Forum:Forest Fire Week 2014

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We need to get rid of all our crap articles and redirect any vital articles that suck to featured, quasi-featured, or overall good articles with a similar premise. This has been mentioned on a bunch of other recent forums and I think it's important. We have about 30,000 articles right now. Quality should be valued above quantity, especially since we want to bring in more readers and we don't want them to read a shitty article, think we're not funny, and then leave. Therefore, I propose we do another Forest Fire Week. Also, I want to add a new line to the FFW template that says "The Admin who deletes this article should redirect it to [Similar article]" but I can't figure out how to. If anyone wants to give it a try, that would be awesome. Anyway, let's vote! -- Sir Xam Ralco the Mediocre 22:27, 12 October 2014 (UTC)

Vote Vote Vote

Score: -3

1.  For. Per what I wrote above. -- Sir Xam Ralco the Mediocre 22:27, 12 October 2014 (UTC)
2.  For. But I'll cry if any of my articles are deleted.   ŤäŁķ ¿Ș₮áłĶ?฿¡฿↓¡ography 00:17 10.13.14
3.  For. We'll have to userspace any articles with significant effort by decent users. And I'd target Injokes that are too derivative and move them into sub-article-space of the main Injoke. And finally, we should build a repository for funny lines/paragraphs found in soon to be deleted articles so they aren't lost forever (Dead Snigger Storage?). --Nikau (talk) 02:34, 13 October 2014 (UTC)
4.  Against. No, no, a thousand times no. The hateful deletion of so many good articles occurs everytime this stupid contest is played, people often put templates up two or three a minute, and there are so many articles tagged that there's no way to keep up with them. Then they are gone. If there was some way of really tagging only the stupid and the unredeemable, yes, but there isn't, and past deletion weeks have been a disaster (check the red links on almost every page). Please don't do this again. Aleister 22:34 14 Halloween month, 2014

   I told you guys...it takes a forestfire week announcement to get Aleister back to uncyclopedia.

5.  For. Burn 90% of the articles down. It's nauseating clicking on a link or a random page and reading infantile horrible dribble. It's embarrassing having articles here next to a giant mountain of crud. One of the ways to set ourselves apart from the spoon is to have a high rate of at least passable articles--ShabiDOO 14:02, 16 October 2014 (UTC)
6.  Against. Didn't get the point of this last year. Lots of users who write fuck all for 364 days of the year seemed to take delight in random unilateral decisions. I am sure lots of shit was taken down, but plenty stays up. To me, very little of the comedy on this site is objectively fantastic - i.e. a lot is subjective - and, in terms of other negative effects it a) occupies users' time which could be better spent writing, b) makes people upset if their obra maestra is attacked and c) runs the risk of filling the front page with lots of red links. I don't see what's wrong with simply VFDing everything we think is shit. Leverage (talk) 14:30, 16 October 2014 (UTC)

   It happens whenever VFD goes dead. Also, orba maestra - nice term to learn. --Nikau (talk) 14:53, 16 October 2014 (UTC)

7.  Against. I've not been here for any of the other forest fires, and although it does sound like fun, it is annoying to click on a red link for a really famous person or thing and see the admin's comment: "Huffed in Forest Fire Week 20**". As per its suitable name, the forest fire is very effective, but not at all sustainable. The reason these happen is supposed to be that the current system is getting dull and we need to inject excitement into the site. I think this should be done responsibly and the articles should all be noted for rewriting, and by that I don't mean adding them to a massive page of suggested topics, I mean that the articles should be taken down one by one and rewritten collaboratively, which should be a lot of people considering these attract users who normally don't come here. Each article should get its own forum for discussion of possible new directions, and maybe articles shouldn't be deleted at all so's we can easily research their histories.--EveryOtherUsernameWasTaken(get dtf) 16:44, 16 October 2014 (UTC)
8.  Against. Per Leverage. There's always going to be articles that one will consider as "shit", even if we did have another FFW - that's what VFD is for. I'd rather focus on encouraging users to write more. -- Lost Labyrinth • (t) • (c) • (a) 19:08, 16 October 2014 (UTC)
9.  Against. I prefer the rewriting idea. -- IFYMB! Talk to me baby! 20:36, 16 October 2014 (UTC)
10.  Against. --EMC ^[TALK] 01:30 Oct 17 2014
11.  Against. - Slapping a template on something and deleting it with only two votes (the user who put the template on and the admin reviewing the template) is the easy way out - why not bring back the rewrite tag instead? This would encourage people to actually do something about the crappy articles - like replace vital articles with good articles - instead of leaving red links galore on the site. -- Simsilikesims(♀UN) Talk here. 04:43, 17 October 2014 (UTC)
12. Comment Forest Fire Week operates on the premise that deleting old pages will create room for new pages to grow; I don't think there has been enough of a period of growth since the last FFW to warrant one now. I would much rather see a Conservation Week. However, American Thanksgiving is next month which means it's Aristocrat's Ball season and I'm sure we can expect lots of high quality new content as usual. -- The Zombiebaron 07:54, 17 October 2014 (UTC)
13.  Huh. I'm... apparently with everybody else. Yeah. Way to be a follower, Bizzeebeever. ~ BB ~ (T) ~ Fri, Oct 17 '14 14:48 (UTC)

discussion

If we do delete 90 percent of images and articles...does it lower server costs at all? --ShabiDOO 14:04, 16 October 2014 (UTC)

Files? Yes I think. Pages? No, they seem to exist forever after deletion. Find something deleted after maybe 2007/2008 and you can probably bring it back, barring errors. --Nikau (talk) 14:56, 16 October 2014 (UTC)

Files are kept after "deletion", too; I think just the thumbnails that have been generated are deleted. Pages definitely still exist in the database. That database is up to 140+ GB, last I looked, which was last week, when we moved the server. ~ BB ~ (T) ~ Fri, Oct 17 '14 14:48 (UTC)

Let me elaborate

I totally get why people are against this idea. I hate red links as much as the next guy, but at the same time, VFD is ridiculously slow and nobody really votes on it. I've started a list here of articles that came up when I hit random page that seemed to be particularly crufty/random/stupid. What was scary was that out of the maybe fifty or so articles that I got when hitting random page, about thirty of them were awful. Of course humor is subjective but we still have far too many articles that rely on unnecessary sexual references, swearing, stating random stuff, Chuck Norris, and the like without any interesting angle. Just click random page a few times and read what shows up. You might be surprised at how bad some of the stuff is. -- Sir Xam Ralco the Mediocre 00:42, 17 October 2014 (UTC)

Do what Xamralco says. Look at 50 random articles from the point of view of a casual visitor. And then tell us if you'd ever visit this site again? --ShabiDOO 02:36, 17 October 2014 (UTC)

Most first-time visitors don't look at as many as 50 articles. Try 10 or so, and only if the first one isn't terrible. But deleting stuff with only two votes isn't the solution - more activity on VFD is. -- Simsilikesims(♀UN) Talk here. 04:46, 17 October 2014 (UTC)

Xamralco: if you promise to keep VFD running with noms, I promise to vote and nag people on IRC (when I can, anyway; I'm in the midst of trying to get a new place to live). ~ BB ~ (T) ~ Fri, Oct 17 '14 14:48 (UTC)

I'm happy to nominate new stuff. I have that list so I'll just start to add them. Good luck finding a new abode. :) -- Sir Xam Ralco the Mediocre 00:21, 18 October 2014 (UTC)