelled an "Uncyclopedia" and satirize Wikipedia sort of confuses things, because the best format for humor writing is a magazine format, not an encyclopedia format. Because encyclopedias aren't funny, duh! Well, except Wikipedia. Anyhow I think we need to take a long hard look at the layout of the site; I think that it would make more sense to imitate online magazines (The Onion and Slate.com come to mind) than Wikipedia in our format. Our fundamental problem is that while we do have some good stuff here (some of it is funnier than The Onion has been in years), we have so much shit you've got to wade through, it's hard to find, so people give up. We need to do more to feature our good stuff and hide the awful articles (that is, most of them) away where they will never see the light of day. InfiniteMonkey 20:53, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

Well, Idk if we has a vision, but we definitely gots a shuvel.   t o m p k i n s  blah. ﺞوﻦ וףה ՃՄ ண்ஸ ފއހ วอฏม +տ trade websites 21:59, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

How come you know a word like 'concatenation' but get 'has' and 'have' mixed up? FreeMorpheme 22:02, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

i had started composing with the title, "uncyclopedia has a vision???" -- midway i added "does" and forgot to correct the typo. i has no shuvels to correct titles here...or don't i? hmm. (lemme check "edit" at the very top of this page and if it allows me, i'll change it.) and yes, i should me more careful in future. (also, i'm not a native spiker of english, :) though i don't mean to highlight this as an excuse -- there is no excuse for poor/bad english or any language)

Re: ...we do have some good stuff here (some of it is funnier than The Onion has been in years)...InfiniteMonkey 20:53, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

this is so true. it so happened that the first few pieces i read (Afghanistan, Condoleeza Rice and U2 come to my mind - Hey U!! R U2??? - wildeism) were brilliant and i also realized that many pieces (like say "afghanistan") were genuine collaborative efforts in which one user expanded on the other's half-formed idea -- for instance, in "afghanistan", the user who expands the motif, "bloody tribal revolts and persistent resistance..." borrows it from (or is inspired by) some previous user who had probably just made an off-the cuff-entry. and a yet-another-user inserts facts into it - giving the piece a nice historical framework to become a serious parody. so that's that. there is no dearth of good stuff here but it's tough finding it. of course there are many single author articles here that are good (Vladimir Nabokov comes to mind), some semi collaborative (See Dick, Crazy foreigner down the street) but there are many other good or even better pieces that i simply haven't read or reached yet. -- mowgli 06:00, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

someone correct the title, please, for i can't. -- mowgli 06:02, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

Done!  c • > • cunwapquc? 06:07, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

lol, but thanks nevertheless. -- mowgli 06:31, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

If you are going to ask whether-or-not Uncyclopedia has an aim, you must specify whether it is an Uncyclopedia, the Uncyclopedia, or ye olde Uncyclopedia. Otherwise, nobody can give a truly correct answer. ~ Ghelæ ^talk_contribs 12:22, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

Well I undertand well the grave need for Uncyc definition. I tried my shot at Uncyclopedia to define Uncyc as a project promoting technological improvements in cyberdocument structure, mainly but not only suppressing cycles in the hypertext document graphs, since as we know, graph algorithms run fastest on trees. For the sake of machines, topics can no longer be connected to their original meaning so as not to create cycles by back connections. This greatly increases computational efficiency and gives Uncyc technological advantage over Wikipedia in the age when more and more Internet access is done by machines themselves. Tell me if you like it or not. Kokot.kokotisko 12:29, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

Of course, that definition could be an Uncyclopedia. The Uncyclopedia would be "the content-free uncyclopedia which anyone can edit... providing they have internet access." Then, however, "content-free" would have to be defined. ~ Ghelæ ^talk_contribs 12:45, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

I think a better one is - "To appease all of the Cabal's wishes and goaa bea bea bea bea bea bea bea bes in fact a Cabal and it does in fact has some goals". This post does not verify in any form the existance of a Cabal. Should the user posting this vanish without trace please notify his family -- Brigadier Sir Mordillo GUN UotY WotM FP UotM AotM MI³ AnotM VFH +S 12:59, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

We's got aim. Pretty darn good aim, too. So you's best be runnin' now. --The King In Yellow (Talk to the Dalek.) 19:06, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

Eh... I don't think there's too much wrong with UnCyc at all, apart from the great gouts of crap content. I've only been here a couple or few weeks but I've lost track of the number of times I've laughed myself silly at the good stuff. Perhaps an "AGH MY FREAKIN EYES"-style front page like Slate has would give people more entry points to the good stuff, but it would have to be done properly. I don't see why UnCyc needs any sort of radical reinvention, though. Change it too much and it won't be UnCyc any more -- Sir Armando Perentie KUN FP 14:07, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

• One simple change to make would be to put the first couple of paragraphs (and pic) from the top UnNews story on the front. It would make the front a bit more colourful and topical and it would cut down the size of that whole wall of blue and black headlines and On This Days. What do you think? -- Sir Armando Perentie KUN FP 14:29, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

 

If you define Uncyc as only a parody of Wikipedia then a bunch of article topics and writing styles are logically excluded. Any well-hung definition logically excludes some possibilities. Watch out what you ask for; you might not get it but you might also end up on Pluto with Bruce Willis and 5 tons of Key Lime pie. It has happened before. ----OEJ 19:30, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

i think uncleptopedia should hasten things -- the demise or resurgence of it -- by quickly including ALL media (uncleptopedia is text + image: a new "application" of "humour" discovered long ago; quite like comp. sci. is an "application" of "math." discovered long ago). it should allow embedded videos, embedded sounds, taste, smell, feel and tickling (even if these haven't been invented yet) to remain at the forefront of humour -- or it's most evolved form. uncleptopedia is humour's most evolved form - uncleptopedia should understand this (it can define itself only in retrospect now).

just like the talkies once re-defined/rendered-redundant written-text without either of the two ending vanquished (or so history has us believe), uncleptopedia too has to battle all the other medias to finish.

of course, such battles are going on all the time -- in every sphere!! welcome to today! would you like to die here or would you prefer to leave (readddddddd Afghanistan, like RIGHT NOW!) -- mowgli 19:54, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

Uncyc is way beyond embedded video and audio. We have embedded text and pics. You're still thinking inside the box. What you should be doing is thinking underneath or, at the very least, beside the box. That's where all the cool kids hang out and smoke. People should spend less time here asking questions and more time out there, making new pages or funnying up the crappy ones. The battle for comedy supremacy won't be won in the forums, victory over the oppressors of humour can only be achieved by writing more funny pages. Now get out there, damnit. Modusoperandi 07:47, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

Thinking behind the box

I suppose defining ourselves as an encyclopædia (or an alternative to one) is in some ways limiting. Most of the books, periodicals, broadcasts, film, video and other assorted media which people use every day aren't in encyclopædia format. They tend to specialise by subject category instead of simply trying to include a few short paragraphs on every topic. They go into depth in the topics that they cover and update content relatively frequently. An encyclopædia (at least in its old, printed format) was a set of books that covered many topics but provided little more than an introduction to each. It was a mostly-static collection of text, with individual entries updated every few years at best and tended to be limited to be less than a Cliffs Notes/Coles Notes blurb to introduce the reader to most topics.

True, there's no harm in targetting all encyclopædaic subjects as fodder for budding writers on crack, per se, but imitation of the Onion, MAD or similar media may require that the text be presented in an often-updated magazine-like format instead of sticking entirely to the format and conventions of an encyclopædia.

Not sure how (or even if) that format could be adapted to our use - sites like the Onion are edited in such a way that someone other than the original author selects what appears on the front pages and in what format. Completed, polished articles aren't mixed in with various works-in-progress of varying quality and the entire content is replaced weekly by new, completed items.

Finding software that formats text in that style shouldn't be an impossibility, but how much effort would be involved in building something that looks and feels like a magazine? The tasks of selecting which articles to use, copy-editing a finished version of each and laying the various pieces out in a magazine are all tasks done by people - editors other than the original authors whose tedious task is to take the various elements (as built by authors and photographers), rework them and lay them out in their finished magazine format. No small task if we were to attempt to copy their methods directly.

The idea of splitting a project into two or more branches - one for pieces still under development and revision, another for stable, completed revisions for release in some structured format - is nothing new. Most software written by herds of wildebeest GNUs follows the pattern of seperating the active "development" branch from the "stable" and "release" branches. The version that's in the .rpm or .deb precompiled distribution on the shrink-wrapped CD/DVD-ROMs isn't the version that's currently being edited, debugged, revised and changed. The same is true of printed books, magazines and published recordings in widespread distribution.

Attempting to create the next Onion or the next (whatever) would be no small task. A lot has to happen (mostly behind the scenes) between the original text being written and the finished product making its appearance in the familiar magazine format. If a newspaper or magazine has to appear every day, every week, every month, the effort required to bring all of these elements together in those formats is ongoing and constant.

There has to be a way, but it may involve rethinking a few assumptions about the way we do things. Dunno... --Carlb 20:41, 11 August 2006 (UTC)