Forum:Dropping User Numbers :O

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According to this we had

952 in April 2007

but

454 in Feb 2008

Plus you can see a lot of good users have left even since I joined.

How can we boost user numbers? Advertising? Magics? Free Cake? --Sir DJ ~ Irreverent 13:19, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

I blame it on sub-prime loans --Nytrospawn 17:43, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

Really? I blame it on the Optimus Prime loans. Damn you, Autobots! Sir Modusoperandi ^Boinc! 21:27, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

On the plus side, there's more beer in the fridge. -- Hindleyite Converse • ?pedia 21:32, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

I blame it on admins who have made less than 50 edits this year and suddenly decided to reappear just to comment on this topic. Sir Cs1987 UOTM. t. c 07:10, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

I blame it on there being many more users then than there are now. That was just when I was coming along, and boy were there a lot of people here.-Sir Ljlego, GUN VFH FIYC WotM SG WHotM PWotM AotM EGAEDM ANotM + (Talk) 21:54, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

On the last Dead tour, I dropped some user numbers. Man, what a trip. Sir Modusoperandi ^Boinc! 22:29, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

Lies in statistics form. --EMC ^[TALK] 04:15, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

I blame the Republic of Lusitania. I have no idea where exactly Lusitania is on a map, but the drop in en:'s Alexa traffic means that those Lusaphones now are roughly tied with the Anglophones or even the Telephones in the race for world domination.

How's about these bananas?

Maybe it would help a bit if we were all a bit more friendly to the n00bs... Doing things like:

• Editing and improving new articles, rather than just slapping an ICU on and leaving it as that. I know I have been guilty of this myself. Sometimes a little encouragement goes a long way.
• Maybe not giving out ICU's so much, and slap a WIP on a bit more instead.
• Improve the beginners guide... I have been working on this for a while now, and would welcome any help. Please use the talk page...
• Perhaps even if some of the admins were not so quick to ban new users who actually don't know what they are doing are are not really "vandals". Personally, I have really liked the way Led has been doing this. He's been giving them a chance...
• Does anyone check the list of perm banned IPs?
• It might also help if we backed off on QVFD a bit in favour of ICU. It must be frustrating to new users who see their article huffed on sight when we have worse in the mainspace.
• Oh, and also, "Editing and improving new articles, rather than just slapping an ICU on..." If you think an author has potential, and you are thinking about slapping an ICU on, actually do something to the article to improve it first.  :-) MrN 18:04, Mar 15

Please show me one noob that you think was unjustly banned. I think that we (as in the admins) are quite cautious when it comes to banning someone. As for the QVFD queue, the never ending argument of "we cannot delete crap on site since we already have loads of it here" is something that I always disliked. We can delete crap on site, period. We cannot delete crap already in the site for some time due to the community's previous decision. You want mass deletion? Fine. Get a consent. All previous attempts of mass deletion failed - because the majority here does not wish to mass delete old articles. Personally I think that this is a of the regular ups and downs we have here. Most regular users are friendly towards the noobs, and most admins are quite careful with dealing with those. What we need is not deletions or lollipops for the users. We need more high quality articles, and tons of them. That, is the only way to bring more people here. ~ 18:15, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

For the record, there are, like, a lot of crappy articles that come that don't deserve the ICU. For another record, when I ban an anon for crap creation, it's either that they've created the same page more than once under different titles, they've recreated the page thrice, it's vanity, or their deleted contributions are a mile long. I also check the previous ban log. If they've been banned before (for the same offens/ce), then I ban them again for longer. Finally, {{WIP}} and {{ICU}} are the same thing. WIP is meant for authors to tag their own work, {{ICU}} for others. Perhaps a name change if anything, but no matter which you choose it'll be deleted 7 days from the last edit. That was for the third record.-Sir Ljlego, GUN VFH FIYC WotM SG WHotM PWotM AotM EGAEDM ANotM + (Talk) 19:22, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

It's on sight. As in, when you see it. One of my pet grammar hates. • Spang • ☃ • talk • 20:11, 15 Mar 2008

In anticipation of his response: his English is better than your Hebrew.-Sir Ljlego, GUN VFH FIYC WotM SG WHotM PWotM AotM EGAEDM ANotM + (Talk) 01:53, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

Unless he meant "on website"? -- Sir Mhaille  (talk to me)

Well, I'm not going to go through the ban log pointing fingers as I don't think that would help, but if you want one example of a user who was unjustly banned I'm sure there was a post in the Dump the other day from a user asking to be unbanned and Ljlego removed the ban with the reason "Good faith edits" or similar. That's just one user who bothered to go to the effort, presumably there are others who do not. I'm also sure that I have seen users getting banned just for blanking one page. Over at Wikipedia they have a warning system to indicate a potential ban. I know we have one too, but maybe issuing a few more warnings before giving bans might help. I don't think the banning issue is really that significantly related to the tittle of this forum anyway... I'm sure it's a combination of issues, and I hope Mordillo is right that this is just part of the normal ups and downs. It does appear to me that it's harder to get an article kept these days than it used to be, and that must have something to do with the number of new users we get.

I'm not suggesting that we should not huff on sight/site many of the newly created articles, obviously a great deal have no potential at all. I just wonder if allowing a few more stubs to live for a while using an ICU might encourage the author to stick around long enough to fix them, and potentially grow into useful contributors to the site. I remember my batism of fire when I joined, and would have defiantly appreciated an ICU rather than a huff. Especially considering the deletion reason I was given at the time... Regarding the difference between WIP and ICU... To me ICU is a lot more intimidating for a new user to find on there new page. It says things like "Do not remove this yourself" and forces the user to contact the person who put it there, whereas WIP is really just an acknowledgement that more needs to be done. Personally if I'm happy that an author is likely to return and work on an article more I try to use WIP rather than ICU. It's just a bit more friendly, and has the same effect. Regarding mass huffings? Did I mention that? Now that would be silly idea surely... MrN 01:26, Mar 16

Actually, I don't think there's anything wrong with ICU at all. I remember all the way back in early April of last year when I joined, and my first article was tagged NRV (the older, slightly less friendly version of ICU, for all you newer folks) and all it did was tell me that "hey, uncyc pages need to be better than this one." Had I been as busy as I am now, I may have been tempted to just let it die, but I didn't. I honestly tried to make the page better, and I think that ICU will continue to convince a select few others to do the same. - P.M., WotM, & GUN, Sir Led Balloon (Tick Tock) (Contribs) 02:00, Mar 16

Well, yeah, but it's not the purpose of it. Regarding "nicer", I think that the work in progress template is deceiving. It looks like a nicer template, but yet again I come back to the fact that it holds the same weight as ICU. Perhaps more clarity is necessary, but the point is that the article be expanded to what is considered an acceptable level before it is removed. Otherwise, the person could just remove the WIP and it gets lost in the sands of time...and then gets VFD'd or put on User:MrN9000/VFD List a year or two later. See, there are some fights which are perennial, and they always end up the same. Sometimes it's better to err on the side of caution. So what if we've yet again dropped under 23,000 articles? I'd rather that than have the shite and tripe they have as filler on Wikipedia. When I was new, and I wanted to start an article, I just couldn't bring myself to do so on a pre-existing article. It's less intimidating to start an article than to replace one. That is why it has been generally decided that we seem a little harsh when you start.

However, I am all for being nicer to new articles that show potential. And I do suggest that we help nurture the articles created by new people. It's just that the system that's in place is not broken. Why fix it?-Sir Ljlego, GUN VFH FIYC WotM SG WHotM PWotM AotM EGAEDM ANotM + (Talk) 02:03, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

Well so long as people are finding and cleaning up bad new articles from the bottom of [1] I guess none should be able to slip through... I don't thing this WIP vs ICU business is really that much of a problem anyway. It's the deletion of articles on sight which (I think) is scaring the new users away. Lets delete less new articles on sight, and give a few more ICUs instead. Anyone who does not think we have a problem with dropping user numbers... Please actually go look at the figures, where it's obvious that there is a continual trend going back for some time now. WE DO HAVE A PROBLEM. [this] Especially when you compare the trend of what's happening to our user count compared to many of the other wiki. Look at the figures. MrN 13:01, Mar 16

If I'm being perfectly honest with you, I fail to see a problem with having less users. The era of higher Alexa traffic and user numbers did not coincide with an era of excellence in quality. Which is, you know, what we're getting at here. Like Mhaille said, quality over quantity. And anyway, we are by far the largest Wikia wiki. We have more users, more articles, more everything (Memory Alpha is second). So, naturally, we're going to have differences than niche wikis like Halopedia and Final Fantasy Wiki. If you have 20 users, and you go up 23, that's +115%. If you have 400 users and you go up 23, it's 5% increase. Figures only go so far. In the end, if a person likes what they see, they'll be more likely to stay than if someone is just kinda meh about the whole thing. Unfortunately, a pitfall to having a big wiki is that you can't give personalized attention to each and ever user. It's similar to the problem of having large classes in the public school system.

If we are indeed going to make a change, it's going to have to be

1. Incremental
2. Small

Otherwise we risk alienating our established users, which is something that we definitely don't want.-Sir Ljlego, GUN VFH FIYC WotM SG WHotM PWotM AotM EGAEDM ANotM + (Talk) 16:47, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

Does it also mean that we have MORE DILDOS?! ~ 09:24, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

That this indicates we're at half the...everything...what we were at this time last year seems to me, and this is just me talking, to mean that something has gone wrong. That VFD has more edits than any other page makes me think, again just me, that we've gone evil. (Eerily, my sandbox is in the top 50 for number of edits which makes me think, me again, that I've gone evil. Evil!)

How about instead of instantly QVFD'ing most of the crap we tag it with ICU? Granted, 90% of the mostly-garbage that will get tagged rather than deleted will not be improved (and will be deleted anyway), but won't that make the potential new user feel at least a bit wanted? Are we pushing away the next generation of users because we've become too deletion oriented? Sir Modusoperandi ^Boinc! 20:13, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

Great idea Batman!. /me makes an attempt at robin the forum of any humour it may ever have had... MrN 20:54, Mar 24

RE: That VFD is the most edited page: That's an anomaly due to it being the only one of our main voting mages (VFD, VFH, VFP - VFS doesn't see enough action) that doesn't use subpages for its votes. By their nature voting pages will get an awful lot of edits (I mean, even FFS is about the thirtieth most edited page, FFS!). If VFH weren't split up last year, it'd probably be the most edited. It's all because VFD's a voting page, not because too much goes through it (I'm on the fence about that debate right now). –—Hv (talk) 24/03 20:30

Quality

Over quantity, any day.... -- Sir Mhaille  (talk to me)

Hells yeah!--Witt, of UNion Entertain me* 21:44, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

They are but chaff in the wind .. . . Verp 22:40, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

Also

Let us assume that when I said On Site I meant it as a..errr....clever pun. Also FU SPANG, my Hebrew is better than your Haggis every day! ~ 10:20, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

You just changed it around to spite me, didn't you? :P-Sir Ljlego, GUN VFH FIYC WotM SG WHotM PWotM AotM EGAEDM ANotM + (Talk) 16:48, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

It's any day. 2-0, sir! • Spang • ☃ • talk • 15:32, 23 Mar 2008

Every day works too. It just means that you're never better than him.-Sir Ljlego, GUN VFH FIYC WotM SG WHotM PWotM AotM EGAEDM ANotM + (Talk) 16:19, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

Obvious explanation

The deletionists took over uncyclopedia. We have not enough bardaphrasers left these days.---Asteroid B612 (aka Rataube) - Ñ 17:15, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

I'm honored you would say so, but if everyone was EXACTLY like me, nothing would ever get done around here.--<<>> 23:00, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

Well, except for QFA getting purged. I reckon it's about time only 75% articles got quasi-status, wouldn't you say?-Sir Ljlego, GUN VFH FIYC WotM SG WHotM PWotM AotM EGAEDM ANotM + (Talk) 15:20, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

No, 125%! Sir Modusoperandi ^Boinc! 17:30, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

Let's come to a compromise and say 2000% or bust.-Sir Ljlego, GUN VFH FIYC WotM SG WHotM PWotM AotM EGAEDM ANotM + (Talk) 17:32, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

Obviouser and only explanation

BENSON has forsaken us! We must pray to HIM that he grant us prosperity once more! -- » Sir Savethemooses Grand Commanding Officer ... holla atcha boy» 17:30, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

Let us make a burnt offering of a noob! Sir Modusoperandi ^Boinc! 21:54, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

Wouldn't virgins be easier to find? This is the internet, after all. - P.M., WotM, & GUN, Sir Led Balloon (Tick Tock) (Contribs) 22:18, Mar 18

You first! Sir Modusoperandi ^Boinc! 23:41, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

Actually, this explanation makes sense to me. I haven't the foggiest idea why. --The Acceptable  Cainad  (Fnord) 00:37, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

My theory

I suspect that some sort of internet monster is eating all the users. --Sir Starnestommy (Talk • Contribs • CUN) 23:44, Mar. 18, 2008

Psh, that's nonsensafklj HOKLY FUCK!! fe MONSTER!!!11one1 --EMC ^[TALK] 00:12, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

It's a gentleman monster that gives its victims time to sign their posts. • Spang • ☃ • talk • 00:28, 19 Mar 2008

Face it, guys, there simply aren't enough persons in the world whome are able to write and read in english to keep this concern going. You should consider going Arab, Punjabi, Chinese or maybe even Dutch. -- di Mario 18:36, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

به ویکی‌پدیا خوش‌آمدید دانشنامهٔ آزادی که !هر کسی می‌تواند آن را ویرایش کند!! -- §. | WotM | PLS | T | C | A 23:12, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

Being an American, I'll take this Muslim prayer hoping for long life and a safe childbirth as a terrorist threat.--<<>> 23:17, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

I thought that's what his username was before he changed it. • Spang • ☃ • talk • 15:25, 23 Mar 2008

Leef lang en voorspoedig. There, see, Dutch is definitely more concise than Arab. Should cut editing efforts by 60%, thereby making it much more attractive to edit in the first place. Hell, we are running the Dutch version with only about seven active users. It all boils down to language efficiency. --di Mario 18:09, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

Not to rub it in or anything

But did you know the lolcat site I was hanging out on for the past 40 days has way more hits than us? LOLCATS, people!

Oh, and to answer your question, all we really need to do to improve the amount of users is to get seriously dug. I mean like getting dug on Digg kind of dug. The lolcat site saw a huge increase in traffic just because of some stunt someone pulled on it — specifically, that someone tried to propose via lolcat. Sure, most of the Diggers showed up just to tell the person how lame they were, but man, did the amount of votes and comments increase on that site like nobody's business. – Sir Skullthumper, MD (criticize • writings • critchat) 17:46 Mar 24, 2008

This is how the size of various Uncyclopedias today compares to that of a year ago today:

Mar '07 Mar '08 ar: 174 ar: 550 ast: 31 ast: 51 bg: 43 bn: 10 bs: 27 ca: 263 ca: 350 cs: 495 cs: 1112 cy: 18 da: 941 da: 2277 de: 3099 de: 3116 el: 583 el: 1199 en: 22559 en: 22937 eo: 20 eo: 39 es: 2480 es: 4367 et: 19 fa: 167 fa: 308

Mar '07 Mar '08 fi: 3050 fi: 4571 fr: 4685 fr: 5991 got: 21 he: 953 he: 1599 hr: 209 hu: 321 hu: 713 id: 40 id: 217 it: 1916 it: 6530 ja: 4872 ja: 9780 jv: 1 ko: 234 ko: 1544 la: 35 la: 63 lb: 7 lt: 186 lv: 23 lv: 76 mg: 7 mg: 9 mk: 12

Mar '07 Mar '08 nl: 480 nl: 959 no: 1525 no: 3141 pl: 6033 pl: 6052 pt: 4318 pt: 9546 ro: 66 ru: 1389 ru: 2052 sk: 313 sl: 5 sl: 32 sr: 90 sr: 387 su: 3 sv: 635 sv: 888 th: 398 th: 1390 tr: 19 tr: 333 uk: 73 yi: 13 yi: 30 zh-cn: 831 zh-cn: 906 zh-tw: 2664 zh-tw: 4230

Which would be some brilliant statistics, if this forum were entitled "Dropping Article Numbers". – Sir Skullthumper, MD (criticize • writings • critchat) 19:04 Mar 24, 2008

Subjects

Speaking as a relitivaly new user, I may be able to shed some light (possibly on this the by far laziest week ever); the site may simply be covering all the topics that can be covered, similalry so many "users" do hash up jobs that are difficult fr a new user to get in on, even though there bad it's still dicouriging to for new users , perhps admins could give a the "crap list" to new users to encourege quality re-writes? I would be wary aginst "soft Touch" on articles that are obviously crap, as it narrows the subjects for new users to do, I hope this may help.--Sycamore (Talk) 19:53, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

Do you mean a crap list like this? – Sir Skullthumper, MD (criticize • writings • critchat) 20:04 Mar 24, 2008

OOO-Yeah, thats the stuff; but I diden't know about that section until I was already quite dug in on other pages. Pages that I more or less re-wrote were not there either (I.E: Scotland, Glasgow, Glasgow Caledonian University.:)

--Sycamore (Talk) 20:27, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

Dropping Robot Numbers :O

It's not just a question of dropping user numbers; robots are now being alienated and are leaving the project. From [2],

"Qscgu9-bot 29 2409 Aug 01, 2007 236 Feb 07, 2008 46"

(yes, 2400 edits, then just as suddenly and quietly gone).

What happened? In this case, I'd suspect a couple of factors. This user was hit by a rangeblock in December '07 that blocked much of a large Italian ISP just to get rid of a few problem vandals. That may have eventually been fixed, but then this was added as insult to injury:

==de.uncyclopedia.org== Hey, you can't imagine how glad I'm about having found you. You are the user who instructed a bot to work on the de.uncyclopedia.org, where his username is Laurusnobilis. If not, then ignore what I'm saying. If true, then note that this is very important. The bot Laurusnobilis was making so much trouble on the de.uncyclopedia that he got blocked today. Let me give you a list with the things we have to complain about: The bot inserts a Wikia-credit line into every article. We don't want that. I see no reason why it could be neccessary. The bot is making trouble with Interwikilinks (or call them interlanguage-links): He tried to set a link to an language which does not exist or is not known by the de.uncyclopedia software, namely [[lb: ]] I made an link from German "Genie" to English "Genius" what is correct, but the bot thought that the English "Genie" would be right, whereas it means "Geist" in German. The reason for the bot to make the change was the same spelling of the two different words. But to my mind this should not trick a bot, especialy because the right Interwiki link did already exist. Does the bot not trust in the changes set by humans? I changed the wrong link in the de.uncy, but as I saw in the English one it has been also set wrong by the bot. Again: [[de:Genie]] belongs to the article "Genius". The same with the other links set during the same edit, as the bot copied them from the de.uncy. Another user complained also about a wrong interwikilink to [[uk: ]]-uncy, but I'm not informed about this case. Well, the de.uncy really appreciated the work of the bot until yesterday. And I'm interested in having a helpful bot. But as long as there's nothing done about our complaints the bot will remain blocked. I will be really grateful if we could work together, as programming an own bot seems too difficult for me. I'm just hoping you can deal with my English becoming worse the later the evening. I'm the user Nequmodiva from the de.uncyclopedia.org and you may talk to me there, but I will also notice any response from you just written down below here. --83.176.135.43 22:51, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

On the face of it, looks like a few technical problems - in this case largely caused by Wikia (the missing languages, the "wikia credits" self-promotion spammed across the bottom of every page of the XML dumps) - and some attempt to resolve the issue. At least that is the first impression; look again: Special:Contributions/Qscgu9-bot shows edit count dropping from very-active to near-zero as of Jan 18, 2008. There were fewer than ten edits from this 'bot since then, and no mainspace activity for a month and a half now.

Sure, the 'bot (and the two-legged critter behind the operation) are still around... on Nonciclopedia, the Italian counterpart to Uncyclopedia. That appears to be the only place this is still active, and the edit pattern has shifted to centre on purely-local tasks in that one Italian wiki.

So now we don't have a 'bot? --66.102.80.212 01:01, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

Question to administrators

I've noticed, as a general trend, we seem to lose people after they become admins. The fact that they're easily replaced via VFS kind of kills the motivation to come back and take over adminly duties again. I've seen users go from basically tanks to very few edits a day after they become admined. Again, it's not always that way, but it's what I've seen over the past ten months I've been here.

So I have a question to ask: Does Uncyclopedia become boring after adminship? Because having so many users admin'd seems to be fucking with the chemistry of things. – Sir Skullthumper, MD (criticize • writings • critchat) 22:25 Apr 02, 2008

I'd also like to point out that the race of the "experienced user" seems to be a dying breed. I remember summer, when things were working the best. We had newbs, experienced users, and admins. The newbs were helped and encouraged by the experienced users. The newbs weren't intimidated by the experienced editors, and the admins weren't bugged about needless things (and if they did bug certain admins, they were sure to get banned). But now, it seems to be all about newbs and admins, with fewer and fewer experienced editors hanging around. The newbs, having no encouragement, really have to right their own battles. And the experienced users feel kind of left out of everything.

When I came around this past summer, I had ICU explained to me. I had someone give me a reward on my talkpage for writing an article. I had people offer me help and even request input. Where is that now? It's all systematic, and the "user gap" as I like to call it is widening. There's no excitement about one anothers' work anymore. No "Wow! You're a good writer!" or "I loved that idea!" Somedays I wish some of the users on here were never admins. I miss the days where we were all on the same level and could either write or do maintenance; as admins, they have to do maintenance, it's a responsibility.

Sure, a lot of admins continue to write. I'm not saying this applies to everyone. But the user gap worries me. If I were a newb now, would I dare to ask any of those scary bold-faced usernames for advice? And where's the encouragement of the newbs? Where's the community? This place is becoming downright boring!

End rant. – Sir Skullthumper, MD (criticize • writings • critchat) 22:37 Apr 02, 2008

We should limit admins doing adminy stuff to, say, twenty admn-related edits a day (for their own protection, you understand). People like Braydie (both a good user and a good writer. Bad hair, though. Pity. Kids with combovers make me sad) started full steam after gaining adminhood, then burnt out. He's a shell of a man now. I saw him a while ago: 65lbs. True story. As for the noobs, is there a link to UN:AAN on the welcome template? Sir Modusoperandi ^Boinc! 00:11, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

I think that's a good point. When I first started here, I was scared to death of those people with fancy signatures who had 95 features. Maybe, for a month, we tone down our fancy wikicode for the noobs? I have no idea. How did I get awards, anyway? Also, maybe someone should track the increase/decrease in "experienced users". Sidenote: I am seeing a HUGE influx in pee review. Does that mean anything?   Le Cejak • <Apr 03, 2008 [0:59]>

Continuing with what Skullthumper probably said(tl;dr), I've noticed that most of our maintenance-y stuff is done by about 4 active admins that were recently opped. We can handle it, but it's becoming tiresome; between adminning and the world outside of uncyc, I barely have any time to write, much less help out a noob. The best thing would be to have all of our older ops start showing up and helping out again, but I don't think that's in the cards, hence my "for new ops" vote on VFS. Skullthumper's user gap seems right on the mark to me. Is it because our experienced users all left? Were they all were made ops? Perhaps figuring this out is the key to fixing our sagging stats. - P.M., WotM, & GUN, Sir Led Balloon (Tick Tock) (Contribs) 03:37, Apr 3

I'd expect that some key inactive admins are not coming back, at least to take over active day-to-day maintenance tasks on. The most obvious "missing admins" would be the two founders, spotted rarely if ever these days. I'd suspect that if Chron's intent were anything other than to leave quasi-permanently, he wouldn't have sold us down the river by selling the domain out from under us in July '06 - a drastic step taken in secret right in the middle of a key period of expansion of the project into other languages. Stillwaters is even harder to find around here than Chronarion; her true identity is unknown. There are a few others, such as Splarka (left after some wheelwar incident with another admin) and Rcmurphy (openly cut back his level of involvement due to outside commitments) who come to mind too.

I can't speak for the inactive admins as there is the small technicality that I am still very much active elsewhere in the Uncyclopedia Babble Babel Project - just not here or on Wikia. Sometimes that means having to deal with this sort of issue, where incidents such as dumping entire nations on CVP are alienating users.

Certainly there have been changes (such as an increasing tendancy to ban misbehaving n00bs until 2034 or so, no warning, no explanation, because it might be fun to make them grovel in IRC) which have done more harm than good. The increasing preference for deleting prose rather than attempting to salvage it also may be doing more damage; a page is almost good enough to stay, but not quite, so delete it, wait for some utter garbage to be written to replace it, delete it a few more times, then CVP it and the entire nation that had the nerve to inflict it on us. So much for "do not bite the n00bs". --Carlb 15:49, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

Well, this has been discussed, like a lot. However, you put a nice summation up for us all, especially us guys that wasn't here for all that other fancy stuff with domains and nonsense like that. The fact of the matter is, maybe we just need to concentrate on building the best wiki we can. If we remain a niche thing, then so be it! We're not Wikipedia, we don't have a grand mission from the high exalted Lord Jimbo that we are to bring the gift of free information to the world or any like goal. In my opinion, the goal of this wiki is (or should be) to have fun, to present the best damn satire you can, have a couple of idiotic jokes, and just try to improve. The key here is the having fun. I think that's why we're having so much trouble keeping people here. It's become no fun for people. That's why admins end up leaving a lot of the time. That's why guys like MadMax, Mhaille, Modusoperandi, Rcmurphy (who featured things at the same time for three freakin' years and would've continued were he able) and the scores of others (Carlb included) who've been here since the beginning or nearly the beginning are so incredible. They still find some enjoyment in it, whether it be by helping out or just by being funny.

We could take a cue from some of these guys, especially Modus. Have fun with it, don't let this place become (too much) work, because you won't end up here in a couple of months' time if you do.-Sir Ljlego, GUN VFH FIYC WotM SG WHotM PWotM AotM EGAEDM ANotM + (Talk) 19:57, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

Obviously

I agree completely. I promised myself when I got opped that I wouldn't let the site stop being fun, no matter what, which brings me back to the reason why we're here. We're not here because we're free; we're here because we're not free. There is no escaping reason; no denying purpose. Because as we both know, without purpose, we would not exist. It is purpose that created us. Purpose that connects us. Purpose that pulls us. That guides us. That drives us. It is purpose that defines us. Purpose that binds us. We are here because of you, Uncyclopedia; we're here to take from you what you tried to take from us. Purpose. - P.M., WotM, & GUN, Sir Led Balloon (Tick Tock) (Contribs) 22:39, Apr 3

Is that the only movie you've ever seen in your life?-Sir Ljlego, GUN VFH FIYC WotM SG WHotM PWotM AotM EGAEDM ANotM + (Talk) 00:56, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

Well, evidently he's also seen the Star Wars movies. I don't think he's watched any others besides Sleepless in Seattle. Unsolicited conversation Extravagant beauty PEEING 02:08, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

For the record, I've seen a few other movies. None of them are as fantastically quotable as *that* one, though. - P.M., WotM, & GUN, Sir Led Balloon (Tick Tock) (Contribs) 03:49, Apr 4

I don't think our user base is waning. It's just that our user appeal is becoming more selective. --SirU.U.Esq. VFH | GUN | Natter | Uh oh | Pee 08:35, Apr 4

Yes. Uncyclopedia is gradually becoming less and less encyclopedic and more and more just broad humour, we have gone from a parody of Wikipedia to a humour wiki. You can see it, original articles from 2005 were based heavily around Encyclopedic topics and even shock Wikipedia excuse for culture. Now the last very encyclopedic article I can remember is Marie Curie. As we have become broader in appeal we seem to have lost those who wrote those mainly encyclopedic articles. Most very encyclopedic concepts have been done and now we are expanding beyond that, attracting more new user who like that. It is up to you to decide whether that is a good thing or bad thing. (this is based from observation of FA in 2005, 2006, 2007 and now) --Sir DJ ~ Irreverent 11:02, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

But hey, enough of my yakkin'. Whaddaya say? Let's boogie! --SirU.U.Esq. VFH | GUN | Natter | Uh oh | Pee 12:36, Apr 4

/me chooses tonight to rock UU tonight. - P.M., WotM, & GUN, Sir Led Balloon (Tick Tock) (Contribs) 22:09, Apr 4

I don't think that we've necessarily devolved to a broader concept; it's more that the general perception of "satire" has changed. In all honesty, I think that most of the 2007 FA's (with the exception of the banal HowTo and Why? booms) were more "encyclopedic", as you put it, than those of 2005. However, on another token, we've reached a place where we can no longer be confined to only what is found in Encyclopaedia Britannica or Wikipedia. If someone could figure out a way to satire DJ-Kicks: Erlend Øye, then more power to you. In the meantime, the real measure of what our progress has been is not in whether or not we produce more or less encyclopedic entries, but whether we are still being satirical of our world.-Sir Ljlego, GUN VFH FIYC WotM SG WHotM PWotM AotM EGAEDM ANotM + (Talk) 23:52, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

Write whateveritis that works, I say. I does! If Sophia points you in that direction, go. When she points in the another, go there too. They're all just words, man. Mumble mumble...non sequitur. Sir Modusoperandi ^Boinc! 00:35, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

I agree completely. We're not here because we're free, we're here because we cannot escape the porpoise. It is the porpoise that pursues. The porpoise which binds us, defines us; porpoise which chases us with his nasty toothy beak and his awful squee-queeee-squee-squee. Is this the Porpoise's cries of rage, or is he just horny? We don't know. And we don't really want to find out. All we know is that we are porpoise-driven. ----OEJ 00:51, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

Mmmm, porpoise.... *drools* - P.M., WotM, & GUN, Sir Led Balloon (Tick Tock) (Contribs) 03:49, Apr 4

Everything is fine, there is no problem

Uncyclopedia

I really, really hope that I'm not the only one to share the view that we DO have a problem. MrN 00:22, Apr 3

Then again, we had 568 users in March... - Admiral Enzo Aquarius-Dial the Gate 20:22, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

Words, words, words. I won't even bother readin' this shite.

568 users of what? ha HA! You GO girl Cajek !   Le Cejak • <Apr 03, 2008 [21:46]>

With humours like these, we cannot lose! To vaudeville! Sir Modusoperandi ^Boinc! 22:44, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

Dam, I just hit my elbow on the table. Now that's humorous. No stop laughing. I mean it. Some one obviously does not have a funny bone in his body... MrN 23:13, Apr 3

Also these are not the droids you're looking for. -- Sir Mhaille  (talk to me)

/me Shoots Alec Guiness. Weren't expecting THAT were you, audience? Now give me those damn droids, this movie is already too long and boring. No, you don't get to meet Han Solo, give 'em here!--<<>> 12:27, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

Movin on Up ^^^

Seems as though crisis averted, good stock of noobs and writers returning. End complaining... for now --Sir DJ ~ Irreverent 10:13, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

My theory is this: "There will always be new users, it's just a question of how we treat them when they get here as to whether they'll stay."--<<>> 12:00, 9 April 2008 (UTC)