Forum:VFH...?

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Okay, so, no doubt, this has been raised before. And no doubt I'll get shot down for even daring to bring this up (or more likely I've got it all wrong). I just don't understand the system as it stands: surely what gets featured depends on what other articles are on VFH at the time, not the actual quality of the article. There's no benchmark, it's simply whether it's better or worse than the other things on VFH at the time. Obviously articles that get featured are always of a high standard, but in theory, if their is a drought on VFH, we might be forced to feature something terrible. That's possible, isn't it? Would it not make more sense for articles to be featured if their for votes were x% more than the article's against votes?

Okay, now explain to me why that's a ridiculous idea and I'm hopelessly wrong, please. :) —YID WHORE Mr. Antonio Yettie (talk) [17:56 16 August 2010]

Not a problem as far as I've experienced. The crap articles get very few favorable votes, and the good stuff is readily apparent (except in the case of Tombstone which people may not be reading because of the subject matter, of a damn topic that was given me as a requirement in Happymonkey's contest!!). Ahem, what was that? Oh, the subject at hand. I'd imagine that if there were no very good pages on VFH nothing would be newly featured--the last good page would continue day after day--and that's happened too. Aleister 18:53 16 8

It's not perfect, but then neither was Jesus, and that seemed to work. mAttlobster. (hello) 19:12, August 16, 2010 (UTC)

Falling standards are always a problem but I don't think the issue is inherent in the system. If you don't like an article, vote against it. -- T​K​F​​U​U​U​U​U​U​U​U​U​U​U​U​U​U​U​U​U​U​U​U​UU​U​U​U​U​U​U​U​U​U​U​U​U​U​U​U​U​U​U​U​U​CK 19:17, August 16, 2010 (UTC)

I'm not saying standards are falling, by all appearances VFH is thriving. I'm just saying is the current voting system the best way of doing things? What happens if we get to a time and there just happens to be no good articles on VFH and we're left with a few average articles and nothing else to choose from. We just leave the last feature up and don't feature anything new for a while? Who decides? It just seems that it would make more sense to have a certain benchmark that you have to read, as opposed to an article having to beat other articles on VFH. —YID WHORE Mr. Antonio Yettie (talk) [20:59 16 August 2010]

If there are no good articles on VFH we will have, at long last, achieved the Apex of Uncyclopediation. Then they shut down the internet. Sir Modusoperandi ^Boinc! 23:59, August 16, 2010 (UTC)

Okay, another example: Say you have twenty excellent articles. Would some of them not loose out because of the current system? —YID WHORE Mr. Antonio Yettie (talk) [00:08 17 August 2010]

Yes. VFH is cruel. Build up a callus. Or be callous. One of those. Sir Modusoperandi ^Boinc! 06:06, August 17, 2010 (UTC)

No, but I mean the standard of articles we're featuring drastically depends on the other articles on VFH. If there's 19 terrible articles and one decent one then the decent one will get featured. However if you have twenty excellent articles (all better than that decent one) some will loose out. Which basically means that you can submit an article to VFH tactically. —YID WHORE Mr. Antonio Yettie (talk) [10:33 17 August 2010]

And so? I do that all the time. All my features were put on VFH in an attempt to lower the standard. You have no idea how many sockpuppets I had to make to pull that off. Most of the people here, probably. Sir Modusoperandi ^Boinc! 19:14, August 17, 2010 (UTC)

There are only five Uncyclopedians. Each of us has a hundred thousand sockpuppets. Also, Yettie, I understand what you're saying. The nice thing about it is that if an article fails, it can be re-nominated in good time. Articles all aren't going to be featured the first time around, and that's just how it goes. In any voting system. Not to mention, the tastes and distastes of the perusers of VFH may change daily, and the perusers themselves may cycle in and out. It's really a blindfolded dartboard situation. Except that's a horrible analogy for this particular situation. But I stand by it, and direct you to my trophy for first place in the Horrible Analogy competition. For the final round we had to make a horrible analogy about why we wanted to win the competition. Mine was "Winning this competition for me would be like raping and murdering the entire population of Costa Rica and making abstract paintings with their bodily fluids." The trophy came with a prison sentence. -RAHB 21:09, August 17, 2010 (UTC)

Trophies that come with their own prison sentence are always the best. Well congratulations on that. But would it not be all round fairer and such if articles were featured if they got to +x or if at the end of a given time period had x% more for votes than against? —YID WHORE Mr. Antonio Yettie (talk) [22:19 17 August 2010]

Competition seems to work well enough. Feelings are hurt, old men lose their homes, small children cry, babies go hungry. Failure is the grist of comedy. Sir Modusoperandi ^Boinc! 23:14, August 17, 2010 (UTC)

Seems to me that would be incredibly complicated. The X amount of time would have to be re-calculated and changed regularly to accommodate changing voting trends, and likely a backlog of to-be-featured articles could build up, which would be welcome for a while, until we realize that so many have built up that VFH is irrelevant and current articles aren't going to be featured for a while. Which could be fixed by moving them up in the queue, but then this whole fairness thing comes into play again, and people will be screaming about how their article came first and should be featured first. The other thing is this whole "fairness" idea. No offense intended to your good intentions, but from what I can tell, VFH is about featuring exceptional writing, the "Varsity" so to speak. On Varsity, only the best play, which means sometimes the third string guys won't see any play time, even though they made the team. Sure, on the freshman team, everyone gets to play, but that's why nobody watches the freshman games, and the team goes 0-10. So while it would be really cool to be fair and everything, I think in the realm of letting the best writing shine through, the current system is being plenty fair. Or rather, it's being as fair as it can be. I don't think any mathematical system has any shot in hell of truly representing what is good art. In fact, that's the whole idea of subjectivism. We could propose a million different formulas for quantifying quality, but quantity and quality are two different things for a reason, they're never going to be able to intersect. So in that way, I think the current system is better simply because it doesn't take a nuclear scientist to calculate it, and it generally represents the ideas of the group of active voters at the time of any particular article's feature. Also per Socky, there's probably not anybody trying to strategically vote for their own personal gain, and if they are, BAN BAN BAN! WHERE ARE THEY! I'LL BAN THEM ALL! -RAHB 02:59, August 18, 2010 (UTC)

Iz wiki, {{sofixit}} by writing better articles. --Mn-z 01:56, August 18, 2010 (UTC)

Yettie, I honestly doubt anyone votes based on the other articles at VFH. And when there really is nothing to feature, then we just don't have a new feature for a couple days. It has happened before. Also,  For what Mnbvcxz just said. —Sir Socky (talk) (stalk) GUN SotM UotM PMotM UotY PotM WotM 02:16, 18 August 2010

I never said anyone has done it, but if they do I could see it becoming quite a big issue. Also RAHB, you sorta lost me at the American football analogy...wouldn't happen to be able to explain that in cricket terms would ya? The thing with the system at the moment is does not a benchmark of quality. Which I know you can't really do with any precision, of course, but the quality of articles we're featuring can drastically vary throughout the year (I mean I managed to get articles featured...how on earth did they slip through?). Which is fine, but then for the articles that are the best of the FA but don't quite make a top 3 of a month or a top 10 of a year, you get no recognition. Which I suppose is okay for people who just like the appreciation and such they get from the article. Anywho, I'm sidetracking a little, the only reason I've brought this up is because the voting system has always seemed just a little odd to me and I wanted to hear it defended. No, you can't have a system that represents quality perfectly through a quantity and people with good articles will always loose out, but surely some systems are fairer than others? I haven't been around for a long time, so I recognise that I'm probably a little bit out of touch. —YID WHORE Mr. Antonio Yettie (talk) [11:19 18 August 2010]

Oh, it's not even remotely perfect - what is? But most articles that get featured do have something to recommend them to some people - for all that you talk about quality varying drastically, don't forget that comedy is highly subjective, and other people might feel the quality has improved when you think it has slipped. Multiliteralist regularly argues a point that at least resembles this a little, I think... Anyway, unless the community stays completely stable, without people leaving for some reason or other, and everyone reads every single article on VFH, and votes on every single article on VFH, you don't really have a chance of establishing any kind of perfect system. But I at least am happy that what we have is a fairly decent way of representing the best we have to offer. Even allowing for the featuring of a certain flippin' wizard! --UU - natter 11:47, Aug 18

I wonder whether having a minimum number of votes before an article can be removed from VFH wouldn't be a good idea? Or perhaps, for an article to be removed, it has to have at least say 1/4 or 1/5 of the votes on the article that is currently ranked top on VFH? It might lead to a whole load of mediocre articles sitting about, but so what? I'm also wondering if perhaps experienced users should have more voting power than noobs? Say you have to be a month old before you get a full 1 instead of a 0.5. It would make "cheating" through sockpuppets would be harder and also more experienced users, who are probably casting more experienced and conscientious votes would get more of a say than noobs who maybe don't have quite a matured/sophisticated sense of Uncyclopedia humour. —YID WHORE Mr. Antonio Yettie (talk) [16:07 23 August 2010]

I personally think the system works fine. Sockpuppets,collective sockpuppets and pre-arranged voting have happened here and no doubt will reappear again but they are usually spotted soon enough. I think a one month on half vote rations is too extreme for Noobs as it would suggest they would all be guilty of potential vote rigging unless proved otherwise.--RomArtus*Imperator ® (Orate) 16:39, August 23, 2010 (UTC)

Not vote rigging as such, but perhaps not vote with as finely tuned sense of whats an FA or not as experienced editors would have. —YID WHORE Mr. Antonio Yettie (talk) [17:36 23 August 2010]

I just realized I made a really big comment in this forum a while ago and never checked it again. As the conversation appears to have been over for five days, I have nothing left to add except for, "what the hell is a shitslide?" and "Fucking cricket, how does it work?" -RAHB 09:02, August 28, 2010 (UTC)